People have been debating the nature of leadership for as long as records have been kept, certainly for as long as Homer and his companions. The subject continues to fascinate and captivate us today, but the way we assess leadership roles is changing.
Where once we looked to military and political leaders for inspiration and insight, now it is increasingly business leaders who capture our attention and provide role models.
Ask someone to name a leader they have admired and are likely to name richard branson ace Tony Blair, anita roddick ace Margaret Thatcher. This approach is reflected in the growing number of books and articles on business and its main players.
Most of the writing on good management and what it takes to get to the top focuses on leadership. It is considered one of the most important areas of personal development. This also explains the growing interest in leadership courses.
Yet defining exactly what makes an effective leader remains as difficult today as ever. But that does not prevent us from seeking to distill his secrets, quite the opposite.
Of course, there must be almost as many leadership theories as there are leaders and models for the best kind of leadership that change with the times.
In the fifteenth century, Niccolò Machiavelli he advocated a combination of cunning and intimidation as a more effective form of leadership. His philosophy, if not his practices, went out of fashion some time ago.
“Great Man” theories, popular in the 19th and early 2000s, are based on the notion of the “born leader” who has innate talents that cannot be taught. An alternative approach that is still in vogue is based on trying to identify the key traits of effective leaders. Behaviorist theory prefers to see leadership in terms of what leaders do rather than their individual characteristics, and tries to identify the different roles they fill. More recently, attention has shifted away from the individual in the leadership role to a more holistic view and less investment in what some commentators call the ‘myth of the heroic leader’.
Much of the recent work in this area has focused on trying to understand why some leaders are more effective than others by looking at their environment and the context in which their actions have taken place. situational The theory considers that leadership is specific to the situation, for example, rather than to the personality of the leader. It is based on the idea that different situations require a different style of leader.
the basis of Situational leadership is to provide a means of effective leadership by adopting different leadership styles in different situations with different people.
Situational leadership it’s a modelnot a theory. The difference is that a theory tries to explain why things happen, whereas a model is a pattern of existing events that can be learned and therefore repeated.
Requirements of a leader:
An effective leader must be:
o A good diagnostician, who can feel and appreciate differences in people and situations.
o Adaptable, in the ability to adapt the leadership style to the circumstances.
A leader must realize that there is no best way to influence people..
The Foundation of Situational Leadership:
Situational leadership it is a way of describing and analyzing leadership styles. It is a combination of directive and supportive behaviors.
guide Behavior involves telling people what to do, how to do it, where to do it, when to do it, and then closely monitoring their performance. support for behavior involves listening to people, providing them with support and encouragement for their efforts, and then facilitating their participation in problem solving and decision making.
There are four leadership styles: Lead, train, support Y delegate.
Each style is appropriate in certain circumstances. They can be displayed as follows:
oh delegate i.e. low support and low management
oh Leader i.e. low directive support and high
oh secondary i.e. high support and top management
oh Training that is, high directive support and low
In summary:
To those who would suggest that great leaders are born, not made, I would say this: We can examine all of history’s great leaders and identify some common characteristics, but we cannot say that they were “born leaders.” They all developed into their leadership roles over a period of time, learning the skills along the way. I believe that leaders can be developed; I have to believe it because we currently have very few of them in the world.
Copyright © 2007 Jonathan Farrington. All rights reserved
