Leadership as a research topic has a huge popularity today, in a variety of scholarly fields, from psychology to IT. When writing an essay about what it means to be a leader, it is often not easy to step up with something brand new. So you need some time and effort to compose a quality research which is bound to have a success. Here are a few tips and tricks for composing a great leadership essay.
Getting Started with Proper Introduction and Subject Description
If you have chosen to write about leadership, there ought to be some reasons behind this decision. Perhaps, you want to inspect the figure of a leader from an unusual aspect in your essay or you are interested in self-development. In any case, these reasons should be present at the beginning of your essay to explain the relevance of its subject. The following explanations can be used:
- Leadership is a highly important phenomenon for a certain period/group/niche, which will be reviewed in the essay;
- Being a leader is a complex notion which includes many different qualities;
- The history of leadership makes it crucial for society or entire civilization, at each step of its development;
- Understanding how one becomes a leader can tell us many important things about humanity; etc.
Explaining your personal interest or involvement can also be useful in order to write a better introduction. As well as many highly popular essay topics, the leadership problem is relatable for many: some people have a goal of becoming a leader, others might have encountered great leaders at sports or at work and would like to understand them better. Therefore, appealing to personal interest in this case is a step towards a successful discussion.
Formulating the Problem and the Purpose of a Leadership Essay
Having provided explanations for choosing to write about a leader notion, you have already somewhat narrowed the scope of your essay and the aspect of your view. Of course, leadership itself is too broad a topic, so it either should be overviewed very briefly or would require a huge book to check its every important quality in detail. A standard essay is not likely to follow the latter way, so it would be wise to write about some very specific aspect or situation which allows to learn something important about leadership, step by step.
It could be:
- Period of history which includes a well-known figure of a leader everyone can learn from;
- Leadership in a specific niche: sports, science, business, politics or social activism;
- A most important quality one needs to have to become a leader;
- Self-improvement and ability to command efficiently;
- Leadership in different group types, cultures etc.
Defining the scope of your essay determines how detailed your description of leadership phenomenon will be. If your leadership related topic is too general, there will be no time or space for going deeper into each question. A highly specific topic means a very detailed inspection. You would need to talk about the figure of a leader you are describing, analyze each their quality which matters for your research, and explain what it means to command in the specific niche which you focus on (e.g. business or sports).
Picking Appropriate Sources about Leadership that Help to Complete Your Research
While general leadership topics usually allow choosing from a vast variety of sources, narrowing your scope to some highly specific things (e.g. a certain quality of a typical leader) makes it harder to find enough information about that. So here you need to balance. Next step is to pick the most credible ones, to avoid making wrong assumptions about your leadership problem.
The following kinds of sources are best for your essay:
- Related works by other researchers;
- Books and articles used in their works, if they are trustworthy and directly related to your topic;
- Books about leadership problems recommended in scientific or scholarly communities;
- Peer-reviewed articles by well known authors;
- Publications in reputable journals or websites.
The analysis of the available literature helps to understand whether your selected leadership problem can be researched given your limited time and resources. If the choice is too specific, there might be not enough trustworthy materials to compose a proper work. Additional research can solve this problem but the question is whether you would be able to conduct it for your essay. This is why it is important to review your sources and evaluate their quality at the beginning, so that you could select some leadership problem that is less specific or easier to research.
Write the Essay and Uncover the Selected Leadership Problem Using Your Introduction
Having formulated the purpose of your leadership essay and the questions you plan to answer in it, you need to proceed with descriptions for each important aspect of the problem: the leader figure, her or his ability to command or lead by example, how it affects the productivity of the group etc. Citations from appropriate sources you have picked before should be illustrating your thesis and strengthening your arguments. Just make sure that all the sources you have used, directly or indirectly, are properly referenced in your work. Follow these steps and finalize them with a conclusion that answers the questions you have raised at the beginning of your essay. Make sure that answers are concise, complete and your selected leadership topics has been analyzed from all necessary aspects. This will ensure your leadership essay will be a success, and also can help you reach a better understanding of what it means to be a leader in your field of interest.