Over the years LDSP has been looked at, defined, and studied in many different ways. By looking at all the information gathered there are two essential ways to view leadership. One is by focusing on the leader and his/her qualities. The second is by looking at the situation and the interaction between the leader and the follower. By looking at readings from all perspectives, social sciences, natural sciences, and the arts and humanities, it is clear that the best way to view and understand leadership is by looking at it as a relational process, focused on the interaction between leaders and followers.
The first perspective to view leadership from is the social sciences. This relates to the relationships between people and tendencies of
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The natural sciences include the fields of physics, chemistry, biology and more. The natural sciences use observational and empirical evidence and examples to prove their ideas. It may not seem viable to learn about leadership by looking at the way organisms work but there is actually plenty of ways to relate things discovered in labs and tests that can teach everyone a thing or two about leadership. We are able to apply the many literary works of leadership that have come about from this perspective by looking at the tendencies of the world around us and what we can learn from them. One such reading is on “Leadership and the New Science” by Margaret Wheatley. In her article, Wheatley talks about the notion of Old, Newtonian Science versus her new idea of a New Science. It is in this distinction that we can vouch for the importance of leader-follower relationships. Margaret Wheatley defines Old Science as having to do with the building blocks of life, in other words, organizations were thought of as machines and focus was placed on each individual part. This would support an idea that looking at the leader alone would enable one to understand effective leadership. Rather, her new idea of New Science looks at the organization or life as a whole, rather than see bits and pieces, it looks at the relationships between everything and how the world fits together. It shows us that leadership is better understood when viewed as a whole than it is as a
Leadership is about taking personal and social responsibility for working with others to achieve common goals.
Leadership can be defined as the ability of a superior to influence the behavior of a minor or group and persuade them to follow a particular course of action. A leader sets a course of action and ensures that everyone follows the action. Leading can apply to leading oneself, other individuals, groups, organizations and societies. The nature of how leading is done depends on the framework of the situation, one's point of view, and on the nature and needs of those involved. While leadership is learned, the skills and knowledge processed by the leader are influenced by their traits, such as beliefs, values, ethics, and most importantly character.
Leadership at times can be a complex topic to delve into and may appear to be a simple and graspable concept for a certain few. Leadership skills are not simply acquired through position, seniority, pay scale, or the amount of titles an individual holds but is a characteristic acquired or is an innate trait for the fortunate few who possess it. Leadership can be misconstrued with management; a manager “manages” the daily operations of a company’s work while a leader envisions, influences, and empowers the individuals around them.
Küpers, W. (2007). Perspectives on Integrating Leadership and Followership. Retrieved 4 22, 2014, from International Journal of Leadership Studies: http://www.regent.edu/acad/global/publications/ijls/new/vol2iss3/kupers/kupers.htm
Before you can summarize the concepts related to leadership theory, you have to define what leadership is. Leadership is a process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task or goals. The fundamental concept of leadership is indirection. In any organization, the leader indirectly impacts the performance of the organization through the performance of individual team members. To make that impact, the leader takes on the role of the coach, and the inspiratory. As the coach, the leader improves the performer's skills. As the inspiratory, the leader inspires the passion required for optimal performance. A good leader can make decisions with a clear mind and will listen to theirs but can run through every consequence and possibility in their head. They take every angle and come out with the best answer for the majority of the people or situations it effects. And will not let their emotions be shut off but will have feeling where it is needed.
A walk through the business section of any major bookstore and you'll count dozens of titles which include the word 'leadership'. A quick internet search of "leadership" turns up over 19 million hits. The classic big name leaders throughout history, Lincoln, Thatcher, King, Welsch, frame a story within which we all play a part, affected each and every one of us. We have each had some kind of deeply personal experience of leadership, positive or negative, either as followers or as leaders ourselves.
Leadership has been defined in different ways, a definitaion of leadership that would be most commonly accepted would be “the ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organization…”(House et al., 1999, p. 184 as cited in Yukl, 2013, p. 19). After a comprehensive review of different leadership literature, Stogdill (1974, p. 259, as cited in Yukl, 2013, p. 18) concluded that “There are almost as many definitions of leadership as there are persons who have attempted to define the concept." Leadership can be viewed from two different angles one is shared influence process and other as a specialized role. Researcher who view leadership as a specialized role consider attributes as a factor in selecting a designated leader. On the contrast, theorist who emphasises on influence process considers “Leadership” as a social process or a pattern of relationship.
A leader can be defined as a person who influences a group of people, organization, etc. in to achieving a set out or common goal. The aim of this paper is to identify the different approaches to leadership, but there is no single definition of leadership, as it can mean many different things to many people depending of their profession, environment and leadership style (Mielach, 2012).
On leadership is a book which deserve to be read by us. Although this book use a precise formation to help us to examine a widely comprehensive aspects of the leadership, there are some drawbacks. Gardner cited different examples to talk about leadership, but just in a particular area, that is political area. So,
Northouse, P. (2010). Leadership: Theory and practice (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Leadership has been described as a “complex process having multiple dimensions” (Northouse, 2013). Over the past 60 years, scholars and practitioners have introduced a vast amount of leadership models and theories to explain this complex field and examine its many perspectives. Numerous leadership theories and models have attempted to define what makes a leader effective. From the early 1900s, the trait paradigm dominated leadership literature, focusing on inherited traits of leaders and suggesting that “leaders are born, not made”. However, during the 1950s, the trait approach lost enthusiasm as focus shifted to the behavior of leaders. Similar to the trait theory, the behavioral paradigm was based on general effective leadership behaviors
Stroup, J. (2004). Managing leadership: toward a new and usable understanding of what leadership is and how to manage it. Lincoln, NE. iUniverse, Inc. Retrieved July 20, 2011 from http://managingleadership.com/blog/2008/09/04/great-man-theory/
Leaders are those who have a great influence on the lives of many people. This is especially relevant in today’s organizations, which face extreme time changes and an increasingly growing complexity (Yukl, 1998).
We can divide the theories that deal with leadership in 3 chronological groups. First were the trait theories. Until the 1940's, research in the field of leadership was dominated by these theories. Second came the behavioral theories which were very influent until the late 1960's. Finally, contingency theories are the most modern theories about leadership.
Leadership is seen as a process by which one individual influences others toward the attainment of group or organizational goals. It is a social influence process, which involves voluntary action on the part of followers and it is always purposeful and goal-oriented. Leadership deals with influence and is not the same as management, which includes planning, organizing, staffing, directing and controlling.