The Importance of Leadership Behavior Traits

Leadership goes beyond management, for some, leadership is instinctual and pours over into your personal life. This paper will discuss a leader I admire in my personal life, and analyze their leadership style. I will discuss how that leader has influenced my leadership style, as well as how things like environment and the economy affect my leadership approach.

The United States Marine Corps has been one of the most powerful military branches in the world for more than twenty-three decades. The most important things that have kept this organization as prestigious and powerful as it is are the famous leadership traits, leadership principles, corps values and the leaders that uphold those traits. Without these structures, this leadership hierarchy this “gun club” would not have lasted this long. The next thousand or so words will help explain those traits, principles and corps values that we hold so high.

For this assignment, I have decided to use the leadership trait, skills and style questionnaires. For this questionnaire, I asked 5 different people that know me in different contexts in life, such as personal, school, and work environments. For the majority, I rated myself higher on the traits than my fellow colleagues. On some of the traits however, I was rated higher than what I thought. Overall, I averaged a 4/5 which means that everyone agreed with the traits that were given. For the style questionnaire, I found out that I place more emphasis in building relationships rather than completing tasks. Finally, the skills questionnaire, my leadership skills are in the high range for technical skills, and my human and conceptual skills are in the moderate range.

The essay classifies leadership into four key approaches: (1) trait approach, (2) behaviour approach, (3) the

The questions regarding what makes a great leader, are they born that way, is there certain behaviors that can be taught, and can one switch from one style of leadership to another, are addressed from multiple perspectives. Three main schools of thought, trait theory, behavioral theory and contingency theory, work to explain the social phenomena of leadership. Though they pull from psychological theories, they each contribute valuable pieces that strives to solve the riddle of what makes or constitutes a great leader. However, this riddle may be far less complex, as John Quincy Adams once said, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader” (Adams,

As I reflect back on my Air Force career, especially my current duty position as the Section Chief of the Small Air Terminal at Hill Air Force Base. I realized that I am a Management by Exception-Active (MBE-A) this came to me after I reviewed my Electronic Self-Assessment of Leadership behavior. At my current assignment I keep my subordinates and processes in control and I enforce all the Air Force standards as well as local policies in my organization. When it comes to the mission I avoid unnecessary risks and always ensure the mission is complete. My goal for the next three to five years is to improve my leadership effectiveness and become a transformational leader using the five most valuable concepts I learned in Course 15. These concepts are avoiding conflict, cognitive flexibility, communication, subordinate-centered communication and mediation.

During this past week, I completed my leadership traits assessment and tallied the results from my friends and coworkers. This process was interesting because it has been several years since I have completed an activity like this one. My results were as follows, I received my highest ratings in being persistent, determined, trustworthy, dependable, friendly, diligent, and conscientious. On the other hand, my lowest scores are in self-confident, self-assured, and perceptive. These results were not surprising to me because they are developmental opportunities that I have been working to overcome. It was good to see that what my results are consistent with what I already knew.

It is evident that integrity and competence are two crucial traits of any successful leader. In order to get to know the importance of a quality over the other, we need to find out which of the two can a leader survive without.

Measurement of effectiveness of leaders has been aided by a wide range of theories. These approaches include trait approach, behavioral approach, situational approach, the Big-Five model and cognitive approach. In this case, the trait approach must be assessed in respect to its idea of concentrating on a leader's personality, abilities and more dispositions, which can be applied in characterizing the individual's personality. Further, the trait claims that most individuals who posses leadership capabilities were born with innate characteristics thus enabling them to exert influence over their subordinates (Deaux & Snyder, 2012).

All leaders wield a certain significant level of influence within their organizations or over their followers based upon their own personal philosophy. Being a leader without considering on a personal level key values that one finds important can result in inconsistent outcomes. Establishing a leadership philosophy helps guide actions, behaviors and thoughts. A leadership philosophy is developed through a combination of internal and external forces that impact an individual over their lifetime. There have been a number of theories formulated that attempt to explain what the traits of a successful leader consists of. One theory is that certain traits such as extraversion, intelligence, openness, conscientiousness, and experience are often

A leader who engages in collective leadership will exhibit behaviors aimed at empowering his followers through delegation and support (Druskat & Wheeler, 2003; Lorinkova, Pearsall, & Sims, 2013). This kind of leader will advocate creativity (Zhang & Bartol, 2010) and knowledge sharing (Srivastava et al., 2006) to empower his subordinates when it comes to finding solutions and increasing effectiveness. By empowering his/her team to function with less direct supervision, the leader is free to focus on ensuring that their day to day needs are adequately met and that any obstacles to them

The topic of leadership is historically one of the most widely researched when it comes to explorations of organizational behavior. The success of any institution or organization is pegged on the quality of its leadership because it is the determining factor on the pattern and speed at which it achieves its growth goals. Leaders are responsible for steering an organization toward its goal by mobilizing resources (both human and material) and maximizing their efficiency. The key deliverables for many leaders include employee well-being, teamwork, adherence to organizational processes and procedures, innovation, crisis

There are many leadership styles and is important to know which style you are. There are many ways one can learn their leadership style, for example, through assessments. Knowing your leadership style will help you become a better leader. Although there are many leadership assessments our text discussed four assessments that can give insights into building blocks of personality most commonly identified by peers, subordinate employees, and supervisors (Ledlow, et al, 2014). These assessments include: Hemisphere Dominance assessments; Jungian assessments; Vark test; Struder Group; Price Group; and many

Scales were formed using the best items from the factor analysis. Change-oriented behavior correlated the strongest with subordinate ratings of the manager’s competence, whereas employeecentered behavior correlated highest with subordinate satisfaction with the manager. In the second study, Yukl (1998) administered leader behavior questionnaires to 318 direct reports of managers in charge of 48 organizational units (division, agency, district office, plant) of varying size from 15 private and public sector organizations. Most of the managers occupied middle or upper-level management positions. The leader behavior questionnaire included representative items from the Managerial Practices Survey (MPS), an instrument used for multi-source feedback workshops (Yukl, Wall, & Lepsinger, 1990). The questionnaire also included some items adapted from the MLQ (Bass & Avolio, 1990). Some new items were written to describe aspects of change-oriented behavior not represented in these earlier questionnaires. An exploratory factor analysis produced a clear factor structure for task-oriented behavior, relationshiporiented behavior, and change-oriented behavior. The latter factor included identifying external threats and opportunities, envisioning new possibilities, proposing innovative strategies, and encouraging

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. Behavioral Theories of Leadership, also known as “The style approach to leadership” focuses on the behavior of the leader and what leaders do and how they act. Learn about the two general kinds of behaviors; task behaviors and relationship behaviors and advantages of this approach to leadership. Learn more about this theory of leadership. What are Behaviors? Behavior is the range of actions and mannerisms made by organisms, systems, or artificial