Today’s leadership in the public policy making arena faces a number of technical and fundamental challenges spanning from globalized marketing, advancement in the information technology and the dynamism of the hierarchical arrangements in organizations or firms. Recently years brings about wide changes in business transactions in the aim of facing out the global market modest challenges, to cope with the rapid changes in technology and cater for the extreme transitional economies.
New leadership skills and management techniques in the business world are therefore inevitable. The leader must be valuable and have unique skills that are not easily to imitate or which lacks a perfect substitution. The employers are interested in leaders who have the ability to cater for diversity to combat the increases of demands and competition.
Dynamism is a key trait for the managers and leaders. They must have the mechanisms of transforming company performance to global economies through globalization and liberalization. The most important leadership traits in creation of public policies comprise of ability to empower others.
An empowering leader is visionary and has the ability to accomplish goals by encouraging and influencing on others through team performances. According to Noonan (2003), leadership is not the ability to work, but influence others to join cohesively and achieve the set objectives.
Successful leaders are able to set an influential operational atmosphere at the workplace where everyone is able to set and achieve personal goals and eventually departmental or organizational goals.
The positive attitude and ability of to work under minimal supervision is empowerment. Leadership requires the ability to create, manage and exploit skills and knowledge of others to gain competitive advantage over rivals. Empowering leaders arrange for motivational visions and missions through orientation and division of responsibilities at all levels of performance.
Today the role of leadership has changed to cater for measures of increasing resources. Leaders are able to formulate environments that are conducive for engaging individuals’ coercive powers, and thus achieve the set goals. This strategy of empowering others overthrows the traditional dictatorial and directive leadership style where decision-making was centralized. Empowered employees are able to support transacts within the firm.
They are readily willing to have a clear definition of the link performance requirements and rewards. Empowered employees also support transformation in the firm by bringing in the individual objectives, goals, and ideas to merge with the business ideas.
Empowered employees have an elevated self-esteem, vision, concerns, self- confidence, conductive and liberal thinking. The style promotes cohesiveness, cooperation and independence of thoughts, character-management, responsibility, positive attitude, mutual trust and self-motivation Noonan (2003).
Although not compulsory, the leader’s education, foreign experience and military backgrounds have a major significance in leadership and policymaking arenas. The fields of education, military and foreign exposure are part of leadership experiences. Traits are never inborn or mastered but achieved through experiences.
Rarely do we find a successful leader who has no experience in either or all these fields. The most important thing to govern leadership is though traits (Kesselman et al, 2009). Most past leaders such as Winston Churchill and Ronald Regan are good examples in support of the notion that successful leaders acquire unique motivational and empowering traits as the main leadership attributes.
Churchill was a professional writer, soldier, and political leader who mainly developed the leadership traits from these fields. In line with Messervy-Norman (2006), Churchill had remarkable creativity and courage to control the World War II during his 1940-45 leadership of Britain’s darkest days.
He had inspiration to empower soldiers in building vital collaboration during war. Ronald Reagan also possessed energy that reflected clearly among presiding leaders and his work group. The group empowerment created the required synergy (Messervy-Norman, 2006).
References:
Kesselman, M. Krieger, J. and Joseph, W. A. (2009) Introduction to Comparative Politics: Political Challenges and Changing Agenda Boston, MA: Cengage Learning Press
Messervy-Norman, J. G. (2006). Meat in Due Season New Jersey, NJ: Lulu.com Press
Noonan, S. J. (2003). Elements of leadership: What you should know. Lanham- Maryland, MD.: Scarecrow Press