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Transcript

Hello friends, in our last class we discussed about the concept of rural development. We tried to understand it as a concept, as a strategy, as a profession and as a academic discipline. And various other issues associated with the concept of rural development. So to achieve that development in the rural areas, we need appropriate leadership for that. And what type of leadership that we are envisaging. And what type of leadership can bring in the changes? And what are the issues associated with the leadership is the topic that we are going to discuss today.

When we talk of the concept of leader. Leader is an individual, who is going to influence the behavior of his followers. And there are specific characteristics of the followers also. That also we will be discussing about. And when we talk of leadership, the first and foremost thing that might be coming to your mind is the political leadership which is more dominant in our society. And because of this political leadership, you might have developed a type of apathy towards this concept of leadership. Let us try to understand the concept of leadership, so that you can emerge as a leader and you can identify the quality of leadership that is lying within yourself and you can adopt an appropriate model of leadership that we are going to discuss in subsequent slides, so that you will emerge as a leader, whatever the profession that you are going to accept. There you are going to play the role of a leader. Throughout your professional life if you observe your own actions. So there will be two roles you are expected to play. Number one is as a leader or number two as a follower.

In the beginning part of your professional career you are going to act as a follower. And you will be led by a senior professional and over a period of time, you will be assuming the role of a senior or a leader, so that you will be leading a group of people with your own skills. And these two roles are interchangeable. And at any given point of time, some body acting as a leader, in some other context he is acting as a follower and in some other context acting as a leader. The person who is acting as a follower in other context, he becomes a leader and in some other context he becomes a follower. And these are changing their roles constantly. That is what we need to understand. And leadership does not necessarily mean only the political leadership that we might be perceiving in that way.

So now with this brief background come to. There are three primary tasks of a leader. Number one is to set the direction. What is that? Mission, goals and vision. That sets you as a leader. What is your mission, what is your goal and what is your vision regarding any issue. When you express your idea. So automatically you will emerge as a leader. If you don’t have that, you will be a follower. Because you have to follow somebody to achieve that desired goal. The second one is building commitment, motivate and inspire. That was what we said in the beginning itself. The he is, one individual is identified as a leader, who can influence his followers. And how many followers that I can influence, that depends on my leadership abilities, my leadership skills. Then the third task of a leader is to confront the challenges. And innovation, deal with the changes, turbulence and take risk. Leader accept the risk for the benefit of his followers and to achieve the desired goal. To achieve the desired goal. In that process he is in need of certain amounts of innovation. And turbulence may be occurring in this particular process. All these things that leader is ready, so then he will be accepted as a leader.

The characteristic of an effective follower is, he is a self-directed man, because he is following a particular individual, to whom he accepts himself as a leader. And he actively participate in setting the group direction. Because he is right now he is not having the abilities to lead the group or influence the group or mass. But he is having the ability to take active part and help in setting the direction, and invest time and energy in the work of the group. Because that is what is the crux of a follower. Because today’s follower definitely is going to emerge as leader in due course of time with his committed work. And he thinks critically. And he makes the comments for the benefit of leader and for the benefit of group. And he also advocates the new ideas for the group. This what we have already said. The leadership is a process of influencing people sothat they will strive willingly towards the achievement of the group goals.

Coming to the different styles of leadership. So there are four different styles of leadership that we are going to come across. We’ll be discussing them one by one. To begin with the theory Y, we said theory L . We said that the ‘Laissez Faire’ leader. This is a very typical style of leadership, wherein the leader is not involving himself by default or by chance he became a leader. Because his approach is ‘Leave them Alone’. He is not ready to take any risk and he is not motivating his followers. But somehow he became a leader and that is how he is continuing there. He sees the main role as the passer of information. Just he passes on the information which he gets from the top. And that’s what he assumes that his role is. So such type of leaders we try to call them as the Laissez Faire leaders. The let others make decisions. He is not ready to take the decisions. And basically he abdicates the responsibility of a team unit. And that is how he has been identified as a Laissez Faire leader.

Then coming to the second style of leadership, that is the autocratic leader. He lacks flexibility because he is very very rigid. And he wants to control and he always demands from his followers. And coercion is part and parcel of this theory ‘X’ or the autocratic leader. And he adopts the stick and carrot approach. He may or may not give you all the benefits, but he expects many things from the leader and ultimately he is focused solely on the productivity. Achievement of the result is his primary task. Whether the wellbeing or the welfare of the followers is not at all taken into consideration. We also came across some of the leaders under this category who follow this theory X or the autocratic leadership.

Just on the contrary. Just opposite nature of the leader, that is theory ‘Y’ or the benevolent leader. Or we call him as a democratic leader also. In the earlier case we said that he is an autocratic, but he is a democratic. When we say that he is a democratic leader, he takes the view of majority. And what the majority wishes, accordingly he takes up the initiatives. And that is why we say that he is people oriented, and he is encouraging, and he organizes the people. And creates an atmosphere of non competitiveness. And ultimately he wants to take the entire group along with him. Whatever the conflicts are there he tries to make resolve all the conflicts within the group in consultation with the team member. And ultimately to achieve the group objectives.

Then coming to the theory ‘Z’ or the team leader. He balances the production and the people issues, because he is neither too rigid nor too flexible. Bu the is taking the middle path. And that is why we called him as a team leader. And in between he makes every effort to balance the production and the people issues. Then he builds a working team of employees. He all the time he keeps on motivating them. And he keeps on activating them, so that they are going to contribute in a productive manner. He adopts the team approach and he involves each and every subordinate, so that the team goals are achieved, the team objectives are achieved. Then organization is a vehicle for carrying output plans for a team leader.

Then coming to the basic differences between the manager and a leader. Management and a leader. So when we say that leader. Leadership is based on the influence. On the contrary management is based on an authority. A manager has authority, that is why he is influencing his followers. But the leader has some qualities, because of that he is influencing his followers. So this is what is the basic difference between the manager and a leader. Then leader is an informal designation, because anybody we can identify as a leader. But we cannot identify anybody as a manager. Because this is formally designated position by certain authorities. Then leadership is an achieved position, because of the qualities, because of his work. And because of his abilities, skills, an individual can achieve the position of leader. But manager or the management is an achieved sorry assigned position. And leader is independent of the management but on the contrary manager not independent of the management or his super ordinates. But he improves by use of leadership skill and ultimately he is also leading a group of people. But he is dependent on the his super ordinates. Coming to the qualities of a leader. The first and foremost quality is adaptable, who can adjust himself to the existing situation and makes the things to work. And he is alert to the environment. Any changes he is always active to understand the changes. And accordingly he takes up the decision. And he is ambitious, and because of this ambitious nature only he became a leader. And he assertive. He will not yield to any of the pressure to achieve the objective. And he never makes the compromise with the goals and objectives set forth, and the team with which he is leading. And he is cooperative because he is cooperating with his team and he expects the same thing from his members also. And that is how they are trying to move together. And he is dependable, because because of that nature only people are following him. And because of this nature he is influencing a group of people. He is energetic and he can spare lot of time for his followers to achieve the goal. And he is persistent, he never gives up. And he is self-confident, tolerant of stress and willing to assume the responsibility. So these are some of the qualities that we observe in leader. This is only an indicative list. There are good number of other qualities, which we can derive from each of these qualities. Might be having some other implications of that

Then coming to the conclusion. Leadership is basically a process. When we say that process it is continuous in nature. It never stops. If somebody is acting as a leader, for any reasons if he is not there, somebody else is going to take up that role and they will be leading the group and that is why it is a process which is continuous in nature. Leadership can be responsible for change. If a leader desires, obviously there will be change. Until and unless we have the Laissez Faire type of leader, who might not be contributing for the change. But largely if the leader wishes he can bring the change. And that is how he is a strong instrument. Then the traits needs to be observed and put into use. Every individual is having certain qualities, certain traits to emerge himself as a leader. But it depends on identification of those qualities and making use of those qualities. For example an individual may be undergoing any of the courses, but he is a very good singer, he is a very good painter, he is a very good speaker, or he is a very good player of any game. So that particular quality can take him to the top levels of leadership in the abilities or in the skills what he possesses.

And that is why he need to identify and he need to emerge as. Similarly in case of agriculture also. Agricultural production is also involves good number of skills. For example a person who has developed himself the skills of production of tomato. Somebody else has developed the skills of cultivation of chillies and so on so forth. And that makes them as the leaders and we the agricultural extension professionals try to identify them the progressive farmers. They are nothing but the leaders of that particular crop or that particular enterprise. And using them we are going to change the environment in the villages. And using them we are trying to influence the fellow farmers, ultimately to achieve the goal of change. To introduce the change and to bring the development in rural areas.

With this we are coming to the end of today’s discussion. And in the next class we will be discussing about the meaning and concept of extension administration.

Thank You.