Situational Leadership Theory Essay

Leadership is the ability to evaluate the opportunities and threats in the environment and also encourage their followers to work towards the achievement of sustainability. In other words, leadership brings together all the resources available and helps in achieving the goals in an effective manner. Leadership theories give a clear idea about the roles and effects of leaders. There are several theories of leadership like contingency theory, trait theory, transformational leadership and behavioral theory. All the theories sum up to the fact that the leaders are the anchors of the organization.

Leadership is a matter of intelligence, trustworthiness, humaneness, courage, and discipline . . . Reliance on intelligence alone results in rebelliousness. Exercise of humaneness alone results in weakness. Fixation on trust results in folly. Dependence on the strength of courage results in violence. Excessive discipline and sternness in command result in cruelty. When one has all five virtues together, each appropriate to its function, and then one can be a leader. — Sun Tzu

Leadership is helping a group or groups of people come to a shared goal; this goal may be an activity or done simply by influencing people to cope with changes (Al-Sawai, 2013). It is also found that “leadership focuses on relationships, using interpersonal skills to persuade others to work toward a common goal” (Yoost & Crawford, 2016, p. 166). The theories listed above describe excellent traits in a leader, I will elaborate on a few leadership theories.

In chapter one, the concept and definition of leadership was introduced and according to the text, more than one hundred definitions of leadership have been identified by scholars and academic studies. What is clear is that leadership requires certain skills and traits of an individual that give them the ability to influence others in a way that motivates them to work toward and accomplish a common objective and goal effectively. While most traits seem to be somewhat inborn and natural to most leaders, it is true that others can be taught and develop the skills over time.

After researching several other leadership styles, I found that situational leadership is the leadership style most effective for myself. Situational leadership is different from most leadership styles because it is adaptable to every circumstance. While other leadership styles are very specific, situational leadership can be used to lead people that are not very knowledgable in a certain area and also people that might know more than you.

Chapter sixteen discusses various leadership theories which can implemented by leaders to achieve success. The choice of leadership theory differs from leader to leader as they possess different vision and way of managing. A theory isn 't always perfect in itself, it is the endless effort of the leaders which makes the theory a perfect one. Two approaches of leadership that I prefer are Situational Leadership Theory and Servant Leadership Theory. Among many theories I prefer these two because I tend to practice those principles most of the time and I assume these are theories that I truly tend to continue in a long run.

Chapter sixteen discusses various leadership theories which can implemented by leaders to achieve success. The choice of leadership theory differs from leader to leader as they possess different vision and way of managing. A theory isn 't always perfect in itself, it is the endless effort of the leaders which makes the theory a perfect one. Two approaches of leadership that I prefer are Situational Leadership Theory and Servant Leadership Theory. Among many theories I prefer these two because I tend to practice those principles most of the time and I assume these are theories that I truly tend to continue in a long run.

The concept of a class focused on studying theories of leadership is a novel idea to me. It is not surprising though; people only began to define leadership at the beginning of the 20th century, so it is a relatively young field (Northouse, 2016). Although I have always believed that leadership was an ability that could be developed and learned, to discuss leadership theory in a classroom without any actual application of the skills did not seem particularly effective. Especially for someone like myself who is generally a practical, hands-on learner, I was not sure what I could possibly gain. My initial thinking stems from the American education, where students are encouraged to be leaders without any explanation of what that might look

Developed by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard, the situational leadership model, also known as the life cycle theory of leadership, dictates that there is no lone best style of leadership, and that leadership should be tailored to the skills, abilities, and occupational maturity of the individual employee. Based on this theory, the most effectual leaders are those that are capable of looking at a task or situation, take cues or other factors from it that may be a factor in completing the job, and then adapt their style of leadership to fit the situation. The authors focus on three leadership models that address contingency factors - situational leadership theory, contingency theory, and path–goal theory.

Hersey and Blanchard proposed situational leadership theory, according to this theory leadership depends on individual situation and no particular leadership can be defined as the best. This theory has two pillars; leadership style and maturity level of the leader.

The situational leadership model was proposed by its two authors, Ken Blanchard, and Paul Hersey in the year 1969. These authors based this model on the notion that leadership should adapt to different management practices and approaches to fit different situations and surpass any diversity of their encounters (Lussier & Achua, 2010). In particular, this model provides guidance on how to analyze a situation, choose effaceable strategies and adopt the most appropriate leadership style. Apparently, the two developers of the model researched and found that, given some case, leadership may fail to accomplish some goals due to adopting single incompatible and

Contemporary leadership theories which has been expanded in the past twenty five years and have apprehend the awareness of leadership practitioners and researchers alike. According to Levy (2006), LMX theory is define as a theory about work teams that concentrates on the relationships between leaders and subordinates preferably than on leader behaviors or traits. The LMX theory concentrates on a dyads, that is the relationship among each subordinate and leader that is reflected independently, rather than on the correlation among the group and the superior. And transformational leadership theory is define as a structure of leadership in which the communication of followers and leader elevates both to leading levels of morality and motivation that they would attain individually. In its perfect structure, it creates positive and valuable change in the people they are leading with the end objective of expanding followers into leaders. Performed in its genuine form, transformational leadership intensify the performance, motivation and morale of followers through a diversity of techniques (Levy, 2006). The focus of this paper will be based on leader-member exchange and transformational leadership theories.

Situational leadership: According to this theory, the effectiveness of the leader is significantly correlated with situational factors which restrict the performance of the leader positively or negatively. In other words, “the efficiency of leader’s skills or traits are determined by the situation in which leaders exercise leadership” (Dessler,1976), These factors are:

In simple words, leadership is the power and skill of leading. If we describe elaborately, leadership is something powerful instrument an individual possess to lead other individual, organization, group or team (McShane and Von Glinow, 2000). Leaders have the ability to lead other people that are done by directing, motivating, encouraging and driving people to work. There are several types of leadership that includes-

The concept of leadership has no exact or definite definition. This is due to the fact that leadership in itself is multifaceted (de Ver,2009,p.4). The concept of leadership can for instance be defined in terms of group processes (Bass,1990,p.11), as personality and its various effects (Bingham,1927),as the art of successfully inducing compliance (Munson,1921), as an exercise of one's influence (Nash,1929), as an act, as a behavior (Fiedler,1967), as a form of persuasion (Neustadt,1960),as a power relation (Bass,1990,p.15), as an instrument for achieving goals (Borgadus,1929),as a differentiated role