Leadership

Leadership Traits, Behavior, and Situational Context

The early leadership researchers (1930s) were convinced that personality characteristics cause effective leadership and could be identified through empirical research: Leaders behave in certain ways because of their traits, that is, physical characteristics, personality, and skills. In recent studies, Gary Yukl found five major traits: intelligence (curiosity), self-confidence, integrity, sociability (empathy), and determination (ambition, self-control). These leadership traits were believed to be the essential components for goal attainment of leaders. However, because these approaches focus [Page 1051]solely on the leader rather than on the group, the situation, or the task environment, they failed to explain leadership success.

Subsequently, the next phase of leadership research (1950–1960) focused on leaders’ behavior toward followers. Patterns of behavior were labeled as styles and became an important instrument in management training. In retrospective, the four main leadership styles were concern for tasks (achievement of concrete objectives), concern for people (emphasis on human resource), directive leadership (leaders take decisions, subordinates follow instructions), and participative leadership (shared decision making). Research did not clearly distinguish which style was significant for effective group work. The main problem still was the lack of context analyses, a proper look at the situation or task environment in which a particular style was used. Situation and context of leadership became popular in the 1970s. Fred Fiedler argued in his contingency theory that leadership effectiveness depends on interacting factors: leadership style and the situation, which gives the leader more or less influence. The comprehensive contingency approach talks about the relationship between leaders and followers, the structure of the task, and the leaders’ position of power. Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard's life cycle theory helped to explain the choice of appropriate leadership styles (“telling, selling, participating, delegating”) for different stages of followers’ maturity, that is, their degree of job experience and psychological maturity. Robert House's path-goal theory explains how a leader's behavior can be motivating or satisfying for followers if it increases the attractiveness of goals and the followers’ confidence in achieving these goals. Which leadership activity or style is best suited for the goal depends on the level of experience of the followers and the complexity of the task. Critics argue that these situational context models of leadership have a North American bias, ignore gender differences in leadership styles, and ignore political and symbolic aspects of leadership altogether.

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