Back

Leadership Qualities - TRAIT THEORY

WHAT IS LEADERSHIP?

A simple definition of leadership is that leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal. It is the activity of influencing people to co-operate towards some goal. It includes influencing people to follow you and work according to your will in order to achieve that goal. It is the factor that binds the group together and motivates it towards achievement of these goals.

Put even more simply, the leader is the inspiration and director of the action. He or she is the person in the group that possesses the combination of personality and skills that makes others want to follow his or her direction.

In business, leadership is welded to performance. Effective leaders are those who increase their companys' bottom lines.

TRAIT THEORY

Trait theory tries to describe the types of behavior and personality tendencies associated with effective leadership. In this theory, it is assumed that people are born with traits of a leader, i.e., they are born with leadership skills. These people are the appropriate mix of all those traits which make a leader. Trait theory describes behavior and personality involved in effective leadership. It is the first theory of leadership. According to this theory, there are certain leadership qualities that are very essential for becoming a good leader. According to this, a leader needs to be ambitious, energitic, have a never say die attitude, ready to face challenges, powerful, motivated all the time, have aggression and thirst to achieve more and more and get better to best, ability to lead, should be truthful and disciplined, should have confidence and belief in his own dreams.

It is the idea that people are born with certain traits. As some traits are linked with leadership, it believes that it would help in identifying people with the correct traits, and so in identifying the leaders. Mostly traits are part of a person’s personality from birth. Thus leadership theory believes that people are born as leaders or not made leaders.The belief is that leadership traits are inborn and can't be changed is not correct. However by learning good traits and qualities a person can acquire all the traits required to be a leader.

BEHAVIORAL THEORY

The trait approach was not accepted and was not very true either, so a search began for new leadership theories. Leadership is a collection or group of behaviors, which either make the leader succeed or fail. A leader, as per this theory, will have characteristics like urge for control and power, self control, creativity, hunger to excel, well behaved. According to this theory, leaders can be made and are not born. Leadership traits can be learned according to this theory. During this period, there was a shift from leader to leadership. Different patterns and behaviour were grouped and called styles.The four main styles were-

Task

Emphasis of leader is on achieving objectives.Their concentration is on high productivity, organizing people and steps to be undertaken to meet the objectives.

People

Emphasis is on the employees - their requirements, desires, areas of interest, problems, development, etc.

Directive

Emphasis is on decisions being taken by leaders for their employees.The employees are supposed to follow the orders of the leader.

Participative

Emphasis is on encouraging participation by everyone in decision making.

SITUATIONAL LEADERSHIP

According to the Situational Leadership theory, different situations require different set of traits. A leader cannot have just a single set of traits, but needs to have enough traits, so that they can tackle and handle any situation. E.g., the authoritarian leadership is used during crisis but does not please the employees. Democratic leadership is used for building mutual understanding. Laissez faire leadership is used when employees are highly learned it provides the employee with freedom and he has to take total charge of duties and their completion.

This theory is used as per the situations, so it is referred to as contingency theory.

What qualities are needed in a leader will change from situation to situation. This is the reason why people who could adapt, modify themselves and their thinking, ways, methods, style and twist and turn their abilities to meet the needs of a paticular situation were in demand.

The main concept was the dependence of the leadership style on a number of factors. The following are important

Equation of leader and follower - If the juniors or subordinates respect, look up to, like and enjoy the leadership style of their leader, they will support their leader.

The task - If the juniors and subordinates are explained their jobs clearly and in detail, then they know exactly what their job is and it makes it easier for the leader to guide them then.

Power - If the company places responsibility on the leader for getting a job completed it will act in his favour, and if he is a good leader he will be able to get the work done from the employees in the way wanted.

Styles of leadership that could be used-

Telling - In this the juniors are told how to go about their job, what to concentrate on, what are the priorities, how to do the job, what not to do ect. This style is adopted for new people who have newly joined the company. This style is high on task and low on relationship.

Selling - Is used for those people who are enthusiastic, interested, willing, ready but have to be encouraged and guided because they lack the maturity to do it. This style is high on relationship and high on task.

Participating - Is used for those people who are not enthusiastic or interested. But, they have to be encouraged and motivated. They have the maturity and ability to do the task. This style is high on relationship and low on task.

Delegating - The leader knows what to do but he leaves the entire responsibility to his subordinates. This is done only with people who have high maturity and experience. This style is low on relationship and low on task.

Also patterns of leadership followed by male and female leaders are different. Women adopt leadership styles that are nurturing, caring and inclined towards relationships. Men are task oriented. But there may be exceptions too.

FUNCTIONAL THEORY

This theory is for addressing specific leader behaviors which contribute to a companies effectiveness. According to this theory, the main job of a leader is to take care of the group needs, they have to look to achieving group effectiveness, satisfaction, cohesion and performance. This style of leadership his basically applied while managing a team, but it is also used for organisational management. In summarizing literature on functional leadership observed five broad functions a leader provides when promoting unit effectiveness. This includes things like monitoring the environment, organizing activities, training juniors, motivating team members, active participation.

Juniors consider the behaviour of their leader either as consideration or initiating. Consideration consists of those actions which fostering good and healthy relations. Initiating consists of those activities focused on achieving tasks.

TRANSACTIONAL AND TRANSFORMATIONAL THEORIES

Transactional theory gives authority to perform certain tasks, reward/punish employees on how they have performed. So the manager leads the group according to the way they want and the team members themselves agree to follow him in order to achieve their goal or targets. The authority is placed in the leaders hand to evaluate, make the required corrections, conduct training, increase productivity and make the entire production process efficient and effective. A transactional leader identifies what we want to get from work and tries to ensure that we get it. Such a leader also exchanges rewards and promises for the effort put in by employees. He is responsive to our interests.

Transformational theory mainly aims to have an effective and efficient team and to provide the required motivation as and when required. An efficient and effective chain of communication is used to pass the message and to get the job done. These leaders have a team of people who focus and take care of details. The leader is highly focussed on achieving company goals. A transformational leader increases our level of awareness and consciousness. He makes us aware about the value of outcomes, and methods of achieving them. This leader teaches employees how to make their intrests take a backseat and to first take care of the things which work in favour of the organisation and for achieving goals.

USING EMOTIONS TO MAKE LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVE

Leadership can be considered as a emotion-laden process, where emotions are mixed with the processes or styles to achieve positive results. In an organization, the leaders’ mood has some effects on his group. These effects can be described in 3 levels:

1. The mood of individual group members. Group members with leaders in a positive mood experience more positive mood than group members with leaders in a negative mood. The leaders transmit their moods to other group members.

2. The affective tone of the group. Group affective tone represents the consistent or homogeneous affective reactions within a group. Group affective tone is an aggregate of the moods of the individual members of the group and refers to mood at the group level of analysis. Groups with leaders in a positive mood have a more positive affective tone than do groups with leaders in a negative mood.

3. Group processes like coordination, effort expenditure, and task strategy. Public expressions of mood impact how group members think and act. When people experience and express mood, they send signals to others. Leaders signal their goals, intentions, and attitudes through their expressions of moods.

In research about client service, it was found that expressions of positive mood by the leader improve the performance of the group.

Beyond the leader’s mood, his behavior is a source for employee positive and negative emotions at work. The leader creates situations and events that lead to emotional response. They shape workplace affective events. For e.g., feedback giving, allocating tasks, resource distribution. Since employee behavior and productivity are directly affected by their emotional state of mind, it is important to consider employee emotional responses to organisational leaders.

Back