Military Leadership Analysis

Leadership has been said, it must be earned and not given. However, sometimes in the military, some individuals are put into leadership roles by default. Most often, time in service and time in grade are the determinants, not whether the individual is capable of leading. My idea of an effective leader is someone whose passion is for the greater cause than their own personal accolades. In my case, someone who want to better each team member, which would better the overall success of the team. An effective leader is a person with a passion for a cause that is larger than they are. Someone with a dream and a vision that will better society, or at least, some portion of it. A strong and effective leader should have the flexibility to move between being authoritative and democratic.
The authoritarian leader has the need to maintain control of the group and the democratic leader represents an attempt to find a reasonable compromise between the other two extremes. The democratic leader does attempt to provide direction and to perform both task and social leadership functions (Smith, 2012, pp. 240-241). This leader had to be both because he was directly responsible for lives in certain situations, he had to be direct and unquestioned. Yet, there was time he needed and wanted input from his subordinates.
For example, one of his decisions he made that he wanted input for was whether we wanted to conduct training after work or take a day off to conduct this training. His decision to get his team members input ensured they would be invested in the training and the team members felt they won a victory as they would receive the decision they wanted. The managing of the groups conflicts is not too difficult based on the military rules and