Leadership concepts and applications

Leadership has been ongoing for centuries, but in modern times several theories have emerged that have become predominant leadership thought. One of these is situational leadership. This style combines elements of task behavior (direction), relationship behavior (socio-emotional support) and building a readiness level in followers such that each situation is met with excellence and responses that are unique to that situation (Schermerhorn, 2001). Another leadership theory is the contingency model, wherein a leader has both a natural leadership tendency and also a fit between the leader's tendencies and the situation. The best fit between these two elements will be the best leader (Fiedler, 1964).

Another variant on contingency management theory is the Vroom-Yetton Model (1973), which expands on Feidler's contingency model but places emphasis on the way that the leader facilitates group action. Leaders can be manager-centered or group-centered, with the degree of freedom given the group dependent on the situation. In addition to these contingency-based models, there are other schools of leadership thought as well. Blake and Moulton (1964) developed the Managerial Grid Model, wherein leaders are determined based on a set of traits that they possess and their managerial style. Thus, managers can be categorized based on their concern for people and their concern for production. Their leadership abilities are essentially set by their leadership style, and are not based on contingencies (Enos, 2007).

2. My personal theory of leadership is that most contingency theories tend to ignore the degree to which the tone must be set before crisis emerges. The team, therefore, will have a predetermined response to a situation based on the leadership demonstrated to that point. I believe we can see this with organizations when they experience cultural inertia, even after the leadership team has been replaced. A leader's style influences the organization over a long period of time, even when the leader is no longer present. This personal theory leans towards some of the older theories such as the Blake-Moulton Managerial Grid, but I do not dismiss other theories, such as the Transformational-Transactional theory.

This theory, still somewhat in development I feel, is an adaptation of the concept of leadership style that I feel has merit. Some leaders are strong at one or the other, but few leaders are strong with both. To me, this explains why some organizations have substantial cultural inertia. I look at General Motors and see a firm that has experience decades of transactional leadership and is now in crisis because they cannot shift their culture to work under a transformational leadership model.

I believe that the ideal leadership theory has yet to be developed, in part because modern thought on the issue is new, and can be difficult to quantify. I feel that to some degree the leading theories require more synthesis in order to be ideal. Situational leadership is the strongest today because it incorporates elements of organizational readiness and seems to ascribe to the understanding that leadership begins with transactional leaders who set the tone for the organization's readiness and then in situations of crisis transformational leaders are able to exert their influence, building upon the work of previous leaders.

3. My current performance as a leader is oriented more towards transactional. I feel that leaders need to be able to lead on a day-to-day, transactional basis with an underlying feel for the way in which that day-to-day will eventually prepare the organizational for crises. This requires a strong sense of the ways in which the everyday leadership contributes to the bigger picture. Each action builds to subsequent actions, the sum of which should be smooth operational performance and the ability to not only deflect crisis but to avoid it altogether.

I see that in my own leadership style I am oriented towards a transactional style, but that in order to improve my leadership I need to weave the daily leadership actions together better with an eye to creating long-term organizational excellence. I feel that I have developed strong communications skills and healthy leadership traits in terms of being rational but also being able to deal with the emotional elements of the job. I perhaps struggle a little at listening, but I also can be short-sighted with my decision-making, such that months or years later I find my decisions have set an undesirable tone that must be corrected. These are the most significant deficiencies between the leader I am and the leader I wish to become.

Long-term strategy can also be considered somewhat of a weakness. There is certainly a gap between the specificity of long-term strategies that the organization has at present and the degree of specificity that we should ideally have. Today's actions are not always guided by any long-term goal, because our goal-setting has lacked sufficient detail to support that.

4. The first part of the action plan is to improve my listening skills. This will require being more patient with respect to gathering information and taking the time to understand what each subordinate or stakeholder is saying. I feel that the expected outcome will be that the amount of resistance to change or new initiatives will decrease as a result of better listening. Blake and Moulton suggest that the ideal leader will have balance between concern for task and concern for people (Thomas, 2001); I feel oriented more towards task. Improving my listening will give me better balance and I will be able to streamline the organization's daily performance around long-term goals if I can better understand the human components of my organization.

The second part of the action plan will be to build a better model for understanding the longer-term impacts of decisions made today, on both operations and culture. This can be measured by the production of such models, wherein potential outcomes are recorded and evaluated. The outcome will be better congruence in the long-run between the desired outcomes of my decisions and the actual outcomes.