RESPOND TO BOTH STUDENT'S POST WITH 200 WORD MINIMUM**

Discussion: Leadership involves many components, but specifically, the ability of the leader, the willingness of the followers, and the situation facing the organization. After Please evaluate your personal leadership style and the effectiveness of the style.

For this week's discussion, answer two of the following statements with a complete paragraph for each statement. Provide examples to illustrate your answers for each statement.

Choose two (2) from the following:

• A leader must always ...
• Leaders should never ...
• The best leader I ever had did ...
• The worst leader I ever had did ...
• When I am doing a good job as a leader, I ....
• I am afraid of leaders who ....
• I would follow a leader who ....
• I am repelled by leaders who ....
• Some people think they are good leaders, but they are not because they ....

First Student:

"In order to answer "what leader would I follow" the first thought I had was a charismatic leader. Of course, there are many instances throughout history where a charismatic leader left his/her mark. Visionaries who can communicate and inspire their visions in others is a very powerful tool. On the other hand, charisma must be backed up by knowledge and strong personal ethics, and it is up to individuals to understand the goal of an organization or movement. I am also drawn to leaders who employ coaching as a leadership tool. Using the path-goal theory of leadership, leaders must be able to adjust their behaviors based on environmental factors and individual characteristics of subordinates, which means it is important to understand what motivates employees individually. While it's important to consider individual characteristics, it is also important to work as a team, give credit where it's due, and appreciate the people who join in the vision of the leader.

Conversely, I am afraid of leaders who have strong social skills and charisma (i.e. Hitler). The ability to inspire and engage individuals can be seen in many historical instances as a powerful tool. I think we are in the contrasting side of the power of charisma because of technology/access to information. As a politician, or someone known, gains power or influence, their entire history is combed through and revealed on the internet. The influence of in-person charisma may become less important as we move to doing many daily tasks via the internet. "

Second Student:

"The best leader I ever had did the best they could for the team, not just themselves. The leader shows this constantly by being open, cheerful, warm, relaxed, and supportive. The leader is self-assured but communicates with the employees about decisions they make for the team. This helps the team be more motivated, cooperative, and efficient. The leader is not overpowering with the decisions they have and is respectful towards everyone in the team by giving everyone a chance to voice what they are thinking. When an employee has issues with a case the employee can reach out to this leader. The leader helps the employee by giving them helpful answers and ideas which leads to more confidence and trust for the leader. When giving these answers to the issues this leader uses honesty and different options to find a solution to the issue. This gives the employee a sense of security in the workplace and gives them a better well-being about the job (Bowman). The leader uses the trait approach according to the book because of him using motivation, honesty, and knowledge of what to do during the cases.

The worst leader I ever had did not work as a team. During staff meetings when employees had ideas, or even just bringing up ideas for cases, this leader would reject the ideas a lot of the time. The leader always made the decisions and sometimes was unfriendly about it. This led to employees being frustrated, distant, and sometimes even uncooperative. Which also created the environment of the job to be unpleasant and tense. The leader was very self-assured and did not care about the employees. With working in the career field of social work teamwork is a big part of the job, the workplace became inefficient because of the leader not working as a team with the employees. Burnout is higher when the workplace is unsupportive and their intrinsic, psychological work conditions were less favorable (Hamama, 2010). The approach that was used to determine this leader is the LPC Theory of Leadership."

**Write substantive responses that will encourage additional discussions.