Leadership, gender, problem solving and decision making
Leadership assessment
Donald Trump is a leader who is inconsistent with most descriptions of a great leader. Leader ship and management are the key attributes of leadership that make an individual a great leader. Importantly, the level of decision making is the major factor that distinguishes the leadership management of different people. The nature and type of decision will demonstrate the kind of leader, what they do and milestones they can achieve. Decision making defines success and mishaps of a leader (Evans & Ward, 2007). This implies that reputable organization need effective leaders and such leaders must be able to make critical decisions without taking a lot of time.
A great leader must possess fundamental qualities that will influence their decision-making process. As a strategy, the decision made by a leader must be influenced by several factors to ensure that it eliminates obstacles and promote success. Important factors that influence decision making include, prior knowledge, cognitive bias, personal beliefs and levels of commitment. It is possible that a great leader can be affected by heuristics that impair their decision-making capabilities. The outcome of a decision can be responded through regret or satisfaction. Where a decision is reversible leaders are ready to pay a premium price, but this does not necessarily guarantee success. Therefore, it is possible to evaluate President Donald Trump leadership style based on his decision-making approaches.
Donald Trump is a consultative leader whose decision making is influenced by the ideas of his party and close associates. He was able to collaborate with Emmanuel Macron to persuade North Korea to drop his nuclear weapon activities. Here, the Republican Party was against nuclear weapons activities by North Korea and President Trump made a decision not persuade the country to drop its activities. However, the decision-making process exhibited by Trump lacks responsiveness. He rarely listens to sections of the community to make a decision. For example, with increased cases of deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA, he singly decided to with draw financial aid to the World Health Organization without considering any opinion.
At personal level, Donald Trump has achieved a lot from being a property owner to President. This implies he is a strong leader with a great vision. His decision-making process is based on a consultative approach with his aide and does not fear anything. As such, being fearless in decision-making traits makes Donald a great leader not only for the USA but the globe at large.
Gender and Leadership
There is no significant difference to the gender differences between men and women in leadership. Every person can achieve a lot of success as a leader provided, they properly understand their role and undertake their decision-making process properly. Successful leaders must be accountable, able to tolerate risks and must be motivated by value orientation. Both men and women are ready to take responsibility of their actions as leaders, but women are not highly regarded in decision making processes. However, for a proper decision, a leader must be able to take calculated risks and incorporate their values in decision making so that it provides a lot of benefits to their organization. In addition, leaders must be fearless because the unpredictability and uncertainty that characterize woken leadership make them less suitable decision makers.
The main difference between men and women in leadership is determined by the command and control approaches. Ideally, men are perceived to have excessive control and command, but women do not like taking full control of their teams. This makes it difficult for women to be considered in decision making because they fail to offer direction. In many cases, women leaders found in a critical need to take full control of the organization have encouraged their constituents to find their own direction in mitigating the problem. It implies that women in leadership favor a delegative approach in decision making process and this is not critical in volatile situations.
The leadership of women is similar to men, but gender has a major influence in determining the leadership roles of female leaders. As such, the leadership roles in return affect the quality of services offered by women who are in leadership positions. However, in assessing the leadership of a women, it is prudent to use facts like accountability, risk averse and value oriented (Evans & Ward, 2007). Contrary, women are assessed based on social traits like being emotional to wrongly disqualify them in decision making. On the contrary, decision making skills can be developed and it gives women an opportunity to be considered for leadership. In the future, many women will hold important leadership positions after improving their decision-making skills throughout their career.
Decision making and problem solving
The ability to make a sound decision is the ultimate measure of a great leader and an indicator of future performance. Problem solving is an important skill that is required by a leader to mitigate problems in an effective without taking too much time. Problems are created by impediments and obstacles within the organization that must be tackled problem to reduce their influence. A good leader must identify the problem, providing alternatives, assessing options and incorporating the best solution. An ideal decision-making process should be open, responsive, representative and must observe stewardship (Evans & Ward, 2007). However, any decision made has consequences both negative and positive from followers and colleagues. As such, a great leader should observe the critical process of decision making to ensure that they avoid making wrong decisions and negative implications from followers and colleagues. In case negative implications arise, leaders must be quick and give direction about the decision.
The decisions made by a community leader are prone to negative and positive impacts to the people around the surrounding. Prior to making a decision as a community leader, it is important to evaluate the problem based on a series of decision-making process. Firstly, there is a need to identify the decision to be made by recognition of the problem. This is vital because it creates an opportunity to address the problem. Secondly, collecting information will help to make a decision that is supported by evidence and facts. However, a community leader must determine relevant sources of information and this will allow to involve all those who must be included in the issue. The third process is to identify alternatives so that it gives an ideal course of an action that will promote realization of desired objectives.
The fourth process involves assessing the evidence collected by determining its feasibility, acceptance and desirability by majority of people in the surrounding. As a community leader, this stage provides an opportunity to evaluate the pros and cons before making a selection that is ideal. The fifth stage is to select alternatives and this should be influenced by the risks involved by either decision taken. It is important to select a combination of options since a lot of evidence is provided. Another stage is for the community leader to take action by developing an implementation plan. At this point, the leader must allocate resources required and get support of people living in the surrounding to ensure that decision is favored by a majority. As a strategy to reduce the negative impacts, it is vital for the community leader to bring on board people with contrary opinion. It implies that the community leader must be ready to address all questions and anxieties that are related to the decision taken.
The last stage involves reviewing the decision taken by the community leader. This is an important stage that is not considered as vital because the community leader is carried by their positions. The community leader must properly assess the effectiveness of their decision before making it public to all people. It is important to ask what went well and anything that was not done properly. The answers to these questions will ensure that any problems encountered or loopholes are not repeated in future decision-making processes.
As a community leader, it is important to learn from mistakes and adapt a good plan to mitigate the problem. The decision made by the community leader must illicit negative and positive reaction from people in the surrounding. Therefore, there is a need to effectively address the problem immediately it is observed. In doing this, it is important for the community leader to identify the problem that attracts negative reaction. This will enable the leader to generate ideas on how to mitigate the problem. However, not all ideas are feasible, and it is important that they are assessed thoroughly (Evans & Ward, 2007). A leader must be fearless and should select a solution to the problems and implement it to the community. Lastly, the community leader should ensure that the solution is assessed properly.
References
Evans, E. & Ward, P. (2007). Management Basics for Information Professionals. Chicago: Neal- Schuman Publisher.
Rogers, P. & Blenko, M. (2006). The high-performance organization: making good decisions and making them happen. Handbook of Business Strategy, 7(1):133-142.