How To Develop a Tainted Leader?
Faye Lopez

Abstract
This paper discusses a former leader and where her leadership skills were lacking. It points out missteps that I have witnessed, but also explains why these missteps may have occurred. This is not an attack on my previous leader. It is simply an example of where her leadership failed, but how she could have improved on being a leader. This paper examines possible reasons why her leadership was lacking, but also gives examples how she could improve on being a leader. Emotional intelligence is examined and looks at each trait to see which skill traits were missing and possible reasons why. Being a leader involves a team and this article also dives into building a team and keeping them happy to maximize their effectiveness.

“Wow my boss doesn’t know what she is talking about”, was a thought I often had after each coaching or team gathering we had at my job. How can a leader be so out of sync with her team and show such a lack of knowledge of her job position? Once I was given my orders, a decision had to be made. Should I follow orders knowing that failure will come about? Should I make a decision to not follow orders, but do what will be best for the team and also best for my boss in the long run? Just because you have the position of leader in the work place doesn’t mean you will be an effective leader without the proper training and development. This paper will discuss how to make yourself a more effective leader, but also how emotional intelligence, a skill set to control emotions of yourself and other people in a team setting, has a huge impact on what type of leader you are. The goal of this paper is to give examples of poor leadership, and discuss ways that a leader could develop into a better one.
Let me say that first off, it isn’t easy being a leader. Often times, leaders are given the responsibly to set goals and lead workers who are lazy, combative, or simply do not work well with others. When you are simply a teammate, normally what happens is you just ignore this person and hope they get fired. A leader, however, is responsible for developing and motivating this worker to reach their full potential. It is very costly to train someone, then fire them. A leader who fires constantly is frowned upon. In order to motivate this type of team member, a leader must have fantastic social skills. Social skills are the ability to find common ground and build rapport (Goleman, 1998, pg. 95) and are one of the emotional intelligence traits. The leader’s responsibility is not to avoid this worker, but to face this worker head on and develop them into a usable member of the team. This can be done by building a relationship. If the leader, using social and mediation skills, can find out the team member’s goals, they then should be able to convince this member to strive enough to have these desires achieved. The leader mentioned in the opening paragraph never does this. She was very much into cliques. If you were non-combative you were in her clique. However, if you showed even a little bit of resistance and independent thought, you would find your development sessions canceled or cut short. A colleague questioned the team leader’s relationship building skills, because she was told “I don’t have time for this, just go back to work, our coaching session is finished” after voicing concern about her own skill development as a team member. This relationship was never recovered and all confidence and loyalty was lost because our leader didn’t stop and analyze this situation or the after effects.
Now by the way I am describing her, you would assume that this leader was not meeting the performance levels required. This was the complete opposite. My leader was a top performer and was constantly hitting every goal required for her position. She employed one of the crudest forms of showing leadership by using threats of job security to get what she wanted. It may