What Do Early Leadership Theories Tell Us About Leadership?
13-2 Compare and contrast early leadership theories.
Actual studies of leadership began in the twentieth century.
Early leadership theories focused on:
—The person (leader trait theories)
—The behaviors—how the leader interacted with his or her group members (behavioral theories)
1 THE LEADER What Traits Do Leaders Have?
WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT LEADERSHIP? When asked that question, most people cite a list of qualities they admire in leaders—intelligence, charisma, decisiveness, enthusiasm, strength, bravery, integrity, self-confidence, and so forth.
That’s the trait theories of leadership in a nutshell—the search for traits or characteristics that differentiate leaders from nonleaders.
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If this concept was valid, all leaders would have to possess those unique and consistent characteristics, making it easy to find leaders in organizations.
But that’s not going to happen: Despite the best efforts of researchers, they have yet to find a set of traits that would always differentiate a leader (the person) from a nonleader.
Attempts to identify traits consistently associated with leadership (the process, not the person) have been more successful. See Exhibit 13–1 for those eight traits.6
Exhibit 13–1
Traits Associated with Leadership
1 Drive. Leaders exhibit a high effort level. They have a relatively high desire for achievement, they are ambitious, they have a lot of energy, they are tirelessly persistent in their activities, and they show initiative.
2 Desire to lead. Leaders have a strong desire to influence and lead others. They demonstrate the willingness to take responsibility.
3 Honesty and integrity. Leaders build trusting relationships with followers by being truthful, or nondeceitful, and by showing high consistency between word and deed.
4 Self-confidence. Followers look to leaders who don’t self-doubt. Leaders, therefore, need to show self-confidence in order to convince followers of the rightness of their goals and decisions.
5 Intelligence. Leaders need to be intelligent enough to gather, synthesize, and interpret large amounts of information, and they need to be able to create visions, solve problems, and make correct decisions.
6 Job-relevant knowledge. Effective leaders have a high degree of knowledge about the company, industry, and technical matters. In-depth knowledge allows leaders to make well-informed decisions and to understand the implications of those decisions.
7 Extraversion. Leaders are energetic, lively people. They are sociable, assertive, and rarely silent or withdrawn.
8 Proneness to guilt. Guilt proneness is positively related to leadership effectiveness because it produces a strong sense of responsibility for others.
Source: Based on S. A. Kirkpatrick and E. A. Locke, “Leadership: Do Traits Really Matter?” Academy of Management Executive, May 1991, pp. 48–60; and T. A. Judge, J. E. Bono, R. Ilies, and M. W. Gerhardt, “Personality and Leadership: A Qualitative and Quantitative Review,” Journal of Applied Psychology, August 2002, pp. 765–80.
What Now?
Traits alone were not sufficient for identifying effective leaders? Why? Explanations based solely on traits ignored the interactions of leaders and their group members as well as situational factors.
Possessing the appropriate traits only made it more likely that an individual would be an effective leader.
Leadership research from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s turned to finding preferred behavioral styles that leaders demonstrated.
Was there something unique in what leaders did—in other words, in their behavior?
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2 THE BEHAVIORS What Behaviors Do Leaders Exhibit?
Would behavioral theories of leadership provide more definitive answers about the nature of leadership?
If behavioral theories could identify critical behavioral determinants of leadership, people could be trained to be leaders—the premise behind management development programs.
UNIVERSITY OF IOWA7
Behavioral Dimension
Democratic style: involving subordinates, delegating authority, and encouraging participation
Autocratic style: dictating work methods, centralizing decision making, and limiting participation
Laissez-faire style: giving group freedom to make decisions and complete work
Conclusion
Democratic style of leadership was most effective, although later studies showed mixed results.
OHIO STATE8
Behavioral Dimension
Consideration: being considerate of followers’ ideas and feelings
Initiating structure: structuring work and work relationships to meet job goals
Conclusion
High–high leader (high in consideration and high in initiating structure) achieved high subordinate performance and satisfaction, but not in all situations.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN9
Behavioral Dimension
Employee oriented: emphasized interpersonal relationships and taking care of employees’ needs
Production oriented: emphasized technical or task aspects of job
Conclusion
Employee-oriented leaders were associated with high group productivity and higher job satisfaction.
Managerial Grid10
Behavioral Dimension
Concern for people: measured leader’s concern for subordinates on a scale of 1 to 9 (low to high)
Concern for production: measured leader’s concern for getting job done on a scale 1 to 9 (low to high)
Conclusion
Leaders performed best with a 9,9 style (high concern for production and high concern for people).
What Now?
Dual nature of leader behaviors—that is, focusing on the work to be done and focusing on the employees—is an important characteristic of each of these studies.
Leadership researchers were discovering that predicting leadership success involved something more complex than isolating a few leader traits or preferable behaviors.
They began looking at situational influences. Specifically, which leadership styles might be suitable in different situations and what were these different situations?
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