What Factors Contribute to make a good Leader and how might your Style of Leadership vary to be Successful When Involved in Racket, team and Individual Activities

In this essay I will look at what makes a good leader? Different styles of leadership and how you will have to change your leadership styles to suit different activities.

There are a lot of things that you need to become a good leader. For example you have to be:

A good communicator
Respected
Empathetic
Knowledgeable
A role model
A high level performer
Confident.

Although all of these characteristics are important I think that the most important is respect. I say this because if you have no respect as a leader then people aren’t going to listen to you and do what you ask. But if they respect you they will do what you ask.

Some people say that you are only a good leader if you have one something. I don’t agree with this statement because all you have to do is look at the Premiership to see that teams like Everton and Bolton are challenging for a Champions League position. Everton and Bolton would have been happy with a mid-table finish. The managers haven’t won anything with these clubs but they have been very successful.

There are three main styles of leadership. These are:

Autocratic
Democratic
Lassez-faire.

The first of these is the autocratic style of leadership. An autocratic approach is where the leader is in control and the students don’t have any input into how things are run. Autocratic leadership has it ups and downs. It is good when you have young, difficult or a lot of students; you only have a short lesson or if the students wont respond to any other leadership styles. The autocratic approach is not so good if the students start to become tense ...

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There are three main styles of leadership. These are:

Autocratic
Democratic
Lassez-faire.

The second style is the democratic approach. The democratic style of leadership is when the leader involves the students into the decision making and how the lesson is run. The good points of the democratic style are that it keeps the students involved. If the leader wants to see how the students like things to be done or if the leader wants to see how good the students are at leading. The democratic approach is not good if there is a lot of people in the class or if there is only a short time for the lesson to take place. This is because if the lesson is short then you want to get the lesson going. If you ask for the students input then you wont get started for a while.

The third style of leadership is the Lassez-faire approach. The Lassez-faire approach is not really leading. In this approach the students basically get to do what they want to do. They get little direction from the leader. This is an effective style to use when you are working with very good students (ability), when the students really want to do well for themselves and if you can trust the students. It should not be used if there are people in the class with limited experience, a big group or if there is difficult people in the group.

All these styles of leadership work in different situations and as a leader you have to change your style to suit the group that you are leading. For example if you are leading a group with limited experience you use the autocratic style, but if you have a really experienced group then the Lassez-faire style is the best.

Now I will look at how you have to change your style of leadership when involved in different activities like racket, team and individual activities.

When you are leading a racket sport you are really only working one on one. This allows you to use a democratic approach because the person you are leading is going to want to succeed. This allows you to let them look at what they want to do in the training session, and then you can put your own input into the session saying what you believe they should look at.

If you are leading a team activity on the other hand you need to use the autocratic approach the reason that you will use this approach is because you need to get the whole team doing the same thing. This is important because you have to get the team working as a team at all times. Also if you are in charge of a whole group of people you need to be respected and maybe even feared. The best way to do this is to use the autocratic style of leading.

Finally if you are leading someone in a individual sport that you can use the Lassez-faire approach because in an individual sport they will know what they have done wrong. They may need a little input from you as the leader but ultimately they will know how to improve their own performance.

I think that all of the leadership styles are effective in different situations, but I would choose the autocratic style over the others if I had a choice. The reason that I would choose this is because an autocratic leader gets things done quickly and efficiently. If you are using the autocratic style you will get more things done. The reason for this is that everyone will be doing the same thing, so you will be able to get through more drills or exercises without people with the group.