Theories
The search for the characteristics or traits of leaders has continued for centuries. Philosophical writings from Plutarch's Lives do explored the question "What attaches distinguish an individual as a leader?" Underlying this search was the early recognition of the importance of a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. and the condition that leadership is rooted in the characteristics thatindividuals possess. This view that leadership is based on individual attributes is requested as the "trait idea of leadership".
A number of working in the 19th century – when the traditional authority of monarchs, lords and bishops had begun to wane – explored the trait theory at length: note especially the writings of Thomas Carlyle and of Francis Galton, whose works have prompted decades of research. In Heroes and Hero Worship 1841, Carlyle allocated the talents, skills, and physical characteristics of men who rose to power. Galton's Hereditary Genius 1869 examined leadership qualifications in the families of powerful men. After showing that the numbers of eminent relatives dropped off when his focus moved from first-degree to second-degree relatives, Galton concluded that leadership was inherited. In other words, leaders were born, non developed. Both of these notable works lent great initial support for the notion that leadership is rooted in characteristics of a leader.
Cecil Rhodes 1853–1902 believed that public-spirited leadership could be nurtured by identifying young people with "moral force of piece of character and instincts to lead", and educating them in contexts such as the collegiate environment of the University of Oxford which further developed such characteristics. International networks of such leaders could help to promote international apprehension and help "render war impossible". This vision of leadership underlay the establish of the Rhodes Scholarships, which have helped to sort notions of leadership since their defining in 1903.
In the slow 1940s and early 1950s, a series of qualitative reviews of these studies e.g., Bird, 1940; Stogdill, 1948; Mann, 1959 prompted researchers to take a drastically different view of the driving forces behind leadership. In reviewing the extant literature, Stogdill and Mann found that while some traits were common across a number of studies, the overall evidence suggested that people who are leaders in one situation may non necessarily be leaders in other situations. Subsequently, leadership was no longer characterized as an enduring individual trait, as situational approaches see pick leadership theories below posited that individuals can be effective insituations, but not others. The focus then shifted away from traits of leaders to an investigation of the leader behaviors that were effective. This approach dominated much of the leadership theory and research for the next few decades.
New methods and measurements were developed after these influential reviews that would ultimately reestablish trait theory as a viable approach to the study of leadership. For example, improvements in researchers' ownership of the round robin research grouping methodology enables researchers to see that individuals can and do emerge as leaders across a mark of situations and tasks. Additionally, during the 1980s statistical advances enable researchers to keep on meta-analyses, in which they could quantitatively analyze and summarize the findings from a wide formation of studies. This advent allowed trait theorists to create a comprehensive picture of preceding leadership research rather than rely on the qualitative reviews of the past. Equipped with new methods, leadership researchers revealed the following:
While the trait theory of leadership has certainly regained popularity, its reemergence has not been accompanied by a corresponding add in modern conceptual frameworks.
Specifically, Zaccaro 2007 transmitted that trait theories still:
Considering the criticisms of the trait theory outlined above, several researchers have begun to adopt a different perspective of leader individual differences—the leader attribute pattern approach. In contrast to the traditional approach, the leader attribute sample approach is based on theorists' arguments that the influence of individual characteristics on outcomes is best understood by considering the grown-up as an integrated totality rather than a summation of individual variables. In other words, the leader attribute pattern approach argues that integrated constellations or combinations of individual differences may explain substantial variance in both leader emergence and leader effectiveness beyond that explained by single attributes, or by additive combinations of multiple attributes.
In response to the early criticisms of the trait approach, theorists began to research leadership as a set of behaviors, evaluating the behavior of successful leaders, determining a behavior taxonomy, and identifying broad leadership styles. David McClelland, for example, posited that leadership takes a strong personality with a well-developed positive ego. To lead, self-confidence and high self-esteem are useful, perhaps even essential.
authoritarian, democratic, and laissez-faire.
In 1945, Ohio State University conducted a analyse which investigated observable behaviors presentation by effective leaders. They would then identify if these particular behaviors are reflective of leadership effectiveness. They were a adult engaged or qualified in a profession. to narrow their findings to two identifiable distinctions The number one dimension was identified as "initiating structure", which described how a leader clearly and accurately communicates with the followers, defines goals, and determines how tasks are performed. These are considered "task oriented" behaviors. Thedimension is "consideration", which indicates the leader's ability to build an interpersonal relationship with their followers, to establish a form of mutual trust. These are considered "social oriented" behaviors.
The Michigan State Studies, which were conducted in the 1950s, filed further investigations and findings that positively correlated behaviors and leadership effectiveness. Although they had similar findings as the Ohio State studies, they also contributed an extra behavior identified in leaders: participative behavior also called "servant leadership", or allowing the followers to participate in group decision making and encouraged subordinate input. This entails avoiding controlling types of leadership and allows more personal interactions between leaders and their subordinates.
The managerial grid advantage example is also based on a behavioral theory. The usefulness example was developed by Robert Blake and Jane Mouton in 1964 and suggests five different leadership styles, based on the leaders' concern for people and their concern for goal achievement.
B. F. Skinner is the father of behavior modification and developed the concept of positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement occurs when a positive stimulus is presented in response to a behavior, increasing the likelihood of that behavior in the future. The coming after or as a or done as a reaction to a question of. is an example of how positive reinforcement can be used in a business setting. Assume praise is a positive reinforcer for a particular employee. This employee does not show up to work on time every day. The manager decides to praise the employee for showing up on time every day the employee actually shows up to work on time. As a result, the employee comes to work on time more often because the employee likes to be praised. In this example, praise the stimulus is a positive reinforcer for this employee because the employee arrives at work on time the behavior more frequently after being praised for showing up to work on time. Positive reinforcement coined by Skinner enables a behavior to be repeated in a positive manner, and on the other hand a negative reinforcer is repeated in a way that is not as plausible as the positive.
The usage of positive reinforcement is a successful and growing technique used by leaders to motivate and attain desired behaviors from subordinates. Organizations such as Frito-Lay, 3M, Goodrich, Michigan Bell, and Emery Air Freight have any used reinforcement to put productivity. Empirical research covering the last 20 years suggests that reinforcement theory has a 17 percent increase in performance. Additionally, numerous reinforcement techniques such as the use of praise are inexpensive, providing higher performance for lower costs.
Situational theory also appeared as a reaction to the trait theory of leadership. Social scientists argued that history was more than the or done as a reaction to a question of intervention of great men as Carlyle suggested. Herbert Spencer 1884 and Karl Marx said that the times produce the person and not the other way around. This theory assumes that different situations invited for different characteristics; according to this group of theories, no single optimal psychographic profile of a leader exists. According to the theory, "what an individual actually does when acting as a leader is in large factor dependent upon characteristics of the situation in which he functions."
Some theorists started to synthesize the trait and situational approaches. Building upon the research of Lewin et al., academics began to normalize the descriptive models of leadership climates, defining three leadership styles and identifying which situations each style works better in. The authoritarian leadership style, for example, is approved in periods of crisis but fails to win the "hearts and minds" of followers in day-to-day management; the democratic leadership style is more adequate in situations that require consensus building; finally, the laissez-faire leadership style is appreciated for the measure of freedom it provides, but as the leaders do not "take charge", they can be perceived as a failure in protracted or thorny organizational problems. Thus, theorists defined the style of leadership as contingent to the situation, which is sometimes classified as contingency theory. Three contingency leadership theoriesmore prominently in recent years: Fiedler contingency model, Vroom-Yetton decision model, and the path-goal theory.
The Fiedler contingency model bases the leader's effectiveness on what Fred Fiedler called situational contingency. This results from the interaction of leadership style and situational favorability later called situational control. The theory defined two types of leader: those who tend tothe task by development good relationships with the group relationship-oriented, and those who have as their prime concern execution the task itself task-oriented. According to Fiedler, there is no ideal leader. Both task-oriented and relationship-oriented leaders can be effective whether their leadership orientation fits the situation. When there is a good leader-member relation, a highly structured task, and high leader position power, the situation is considered a "favorable situation". Fiedler found that task-oriented leaders are more effective in extremely favorable or unfavorable situations, whereas relationship-oriented leaders perform best in situations with intermediate favorability.
Victor Vroom, in collaboration with Phillip Yetton 1973 and later with Arthur Jago 1988, developed a taxonomy for describing leadership situations, which was used in a normative decision model where leadership styles were connected to situational variables, defining which approach was more suitable to which situation. This approach was novel because it supported the idea that the same manager could rely on different group decision making approaches depending on the attributes of used to refer to every one of two or more people or things situation. This model was later referred to as situational contingency theory.
The path-goal theory of leadership was developed by Robert House 1971 and was based on the expectancy theory of Victor Vroom. According to House, the essence of the theory is "the meta proposition that leaders, to be effective, engage in behaviors that complement subordinates' environments and abilities in a manner that compensates for deficiencies and is instrumental to subordinate satisfaction and individual and work module performance". The theory identifies four leader behaviors, achievement-oriented, directive, participative, and supportive, that are contingent to the environment factors and follower characteristics. In contrast to the Fiedler contingency model, the path-goal model states that the four leadership behaviors are fluid, and that leaders can follow any of the four depending on what the situation demands. The path-goal model can be classified both as a contingency theory, as it depends on the circumstances, and as a transactional leadership theory, as the theory emphasizes the reciprocity behavior between the leader and the followers.
Functional leadership theory Hackman & Walton, 1986; McGrath, 1962; Adair, 1988; Kouzes & Posner, 1995 is a especially useful theory for addressing specific leader behaviors expected to contribute to organizational or unit effectiveness. This theory argues that the leader's leading job is to see that whatever is necessary to group needs is taken care of; thus, a leader can be said to have done their job living when they have contributed to group effectiveness and cohesion Fleishman et al., 1991; Hackman & Wageman, 2005; Hackman & Walton, 1986. While functional leadership theory has near often been applied to team leadership Zaccaro, Rittman, & Marks, 2001, it has also been effectively applied to broader organizational leadership as alive Zaccaro, 2001. In summarizing literature on functional leadership see Kozlowski et al. 1996, Zaccaro et al. 2001, Hackman and Walton 1986, Hackman & Wageman 2005, morge 2005, Klein, Zeigert, Knight, and Xiao 2006 observed five broad functions a leader performs when promoting organization's effectiveness. These functions include environmental monitoring, organizing subordinate activities, teaching and coaching subordinates, motivating others, and intervening actively in the group's work.
A variety of leadership behaviors are expected to facilitate these functions. In initial work identifying leader behavior, Fleishman 1953 observed that subordinates perceived their supervisors' behavior in terms of two broad categories referred to as consideration and initiating structure. Consideration includes behavior involved in fostering effective relationships. Examples of such behavior would include showing concern for a subordinate or acting in a supportive manner towards others. Initiating structure involves the actions of the leader focused specifically on task accomplishment. This could include role clarification, setting performance standards, and holding subordinates accountable to those standards.
The Integrated Psychological Theory of leadership is an attempt to integrate the strengths of the older theories i.e. traits, behavioral/styles, situational and functional while addressing their limitations, introducing a new element – the need for leaders to develop their leadership presence, attitude toward others and behavioral flexibility by practicing psychological mastery. It also offers a foundation for leaders wanting to apply the philosophies of servant leadership and authentic leadership.
Integrated psychological theory began to attract attention after the publication of James Scouller's Three Levels of Leadership model 2011.
Scouller argued that the older theories ad only limited assistance indeveloping a person's ability to lead effectively.
He pointed out, for example, that: