Reflections on World's Leadership - Research Paper Example

(page 6) iv. What I have learnt from her……………………………………… (page 7) V. George W. Bush- A Demonstration of BadLeadership i. His Actions ………………………………………………………. (page 7) ii. His Leadership Style……………………………………………… (page 8) iii. Reasons underlying My Perception of Him……………………. (page 9) iv. What I have learnt from him……………………………………. (page 9) VI. Conclusion_________________________________________(page 10) VII.

Bibliography________________________________________(page 11) Introduction Who is a “Leader”? Does it refer only to those who rule the masses by virtue of their political authority? Do the activists who never held office but had the ability to move the masses through their ideas and visions also deserve inclusion? Does it include only those who had a positive influence on the world or also those who brought about damage and destruction? Moreover, what is Leadership? Such eternal questions concerning the mystery of great leadership have fascinated men ever since the creation of mankind.

The world has always stood in awe of the leaders thriving within it. Great Western scholars like Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch and Machiavelli have reflected, in their works, upon leaders and their use of power. In fact even the Bible can be regarded as a treatise on leadership in human and divine form. But for the early civilisations, leadership was one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth. It was finally in the eighteenth century that man could actually figure out a discrete sense of the word “leadership”.

With the dawn of Enlightenment, man started applying reason and science to concepts that were till then explained by religion. The advent of the various branches of social science such as evolutionary history, political science and psychology helped to frame general theories and models of leadership. Trends in Leadership Studies The first dominant framework on leadership was the Trait Theory or the “Great Men” Theory which was proposed in the early twentieth century. It focussed on the five central traits possessed by leaders- intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity and sociability.

The theory claimed that leaders are born, not made. Galton (1869) contributed to this theory by stating that “no man can achieve a very high reputation without being gifted with very high abilities”. Carlyle (1910) also asserts that “the history of the world is the history of great men”. Mid-twentieth century saw the rise of the Behaviourist school of leadership which emphasized on the actions and dominant behaviour of the leaders. This period was marked by a parallel research at Ohio State and Michigan University that highlighted the leaders’ behaviour on the job, use of authority and task-relationship orientation.

Later, scholars such as Fred Fiedler realised that a leader must match his/her situation and leadership style should vary depending on the situation and context. This gave way to a third phase of leadership studies, known as the Contingency school, which focussed on task structure, leader-member relationship and power position (Shoup, 2005, pp. 2-4). The modern proponent of leadership studies is James McGregor Burns who has brought about a marked transition in this genre through his classification of the transactional and transformational leader. According