Critical Analysis of a Leadership Theory in the IT Context: QCD111

This report provides a critical analysis of the behavioral approach to leadership, focusing on its application within the IT context. The analysis begins by establishing the importance of leadership in IT, emphasizing the need for strong IT leadership to align IT with business goals. The report defines the behavioral approach, which posits that effective leadership stems from positive role behaviors rather than inherent traits. It explores the essential skills of a leader in this approach, including human, technical, and conceptual skills, and how these skills apply within IT firms. The report acknowledges the strengths of the behavioral approach, such as its focus on observable actions and its ability to inspire employees. However, it also addresses its weaknesses, including the need for leaders to adapt their behaviors to changing situations and the potential for the approach to overlook the importance of managing organizations. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of adapting leadership styles to achieve success in the dynamic IT environment, highlighting the need for leaders to respond to frequent changes and increasing competition.

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Management

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Leadership: critical analysis of one leadership theory
Leadership in IT is responsible for the applications as well as infrastructure that drive
as well as enable the overarching business goals and strategy. Some of the essential
leadership qualities that are required include hard skills, soft skills as well as the capability to
inspire the employees in order to leverage the IT. This is required for improving the
processes. It is clear that the strong IT leadership is crucial for the alignment of IT as well as
business. For a successful IT leader, it is essential for the person to recognise the street
between the business and IT.
Behavioural approach of leadership states that the effective leadership comes from the
positive role behaviour. It states that the leadership is seen more by the act of person rather
than traits. A leader uses their several skills such as human, technical as well as conceptual
for leading their followers. Technical skills are those that refer to the person proficiency as
well as knowledge in any of the technique and process (Antonakis & Day, 2017). It is
therefore said to be the capability to effectively interact with the people. In IT firms, it is also
essential to ensure the conceptual skills. It enables the manager to successfully deal with the
abstractions. Behaviour of manager in one proper direction helps the person in becoming
good leader. motivating the employees, setting goals, building the team spirit as well as
effective communication are some of the behaviour that are required for a person to become a
successful leader. It is true that the great satisfaction to the person as well as followers is
proved to be the effective quality in a leader. This approach has however one weakness
because a particular behaviour not effective in every case. In today’s competitive
environment, several changes are seen frequently. As per the situation, it is therefore essential
for the leader to change the behaviour. Work cannot be done effective by following the single
behaviour in every situation (Gottfredson & Aguinis, 2017). In IT firm, it can be possible
that the behaviour in one situation will be challenging for the other task. Besides this, it is
also criticized based on the managerial grid as it gives focus on managing organisations
rather than leader.
In this way, it can be stated that leadership plays an essential role in the IT firms. Due
to the changing business environment, it is required by the leader to adopt different
leadership style as per the situation. Due to the increasing competition, several frequent

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changes are brought in the external environment. Due to this, it also has to adopt the different
leadership so that company will be able to achieve success and growth.

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References
Antonakis, J., & Day, D. V. (Eds.). (2017). The nature of leadership. Sage publications.
Gottfredson, R. K., & Aguinis, H. (2017). Leadership behaviors and follower performance:
Deductive and inductive examination of theoretical rationales and underlying
mechanisms. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 38(4), 558-591.
Meuser, J. D., Gardner, W. L., Dinh, J. E., Hu, J., Liden, R. C., & Lord, R. G. (2016). A
network analysis of leadership theory: The infancy of integration. Journal of
Management, 42(5), 1374-1403.