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Leadership Essay

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Everyone has probably played the game “Follow the Leader” back in elementary school. It is a game where the leader stands in front of the line. He or she can say or do anything, and her followers (standing in a straight line behind her) must repeat exactly the same thing he or she does or says. Whoever was picked to be the leader must have loved the experience because one had the freedom to do whatever they please, while others followed miserably or happily depending on what the leader is saying or doing. However, if one was the follower, one would wait anxiously to be the next chosen leader. At the same time, one must somehow express his or her self in a fashion that will make them stand out from the rest of the students. Whether he or …show more content…

However, researchers have been organizing traits around the Big-Five personality framework. It was evident that most leadership traits could be summed up under the Big-Five. This approach shows strong support for trait as a predictor of leadership. Under comprehensive review, extroversion is the most important trait of effective leaders. Next would be conscientiousness and openness to experience. However, it is better to use traits to predict leadership (emergence and appearance of leader) than use it to distinguish between effective and ineffective leaders. (Robbins, 2005) In contrast, the behavioral theories of leadership work on finding unique behaviors of effective leaders so that they would be able to provide answers about the nature of leadership. If there were specific behaviors that identified leaders, they would be able to teach leadership by designing programs. In trait theories, leaders are natural, they are born with it. However, let’s examine the Ohio State studies and the University of Michigan studies. In the Ohio State studies, studies wanted to identify the dimensions of leader behavior. From a thousand dimensions, they narrowed the list down to two categories that accounted for most of the leadership behavior (told by

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