17-03-2014, 03:25 PM
Leadership - Models and Theories
DEFINITION
Leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal.
George R.Teery,”Leadership is the activity of influencing people to strive willingly for group of objectives”.
Koontz and O`Donnel ,“Leadership is the art of process of influencing people so that they will strive willingly towards the achievement of group of goals”
Models and Theories of Leadership
Trait Theory (30’s)
Behavioral Theory (40’s and 50’s)
Contingency Theory (60s and 70s)
Transformational Theory (80s up)
Others: emergent, distributed, shared, level 5 leadership, etc.
Trait Theory
a theory that concerns itself solely with leader characteristics (Stogdill, 1948; Mann 1959)
studies identified certain personal characteristics that appear to differentiate leaders from followers
basic premise is that leaders are born
Limitations of the Trait Theory
focused on the leader per se and have minimized the impact of the followers and the situation
assumed leadership was innate; cause and effect were not addressed
failed to account why certain leaders would be effective in certain situations yet not in others
it presumes that traits are stable across time; universal traits?
failed to offer a guideline for leadership development
not an exact science, e.g., measurement of traits
Contingency Theory
This is a leader match theory because it tries to match leaders to appropriate situations
A leader’s effectiveness depends on how well the leader’s style fits the context
The theory was developed by studying the styles of leaders in situations and whether they were effective (primarily in military organizations)
Concerned with styles and situations
LPC Scale
Used to measure a person’s leadership style
For example, it measures your style by having you describe a coworker with whom you had difficulty completing a job. (not necessarily someone you dislike, but someone with whom you least like to work with)
After you choose this person, the LPC instrument asks you to describe your coworker on 18 sets of adjectives
Variations of Transformational Leadership
Charismatic Leadership (robert house)
Transactional vs. Transformational (burns; bass)
Servant Leadership (greenleaf)
Distributed Leadership (belbin)
Living Systems (wheatley)
Level Five Leadership (jim collins)
Leaders as catalyst of change - warren bennis, james kouzes and barry posner, stephen covey
Leaders as strategic visionaries - peter senge (systems thinking and learning organization
Leadership and Spirituality - fullan,moxley, zohar, nelson ,frye