Leadership and Psychology - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages In the past, the idea of "top-down leadership, in which the leader told others what do, was an effective way to lead. Today, there is less "top-down" leadership and more building relationships with employees in order to build effective teams inside organizations so that employees will work more effectively.
Traditionally, psychology has been the study of human behavior and though while leadership was the study of leading people. As leaders found that business was changing from the "hard sell" to building relationships with customers, psychology was touted by experts as a way to explore and understand customer need.
Traditionally, psychology has been the study of human behavior and thought and this study has been based on various theories. Most of the concepts of psychology are talked about within these theories and they lay the groundwork for the models that came from them.
Behavioral psychology was begun by B.F. Skinner and is based on conditioning. It was Skinners belief that all behavior was conditioned by stimuli in an environment. He found that by using certain directed stimuli anyone could create a behavior, change it or modify it in any way. Usually, behaviorists would start out with a specific behavior that they wanted to change and create a system of rewards and punishments. Eventually, the behavior began to happen as the rewards were given infrequently. These techniques have been used education to help children with disabilities learn certain tasks that were in other ways difficult.  ...Download file to see next pagesRead More