Is a Title Necessary to Become an Effective Leader?: A Theoretical Perspective

Abstract

There has been a lot of talks lately about the need for a title/position to be a true leader among academics and researchers. Likewise, most people are confused about the title and the action of a leader in an organization. The words on the street are that most of the leaders believe in their titles, not in their actions, as well as in most of the research on leadership are characterized by fragmentation and conflicting nomenclatures. These confusions and conflicts must be solved through adequate reviewing and research studies. The primary goal of the study is to find out if the title is needed to be a leader and to identify the key qualities to be an action-oriented leader. The review is a stand-alone literature review conducted using the electronics databases such as EBSCO, DOAJ, RESEARCH LIFE, EMBASE and Google Scholar. The information on leadership, effective leadership positions and qualities of effective leaders was obtained after reviewing relevant research papers from these different journals. The present review shows some rough ideas on how to be an action-oriented leader without a title. It also showed that communication skills, trust, pragmatism, and relationship building are the most important qualities of leaders to enhance the personal power to gain organizational power, to be the most effective and dynamic leader, the present review suggests some requirement of additional skills such as trust, compassion, stability, hope, relationship and influential skills to make an impact in the 21st century leadership environment.