Management/Leadership Styles
| Author | Thomas Haynes |
| Pages | 477-482 |
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Leading should not be considered the same as managing. Business leaders who do not understand the difference between the functions/roles of leading and managing are quite likely to misinterpret how they should carry out their duties to meet organizational goals. While some managers are high-quality leaders, others manage only resources and do not lead their subordinates. Leadership is one of the four primary activities that are used to influence others. As such, it is a subcategory of the management concept that focuses mainly on behavioral issues, influence, and engaging opportunities. Managing is more comprehensive than leading. It involves dealing with resource issues as well as behavioral factors. Generally speaking, not all managers are necessarily leaders, yet the most effective managers, over the long term, are leaders.
Leadership is the process of guiding the behavior of others toward an organization's goals. Guiding, in this context, means causing individuals to behave in a particular manner or to follow a specific set of instructions. Ideally, the behavior exhibited is perfectly aligned with such factors as organizational goals, culture, policies, procedures, and job specifications. The main goal of leadership is to get things done through other people, making it one of the main activities that can enhance the management system. It is accomplished to a great degree through the use of effective communication.
Because leadership is a prerequisite for business success, to be a successful business manager one must have a solid understanding of what leadership includes. Indeed, such issues as the increased capabilities afforded by enhanced communication technology and the rise of international business have made leadership even more important in today's business environment. The following sections describe the major theories underlying the most
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commonly accepted management/leadership practices and the concepts on which they are based.
The trait theory of leadership is based on research that implies that the abilities and dispositions necessary to make a good leader are inborn, not capable of being developed over time. The central thrust of this research is to describe leadership as accurately and analytically as possible. The reasoning is that a description of the full spectrum of managerial leadership traits would make it possible to easily identify individuals who possess them. An organization could then hire only those individuals who possess these traits and thus be assured of always having high-quality leaders.
Current management thoughts, however, suggests that leadership ability cannot be explained by an individual's inherited characteristics. To the contrary, business analysts believe that individuals can learn to be good or even exceptional leaders. Thousands of employees each year complete training to improve their leadership skills. Corporations and not-for-profit organizations continue to do this as an investment, which pays dividends.
Since trait theory proved not to be aligned with leadership skill, researchers have analyzed other angles to explain leadership success or failure. Rather than looking at the traits successful leaders supposedly should possess, researchers began to investigate what good leaders really do. This behavioral approach was concerned with analyzing how a manager completed a task and whether the manager focused on such interpersonal skills as providing moral support and recognizing employees for their successes. Based on these research efforts, leaders can be accurately described by either their job-centered behavior or their employee-centered behavior, since this research indicated two primary dimensions of leader behavior: a work dimension (structure behavior/job-centered behavior) and a people dimension (consideration behavior/employee-centered behavior).
In addition, effective leaders are skilled coaches and mentor those around them. They build team thinking and behavior, as well as communicate formative developmental feedback. They also illustrate the visible meaning of the organization's vision and mission, including shared values, as well as being a boundaryless thinker. Successful leaders build networks within and outside their organizations searching for solutions, opportunities, and synergies. In their day-to-day work, they exemplify diplomacy while being an interpreter and spokesperson of the organization's vision.
From a different standpoint, what perspectives and behaviors typically align with poor or ineffective leaders? Behaviors and patterns of thinking that contribute to ineffective leadership include lacking knowledge and skill related to the main activities of the organization and leadership, generally considered incompetence. Being rigid, intemperate, and callous clearly cause difficulties in leading others. Although the next types of poor leadership are obvious, they continue to shackle organizational success. These negative attributes include corruptness, insularity, and being evil. Unfortunately, one often reads or see stories about leaders who have taken the leap to the "dark side."
Caution should be exercised when considering what style of leadership is best. Research suggests that no single leadership style can be generalized as being most effective. Organizational situations are so complex that one particular leadership style may be successful in one situation but totally ineffective in another.
Contingency theory, as applied to management/leadership, focuses on what managers do in practice, because this theory suggests that how a manager operates and makes decisions depends upon, or is contingent upon, a set of circumstances. It is centered on situational analysis. Using contingency theory, managers read situations with an "if-then" mentality: If this situational attribute is present, then there is an appropriate response that a manager should make. This theory takes into consideration human resources and their interaction with business operations. Managers may take...
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