Leadership Theories and Practices: A Critical Analysis of Leadership

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of leadership theories, exploring their significance in organizational contexts. It begins by defining leadership and its role in guiding and motivating employees toward achieving goals. The essay delves into various leadership theories, including the Great Man theory, Path-Goal theory, and Trait theory, analyzing their core assumptions, strengths, and weaknesses. The Great Man theory, which posits that leaders are born with inherent traits, is contrasted with other theories that emphasize learned behaviors and situational factors. The Path-Goal theory, focusing on how leaders can assist followers in achieving goals, is also discussed. The essay highlights the Trait theory as the most suitable for supporting the claim that leaders are not like other people by identifying specific traits and abilities crucial for effective leadership. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of continuous learning and development for aspiring leaders, drawing from the insights provided by these theories. The essay also touches upon the role of power and influence, the leader-follower relationship, and the value of reflectivity for leaders.

Leadership: Process and
Management

Contents
INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................................2
MAIN BODY...........................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION.........................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES..........................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Leadership style play an important role in growth and success of an organisation as it
guides and motivate employees to perform in right direction and give their maximum efforts
and contribution towards achievement of desired goals and objectives. For this, leader should
have skills and capabilities to adopt suitable leadership styles at workplace so as to get work
done from others in more effective and efficient manner. The present essay is based on the
importance of leadership theories and among which one suitable theory which can evaluate
the claim that “Leaders are not like other people”. The present essay defines the role of power
and influence, the leader-follower relationship and the value of reflectivity for leaders.
MAIN BODY
Leadership concept has defined by various authors and practitioners but in general
terms; it is defined as the relationship in which the actions or behaviours get influenced by
one person. According to Yukl (2013), the process of understanding others and get work
done from others in more effective and efficient way is known as leadership.
Individuals and organisations get influences by the leadership due to having two-way
process. In order to make their followers more capable to functions more appropriately,
leaders encourage their follower and design organisational contexts. It an individual or group
of individuals provide their maximum efforts to achieve desired goals then the overall
performance level of company are automatically enhanced. Leadership cannot exist without a
leader and one or more followers (Biddle, 2013). Leadership tool immediate actions on the
behalf of its followers. Leadership is very much depends on the follower’s behaviour which
is determined and goal oriented in some kind of organised setting. To support this, there are
huge theoretical literature is available in order to describe the style of leadership and its
impact on the organisation which is determined as under:
Great Man theory of leadership is mainly emphasis on the two assumptions. One
assumption is that the leaders are born with inherited traits and qualities and other one is that
the great leaders can arise when there is a great need. Such kind of theory of leadership was
developed in the 19th century by historian Thomas Carlyle with an intention of praising
historic heroes that leader is an individual who have an effective traits and qualities as gifted
by birth and has ability to capture the imagination of the masses. In the past, such theory is
applicable on the males only due to having perception that males have leader skills and traits

due to which such theory has recognised as the great person theory (Bolden, 2016).. Such
theory clearly defined that some individuals are born with an effective attributes and skills
that differentiate them from others and such inherited traits are responsible for the assuming
positions of power and authority. A leader is one who gives directions and guidance to its
followers in order to achieve desired goals and objectives. Such theory states that such
individuals who have inherited skills and traits are in power of guiding others. It has faced
some criticism as well as most of the traits inherited by an individuals are typical masculine
traits due to which it lacks of mentality traits which is also much important for an individual
to become a successful and effective leader. Apart from this, Great man theory has facing
some criticism by various authors and writers. According to them, such theory implies that a
successful leader is born, not made. This indicates that people who don’t possess the right
qualities and traits will never become a good leader. Such kind of theory is outdated and was
based only on powerful men from the upper in the 19th and 20th centuries. Through focusing
on statements of people who are born with inherited qualities, this theory underestimates the
ability of other people, especially women to learn the required skills to become a leader
(Hollander, 2013).
House’s Path Goal Theory is another more important theory of leadership which was
founded by House Mitchell in the year 1974 with having an intention of assisting
organisation to achieve its desired goals and objectives within pre-determined time period.
This theory implies that the perception and efforts of employees get influenced by the
behaviour of leaders. A leader helps followers or employees to achieve benefits by
determining the paths to goals and eliminating barriers to performance. It can be done
through facilitating them about providing information support and other resources which are
most needed by the employees to execute their allotted activities (Mulki, Caemmerer and
Heggde, 2015). Such theory supports servant leadership which implies that leadership is not
viewed as a position of power. Rather leaders play as a coaches and facilitators in front of
their subordinates. According to this theory, the effectiveness of leaders is very much
depends on the efforts of employees and environmental contingent aspects as well as certain
leadership styles. Such leadership styles are:
Directive in which the leaders have full authority to take decisions on their own
without considering views and suggestions from its employees. They have set performance
standards, and controls behaviour of employees through using rewards and disciplinary
actions.

Supportive is another leadership style in which the leaders show personal concern
towards the needs, welfare and well-being of their followers. Thus, this style is people
oriented.
Participative eldership style in which leader took suggestions and collect views from
their followers or employees before making a decisions. This will increases the satisfaction
level of employees which motivates them to contribute maximum efforts in achievement of
desired goals and objectives (Parris and Peachey, 2013).
Achievement oriented leadership style in which the leader’s sets challenging task
towards its employees and accordingly encourage them to improve their performance level to
achieve the same within allotted time period. According to this, leader assumes that
employees are responsible for outcomes received by them in near future.
Path goal theory is consistently reminds the leaders that their main roles as a leader is
to assist the followers or employees in describing their goals and accordingly assist them in
achieving those goals in more effective and efficient manner (Phillips and Phillips, 2016).
Trait theory of leadership is another important leadership theory which is based on the
attribute and characteristics of leaders which are successful and unsuccessful. It identifies the
list of traits which can make an individual a successful leader. Such traits include
physiological including appearance, height etc., demographic such as age, education,
personality, self confidence aggressiveness, task related and social characteristics (Trait
Theory of Leadership, 2018). These all traits defines that whether an individual will become a
successful leader or not but essentially seen as a preconditions that endow people with
leadership potential. Such theory has faces some criticism as well as it outlines the traits
which should be attained to become a successful leader but is very narrow oriented and did
not take into considerations the wide range of existing personalities out theories. However, it
brings space to the people to learn the identified abilities over a period of time to become a
successful leader (Walter and Scheibe, 2013).
Among three theories described above, trait theory of leadership is more suitable one
to adopt as it support the statement that “leaders are not like other people” through listing the
traits and abilities which must be present in an individual to become a successful leader. It
provides constructive information about leadership. It can be suitable for people of all levels
in organisations. The managers can use the information’s available in the theory in order to

evaluate their position within company and also enable them to identify the ways of
enhancing their position in an organisation. This theory helps managers in acquiring its
strengths and weaknesses which enable them to put efforts to eliminating weaknesses through
enhancing strengths. This will provide better understanding to the managers to develop their
leadership qualities in order to provide right direction to their followers in order to achieve
desired goals and objectives within pre-determined time period (Storey, 2016).
CONCLUSION
It has been concluded from the above essay that there are various leadership theories
which guides an individual to learn in order to become successful leaders. Such leadership
theories Includes Great Man theory, Trait theory etc. out of which the most suitable theory is
determined as trait theory which implies that an individual can be a leader even if he cannot
born by inherited traits and qualities. It defines the list of qualities that an individual must
required to develop over a period of time which brings motivation among them to work hard
and learn from the past to become successful leader.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Biddle, B. J. (2013). Role theory: Expectations, identities, and behaviors. Academic Press.
Bolden, R. (2016). Leadership, management and organisational development. In Gower
handbook of leadership and management development (pp. 143-158). Routledge.
Hollander, E. P. (2013). Organizational leadership and followership. Social Psychology at
Work (Psychology Revivals): Essays in honour of Michael Argyle, 69.
Mulki, J. P., Caemmerer, B., & Heggde, G. S. (2015). Leadership style, salesperson's work
effort and job performance: the influence of power distance. Journal of Personal
Selling & Sales Management. 35(1). 3-22.
Parris, D. L., & Peachey, J. W. (2013). A systematic literature review of servant leadership
theory in organizational contexts. Journal of business ethics. 113(3). 377-393.
Phillips, A. S., & Phillips, C. R. (2016). Behavioral styles of path-goal theory: An exercise
for developing leadership skills. Management Teaching Review. 1(3). 148-154.
Storey, J. (2016). Changing theories of leadership and leadership development. In Leadership
in Organizations (pp. 33-58). Routledge.
Walter, F., & Scheibe, S. (2013). A literature review and emotion-based model of age and
leadership: New directions for the trait approach. The Leadership Quarterly. 24(6).
882-901.
Yukl, G. A. (2013). Leadership in organizations. Pearson Education India.
Online
Trait Theory of Leadership. 2018. [Online]. Available through:<
https://managementstudyguide.com/trait-theory-of-leadership.htm>.