The purpose of the leadership function is to achieve the organization’s goals. At the same time, leadership has also to build an organizational climate that is conducive to better performance. The leadership functions, thus, include directing, developing, motivating, communicating, maintaining and mediating.
The functions of leadership are explained below:-
- Directing- Leadership inspires and influences others to give their maximum efforts and cooperation for the attainment of group objectives. The directing function includes sharing organizational mission and goals, defining and setting performance standard, explaining plans and decisions etc. Hence, good leadership brings out the best in people.
- Supervising and guiding- Supervision is concerned with training, coaching and development of groups whereas coaching relates to helping employees improve their performance to reach their potential. Leadership can help them over the long term through the day to day training, sharing of information and feedback.
- Motivating- Most people respond to a challenging job. They take pride in their accomplishment. Therefore, real motivation depends upon a personal sense of belongings to the team. Leadership function thus creates this motivation climate in workplaces.
- Communication- Communication is a necessary part of the leadership function. It occurs not only through established channels for communicating up and down the chain of command. Group functioning is effective only when there is the presence of proper communication.
- Maintaining- The function of a leader is to maintain the group members. It is related to retaining the members of the group. It is the challenging function of a leader. It is concerned with providing safe working conditions and good work.
- Mediating- Conflicts are inevitable in groups and organization. Sometimes there occur the disagreements which lead to the conflicts. If these problems are not handled by the leader then there could be a very harmful group performance. Hence, it is an important role of a leader to manage the environment.
Therefore the Functions of Leadership are explained above.
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