All About Leadership

What is Leadership?

Leadership is a quality or trait that every individual possesses, but not necessarily uses. It is the process whereby one or several individuals influence others toward the attainment of a goal. Some leaders themselves described leadership in the following ways.

My definition of a leader . . . is a man who can persuade people to do what they don't want to do, or do what they're too lazy to do, and like it.

Harry S. Truman, 1884-1972, Thirty-third President of the United States, Miller, More Plan Speaking

Leadership is the ability of a superior to influence the behavior of a subordinate or group and persuade them to follow a particular course of action.

Chester Bernard

To measure leadership more specifically, one may assess the extent of influence on the followers, that is, the amount of leading. Within an organizational context this means financially valuing productivity. Effective leaders generate higher productivity, lower costs, and more opportunities than ineffective leaders. Effective leaders create results, attain goal, and realize vision and other objectives more quickly and at a higher level of quality than ineffective leaders.

Many associate leadership with one person leading. Four things stand out in this respect. First, to lead involves influencing others. Second, where there are leaders there are followers. Third, leaders seem to come to the fore when there is a crisis or special problem. In other words, they often become visible when an innovative response is needed. Fourth, leaders are people who have a clear idea of what they want to achieve and why. Thus, leaders are people who are able to think and act creatively in non-routine situations – and who set out to influence the actions, beliefs and feelings of others. In this sense being a �leader’ is personal. It flows from an individual’s qualities and actions. However, it is also often linked to some other role such as manager or expert. But it’s important to remember that not all managers are leaders; and not all leaders are managers.

Behavioral Approach

Behavioral theories of leadership do not seek inborn traits or capabilities. Rather, they look at what leaders actually do. If success can be defined in terms of describable actions, then it should be relatively easy for other people to act in the same way. This is easier to teach and learn then to adopt the more ephemeral 'traits' or 'capabilities’. Behavioral is a big leap from Trait Theory, in that it assumes that leadership capability can be learned, rather than being inherent. This opens the floodgates to leadership development, as opposed to simple psychometric assessment that sorts those with leadership potential from those who will never have the chance.

A behavioral theory is relatively easy to develop, as you simply assess both leadership success and the actions of leaders. With a large enough study, you can then correlate statistically significant behaviors with success. You can also identify behaviors which contribute to failure, thus adding a second layer of understanding.

Various schemes appeared, designed to diagnose and develop people’s style of working. Despite different names, the basic ideas were very similar. The four main styles that appear are:

 Concern for task. Here leaders emphasize the achievement of concrete objectives. They look for high levels of productivity, and ways to organize people and activities in order to meet those objectives.

 Concern for people. In this style, leaders look upon their followers as people - their needs, interests, problems, development and so on. They are not simply units of production or means to an end.

 Directive leadership. This style is characterized by leaders taking decisions for others - and expecting followers or subordinates to follow instructions.

 Participative leadership. Here leaders try to share decision-making with others.

Many of the early writers that looked to participative and people-centered leadership, argued that it brought about greater satisfaction amongst followers (subordinates). However, as Sadler (1997) reports, when researchers really got to work on this it didn’t seem to stand up. There were lots of differences and inconsistencies between studies. It was difficult to say style of leadership was significant in enabling one group to work better than another.

For example:

In behavioral