Adolf Hitler Leadership Effectiveness

ADOLF HITLER

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler, regardless of his wrong doings and the obvious evil that he empowered, was one of the great leaders of our time and changed the way that our society looked at war. The fact that Hitler came from a front-line soldier with no real future in a leadership role to the chancellor of Germany and the commander of a great army shows his great will and ability to meet his goals and to manipulate people to achieve a vision. The reason that I chose Hitler as the subject for this paper was because of the great impact that he had on our world over the last century and also to take a look at just how he could convince not only his nation but other allies to carry out his ill-will towards Russia and the Jews. Whether or not he is viewed as crazy is irrelevant here, his leadership and manipulative skills allowed him to achieve at least some of his sub-goals and very nearly his overall goal of expanding Germany into Russia and exterminating the Jews. When looking at a leadership style or a model to compare Hitler to, there is one word that really stands out in most leadership models that all relate to Hitler: directive. This paper will look at two different models which I believe will show what kind of leader Hitler was and also why I think that he was as successful as he possibly could have been. These two models are Blake and Mouton's Leadership Grid and the contingency model. On Blake and Mouton's Leadership Grid, Hitler should be taken as a "9,1" type leader, the place on the model known as "authority-compliance". This type of leader is said to place heavy emphasis on task and job requirements and only care about people because they are "tools" necessary in getting the job done. The leader is often seen as controlling, demanding, hard-driving, and overpowering (Northouse, 2004: pg 69). The contingency theory looks at not only the leader but the subordinates and then predicts whether or not the leader should be effective in his position given the situation. In Hitler's case, leader-member relations are good, there is a high task structure and high position power. For reference in the analysis section of the paper, leaders who are low on the least-preferred coworker (LPC) scale are those who first worry about finishing