Leadership Profile PART II - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages... All sorts of leaders, be it a political leader, group/team leader (for a project), leader in any field or discipline(s) and any n' every leader; they, despite being unique by several of their attributes, they have a few similarities (Gareth & Charles, 2005). They show some of the similar patterns which can be integrated into a few categories or types of leadership styles as per the leadership theories given by renowned observers and theorists. These include several theories which have provided exceptional guidance to assist people over the whole globe and to help out leaders in leading their subordinates effectively as per the prevailing conditions and situation of an organization. Some of those world renowned theories are discussed briefly below. It will be pertinent to note here that we have already looker at the reasons and chosen the transformational leadership style to explain the behaviour of our chosen leader namely Mr. Thaksin Shinawatra.
Fred Fiedler was the one who developed a contingency or situational theory of leadership. Leadership theories may be of great help in molding the behaviors of leaders but they also need to be effective enough to assist leaders in different situations. Now that many theories are there, a lot of researchers have agreed on the point that actually no "one" style of leadership is always right for every person, who is a leader. Therefore, for different conditions and circumstances, these conditional theories were developed to be applicable in different cases with respect to the task at hand, the type of organization and the people involved (G. Northouse, 2006). In this theory, the developer i.e. Fiedler emphasized on three main things that were the structure of the task, the relationship between the leaders and the subordinates, and the power that the leader has and is entitled to exercise on his own discretion.
Transformational Leadership:
James MacGregor Burns wrote in his book 'Leadership' about the concept of "transforming leadership" (G. Northouse, 2006). According to him, transformational leadership actually takes place when a leader changes his subordinates or followers in three important styles. He inculcates a feeling of cumulative and/or shared gains in the employees i.e. to work not only for their selves only but also fro the sake of the organization's benefit. This results in the subordinates having more trust in their leader, performing at higher levels of productivity and effectively contributes to the achievement of the organizational goal and objectives that are the target for any organization. (Bernard M. Bass, 2005)
Path-Goal Theory of Leadership:
This theory emphasizes on the leaders to motivate their employees by clearly stating them the means of achieving high. This includes guiding them as to how they should achieve the organizational goals, controlling their performance and monitoring their output results, lauding them for good work and respecting what they did and then further guiding them how to improve on the mistakes that were made and also how to achieve new and higher benchmarks.
Leader-Style Theory:
Leader style, also known as "Trait Theory" is another way of identifying and analyzing the key characteristics of a successful leader. This approached was used for actually separating the critical leadership traits of born-leaders so that ...Download file to see next pagesRead More