How to build an effective leadership

Leadership is a force in which one person has the ability to influence or change the values, beliefs, behaviors and attitudes of others. An effective leader characteristic is that they give clear direction to their followers, commit to work, work to achieve the goals and objectives of the organization is the process by which leaders use their skills and knowledge to lead and take a group of people in the desired direction relevant to the goals and objectives of the organization that have been determined. In addition, an effective leader must have strong leadership skills and have certain characteristics, such as passion, consistency, trust, and vision; only for leaders who have characteristics that are able to build the trust of employees.

Leadership and management are both distinct aspects. Management is more about how to manage the business, have full control over the organization, and assign and direct employees to do their work according to the instructions and plans of the owner. Meanwhile, leadership is when leaders guide employees toward organizational goals, while trying to communicate and motivate employees to ensure they are in the right position and use their talents and commit them to achieving results from the organization. Leadership strategies will also change according to trends when needed, unlike management that solely follows the old traditional rules.

Some experts argue that an effective leadership strategy consists of: (1) develop and communicate a vision, strategic leaders must develop the vision and harmonize that vision thoroughly to help the formation and implementation of strategies to achieve that vision. The role of the leader is very important to set the direction of the organization to achieve growth and achieve predetermined targets. (2) Build dynamic core competencies, core competencies are the main ability to perform important tasks (e.g., functions) quite well, and make a valuable contribution to the competitiveness of the company. Dynamic core competencies imply that the company is constantly evolving and updating competencies to become a leader, or at the forefront, in that capability. It also implies the company is ready to develop new competencies to replace existing ones when necessary, maintaining a competitive advantage, and/or building new profits.  (3) Emphasize and effectively use human capital, the use of human capital shows that strategic leaders must be able to attract and retain employees with the best talent and continue to develop their skills in order to be useful to the organization.  (4) Invest in the development of new technologies, an effective strategic leader capable of taking the necessary actions to stay at the forefront of new technologies, developing them internally. They should also use technology to ensure the company operates in the most efficient way possible.  (5) Engage in valuable strategies, involved in a strategy that is a leader capable of exploiting market opportunities by using differentiation strategies to achieve goals at a low cost.  (6) Build and maintain an effective organizational culture, Developing and maintaining a healthy organization and a healthy culture should be the priority of strategic leaders.  A healthy Budaya always emphasizes the core values of innovation, learning, and respect for human capital and teamwork.  (7) Develop and implement balanced controls, control system helps organizations manage finances, capital, and organizational work processes. Effective strategic leaders build flexible and innovative controls to help companies maintain and/or gain a competitive advantage.  (8) Engage in ethical practices. Strategic leaders play a significant role in building ethical practices throughout the organization. The effectiveness of strategic leaders emphasizes honesty, trust, and integrity in decision-making, and implements those decisions.

Some argue that an effective leader can cause his followers to be unconscious with their ability to sacrifice for the sake of the organization. A better definition of an effective leader works by rewarding his subordinates with their ability to achieve a formulated vision and work to make it happen. There are several things how leaders motivate subordinates, namely: 1) Convince subordinates that the vision of the organization (and the role of subordinates in this case) is important and achievable. 2) Challenge subordinates with goals, projects, tasks, and responsibilities by considering subordinates' sense of success, achievement, and proficiency. 3) Reward subordinates who perform well with awards, money, and promotions.

Future leaders are leaders who continue to learn, maximize energy, and master the deepest feelings, simplicity, and multifocus. Therefore, it is stated that quality becomes important, and quantity is no longer a competitive advantage. Seeking knowledge and exploring knowledge must continue to be done for future leaders, this is very important because science is a vital energy for every organization. The future leader is also a leader who is adaptive to challenges, pressing regulations, paying attention to the maintenance of discipline, giving back to employees, and maintaining his leadership. Leadership must always prepare various forms of solutions in solving future challenge problems. In relation to adaptation to change, it is emphasized on the utilization of human resources. For this reason, it is necessary to develop new regulations, new relationships and cooperation, new values, new behaviors, and new approaches to work.

In practice, forming effective leadership is not easy. At least there are challenges that need attention.

First, leadership as attribution. The theory of attribution of leadership states that leadership is an attribute that people make over others. This theory suggests that people assume leaders have traits such as intelligence, pleasant personality, strong verbal skills, aggressiveness, understanding, perseverance, or even firmness in predetermined decisions. At the organizational level, the attribution framework deals with the condition of using leadership to explain organizational outcomes. This helps explain the vulnerability of CEOs (and high-level state employees) to blame if the organization suffers financial setbacks or tends to be rewarded for positive financial results. In line with leadership attribution theory, the important thing to say as an effective leader is to project the look of being a leader and not focus on actual achievements.

Second, Substitution and Leadership Neutralizer. Many organizational successes or failures are caused by factors beyond the influence of leadership, besides that leader do not always have an influence on their followers. Neutralizer makes the leader's behavior impossible to have influence in his followers. While substitution makes the influence of the leader becomes unnecessary. The validity of substitution and neutralizer of leadership still causes controversy, because. The theory is very complicated – there are many substitutions and neutralizers that are possible for many different types of leader behavior in different situations as well. Sometimes the difference between substitution and penetrization is still unclear.

Similarly, some of the styles, typology, or models and theories of leadership that have prevailed in the late 20th century are relevant in facing the challenges and problems of the 21st Century, we can consider in developing 21st century leadership. These leadership styles   include transactional leadership, transformational leadership, charismatic leadership, visionary leadership as an alternative to the 21st Century leadership model.