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Leadership Approaches: A Sample Paper
Table of Contents
Introduction
The basis of leadership approaches depends on knowing what leadership entails. Leadership is an interpersonal process involving a leader influencing followers and this influence plays a role in guiding, structuring, and facilitating relationships and activities in a group or organization. As Dansereau et al. (2013) observe, there have been numerous paradigms and theories of leadership that purport to describe what leadership entails.
However, reconciling the leadership approaches remains difficult, considering that each approach captures the actual identity of leadership independent of the other approaches. According to Badshah (2012), the appreciation of the existence of different leadership approaches prompts attention towards underlying ideas behind the approaches to be able to fundamentally establish which leadership approach would fit an educational organization.
Each leadership approach provides a unique piece of mosaic of leadership. In the case of an educational organization, a certain leadership approach is likely to be more effective than the rest. Informed by the desire to identify the specific leadership approach that would be more fitting to an educational organization, this paper seeks to conduct a literature review on various leadership approaches by describing their key themes to facilitate an informed choice of leadership approach. The continued interest in leadership reveals its complex and multifaceted dimensions prompting evaluation based on enduring traits, situational properties, set of behaviors and styles, and presumed cognitive processes.
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Leadership Approaches
Trait Leadership Approaches
In the trait approach, emphasis is on the personal traits or attributes of the leaders. Some of the attributes include competencies, value, physical and personality characteristics. This prompts the interpretation of leadership largely from the perspective of the individual leader. In their study aimed at developing an integrative trait-behavioral model of leadership effectiveness, Derue et al. (2011) observe that the fundamental basis behind the approach is the assumption of the traits having the tendency of producing behavioral patterns that exhibit consistency across situations.
In their study aimed at juxtaposing the resonant leadership element of values, vision and culture and their corresponding equivalent Roman themes, Ahn et al. (2012) provide an insightful criticism of the trait leadership approach. Hereby, they observe that the traits of successful leaders are bound to vary based on time and context, across sectors and generations. This argument raises a fundamental issue as it poses that the leadership elements are not truly timeless.
In the case of educational organization, it would imply that the leader would need to have certain in-born traits for them to be effective. In a study to compile various camps studying leadership from different perspectives, Badshah (2012) observes that the trait approach advances that those occupying leadership positions exceed the average members in scholarship, intelligence, socioeconomic status, activity and social participation, persistence, initiatives, self-confidence, cooperativeness, popularity, adaptability, alertness to situations and verbal facility.
As evident, it would be challenging for trait approach to apply in the case of leadership of an educational organization. This is considering the significant downside of the approach in its inherent discrimination. In this approach, only those born with the leadership traits and have those traits remain relatively stable over their lifetime can be effective leaders. Relying on such an exclusive leadership is likely to lead to limited advances in promoting leadership in the educational organization, which would translate to limited progress.
Skills Leadership Approaches
In an effort to examine leadership, the skills approach gives emphasis on the competencies of a leader. Drennan and Richey (2012) observe that the skills approach promotes the notion that leaders are the ones from which ideas originate. Based on this, the motivational skill of the leaders is responsible for followers’ inspiration to an extent that without the skills of the leaders, transformation becomes challenging.
In their journal article, Kalargyrou et al. (2012) examined the necessary skills leading to effective leadership in hospitality management higher education and found that the skills considered in the leadership approach entail the conceptual, technical, and interpersonal skills and behaviors that an effective leader should possess. The desirability of this approach arises when considering that many situations.
As van Wart (2010) observes, educational organizations are particularly likely to seek for leaders who are capable of facilitating the ideas of others, restoring the management systems likely to be broken rather than reinventing them and drawing from the collective will to change without necessarily inspiring it from magnetism. A benefit that evident in acknowledging this approach lies in the appreciation that everyone has the potential of being an effective leader as skills are abilities that do not have to be inborn as they can be developed, and such is manifested not only in potential but also in performance.
Style Leadership Approaches
According to Ispas (2012), in the leadership style approach, emphasis is on the behavior demonstrated by the leader, focusing exclusively what a leader does and the way they act. The leadership behaviors under this approach include relationship behaviors and task behaviors. In particular, the focus of task behaviors is in goal accomplishment and thus attention is on helping members achieve their objectives.
The attention to relationship behaviors lies in assisting subordinates to be comfortable not only with themselves but also with each other as well as with the situation that they find themselves in the organization. Evidently, the approach gives emphasis on how the two behaviors can be blended to enhance group success. According to Clarke (2012), an effective leader is the one who can not only initiate structure, but also task behaviors after which they nurture their subordinates to be able to realize the full potential of the organizations.
According to Men & Stacks (2013), the main element that leaders gain from the style approach is that the leaders’ actions toward their followers occur on both task and relationship levels. There are situations that require a leader to be more concerned in certain tasks than others in the process. The extent to which a leader is able to strike the balance determines whether one has good or bad leadership. In formulating their leadership behaviors, one needs to be aware of their timing, knowledge and understanding the needs of others.
The desirability of the styles approach to leadership results from the allowance that the approach gives to the leader to evaluate their objectives after which they can subdivide their behaviors accordingly. In particular to an educational organization, the value of the style approach is attributable to its potential in assisting leaders in soliciting feedback from their followers regarding their progress. This way, it becomes possible for leaders to have the awareness that their effect on followers takes place through the tasks they perform and the relationships they establish. The integration of situation perspective in this style enhances the awareness as some of the organization’s members would require more direction, while others are likely to need more nurturing and support.
Situational Leadership Approaches
According to Reed (2012), situations tend to have a significant influence on behavior. This is based on the premise that human behavior results from external conditions, which prompt the development of social and psychological cues. Hereby, the locus of control in this approach is largely external to the individual.
According to Schreuder et al. (2013), the needs and characteristics of a system are the main elements in the situational approach. From the prevailing situations, the leadership styles and behaviors that would be most critical to ensuring effective operation of the system are deduced. An area of interest in this approach in understanding leadership is the tendency of leaning more towards examining the property functioning of the system after which focus is on what leaders should do to be effective.
As van Wart (2010) observes, necessity drives this leadership approach. This causes the leadership focus to be on select situations and specific organization characteristics to inform on the prescriptions regarding the kind of leadership styles and behaviors that would be most effective. It is common for the approach to lean towards macro-level descriptions, but there are examples of comprehensive situational approaches to leadership (van Wart, 2010). Such causes the leadership approach to have a significantly limited prescriptive value due to the wide range of situation that they cover.
In the case of the educational organization, there are some fundamental shortcomings evident in the situational approach. With the locus of control largely external to the individual, this implies the possibility of otherwise good leaders behaving badly courtesy of the contextual and situational factors. It would be more desirable that for the leader to have an influence on the success of an organization’s leadership.
Conclusion
Based on personal review of the literature, it comes out that the various leadership approaches should be preferably complementary. A strong ingredient of successful leadership, however, is likely to involve the interaction between the leader’s traits and the prevailing situation. This is consistent with the realization that the interaction of the leader’s trait and the situation is crucial in understanding what leadership entails. However, it would be desirable for more emphasis to be on the leadership skills approach. This is particularly considering the responsibility that the approach gives to leader that would apply in the educational organization.
From an ethical point of view, the skills leadership approaches become more desirable considering the competency of the leader and the paramount responsibility of creating an organizational atmosphere associated with trust, empathy and nurturance, and assistance that enable followers to grow when handling difficulties. This is considering that the leadership approach is based on the ideas that skills entail behavior that anyone can learn and develop, which is different from the trait approach.
Furthermore, the desirability of the skills leadership approaches lies in considering the need to fit educational organizations. Giving focus to skills implies that it is possible to examine leadership within the specific educational organization’s context, considering the explicit awareness of the likelihood of a leadership skill being a requirement in one context and less relevant in another.
References
Ahn, M. J., Ettner, L. W., & Loupin, A. (2012). Values v. traits-based approaches to leadership: Insights from an analysis of the Aeneid. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 33(2), 112-130. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/01437731211203447
Badshah, S. (2012). Historical study of leadership theories. Journal of Strategic Human Resource Management, 1(1), 49-59.
Clarke, N. (2012). Shared leadership in projects: A matter of substance over style. Team Performance Management, 18(3/4), 196-209. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/13527591211241024
Dansereau, F., Seitz, S. R., Chiu, C.-Y., Shaughnessy, B., & Yammarino, F. J. (2013). What makes leadership, leadership? Using self-expansion theory to integrate traditional and contemporary approaches. The Leadership Quarterly, 24(6), 798-821. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.10.008
Derue, D. S., Nahrgang, J. D., Wellman, N., & Humphrey, S. E. (2011). Trait and behavioral theories of leadership: An integration and meta-analytic test of their relative validity. Personnel Psychology, 64(1), 7-52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2010.01201.x
Drennan, F. S., & Richey, D. (2012). Skills-based leadership. Professional Safety, 15(2), 59-63. https://aeasseincludes.assp.org/professionalsafety/pastissues/057/02/059_063_F3Drennan_0212.pdf
Ispas, A. (2012). The perceived leadership style and employee performance in hotel industry – A dual approach. Revista de Management Comparat International, 13(2), 294-304. https://www.rmci.ase.ro/no13vol2/10.pdf
Kalargyrou, V., Pescosolido, A. T., & Kalargiros, E. A. (2012). Leadership skills in management education. Academy of Educational Leadership Journal, 16(4), 39-63.
Men, L. R., & Stacks, D. W. (2013). The impact of leadership style and employee empowerment on perceived organizational reputation. Journal of Communication Management, 17(2), 171-192. https://doi.org/10.1108/13632541311318765
Reed, G. E. (2012). Character vs. situational imperatives as the primary driver of unethical conduct: Implications for the study of leadership. Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics, 9(4), 21-29.
Schreuder, J. A., H, Groothoff, J. W., Jongsma, D., & Zweeden, v. (2013). Leadership effectiveness: A supervisor’s approach to manage return to work. Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation, 23(3), 428-437. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10926-012-9409-6
Van Wart, M. (2010). Two approaches to leadership studies. Public Administration Review, 70(4), 650-653. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2010.02191.x
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