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2.1 Leadership styles

The study of leadership throughout history is marked by a focus on great men and women. From these men and women we derive benchmarks for leadership styles and attributes.

Study of political, military and religious leaders has been a constant source of the behaviours and skills that leaders must exemplify to be effective. Inherent in this study has been the belief that great leaders are borne, not developed. The elements that forge 'the great-man' or heroic leader are so innate to the person and their experiences that no-one other individual can hope to codify these attributes and successfully pass them onto another.

Perspectives on leaders are built into our psyche by writes such as literary classics like Homer's Achilles, Machiavelli's The Prince , Shakespeare's Henry V , or military writes on such figures as Caesar , Charlemagne , Napoleon , Frederick the Great , or the myriad of authors highlighting religious, national, moral, political, and current leaders. By the late 1980s and 1990s the management and personal development sections of bookstores began to evidence the rampant quest to prescribe the factors that could make the ordinary worker great leaders (e.g., Bennis, 1989; Kotter, 1990b; Kouzes and Posner, 1987; Manz and Sims, 1989; Yukl, 1989a, Covey, 1992).

This 'great man' view of leadership has raised some questions:

By the late 1990s individuals were faced with an overwhelming theory on every aspect on leadership and leading. The fundamental reason for this is that leadership is so complex and open to so many variations in modern organisations that it cannot be explained by one set of prevailing theories and practices. Even faced with the overwhelming array of different ways to lead, and the imperative to seek and implement more effective leadership practices, there is still a need to convince many executives within organisations that workplace leadership exists below their level and does make an essential contribution to team performance and organisational competitiveness (Karpin, 1995:xviii-x).

Generally, managers in Western countries (Eg. US, UK , Australia , Canada , New Zealand , etc.), have been oriented toward the management of structures. As such the focus for the executive manager as leaders has been to produce corporate visions that are underpinned with quantifiable and meaningful objectives and for the supervisory manager to translate goals into meaningful outcomes and resolve problems affecting goal attainment.

Reading 1

Steyrer, J (Winter, 1998) 'Charisma and the Archetypes of Leadership', Organizational Studies , 22 pages. Sourced October 2002, at http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4339/is_5_19/ai_65379679

Activity 1

  1. Are cognitive capacity and charisma linked? If so, how?
  2. Is transformational leadership a leader-centred approach to leadership?
  3. Having read the paper from Steyrer, do you consider charisma to be a fundamental component of leaders you come into contact with n a daily basis? If it is not charisma that is a major factor in their leadership style, what is?
  4. Some have argued that the role model - 'be like me' - approach to leadership is far more common in modern workplaces than the charismatic - 'follow me' - typology of leader. Reflect on your experience. Do you agree with this statement?

Activity 2

Charisma lies at the heart of Transformation leadership. Yet what is charisma. Visit the following site and prepare a 200 word description of charisma that you are comfortable described charisma within a transformational leadership context. This is an important exercise as we will revisit this definition in a later chapter.

CHARISMA at http://cbae.nmsu.edu/~dboje/teaching/338/charisma.htm

The changing emphasis to leading has occurred as organisations have to consider how to support and facilitate process improvement; and the complex relationships between individuals, technology, processes, and between processes and the external environment. Increasingly executives and shareholders are also placing organisational operations into a 'customer-driven' environment and challenging staff to respond to client needs. The autonomy and flexibility necessary to achieve these outcomes are enhanced through the formation of teams with 'ownership' of a process and problem solving capabilities.

Today the quest is for a more holistic approach to workplace leadership that encompasses the organisations search for improvement and the need to lead across corporate, process and human dimensions. What is required is an understanding of the different leadership models and how no-one universal model can permit every organisation and supervisory-level manager to make sense of the complexity surrounding leadership in a specific workplace context or point in time.

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