Leadership Characteristics and Empowerment

There are several different characteristics of a leader such as authentic, vulnerable, accepting, present, and useful. Most people can tell if someone is a good or effective leader even without knowing specific characteristics. To have a work environment that is productive with people who are happy requires a leader to empower their workers or team members. This article goes over the top ten principles of empowerment.

The following videos show different instances of leaders and their characteristics and how they empower people.

I think this clip from the movie Lean on Me is an example of a poor leader. Mr. Clark comes into a meeting with the school staff and does not listen to what they have to say. He starts changing positions and jobs around within the staff and is tearing down any community they have built throughout the school. Mr. Clark does seem aware of the issues facing the school, but is not aware of the staff's opinion or thoughts on anything. Mr. Clark even goes as far to tell a teacher if they don't like his decision they can quit. I would not want to work for a leader like this and I doubt the other teachers in the movie will enjoy their time under Mr. Clark. If Mr. Clark were to try and build up the school community instead of tear it down he, and the school, might have greater success. A leader needs to be aware of everything happening around them to help them make decisions and know what is happening in their organization. I think Mr. Clark does a poor job of this. 

Part of being a leader is empowering those around you. I think Mr. Clark also does a poor job of this. Instead of demonstrating he values the people around him, he does the opposite by tearing them down about being the football coach or changing who the school janitor will be. Mr. Clark tells the staff that reading scores are down and discipline needs to change, but he does not share the direction and goals of how to solve those problems. He does not listen to his staff or ask questions to provide guidance for his leading and he does not seem like someone who will recognize others and help them feel rewarded. Mr. Clark does the opposite of empowering his employees. I have not seen all of this movie, but based off this clip, my guess would be things do not work out well for anyone at the school.

In this video of a broken escalator there seems to be the lack of a leader. Sometimes when people face a problem they don't know how to solve they just freeze and can't move past the problem. These people have no foresight for the particular issue. In this video, the people lacked the foresight to walk up the escalator. It was almost as if they were waiting for someone to come tell them what to do. When a mechanic came to fix the escalator the man and woman were both very excited to see him and then the mechanic's escalator froze up causing the man and woman to hit another wall. Their solution was to sit down and give up. Neither of these people were useful to each other to look around and solve the problem.

Neither the man or woman provided information for decision making in order to empower one another. No one was there to solve the problem at hand or even try. There was no leader present to empower others in this video. I don't know if I would say this video was an example of a poor leader; I would almost classify it more as a lack of leadership.

In this video of A Bug's Life you see a line of ants working together. When a leaf falls and disrupts the line of ants the leader steps in to help solve the issue. In order to be aware of the problem, the leader ant is present during the work. He sees the line stop and comes down to help with the situation. The working ant who is stuck by the leaf freaks out and does not want to walk around the leaf. The leader ant is persuasive and encourages the worker ant to make it around the leaf. He doesn't just say, "walk around the leaf and get back in line," he walks around the leaf with the worker ant and leads him all the way. The leader ant shows the characteristics of being present and persuasive.

This leader ant empowered the worker ants through solving the problem and not pinpointing problem people. He knew where the problem was, but instead of blaming the ant and making him look bad in front of the rest of the workers, he solved the problem by helping the ant go around the leaf and back to the line. The leader ant was able to solve the problem without involving the Queen ant.