Leadership Theories
Leadership Theories
Leadership is in knowing your strengths. According to our book, an effective leader is an individual who can make good decisions in complex situations under pressure, because they know their own strengths and weaknesses and they’ve learned how to make the best use of them. A common theme among leaders is that they all know it is not about having all of the right strengths, but knowing what strengths they do have and making the best use them. Each theory has its own approach to understanding and identifying each leader’s strong points. We’ll discuss each.
You can hear people say “it’s as plain as the nose on your face” as in very obvious. This is why “The Great Man approach” is used to describe those leaders that are born not made. (Cherry, 2005) It was used especially for those men who were in a military standpoint. Think of Alexander “The Great”. Born 356BC, the son of King Phillip II of Macedon and Olympiads, came to power after his father’s death. He possessed the high level of vision and ambition to make him one of the greatest military geniuses of all time. Even today he lives on as one of the greatest conquerors the world has ever seen. (Gill, 1997)
The Trait approach: a trait is a distinguishable personal characteristic about a person. It is something that makes that person stand out; honesty, intelligence, self-confidence, and appearance. (Daft, 2011) However this concept is highly debated because traits can be learned or unlearned depending on the circumstance. As noted in an article from Leadership501.com. An organization made the call to lie to employees about a satellite office closing. Its leadership made this decision in order to avoid the embarrassment in admitting the failure that a company decision didn’t work. This lie reduced the leadership influence within the organization. Just because you’ve never been caught lying doesn’t mean you are honest (Shead, 2010). Again, a normal... [continues]
Leadership Theories
Leadership is in knowing your strengths. According to our book, an effective leader is an individual who can make good decisions in complex situations under pressure, because they know their own strengths and weaknesses and they’ve learned how to make the best use of them. A common theme among leaders is that they all know it is not about having all of the right strengths, but knowing what strengths they do have and making the best use them. Each theory has its own approach to understanding and identifying each leader’s strong points. We’ll discuss each.
You can hear people say “it’s as plain as the nose on your face” as in very obvious. This is why “The Great Man approach” is used to describe those leaders that are born not made. (Cherry, 2005) It was used especially for those men who were in a military standpoint. Think of Alexander “The Great”. Born 356BC, the son of King Phillip II of Macedon and Olympiads, came to power after his father’s death. He possessed the high level of vision and ambition to make him one of the greatest military geniuses of all time. Even today he lives on as one of the greatest conquerors the world has ever seen. (Gill, 1997)
The Trait approach: a trait is a distinguishable personal characteristic about a person. It is something that makes that person stand out; honesty, intelligence, self-confidence, and appearance. (Daft, 2011) However this concept is highly debated because traits can be learned or unlearned depending on the circumstance. As noted in an article from Leadership501.com. An organization made the call to lie to employees about a satellite office closing. Its leadership made this decision in order to avoid the embarrassment in admitting the failure that a company decision didn’t work. This lie reduced the leadership influence within the organization. Just because you’ve never been caught lying doesn’t mean you are honest (Shead, 2010). Again, a normal... [continues]
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