Aspect Of Leadership Essay

Leadership is defined as a process by which an individual influences others to obtain goals. There are three aspects that should be addressed when explaining leadership. One aspect is that leadership is a social influence process; leadership could not exist without a leader and one or more followers. Another leadership aspect is compliance; all of the leader’s directions must be complied with voluntarily. Compliance is what separates leadership from other influence-based formal authority. Finally, leadership results in the followers’ behavior, that is purposeful and goal-directed which must be in some organized setting (Leadership Theories and Studies, 2009).
Some people believe leadership and management are one in the same; however, this

(Blake & Mouton, 2002). The leadership grid combined the “concerns of production” and the “concerns for people” (Leadership, 2008) into five alternate behavior theories: improvised management, country club management, task management, middle of the road management, and team management.
Improvised management behavior is when a leader emphasizes no concern about people or production. A leader with country club management behavior emphasizes concern for people but little to no concern for production, while task management behavior leaders stress on production and not people. The middle of the road management behavior produces a leader who tries to balance concern for production and people; whereas, a leader exhibiting Team management behavior is able to exhibit high concern for both production and people (Leadership Theories and Studies,

In the contingency leadership theories both the task and the follower’s characteristics are used to determine which behavior is better suited for effective leadership. Within the contingency approach are several factors to consider: the quality of relationships, tasks and activities to be performed, perceptions of the leader based on history, the motivation of both the leader and the follower, and personal characteristics influencing the situation (Leadership Theories and Studies, 2009). The first contingency leadership theories studies were conducted by Fred Fiedler, a leadership researcher and the earliest pioneer in the field of contingency leadership, who focused on how situational variables interact with leader personality and behavior (Contingency Approach to Management, 2009); from these studies he developed the contingency leadership model. The contingency leadership model is used to determine whether a person’s leadership style is task– or relationship-oriented, and if the situation (leader-member relationships, task structure and position power) matches the leader’s style to maximize performance (Lussier & Achua, 2010). Fielder discovered that leadership effectiveness was dependent on the factors of the leader–follower relationship, task structure, and leader position. For example, if all the factors are high or low, a task-centered leader would be