Relationship between Leader Traits, Motives and Effectiveness
Introduction
The presence of certain inherent traits and their impact on leadership has been one of the earliest topics of research into leadership. After a long period of being relegated to the background, the importance of leadership traits is being appreciated by recent scholars.
This paper addresses how leader traits continue to determine the effectiveness of leaders, however, within the constraints imposed by the environment and situation. The influence of leader motives as shaped by their need for acquiring more power and influence, forming positive relationships with subordinates, and personal self-actualization also has a moderating influence on leader outcomes, which is
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An interesting observation made by Judge, Piccolo and Kosalka (2009) is that there is a different set of traits associated with leadership emergence and a different set that is associated with leadership effectiveness. The authors also obtain support for the relationship between leadership traits and leadership effectiveness from evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics. Judge, Piccolo and Kosalka (2009) explain, for instance, the phenomenon of the environmental moderators which form the context within which certain traits contribute to leadership effectiveness more than others. They also state that certain traits, such as charisma, acts as moderators themselves in influencing the relationship between leadership emergence and leadership effectiveness (Judge, Piccolo and Kosalka, 2009).
Agreeableness, for example, is a trait that enables leaders to be effective provided that they have a high need for affiliation. It enables the leader to be more effective by way of forming cooperative relationships with subordinates and team members. Mayer, Bardes and Piccolo (2008) state that the agreeableness trait enables leaders to demonstrate greater empathy towards subordinates when they have to deliver negative or critical feedback on
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In fact, Zaccaro, Wood and Herman (2006) argue, the leadership traits also determine the ability of the leader to acquire new attributes and skills that might expand the leader’s skill set and thus increase his or her effectiveness in a diverse array of settings. In this way, leadership traits can determine the effectiveness of training and development opportunities offered to the leader by the organization. At the same time, cognitive capacities and motive for self-actualization can make the leader more effective at learning from experience and thus adopting more effective leadership skills to employ in different types of settings.
Luria and Berson (2012) describe the impact of leader motives on leader performance. Their study is focused on a military context, but the findings may prove relevant to organizational leadership as well. According to Luria and Berson (2012), leaders who possess high motivation to lead are more likely to engage in teamwork behavior when carrying out their
(Kerfoot 1998) (Evans, 2003). The Personality traits for good leader are activity level or energy, adjustment, dominance, assertiveness, emotional balance and emotional control, self- confidence, originality, intelligence, tolerance of stress, personal integrity, independence, achievement motivation, sociability, responsibility, initiative, and diplomacy (NYSTEDT 1997). Furthermore, Agreeableness and conscientiousness is perceived as a trait for transformational leaders (ARTOG2 et al 2005).
Week two talks about leadership qualities. Leadership is how an individual influences another individual or groups to achieve a common purpose. For a leader to achieve its set purpose or vision towards individual, organization, or a group, influence is the aim. Influence, therefore is the ability to direct or indirect manipulation to get others to act or respond in accordance to a leader’s want or desires. When a leader leads, the leader will often times have the people he or she is leading conform to his or her ways of doing things or at least agrees with the leader, which in this case regard as being obedience.
These are the factors that play a major role in increasing employee motivation on the job. While management was once determined by status and privilege, this is no longer the case. Modern leadership is now an ambition that leaders must earn from the people following them. Leaders must make a daily effort to keep their followers motivated and committed to the leaders they are following. Followers make a daily decision whether to follow their leaders.
The first source of this value is from the Trait Theory of Leadership. The Trait Theory of Leadership was first studied in the 20th century (Northouse, 2016). The primary purpose of this study was to determine what qualities were possessed by great leaders (Northouse, 2016). These traits varied wildly throughout the many studies in the 20th century (Colvert, Judge, Choi, Wang, 2012). However, in the late 20th century, many behavioral scientists reached a consensus on which traits are the most pertinent to success as a leader (Colvert, Judge, Choi, Wang, 2012).
Among other things, it predicts that directive leadership is effective with ambiguous tasks, that supportive leadership is effective with repetitive tasks, that participative leadership is effective when tasks are unclear and subordinates are autonomous, and that achievement-oriented leadership is effective for challenging tasks. By taking the Path-Goal Leadership Questionnaire, I know that which way suit me to lead my followers. In my case, I score 27 in participative, which is the highest of four options. As a participative leader, I do reference the suggestions from the followers for making decisions sometimes but not always. Sometimes the leaders’ behaviors depend on the characteristic of the subordinates and tasks.
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 Thought Development from 1900 – 1970 The thought of leadership evolved from the Great Man Theory to Trait Theory and Behavior Theory. The trait theory focuses on identifying distinctive personality traits and characteristics that are associated to successful leadership.
Understanding leadership Describe the factors that will influence the choice of leadership styles or behaviours in workplace situations Leaders are performing different styles of leadership, as each leader maintain to develop her/his own personal style. Many factors may influence the style a leader uses. Some of the factors may create naturally, while others are a product of the leader's environment. Some leaders may need to improve their leadership style to follow to a changing culture. a. Personality Traits: A leadership style may become an expansion of the leader's personality.
Today, leadership is considered to be more art than science. Equally observable is that those who engage in leadership invoke a variety of leadership styles and traits that can vary greatly, and yet can be equally successful in a variety of situations. No one could deny the tremendous leadership skills of Martin Luther King, but at the same time, for example, do not highlight the skills and success of General Schwarzkopf in crushing the army of enemies. As is generally known, the personal motives affect the leadership preferences. For example, some people choose adventurous and strict leadership style, while the others prefer peaceful and continuous.
Leadership has been defined in a variety of ways, there are multiple authors and theorists who have tried to define and understand leadership, all leading to varying theories and conclusions, but one thing that is universally understood is the importance of effective leadership and how someone with good leadership skills can impact so many people around them. (Kakabadse and Kakabadse, 1999; Yukl, 2002; Northouse,2013) The main components that have been identified to play a role in leadership are relations between leader and subordinates, interaction form between leader and followers, the influence that the leader has, the way in which the leader behaves and finally a leader’s traits. (Yukl, 2002) These elements that make up a leader, are then used as building blocks to identify the way in which each specific leader deals with its followers.
AIM To address learning across Effective Leadership and Management and Team Effectiveness. INTRODUCTION The objective of this assignment is to unpack the key differences between leadership and management. While doing that, I will also be deliberating on my own environment as well as personal leadership with a particular focus on specifically where I can develop further to enhance an even stronger and effective team that will achieve high performance results.
Through self-reflection and academic readings, I have discovered that I identify with three different leadership theories. During the first meeting in a Strength Based Leadership class, we were asked to write our leadership history. The class then began an ongoing exploration of various leadership theories. Upon reviewing my leadership history from the first class and synthesizing the information from the theories that were examined, I discovered that I most resonate with the Trait Leadership Theory, the Skills Leadership Theory, and the Path-Goal Leadership theory. These theories are leader focused, describing the process and techniques a leader uses to accomplish goals.
Without the use of other studies, the explanations and use of his own data would have made his powerful conclusion of power motive leaders as the greater leaders inaccurate and unconvincing. While reading through the article and seeing how personality can affect ones’ social motives or leadership appeal and performance one can think back to the basic psychology principle learned in a Psych 101
Those proposing contingency theories realize that a leader must adjust. The hallmark of these theories is context and in a more profound sense, everything is interdependent. To a certain extent contingency leadership theories are extensions of the trait theory, in the sense that human traits are related to the situation in which the leaders exercise their leadership. It is generally accepted within the contingency theories that leader are more likely to express their leadership when they feel that their followers will be
Every organization searches the Effective and dynamic quality of leadership. It specifies that its very difficult to delineate the successful leader. The factor which distinguishes the successful organization from one and as well as the unsuccessful is the presence of effective leadership (Hersey et al., 1996). Webster defined a leader as , The person one who guides by going in advance or one who directs as in a direction.
One of the major empirical contributions from the behavioral school was the identification of two broad classes of leader behavior , task oriented and person oriented behaviors that were identified by repeated factor analysis conducted by the Ohio State group, interview by the Michican group and observation of emergent leaders in laboratories by the Harvard group also identified a third dimension, individual motive (the self-center) which was somehow ignored in subsequent leadership literature. This dimension may have been neglected because of the individual motive seeking ground in some universities at that