Casual Friday

Leadership Theory

Leadership is a commonly used term in business and life that is not commonly understood. There are so many understandings and meanings conjured when someone mentions leadership that if everyone hearing the term was to leave the situation and write down what it meant to them, there would be as many perceptions as there were people participating. Not only does the word mean different things to different people but the strategies of leaders and what followers expect can be just as diverse. There has been much debate and opinion over the true and definitive meaning of leadership. A couple of the most significant things to emerge from this debate has been the greater diversity of terms and complexity of analysis.

If we evaluate leadership from an etymological perspective, it can be understood to be the life and behavior of someone who has created a desire in others to follow them, imitate them, or become like them. This is when we can understand leadership beyond the organizational and positional structure but instead from an influential point of view. Leaders in this understanding are more recognized than appointed and can transform organizations from the inside out. According to Schermerhorn et al (P287) this form of leadership is called informal, whereas positional or appointed leadership is referred to as formal.

The study of leader and non-leader difference has been categorized as the trait approach. This form of study is now over 100 years old and seems to emerge from a time in history where there was more interest in knowing what separated the heroes from the masses, or what exactly made up a “great person”. The trait approach has developed over the years to encompass a greater understanding of all people and what traits are beneficial to leading effectively. This highlights one of the universal traits of a leader which is integrity that breeds trust.

Behavioral theories of leadership take the study of leadership one step beyond trait analysis. It began by breaking leaders into two main centers of behavioral focus, employee and production. The employee focus can also be referred to as human relations oriented, considerate, or socioemotional. The production focus is also recognized as task oriented with an emphasis on initiating structure. These theories were pioneered by Michigan and Ohio universities. Robert Blake and Jane Mouton developed the theories further with the development of the leadership grid which plots a graph and offers a sliding scale understanding that is more useful for situational application.

The setting, circumstances, and team where a leader is positioned has been termed the situation. Situational analysis has come high on the agenda of research as well as the traits and behaviors of leaders as many are becoming aware that leaders can impact and influence outcomes but the situational understanding is necessary for connecting the right style of leader with the situation in order to have more predictable outcomes. These theories have been brought to the fore by Fred Fielder’s leadership contingency theory and the situational contingencies of House and Aditya. These studies have taken the emphasis away from the fixed traits of a leader to an emphasis on fit and deliverables within an organization. This evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of certain behaviors such as directive or non-directive style within specific settings. This theory plots situational variables in order to discover the preferred leadership style to bring certain results.
Hersey and Blanchard contributed a situational leadership model that highlights that there is no single best way to lead and again offer a map for understanding what to apply when and where. These contributions to the study of leadership have been very beneficial in that we now look systemically at a situation when planning for results and do not expect all things from some leaders. This has broadened the understanding of leaders and has “allowed” more to become categorized as a leader when they would previously have been outside of the camp.
One of the ongoing areas of discussion has to do with the relationship between the leader, the team, success and failure. For instance, can a leader be attributed for great leadership when his/her team is successful? Or can is weakness attributed to the leader when the team fails or under-delivers? There is also the situational issue when it comes to attribution, in that certain circumstances attribute to the performance of a team. This is a natural process for a leader and a team to attach success or to look for meaning. The problem with this can be that many leaders will attribute success to their personal efforts and failure to the lack of effort or experience in the executing team. Attribution theory then enters a deeper realm of understanding and evaluating the esteem and needs of the leader and the team involved. It can be beneficial however to find new ways of doing things as well as ways to improve performance.

Schermerhorn et al (P298) also deal with the issue of leadership prototype and the mental picture a set of people will have about good leaders and real leadership. What seems interesting in the how the mental picture someone has of a leader will effect how they perform in certain leadership scenarios. According to Schermerhorn et al, “The closer the behavior of a leader is to the implicit theories of his or her followers, the more favorable the leader’s relations and key outcomes tend to be.” (P298).

After evaluating the leadership theories above in addition to new leadership theories such as transformational leadership and leader as coordinator in a company thriving on self-managing teams, it seems plausible for companies to draw from each at different times. It also appears like there is a lot of space for a team of people to take things a step further in synergizing all of the above into a matrix grid that is easily implemented for leaders and managers alike.

posted by Mark Dowds @ Sunday, January 09, 2005