Leadership and Management Theories - Essay Example

Leadership and Management Theories Analysis Leadership and Management Theories Analysis Running an organization is a task, which requires much attention and skills in its operations and success to be realized. This is mainly achieved by the availability of reliable and organized leadership; good leadership met when appropriate leaders are in place. Leadership is a process whereby individuals in an organization influence others in accomplishing the set objectives and directions in a coherent and organized manner. The main objective of leadership is to work towards achieving a common goal set by the organization. Leaders accomplish this task by putting into practice appropriate leadership skills and knowledge. A person through learning acquires exemplary leadership; leadership skills and knowledge, however, processed by a leader. These leadership skills and knowledge mainly influenced by beliefs, character, values and ethics; these factors contribute to leadership process. Leadership process has four principal factors that are the leader, situation, communication, and followers. These factors form the basis of outstanding leadership in an organization, hence the organization’s success while undertaking organizational operations. Several theories of leadership have been produced by students of leadership these theories include Trait, Skills, Styles, Situational, Contingency, Path-Goal, Leader-Member Exchange, Transformational, Servant, Authentic, Team and Psychodynamic theories (Chemers, 1997). These theories are vital in maintaining a sound leadership in an organization, the most common theories in an organization, which will be dealt with in this paper are transformational theory, situational theory and contingency theory. According to transformational theory, leadership is a process through which a person’s engagement with others establishes a connection, which normally results into encouragement of morality and increased motivation for leaders and its followers. The theory attributes leaders with qualities such as confidence, extroversion and the values stated; with these qualities, the leaders are able to motivate followers (Chemers, 1997). Under transformational leadership, the leader need to pay attention to the follower’s needs and motives if their potential is to be attained. Transformational leadership does attempt to explain leader’s efforts to implement initiate and develop crucial and significant changes in any given organization. This leadership use different mechanisms in enhancing performance of the followers, these mechanisms include being role models for followers to emulate, as they get inspired, giving followers challenging work to take, having a clear understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, and providing them with a sense of identity by letting them having a connection to the organization’s operations and schedule. All these are the efforts made by the leader to ally its followers with activities and tasks for the purposes of enhancing their overall performance. The leader play a significant role in directing followers to address their needs, with the order needs coming first. Transformational leader possess outstanding, charismatic characteristics, which enable him perform his duties effectively. Behaviors acquired by these leaders include appearing competent to workers, communicates with expectations to its followers and possess the ability to arouse tasks relevant in motivating followers in task accomplishment, these behaviors make them unique leaders. Transformational leaders recognizes the efforts put by the followers by giving promotion to those who display outstanding performance, provide motivation to workers and gives awards and grades to followers. All these efforts meant to maintain a healthy relationship between the organization and the followers (Chemers, 1997). The leadership theory has several strengths it has a large body of research to support the theory, views leadership process as the process involving leaders and organizational followers. It also lay emphasis in promotion of the welfare and morals of the followers, this is an added advantage since followers get motivated thus performing their duties and responsibilities effectively. The theory has been effective in bringing into awareness the understanding the organizations leadership and management. Leaders through this leadership style have been in a position to undertake their roles effectively and an organized manner (Chemers, 1997). Transformational leadership is thus, said to be the best way an organization succeeds in undertaking the activities and operations. The theory, however, have weaknesses it lacks clarity in issues concerning conceptuality, it focuses on personality traits and behaviors rather than the skills an individual possess. Transformational leaders have powers over the organization; they can thus abuse these powers for personal gains. Contingency leadership theory states that success of an effective leader is contingent and depends on the way their styles fits a given situation. In this leadership, emphasis laid on the leader’s effectiveness to fit on the given style at a specified situation. The theory states that organization of any given organization depends on the external and internal situations. The theory applies scales in its operations where coworkers normally rated in scales based on their performance, where they rate as either as low or high. Preferred qualities identified in all the coworkers including the least coworker scale based on the results conclusions made. Organizations situations normally assessed based on different relations and operations of the organization. Leader-member relations normally assessed based on followers loyalty and loyalty of followers towards their leader, task structure whereby task and its requirement clearly identified, and position power, which entails the authority of the leader in administration of appropriate rewards and punishments. Successful assessment of the situation leads to conclusions arrived concerning the favorableness of the situation as most favorable or least favorable situations. Leader with position power characterizes most favorable situations; definition of tasks is clear and presence of significant relations between the leader and the followers. On the other hand, least favorable ones characterized by the presence of poor relations between leader and followers, unstructured tasks and leaders in a weak position power. The theory, however, has several weaknesses thus affecting the organization’s performance and its accomplishment of duties. The theory needs a lot of research to support its validity, hence an expensive system to be adopted by the organization. The theory lays focus on the relationship between leader and situation leaving other aspects unattended. The theory is also predictive, with no descriptions to support it. The issue of assigning followers in different scales leads to assigning low positions to individuals even it is not their fault. The theory does not explain reasons behind the effectiveness of some leadership styles while others are ineffective. This renders the system inappropriate since there will be no conclusions to be arrived based results, it also fail to ascertain the presence of mismatch between followers and leaders and different scales. Using the theory in the world setting has proved to be cumbersome because of several procedures involved. This leadership style has proved to be ineffective when used in isolation, thus needs incorporation with other leadership styles. The other significant leadership theory is the situational theory. This leadership style has been effective in enabling an organization work effectively. Leaders and its followers work together in ensuring the success of the organization accomplished. The efforts to carry out the assessment in the organization have proved to be effective in organizations operations. Information from these assessments has been a significant tool for decision-making and management process. Leaders and those in management make decisions and crucial details based on the information derived from the assessment. The theory enables organizations meet the set goals and objectives since leaders put efforts in ensuring that leadership and management processes well understood. This is aided by successful assessment. Situational leadership theory, a leadership theory developed by Professor Paul Hersey; suggests that each situation has unique leadership styles and theories. This mainly achieved through the ability of an organization to be at a position to adapt and make adjustments on the styles based on the prevailing circumstances of the situation (Chemers, 1997). In this leadership theory, adapting to the competence and leader’s commitment normally assessed, which helps in determining the style to be used by a leader, either directive or supportive style. The theory advocates that there is no style of leadership, operating in isolation and that the effectiveness in leadership normally achieved by leaders adapting leadership styles in a mature manner, willingness to accept responsibility, experienced, set attainable goals of an organization and ability to influence others. Effective leadership depends on the individual’s function, task, and job to be fulfilled. When leaders use this theory, they will utilize their leadership skills and abilities based on the employee’s needs and conducting effective leadership, which is in line with the situational context of the organization. This leadership style requires that the followers get support from the leaders based on their needs. By doing so, the followers will benefit since their skill will improve over time and will at last become mature and independent because of the skills acquired in the course of accomplishing their duties. Situational leadership has four leadership styles and maturity levels these must be accomplish for the success of the business or the organization accomplished these leadership styles include telling, selling, participating and delegating (Chemers, 1997). These styles are of significance to the organization none is better than the other leaders should learn to be flexible and posses ability to use all the styles under different circumstances, with different followers and various situations. This leadership style, however, has limitations; situational leadership is ineffective when dealing with a large organization operating with several activities in different circumstances. To curb this problem, leaders should try to incorporate different leadership styles for effective leadership process. An organization in an effort to realize success in operations based on leadership should use various leadership styles, no single leadership theory normally used in isolation. Success and effectiveness arrived when leaders treat followers in the most effective way, at the same time ensuring that the organization operates as required without straining of resources. Reference Chemers, M. (1997). An integrative theory of leadership. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Read More