THE MANY THEORIES OF LEADERSHIP

SHARED FROM:

http://blog.readytomanage.com/category/leadership-management

Are Leaders Born or Made?

April 4, 2013 by Dr. Jon Warner

 

There are nine theories we will consider in the overall general thinking about leadership. 

The theories can fall into three broad realms or categories that are:

1. Inner Type, Temperament and Traits
2. Patterns of Learned Behavior
3. Culture/climate

Jung (Type/Temperament)	Stogdill (Behavioral Skills)	Bennis (Traits)
Covey (Values, Principles)	Tannenbaum / Schmidt (Patterns)	McGregor Style / Approach (Style)
Hersey / Blanchard (Situational)	Adair (Climate for Action)	Blake and Mouton (Goals/Vision)

 

1. INNER TYPE AND TEMPERAMENT LEADERSHIP THINKING

• leaders are typically more born than they are made
• Carl Jung
• suggested that the four areas of Sensing, Intuition, Thinking and Feeling significantly govern an individual’s behavior
• there are four overall temperaments that could be observed in leadership behavior

	The Sensing Judgment Type	The Sensing Perceiving Type	The Intuitive Thinking Type	The Intuitive Feeling Type
Leadership Style	Traditionalist Stabilizer Consolidator Has a sense of duty, responsibility, loyalty and industry	Trouble-shooter Negotiator Fire-fighter Seeks to act with cleverness seeking short cuts to save time or effort where possible	Visionary Architect Systems builder Seeks to add ingenuity and logic to ideas and actions	Catalyst Spokes-person Energizer Likes to persuade people about values and personal inspirations
Tends to be noticed for	Being hardworking,  reliable and dependable	Being resourceful, risk taking and spontaneous	Being competent, expert and logical	Being open, authentic and inclusive

• Ralph Stogdill
• identify a number of traits considered to be common to almost all leaders
• MAIN LEADERSHIP TRAITS
• ability to facilitate the efforts of the group to attain its goals
• Intelligent
• Alert to others’ needs
• Understands the task
• Initiative
• Persistence in dealing with problems
• Self-confident
• Desire to accept responsibility
• Desire for the position of dominance and control
• TYPOLOGY
• Capacity: intelligence, alertness, verbal facility, originality, judgment
• Achievement: scholarship, knowledge, athletic accomplishments
• Responsibility: dependability, initiative, persistence, aggressiveness, self-confidence, desire to excel
• Participation: activity, social ability, co-operation, adaptability, humor
• Status: socio-economic, position, popularity
• four main conclusions
• Traits used or drawn upon varied by situation or circumstance
• The Relative importance of trait varied by situation or circumstance
• A person does not become a leader by virtue of the possession of some combination of traits…
• Two leaders with completely different traits could be successful in same situation
• Warren Bennis
• believed that these traits were often learned and could therefore be developed
• strongly believed leaders were more inclined to be “made” rather than “born”
• Ten Traits of Dynamic Leaders
• Self-knowledge Knowledge of own talents
• Open to feedback
• Eager to learn and improve
• Curious, risk takers
• Concentrate at work
• Learn from adversity
• Balance tradition and change
• Open style
• Work well with systems
• Serve as models and mentors

 

2. PATTERNS OF LEARNED BEHAVIOR LEADERSHIP THINKING

• believe that the leader is a critical player
• Good leaders can therefore very much be nurtured
• Stephen Covey seven principles or habits of effective leaders
• 7 HABITS OF PRINCIPLE-CENTERED LEADERS
• Be proactive: principle of self-awareness, personal vision, and responsibility
• Begin with the End in Mind: Principle of Leadership and Mission
• Put First Things First: Principle of Managing Time and Priorities Around Roles and Goals
• Think Win-Win: Principle of Seeking mutual Benefit
• Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood: Principle of Empathic Communication
• Synergize: Principle of Creative Co-operation
• Sharpen the Saw: Principle of Continuous Improvement
• The 7 principles of leadership operate on 4 Levels
• Personal (Trustworthiness)
• Interpersonal (Trust)
• Managerial (Empowerment)
• Organizational (Alignment)
• 6 Conditions of Empowerment
• Character
• Integrity (HABITS-VALUES, WORDS=DEEDS)
• Maturity (COURAGE BALANCE with CONSIDERATION)
• Abundance Mentality
• Skills
• Communications
• Planning & Organization
• Synergistic Problem-Solving
• Win-Win Agreement
• Desired results
• Guidelines
• Resources
• Accountability
• Consequences
• Self-Supervision
• Control -> Plan -> Do
• Helpful Structures and Systems
• Accountability
• Self-Evaluation
• Robert Tannenbaum and Warren Schmidt
• Relationship between the level of freedom that a leader chooses to give to a team, and the level of authority used by the leader.
• As the team’s freedom is increased, so the leader’s authority decreases

• describing a range of behavioral patterns available to a manager
• related the leader’s actions to the degree of authority used by him and the amount of freedom available to his subordinates
• Douglas McGregor
• develop a simple philosophical view of humankind with his Theory X and Theory Y model
• Under Theory X
• People have an inherent dislike for work and will avoid it whenever possible
• People must be coerced, controlled, directed, or threatened with punishment in order to get them to achieve the organizational objectives
• People prefer to be directed, do not want responsibility, and have little or no ambition
• People seek security above all else
• management’s role is to coerce and control employees
• Under Theory Y
• Work is as natural as play and rest
• People will exercise self-direction if they are committed to the objectives (they are NOT lazy)
• Commitment to objectives is a function of the rewards associated with their achievement
• People learn to accept and seek responsibility
• Creativity, ingenuity, and imagination are widely distributed among the population. People are capable of using these abilities to solve an organizational problem
• People have potential
• management’s role is to develop the potential in employees and help them to release that potential towards common goals

 

3. CULTURE/CLIMATE FOCUSED LEADERSHIP THINKING

• John Adair
• action-centered leadership model

• Task
• refers to the business of getting the job done

Too little task If too little attention is paid to the task then you may have a very cohesive team, but it won’t achieve anything. And if it doesn’t achieve anything it won’t be cohesive for very long.

Too much task If too much attention is paid to the task then people may not be able to find ways of working together effectively.

• Team
• rely on different people making different contributions

Too little team If too little attention is paid to the team then it will not function as a group and people will not be able to offer their contributions.

Too much team If too much attention is paid to the team then the task may be forgotten and individual’s needs not met.

• Individual

Too little individual If too little attention is paid to the individual then that person’s contributions will be restricted – and the rest of the team may feel that they could well be next.

Too much individual If too much attention is paid to the individual then you may well have a good therapy group but it will be hard to get the task done.

• Jane Mouton and Robert Blake
• adopt the simplicity of McGregor’s bi-polar model style model but to reflect this in a four-quadrant grid format
• assumption made: there is a best leadership style (behavior)
• A high concern for production, coupled with a high concern for employees.

 

PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER

The Inner Type and Temperament, Patterns of learned behavior and Culture/climate are all important.  The 3 categories or schools of leadership thinking are as shown below on one single holistic model.

The Situational Leadership® theory is perhaps the only model that draws from all of these theories.  The SOAR model, originally developed by Norman Maier, is a useful acronym to represent the interaction of all three categories.  The SOAR model simply suggests that many factors potentially effective leadership.  the four “SOAR” components are:

• the particular situation or circumstances in which an individual leader may find themselves
• the organization of which they are a part
• the activities or tasks that need to be achieved
• the results that are expected from the effort

Later thinking led to the addition of the “L” for leader and “V” for Vision to the variables.  The entire “L “SOAR” V model is therefore shown diagrammatically below.

L (Leader)

S (Situation)

O (Organization)

A (Activities)

R (Results)

V (Vision)