Leadership: A Critical Review Of Leadership Theories

existence—is associated mainly with Thomas Carlyle (Spector, 2015, p.250). The focal-point of this theory is that leaders’ skills are inherent and set that them apart from those around them and that these traits enable them to assume roles of power and authority. Those individuals who were believed to have these inherent skills were people of very influential status, wartime heroes and those of great wealth. The people who emerge or are most picked to lead have distinctive drives and character profiles (Nicholson, 2013, p.16).

Leadership a hard thing to define. There is no one definition that can incorporate every individual 's personal leadership style. Each leader has to decide for him or herself what their approach to leadership will be and how they want to approach it. Some people believe that leadership is an quality that you are born with, I do not believe that is the case. Leadership is a skill that can be not only taught, but continually improved on. A true leader is capable of inspiring others and influencing them to work together to achieve a common goal. There are different ways to look at leadership and we have discussed multiple ways in class. There are different leadership theories the LEAD scholars class has discussed including leadership and power,

In developing this paper on leadership, I examined what was most important to me as a leader. As I reflected on my leadership philosophy, I thought about my experiences and the principals that I have learned through my own self-discovery and the observation of other leaders that I have had throughout my life. My leadership philosophy paper will focus on what leadership is to me, core values, and knowledge of others.

Most people believe that wearing a vibrant uniform, with badges on pinned on your chest or medal around your neck makes you stand out, or having your name upon a board with broken records makes you a great leader. You can be as simple as a parent, a teacher, a coach, even just your plain self. These everyday people show leaderships by directing others of their mistakes, aiding or supporting someone in need, and encouraging us to lead others. Odysseus would be example in the Odyssey when he show his soldier a plan to escape the cyclops. He does this by aiding this soldiers to get the cyclopes drunk, created lies with their crazy identities so the one-eyed monster brother’s would think he insane if he tried to call for help, blinded him by gouging a olive tree in his eye, and tied himself, and his men on to the cattle so when, the monster lets them out they can escape with them to. “Leadership is when someone who leads”, goes along to guide and show the way, or who directs authority over others”(“Leadership”). Leadership is determined by anyone who

Leadership is an important aspect in our life. It is all started within a basic unit of family which the father held the responsibilities as a leader that lead family towards happiness. Leadership skills also been practiced at the primary school level where there are class monitor or class president who is in charge of the class. The major aspect is for government where a leader is elected or appointed in order to rule the country. Leadership style is classified as the way leaders perform their role and how their action and attitude toward members of the group (Mullin, 1999). In scope of Human Resource, leadership is one of the most important factor in any organizations. Successful organization depends on how leaders lead and managing the organization.

Leadership has so many different definitions, some more specific than others, but all of them reflect many important aspects of what it means to be a leader. The complexity of defining leadership shows that it is an open practice and it is formed by personal experiences. It is open and personal because it is subject to change from one person to another, it can be built with the time and there is not a magical formula or characteristics to be a perfect leader. Throughout the class, we have seen various concepts developed by some experts about leadership. Many of those definitions can add to each other and help people to build on their personal definition and it can translate to a better exercise of leadership.

One of the popular definitions of a leader is, "The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers." ( ) A more comprehensive definition that highlights striking features of a leader is, "A simple definition of leadership is that leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal.” ( ) A closer scrutiny of the characteristics of an influential leader would many ways assist one, in recognizing those attributes in an attempt to assimilate the best in others.

Leadership has been described as “influence, that is, the art or process of influencing people so they may strive willingly and enthusiastically toward the achievement of group goals.” (Weihrich and Koontz, 2005)

Leadership is not a characteristic or trait with which only a few, certain people are endowed with at birth. If we consider leadership as a process it means that it is a transactional event that happens between leaders and their followers for the purpose of a common goal. Leadership is about directing a group of people toward the accomplishment of a task or the reaching of an endpoint through various ethical based means. Leaders and followers share objectives, meaning that they work together to achieve the shared objectives. For a leadership process to take place the leaders and followers have an ethical responsibility to attend to the needs and concerns of each other in attaining the goals. In this process it is to be noted that leaders are not better than the followers, nor are they above followers. On the contrary, leaders and followers are

When discussing leadership theories and styles, the common question arising is – ‘Are leaders born or made?’. Earlier theories such as Trait theories, which are also known as ‘The Great Man Theory’, developed by Carlyle (1841) was born out of the philosophy of Aristotle, who believed that some are born to lead, and others are born to be led (Barr & Dowding, 2016). It is based on the belief that leaders possess exceptional qualities (Barr & Dowding, 2016). The theory attempted to determine which specific traits make a person an effective leader, by concentrating on identifying who were considered ‘great’, with their characteristics or traits as a reason for their success (Ledlow & Coppola,

Leaders can express their authority in diverse ways. However, Hersey & Blanchard (1969) are of the view that there is no single best style of leadership and that a leader cannot rely on a single management style to fit in all conditions.

Leadership is a behavioral task of the leader. Successful leaders identifies the changes in the environment and make use out of the opportunities arising in the environmental changes by motivating subordinates, correcting poor performances, attempting to increase productivity, and leads the organization towards achieving its goals and objectives. This paper identifies the importance of “leadership”, where organizational objectives can be achieved only through channeling everyone’s united efforts towards one goal, and not through isolation attempts. Furthermore, this assignment is a privilege for us to identify different leadership theories and leadership qualities of Steve Jobs who is considered as one of great leaders.

From the concept of leadership we can see that leadership consists of three basic elements:

At the present competitive world leadership is a dynamic process where influencing others is the most important issues. That’s why exercising power is one of the most important issue to be a charismatic leader and this power doesn’t come automatically it comes after advocating other fellow members. Here, one thing is most important to remind that the power should be imposed and exercise within the worth and boundaries of the leaders. However organization’s culture, its mission, vision, short-term strategies all these reform the leadership process.

The many leadership theories which exist today fall within eight categories. These are the great man theories, trait, contingency, situational, behavioral, participative, management and relationship theories respectively. In great man theories, leadership is presumed to be inherent, that is, leaders are born not made. Similarly, trait theories hold this ideology but based on the leadership qualities. Relative to contingency theories, the environmental factors determine the leadership style whereas on situational theories the situation dictates. Unlike great man 's theories, behavioral theories hold that leaders are not born but made: leadership develop from learning either through teaching or observation. Further to participative and management