Behavioural Theory. The Best Leaders Are Those Who Have

Batool, B. F. (2013) Emotional Intelligence and Effective Leadership. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 4(3), 84-94. (Note: Available in the Strayer Library)

"The action of leading a group of people or an organization, or the ability to do this."

The contents and assignment in this course has helped me understand the various theories of leadership and how different leadership styles can have a negative or positive effect on followers and organizations. The leadership theories helped me understand the concept of leadership better because it educates me on the different leadership options that are available. Leadership and followership is not based on specific characteristics. Leaders must draw from things and approaches to find the right style. A follower’s attitude determines the way a leader leads. According to Johnson (2011) “Being a good follower means ensuring your boss is supported, but only if he is making optimum decisions”.

Leadership can be defined as the process of identifying a goal, motivating others, and make them to achieve the mutually goals (Giltinane, 2013). According to Humphreys (2002), successful leaders do this by applying their leadership knowledge and skills. A good leadership is not only good at management, but also use different leadership styles in different situations. A successful corporation must has a good leader who have the flexible ability which can provide a suitable leadership to make the company successful. Furthermore, there have no perfect leadership styles in the world. Different leader have different leadership styles which also have the different strengths and weaknesses (Ali & Waqar, 2013). Leaders need to consider

A leader is more than just running a group; it is some one who impacts at least one other person’s life in a positive way. A leader is someone who can guide others into accomplishing some success and goals. Furthermore, empower others is essential in the ability to maintain positive leadership. A leader is caring, must be willing to adapt and share the values of others, while still preserving their own personal values and beliefs. One aspect of being a good leader is having strong self-awareness- described as knowing your own strengths and weaknesses. Emotional intelligence, another aspect of being a respectable leader, is knowing your inner emotional state and remaining in control of it. Emotional

Leaders are some of the most influential individuals in any society. They have the ability to influence those around them with various leadership styles including coercive, authoritative, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting, and coaching. Effective leaders consistently adapt to the environment around them to either enhance or correct any situation facing them. Within these leadership styles the most effective style has been considered that of the authoritative style. This style brings individuals together, builds self-confidence, and easily adapts to the environment around it.

A team leader faces many challenges such as co-ordinating a team to achieve a set goal or objective. Every team is created for a purpose, and each one must succeed in meeting objectives. Learning how to get the best out of a team is really the key to making things work. Other factors and challenges that may affect a team leader include budgets, schedules, project timelines, and complaints or bad relationships with underlings. Balancing a series of tasks and roles is really what being a leader is all about, so the most successful leaders will have a dynamic blend of diplomatic skills. Leaders know how to motivate "the troops", and they also know how to quiet down and relate one-to-one when that sort of approach is needed. The best way to become a

Leaders are most effective when they are able to attain cooperation among all the members and make them feel the purpose of doing their tasks. It is important for them to research on the characteristics of high performance teams so that they also have it as their standards in leading their people. Some of the important activities that a leader should be good at are persuading, communicating, and motivating people (Tracy, n.d.).

The selection of a team leader is of key decision that can have a great impact on the overall success of a team. A good team leader should be able to build and maintain team morale, instilling confidence and trusting in other team members allowing them to work together to achieve the teams goals (Llopis, 2014). The ability to understand the stages of a team and provide the guidance to all members is essential. The stages of forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning (Abudi, 2010) are a helpful framework for recognizing patterns during team conversations and the understanding that team development may not always be linear. The aptitude to walk the team through these stages and ensuring they understand the development of the team and why things are happening in certain ways is an important part of the self evaluation process. Having ways to identify when certain behavioral patterns are occurring and a way to then cause changes to the team behavior can help the team maximize its productivity.

Emotional intelligence is an important characteristic in becoming a good leader. “Emotional intelligence is the ability to manage oneself and one's relationships in mature and constructive ways” (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2009, p.137).Being a good leader entails more than just being smart; leaders need to be able to connect to their employees emotionally and empathetically. Organizations today not only look for leaders with the skills, but leaders that can emotionally connect to employees to obtain the organization’s goal. “Leaders have always played a primordial emotional role. No doubt humankind’s original leaders-whether tribal chieftains or shamanesses-earned their place in large part because their leadership was

A leader is a person who sets direction and influences others to accomplish the goals (Borkowski, 2015). It is the responsibility of the supervisor to set the direction by helping and motivating staff members see what lies ahead and face those challenges. Emotional intelligence is one of the important trait that helps leaders to work with people effectively. “Emotional intelligence involves assessing one’s own feelings, as well as feelings of others, then using those assessments to guide personal thought and action” (Borkowski, 2015, p. 239).

In my personal experience with different Management Styles as a professional firefighter, this particular subject does shed some light on the “why” leaders act and “how” others react. Emotional Intelligence is a theory championed by Dr. Daniel Goleman in the early 90’s (Emotional Intelligence, 1995) which, in short is the ability to: Recognize, understand and manage our own emotions; and Recognize, understand and influence the emotions of others. In the professional world this has been used to promote the idea that a well-rounded leader should not only possess the education and intelligence commensurate with a leadership position but also the Emotional Intelligence that appears to garner the support of peers, superiors and subordinates

The best leaders are those have the adaptability to flex their behavioral style, and choose the right style suitable for each situation. According to this theory, people can learn to become leaders through teaching and observation and certain behavioral patterns may be identified as leadership styles. Advantages of Behavioral Theory of Leadership: Behavioral theory promotes the value of leadership styles with an emphasis on concern for people and collaboration. It promotes participative decision making and team development by supporting individual needs and aligning individual and group objectives. It helps managers evaluate and understand how their behavioral style as a manager affects their relationship with the team and promotes commitment and contribution towards organizational goals. This theory helps managers find the right balance between different styles of leadership, and helps them decide how to behave as a leader, depending on concerns for people and for productivity. Criticism / Arguments against - Behavioral Theory of Leadership: As there were inherent limitations with the Trait approach to leadership, when early researchers ran out of steam in their search for traits, they turned to what leaders did, how they behaved and came with behavioral theory of leadership. This became the dominant way of approaching leadership within organizations in the 1950s and early 1960s but this

This is the essence of the managerial grid defined by Blake and Mounton (1964)which sugest five key leadership styles .

Overall, Emotional Intelligence and resonant leadership are very important concepts in the marketplace today. They are vital to the dynamics of an organization and are qualities that the modern leader must possess in order to foster change and inspire others towards the achievement of goals and objectives. It is through these two concepts that a leader is truly able to elicit team unity and foster an atmosphere of change within the organization.