Olayinka Otukpe Leadership when it matters most AMBA620- Managing people and Groups in the Global Workplace Instructor: Dr. Ann Hurd, SPHR

Abstract
The purpose of this work is to analyze the importance of leadership and how it relates to success for an organization. Leadership in any organization should be guided toward achieving the necessary goals that correlate with the organization’s mission. Important to leadership are these five characteristics that can provide the necessary success that is needed for great productivity and profit for any organization. These five characteristics include: influence, power, commitment, motivation and decision making skills. These tools will help any leader perform at top level and provide necessary transformation through individual acts that can be emulated by all the employees.

Introduction
Leadership is very important in any organization because it can have a great impact on the success or failure of the organization. Most organizations that are successful will attribute their success to great leadership, whereas those organizations that have failed will attribute their failure to poor leadership. The reason for this paper is to look at the role of leadership in any organization. The need for individuals with good leadership skills cannot be over emphasized. This is why many organizations hire individuals with great leadership skills and are willing to pay them huge sums of money so that their organizations can be successful. Although becoming a leader is well desired, not everyone who assumes this role is good at being a leader. Good and bad leadership will always have their place in history in any capacity of involvement, either in a nation, within an industry or organization, or in any capacity. Organizations that are interested in being successful need to ensure that there is good leadership on ground to direct the affairs which will then make certain the success. The kind of leadership that can provide the necessary requirements for an organization’s success will bring many changes within that organization which may not be readily acceptable in the initial stages, but will be appreciated afterwards when the results begin to manifest. Leadership requires team work through active participation of everyone in an organization which will therefore lead to achieving set goals which may include making more profit and expanding business. According to Thorn (2012), leadership, described from the transformational leadership style, claims that a leader is required to make worth doing and proposed alterations in an organization (p.1).

Context
There are leaders and there are leaders. All leaders are different in either their approach or the system they use to get to their goals. I have had the opportunity to be among many leaders, but there is one that particularly stands out. The leadership example I am going to be using is my former boss when I worked in Nigeria. He was a man of substance who stood on the truth and could not be influenced by the corruption that transpired around him. He was a true leader that had a lot of influence on people who worked with him and through his sincere acts of love and dedication to his work touched the lives of many individuals. The leadership skills this individual had and exhibited was so profound yet it was very natural. It was not the type that could be learned and it is very difficult to emulate, it is that real. Under his leadership, the organization I worked for had great success for many years and the entire staff benefitted from his leadership skills. The dedication and concern he had for the organization and individuals who worked for the organization, no matter the capacity of involvement of the individual, truly manifested in how these individuals worked under