Similarities Between Traits And Behavior Leadership Theories

Leadership is the most essential aspect of a successful operation; without a leader there is no concise direction or defined power in charge. A leader’s intangibles and instincts must be sharp, knowing that everything hinges on their ability to place their people in the best possible situations to thrive. For as long as humanity has existed, man has always had a leader; both good and bad leaders, qualified or unqualified. People are divided on the concept of what a leader is. Are leaders naturally born? What makes up a leader? How do we determine a leader?

Leadership is, and always has been, a vital aspect of social and economic constructs. It is essential to the survival of societies, industries, organizations, and virtually any group of individuals that come together for a common purpose. However, leadership is difficult to define in a single, definitive sense. As such, theories of leadership, what constitutes a great leader, and how leaders are made have evolved constantly throughout history, and still continue to change today in hopes of improving upon our understanding of leadership, its importance, and how it can be most effective in modern organizational cultures.

For centuries leaders have been analyzed in order to determine what the traits and characteristics of a successful leader are. Leadership, as defined by Koontz and Weihrich (2008) is “the art or a process of influencing people so that they will strive willingly and enthusiastically toward the achievement of group goals” (p. 311). Leadership plays an important role in employee’s participation, creativity, recruitment to an organization, their commitment to the organization, and productivity levels. Over the years, there have been a number of theories surrounding leadership such as the “Great Man” theory, which, according to Riaz and Haider (2010), “assumes that leaders are born and have innate qualities, therefore, leaders

In Lesson 6, Dr. Fischer explores the ideas of whether leaders are born or made. In some cases certain traits such as extroversion, conscientiousness, openness, and emotional intelligence can suggest that leaders can in

What is leadership? Are individuals destined to lead or are they mentored into it? Leadership can be taught and seen by hard work, mentoring and a specific mind set, but the great leaders are born with the leadership quality. Leadership is taken from hard work. If one individual sees another individual working hard than the other will try and help the fact and get the job done with more efficiency by he also trying his hardest. It has a conformity affect. If most people in the group work hard and keep their eyes on the prize than good things will happen. Leadership could have been taught by the worker that began the domino affect with the conformity of the group. He could have a very humble father that taught him that hard work pays bills. Therefore if he works to his abilities than the worker will receive riches. If a worker only half-asses it than he will not move up the chain of life. Some people have mind sets that make them successful. Herbert hoover, the 31st President of the United States was an orphan.( The Biography.com website.) This tells us that no one's life is invaluable, and that no matter what environment a person comes

As a growing debate, the question at hand is whether great leaders are born with specific leadership traits, or if one can be taught certain traits over time. According to (Wikipedia.com) the approach of listing leadership qualities, often termed "trait theory of leadership", assumes certain traits or characteristics will tend to lead to effective leadership. I believe that leadership traits such as honest, competent, initiative, inspiring, hardworking, intelligent, and the ability to lead the masses, are some of the leadership traits one should possess. Within this paper, I will examine the overall concept of leadership traits, while observing the traits that were, or can be associated with successful leaders.

In modern day business, leadership has become an issue that is given far more attention and investment than ever before. Leadership involves establishing a clear vision, sharing that vision with others so that they will follow willingly, providing the information, knowledge and methods to realise that vision, and coordinating and balancing the conflicting interests of all members and stakeholder. This essay will discuss whether leaders are born not made, with varies of theories being compared and contrasted and the strengths and limitations of leaders itself. Further this essay will analyse the future aspects of theories which would establish whether a leader was born with leadership qualities or made into a successful leader.

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

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

Therefore how a leader’s character or personality influences leadership. This paper will critically evaluate how useful is the trait approach to leadership. It begins with

LEADERS ARE BORN NOT MADE There have been an age long debate, and humans since beginning of time, have tried to come up with an answer to this question – Are Leaders born or are they made?. This question has generated an age long debate, which in turn has resulted in various school of thoughts, some believe that leaders are born, while others think otherwise. My contribution to this lifelong debate will serve as a pointer to my position on this issue. I strongly believe that leaders are born and not made. Who is a Leader? - “A leader is a person who guides others toward a common goal, showing the way by example, and creating an environment in which other team members feel actively involved in the entire process. A leader is not the boss of

Leadership is something that can be taught (Northouse, 2015. There are some valuable theories, which will be discussed later in this paper, how a leader can develop into having a strong influence in any daily aspect of their lives. Also later in this paper it will be discussed the various styles of leaders that can affect the behaviors of the actions of each leader. Each leader can learn these attributes or some of them just have the natural capability of being a leader.

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.

Research on leadership began with a search for inherited characteristics that differentiated leaders from non-leaders and