Leadership Theories And Behavior Approaches Of The Service Department Of A Global High Tech Company

The next big era of leadership theories was the Rational Management era. When the previous era failed to determine exact traits that could consistently be identified in great leaders, a shift occurred to begin looking at how these leaders behaved, and what made them into great leaders, rather than who they were in a specific sense. This was a major shift from thinking that people were born leaders, to now considering that perhaps leaders could be made, or trained to become leaders. The first of these theories, beginning in the early 1950’s, were the behavior theories. The focus of these theories was to study what these leaders do, and

I strongly believe that a leader must be adaptable to the situation and therefore prefer the Contingency theories. I shall therefore use two contingency theories to illustrate my ability to fulfil key responsibilities of my leadership role.

The leader behavior approach is the focus of what people do as a leader or leadership style rather than the characteristics leaders inherit as a leader. It is the assumption that the actions of a person opposed to their innate mental state. Because leaders can learn through teaching and observation; specific behaviors are the focus of a leader. An important study of this theory was conducted by the Ohio State University, and the purpose was to identify common leadership behaviors. The study and research uncovered that there are two linked groups of behavior.

The Trait Theory is based on the innate characteristics that a leader should have in order to lead successfully. For example, sense of humor, caring, and friendly. People in the Trait Theory have to show certain qualities when they communicate and these qualities have to remain constant in different environments.

There are different leadership theories developed throughout the history. Most popular ones are trait theories, behavioral theories, contingency theories, and leader-member exchange (LMX) theory. The author of the post will briefly discuss two theories, Fiedler contingency theory and Leader-Member Exchange (LMX), and compare and contrast their strengths and weakness.

The Trait theory is based on the innate characteristics that a leader should have in order to lead successfully. For example, sense of humor, caring, and friendly. People in the Trait Theory has to show certain qualities when they communicate and these qualities have to remain constant in different environments.

The trait leadership theory focuses on the individual leader’s personal characteristics as the basis of its investigations. It is one of the earliest leadership theories upon whose tenets many researches on leadership have been done. Although it is not very coherent, its heuristic nature has contributed to its significance in leadership research. Zaccaro and Klimoski (2002) define traits of reference to leadership as the stable personality characteristics, which result in a consistent leadership performance pattern, given different scenarios and groups. They include individual personalities, temperament, rationale, prowess, as well as cognitive abilities. Initially, the theory explored both physical and psychological characteristics that tell apart leaders from non-leaders.

The Trait Approach was the 1st systematic attempt to study leadership. In the 20th century it was known as the “great man” theory. This approach takes a look at the leaders personal attributes such as but not limited to: motivation, energy, intuition, creativity, persuasiveness and foresight. Some of the traits that are essential to this list include: intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity and sociability. Thus it focuses mainly on the leader and not on the followers or situations. The strengths of the Trait Approach includes: 1) it is intuitively appealing, 2) it has research to back it’s theory, 3) it highlights the leader, 4) it identifies what the traits of a leader should have and whether the traits we do

Trait leadership theory suggests that all leaders are born with or display certain key personality characteristics. Certain characteristics are particularly suited to leadership. People who make good leaders have a sufficient combination of these character traits. Most of the time the traits are considered to be naturally part of a person’s personality. Hence, leadership trait theory tends to assume that people are born as leaders or not as leaders. However, according to Shead (2007), the idea that leadership traits are inborn and unchangeable appears to be incorrect. He posits that it is true that many of our dispositions and tendencies are influenced by our personalities, but most people will acknowledge that it is possible for someone to change their character traits for the worse. Someone typically known for being honest can learn to be deceitful. Stogdill (1974) identified the following traits and skills as critical to leaders.

If we focus on the idea that people can poses different personality and characteristics can be linked to successful leadership across various situation this would be defined as the trait theory of leadership. Some researcher believe that the ability to lead was something that a person was born with and not something that could be developed or learn. Many people still believe that leaders just have an intuition that makes them good at making decision and developing

Moreover, the trait approach gives a deeper understanding of the leader element in the leadership process by emphasising exclusively on the leader, (Gore et al, 2011). The trait theory does not offer hypotheses about the role of situational variance or characteristic of the followers. Instead, this approach provide information about leaders, and about which traits cause which behaviours and that certain set of traits are central to the leadership process and play an indispensible part of effective leadership.

The trait theory hypothesis trusts that individuals are either conceived or are made with specific qualities that will make them exceedingly tremendous in leadership qualities. That is, certain qualities, for example, knowledge, and awareness of other's expectations, innovativeness and different qualities place anybody in the shoes of an amazing leader. Indeed, Gordon Allport, an American psychologist, identified close to 18,000 English leadership defining terms"

This theory is based on the premise that there are certain personality characteristics that are essential for a person to possess in order to be a leader. The main emphasis is on what the person is in terms of a constellation of personality traits. This theory searches for that set of universal leadership traits that will assure success. Numerous traits have been suggested: courage, integrity, loyalty, charisma, ambition, intelligence, honesty, clairvoyance, persistence, arrogance, health, political skill, confidence and vision.

Contingency Theories:- Stoelhorst and Peter (2013) said that this leadership theory mainly focus on particular variables which shows the relation with the environment. This will indicates about what kind of leadership will be the most effective? This theory simply states that no theory is universal perfect but the implement of theories depends on the variability, it also

Trait theories assume all leaders share a number of common traits. This theory identifies traits or characteristics that are essential when being a leader. Traits like assertiveness, good decision making, empathy, integrity, and confidence are some examples of traits of successful leaders; however, there is no magic combination of traits that will guarantee someone to be a successful leader. Traits are based on our inner thoughts and beliefs. Many different studies about leadership traits agree only in the general righteous qualities needed to be a leader. Those traits are known as core traits. The core traits include