An Analysis of Leadership Theories and Management Styles

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of leadership, exploring its multifaceted nature and significance in organizational success. It defines leadership as the art of influencing and guiding individuals toward a common goal, emphasizing the leader's role in building high-performing teams. The essay delves into the traits and skills essential for effective leadership, highlighting the importance of communication, decisiveness, charisma, and empathy. It then examines various leadership styles, including the Great Man theory, trait theory, situational leadership, and transformational leadership, illustrating how the choice of style depends on organizational contexts. The discussion further encompasses the key elements of leadership such as vision, motivation, and team structure. Ultimately, the essay underscores the evolution of leadership theories, from the Great Man theory to transformational leadership, and asserts that while certain leadership qualities may be inherent, leadership skills can be developed through experience and practice. The essay also provides a list of different leadership styles, including authoritative, affiliative, coaching, coercive, democratic, charismatic, command, innovative, control, pacesetter, laissez-faire, situational, servant, and transformational.

Management

Management 1
Leadership is an exercising power that can be entrenched in the attributes of the
individual, culture of the company and role necessitated. The leaders have a great role in the
organization’s achievement, efficiency and enactment of the employees. The main task of the
leader is to construct and sustain a high performing team. It is about persuading and
controlling associations within the organization. Moreover, it is an art of empowering a group
of persons to act towards attaining a communal goal.
The leadership is associated with the performance and effective leaders increase the
bottom lines of the organisation. The leadership necessitates traits which encompass beyond
the management obligations. In order to be effective, a leader definitely has to accomplish the
resources at disposal. The leadership also comprises collaborating, empowering and
administering. On the other side, individuals seem to be naturally artistic with more
leadership capabilities than others. But individuals can also learn to become leaders by
enhancing the skills lacking (Grint, Jones, Holt & Storey, 2016). The leadership requires
certain skills like robust communication skills, decisiveness, charisma and empathy. The
persons inherent some leadership traits and rest can develop many skills through routine
experiences.
There are several leadership styles but the execution of one depends on the situations
faced in the organization. There is the requirement of different styles for the different
situations and the leaders are well known for using a specific leadership style. For instance,
Great Man theory was originated in 19th century and focused that great leaders were born
with certain qualities. Another theory identified as trait theory was formed in 20th century and
stressed the notion that some people are born with the traits which make them great leaders
like self-confidence and veracity (Storey, 2016). Some other categories arrived in the half of
the 20th century comprising situational leadership. It is a leadership style relied on the
readiness or skill level of the followers in a specific situation. The contingency theory
stresses that effective leadership centres on having the appropriate leader for the appropriate
situation. The transactional leadership theories focus on rewarding or punishing followers in
order to attain outcomes (Scott, Jiang, Wildman & Griffith, 2018). On the other hand,
transformational leadership theory is used by the leaders to transform the followers by
offering examples.
Leadership includes certain elements which describe the art of leading like vision,
motivation, aiding, compassion, creativity, handling, diligence, team structure, taking

Management 2
menaces, and enhancing. Similarly, it is believed that there are several types of leadership
styles and a few leaders have a dominant single style whereas others make use of different
styles in the varying situations or with the several followers (Anderson, et al. 2017). the
commonly recognized leadership styles are authoritative, affiliative, coaching, coercive,
democratic, charismatic, command, innovative, control, pacesetter, laissez-faire, situational,
servant and transformational.
The review of the leadership shows the progression of great man theory to
transformational leadership. The leadership is inherited by the individuals but can be
correspondently developed by learning skills and practising them in routine life. There are
different types of leadership styles but the execution depends on the situations being faced in
the organization. The leaders are capable enough to use the specific one as per the
requirement.

Management 3
References
Anderson, H. J., Baur, J. E., Griffith, J. A., & Buckley, M. R. (2017). What works for you
may not work for (Gen) Me: Limitations of present leadership theories for the new
generation. The Leadership Quarterly, 28(1), 245-260.
Grint, K., Jones, O. S., Holt, C., & Storey, J. (2016). What is leadership. The Routledge
companion to leadership, 3.
Scott, C. P., Jiang, H., Wildman, J. L., & Griffith, R. (2018). The impact of implicit collective
leadership theories on the emergence and effectiveness of leadership networks in
teams. Human Resource Management Review, 28(4), 464-481.
Storey, J. (2016). Changing theories of leadership and leadership development. In Leadership
in Organizations (pp. 17-41). Routledge.