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Leadership
Introduction
There are certain born leaders like Alexander/Julius
Caesar. A good leader displays great ability, creativity, initiative
and confidence. He adds and gets cooperation, willingness, and
builds employees' morale and motivation. There is a classic
debatable question “Leaders are Born and Not Made”. Whatever
be the outcome of this debate, the fact remains that leaders are
of a different breed and class apart. They are ordinary people who
do extraordinary things.
Concept of Leadership
Leadership is defined as "the relationship in which one person
influences others to work together willingly on related tasks to
attain that level which he desires." That is to say, if there is no
follower, there is no leader.

Haiman defined Leadership as "the process by which an

executive or a manager imaginatively directs, guides and
influences the work of others in choosing and attaining specified
goals by mediation between the individual and organization in
such a manner that both will obtain the maximum satisfaction.”
The word leadership has been widely used by political orator,
business executives, social workers, philosophers and scholars
both in speech and writing, yet the real meaning has meaning
has eluded almost everybody.

Important definitions are

1. Leadership is interpersonal influence, exercised in a
situation, and directed, through the communication
process, toward the attainment of a specified goal or goals.
(Tannenbaum, Weschler & Massarik)

2. Leadership is the accomplishment of a goal through the

direction of human assistants. A leader is one who successfully
marshals his human collaborators to achieve particular ends
(Prentice, W.C.H. ‘Understanding Leadership’ Harvard Business
Review September/October 1961)
3. Leadership is the process of influencing the activities of an
individual or a group in efforts toward goal achievement in a
given situation. ( Hersey, P. & Blanchard, K. ‘Management of
Organizational Behavior’. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall
1988)

4. Leadership is a purposeful relationship, which occurs

episodically among participants, who use their individual skills in
influence, to advocate transforming change. ( Michael S. Kearns,
2005)

Core points or essence of leadership:

a. Leadership refers to the ability of an individual to influence
others.
b. The influence is exercised to change the behavior of others.
c. Behavior is changed through non- coercive means.
d. Change of behavior is caused with an objective of achieving
a shared goal.
e. The person influencing others possesses a set of qualities or
characteristics which he or she uses to influence others, as the
opening case indicates.
f. Leadership is a group phenomenon. It involves interaction
between two or more people.

Following are the important character of leadership

 1. Performance: It directly influences the leader. If he asks
his employees to come on time, he himself has to reach
on time. The workers follow his behavior and functions
automatically. The leader’s performance itself guides and
motivates the employees. Leaders have to influence
people by their action. Ex: Mahatma Gandhi was a ‘great
leader’ he influenced people by his deeds. The leaders’
performance increases the group’s ability and member’s
satisfaction.
2. Communication: Leadership starts with communication
either by words or deeds. The followers can develop by
observing and accepting the work or verbal
communication of a leader. Although work
communication is more effective, verbal communication
is also influential. Formal and informal, written and oral,
personal and impersonal communications have their
respective influences. So, a leader must use the
communication appropriate to a particular situation.
Many times, personal approach has a long-lasting impact
on the followers whereas impersonal communication is
needed for keeping the followers at a distance to have an
effective influence on them. Similarly, all types of
communication have this respective use according to the
demands of different situations.
3. Influence: A leader must have the capacity to influence
others. If not, he cannot function. He influences others
morally and socially by using communication. The
amount of influence desired decades on the form of
communication to be used. The influence is long lasting
in the mind of employees who work willingly even at a
small gesture from the leader. An unbiased leader is more
influential than the situational leader. Individuals with
honesty integrity and competence. Influence the followers
within a short time and for a long period.

4. Power base: The influence depends on the power base

enjoyed by the leader.
a. coercive When a person threatens others to work it is
coercion. It has no permanent influence. It gives rise to negative
feelings and hostility is developed between the leader and his
followers. It is a form of power base used in unethical and
immoral activities. Organisation appointing illiterate and inactive.
Employees use coercive power to influence the employees to get
work done. The fear of punishment and negative reinforcement
influence to work for attainment of goal.
b. Reward power: Impels to motivate and award employees
who have done some commendable tasks. This power base is
used for influencing the literate and educated employees who are
motivated with monetary and non-monetary reward.
c. Legitimate Power: Is derived from the position. His position
has the power without his position, he has no power. This power
without his position, he has no power. This power is used to
formally influence the employees of an organization.
d. Expert power: Is possessed by technically qualified
persons. The knowledge skill and behavioral communication and
are the given power base to influence others. A qualified manager
is able to influence others even after his retirement. He is
consulted by the organization and employees.
Theories of Leadership
Leadership has been described as the “process of social influence
in which one person is able to enlist the aid and support of
others in the accomplishment of a common task” .A definition
more inclusive of followers comes from Alan Keith of Genentech
who said "Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for
people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen."
Students of leadership have produced theories involving traits,
situational interaction, function, behavior, power, vision and
values, charisma, and intelligence among others. Various
theories on leadership are as follows

Trait theory; Trait theory tries to describe the types of behavior

and personality tendencies associated with effective leadership.
This is probably the first academic theory of leadership. Thomas
Carlyle (1841) can be considered one of the pioneers of the trait
theory, using such approach to identify the talents, skills and
physical characteristics of men who arose to power.
Ronald Heifetz (1994) traces the trait theory approach back
to the nineteenth-century tradition of associating the history of
society to the history of great men. Proponents of the trait
approach usually list leadership qualities, assuming certain traits
or characteristics will tend to lead to effective leadership.
 Shelley Kirkpatrick and Edwin A. Locke (1991) exemplify the
trait theory. They argue that "key leader traits include: drive (a
broad term which includes achievement, motivation, ambition,
energy, tenacity, and initiative), leadership motivation (the desire
to lead but not to seek power as an end in itself), honesty,
integrity, self-confidence (which is associated with emotional
stability), cognitive ability, and knowledge of the business.
According to their research, "there is less clear evidence for
traits such as charisma, creativity and flexibility". Although trait
theory has an intuitive appeal, difficulties may arise in proving its
tenets, and opponents frequently challenge this approach. The
"strongest" versions of trait theory see these "leadership
characteristics" as innate, and accordingly labels some people as
"born leaders" due to their psychological makeup.
On this reading of the theory, leadership development
involves identifying and measuring leadership qualities,
screening potential leaders from non-leaders, then training those
with potential.

Behavioral and style theory. In response to the criticism of the

trait approach, theorists began to research leadership as a set of
behaviors, evaluating the behavior of 'successful' leaders,
determining a behavior taxonomy and identifying broad
leadership styles. David McClelland, for example, saw leadership
skills, not so much as a set of traits, but as a pattern of motives.
He claimed that successful leaders will tend to have a high need
for power, a low need for affiliation, and a high level of what he
called activity inhibition (one might call it self-control).
The Managerial grid model theory Kurt Lewin, Ronald Lipitt,
and Ralph White developed in 1939 the seminal work on the
influence of leadership styles and performance. The researchers
evaluated the performance of groups of eleven-year-old boys
under different types of work climate. In each, the leader
exercised his influence regarding the type of group decision
making, praise and criticism (feedback), and the management of
the group tasks (project management) according to three styles:
(1) authoritarian, (2) democratic and (3) laissez-faire.
Authoritarian climates were characterized by leaders who make
decisions alone, demand strict compliance to his orders, and
dictate each step taken; future steps were uncertain to a large
degree. The leader is not necessarily hostile but is aloof from
participation in work and commonly offers personal praise and
criticism for the work done. Democratic climates were
characterized by collective decision processes, assisted by the
leader. Before accomplishing tasks, perspectives are gained from
group discussion and technical advice from a leader. Members
are given choices and collectively decide the division of labor.
Praise and criticism in such an environment are objective, fact
minded and given by a group member without necessarily having
participated extensively in the actual work. Laissez faire climates
gave freedom to the group for policy determination without any
participation from the leader. The leader remains uninvolved in
work decisions unless asked, does not participate in the division
of labor, and very infrequently gives praise.
The results seemed to confirm that the democratic climate
was preferred. The managerial grid model is also based on a
behavioral theory. The model was developed by Robert Blake and
Jane Mouton in 1964 and suggests five different leadership
styles, based on the leaders' concern for people and their concern
for goal achievement.

Situational and contingency theory Situational theory also

appeared as a reaction to the trait theory of leadership. Social
scientists argued that history was more than the result of
intervention of great men as Carlyle suggested. Herbert Spencer
(1884) said that the times produce the person and not the other
way around. This theory assumes that different situations call for
different characteristics; according to this group of theories, no
single optimal psychographic profile of a leader exists.
According to the theory, "what an individual actually does
when acting as a leader is in large part dependent upon
characteristics of the situation in which he functions." Some
theorists started to synthesize the trait and situational
approaches. Building upon the research of Lewin et.al, academics
began to normalize the descriptive models of leadership climates,
defining three leadership styles and identifying in which
situations each style works better.
The authoritarian leadership style, for example, is approved
in periods of crisis but fails to win the "hearts and minds" of their
followers in the day-to-day management. the democratic
leadership style is more adequate in situations that require
consensus building; finally, the laissez faire leadership style is
appreciated by the degree of freedom it provides, but as the
leader does not "take charge", he can be perceived as a failure in
protracted or thorny organizational problems.
The Fiedler contingency model bases the leader’s
effectiveness on what Fred Fiedler called situational contingency.
This results from the interaction of leadership style and
situational favorableness (later called "situational control"). The
theory defined two types of leader: those who tend to accomplish
the task by developing good relationships with the group
(relationship-oriented), and those who have as their prime
concern carrying out the task itself (task-oriented).
According to Fiedler, there is no ideal leader. Both task-
oriented and relationship-oriented leaders can be effective if their
leadership orientation fits the situation. When there is a good
leader-member relation, a highly structured task, and high leader
position power, the situation is considered a "favorable situation".
Fiedler found that task-oriented leaders are more effective in
extremely favorable or unfavorable situations, whereas
relationship-oriented leaders perform best in situations with
intermediate favorability.

Victor Vroom, in collaboration with Phillip Yetton (1973) and

later with Arthur Jago (1988), developed a taxonomy for
describing leadership situations, taxonomy that was used in a
normative decision model where leadership styles where
connected to situational variables, defining which approach was
more suitable to which situation. This approach was novel
because it supported the idea that the same manager could rely
on different group decision making approaches depending on the
attributes of each situation. This model was later referred as
situational contingency theory.

The path-goal theory of leadership was developed by Robert

House (1971) and was based on the expectancy theory of Victor
Vroom. According to House, the essence of the theory is "the
meta proposition that leaders, to be effective, engage in behaviors
that complement subordinates' environments and abilities in a
manner that compensates for deficiencies and is instrumental to
subordinate satisfaction and individual and work unit
performance.
 The theory identifies four leader behaviors, achievement-
oriented, directive, participative, and supportive; those are
contingent to the environment factors and follower
characteristics. In contrast to the Fiedler contingency model, the
path-goal model states that the four leadership behaviors are
fluid, and that leaders can adopt any of the four depending on
what the situation demands. The path-goal model can be
classified both as a contingency theory, as it depends on the
circumstances, but also as a transactional leadership theory, as
the theory emphasizes the reciprocity behavior between the
leader and the followers. The situational leadership model
proposed by Hersey and Blanchard suggest four leadership-styles
and four levels of follower-development. For effectiveness, the
model posits that the leadership-style must match the
appropriate level of follower ship-development. In this model,
leadership behavior becomes a function not only of the
characteristics of the leader, but of the characteristics of
followers as well.

Functional theory Functional leadership theory (Hackman &

Walton, 1986; McGrath, 1962) is a particularly useful theory for
addressing specific leader behaviors expected to contribute to
organizational or unit effectiveness. This theory argues that the
leader’s main job is to see that whatever is necessary to group
needs is taken care of; thus, a leader can be said to have done
their job well when they have contributed to group effectiveness
and cohesion (Fleishman et al., 1991; Hackman & Wageman,
2005; Hackman & Walton, 1986). While functional leadership
theory has most often been applied to team leadership (Zaccaro,
Rittman, & Marks, 2001), it has also been effectively applied to
broader organizational leadership as well (Zaccaro, 2001).

Transactional and transformational theory ;- the transactional

leader (Burns, 1978) is given power to perform certain tasks and
reward or punish for the team’s performance. It gives the
opportunity to the manager to lead the group and the group
agrees to follow his lead to accomplish a predetermined goal in
exchange for something else. Power is given to the leader to
evaluate, correct and train subordinates when productivity is not
up to the desired level and reward effectiveness when expected
outcome is reached.
 The transformational leader (Burns, 2008) motivates its
team to be effective and efficient. Communication is the base for
goal achievement focusing the group on the final desired outcome
or goal attainment. This leader is highly visible and uses chain of
command to get the job done. Transformational leaders focus on
the big picture, needing to be surrounded by people who take
care of the details. The leader is always looking for ideas that
move the organization to reach the company’s vision.

Leadership Styles -
Leadership style is the manner and approach of providing
direction, implementing plans, and motivating people. Kurt Lewin
(1939) led a group of researchers to identify different styles of
leadership. This early study has been very influential and
established three major leadership styles.
• Authoritarian or autocratic
• Participative or democratic
• Delegative or Free Reign

Authoritarian or autocratic -
This style is used when leaders tell their employees what they
want done and how they want it accomplished, without getting
the advice of their followers. Some of the appropriate conditions
to use it are when one has all the information to solve the
problem, one is short on time, and one’s employees are well
motivated. Some people tend to think of this style as a vehicle for
yelling, using demeaning language, and leading by threats and
abusing their power. This is not the authoritarian style, rather it
is an abusive, unprofessional style called bossing people around.
It has no place in a leader's repertoire.
Participative or democratic -
This style involves the leader including one or more employees in
the decision-making process. However, the leader maintains the
final decision-making authority. Using this style is not a sign of
weakness; rather it is a sign of strength that your employees will
respect.
This is normally used when one has part of the information,
and one’s employees have other parts. Note that a leader is not
expected to know everything this is why one employs
knowledgeable and skillful employees. Using this style is of
mutual benefit. it allows them to become part of the team and
allows one to make better decisions.

Delegative or Free Reign:

In this style, the leader allows the employees to make the
decisions. However, the leader is still responsible for the
decisions that are made. This is used when employees are able to
analyze the situation and determine what needs to be done and
how to do it. One cannot do everything, one must set priorities
and delegate certain tasks. This is not a style to use so that one
can blame others when things go wrong, rather this is a style to
be used when one fully trusts and confidence in the people below
one.

Charismatic leadership:
Max Webber, a sociologist, defined charisma more than a century
ago as “a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of
which he or she is set apart from ordinary people and treated as
endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least exceptional
power qualities. These are not accessible to the ordinary person
and are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the
basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader’’.
Weber argues that charismatic leadership was one of the several
ideal types of authority.

Transformational leadership: Transformational leaders inspire

followers to transcend their self-interest for the good of the
organization and can have an extraordinary effect on their
followers .they pay attention to the concerns and needs of the
individual followers , they change followers awareness of the
issues by helping them look at old problem in new ways and
they excite and inspire followers to put out extra effort to
achieve goals .

Transactional leadership: it is a part of a style of leadership that

focuses on supervision, organization, and performance; it is an
integral part of the Full Range Leadership Model. Transactional
leadership is a style of leadership in which leaders promote
compliance by followers through both rewards and punishments.
Through a rewards and punishments system, transactional
leaders are able to keep followers motivated for the short-term.
Unlike transformational leaders, those using the transactional
approach are not looking to change the future, they look to keep
things the same. Leaders using transactional leadership as a
model pay attention to followers' work in order to find faults and
deviations.

Conclusion :
Leadership is a process of influencing the behavior, beliefs and
feelings of the members of a group. The functions of leadership
however, cover wide range of activities like coordinating, decision-
making, policymaking, group representing, controlling,
arbitrating, etc. Leadership, not being a single phenomenon, is
affected by many variables and involves several skills like
technical, human, conceptual, designing, creative,
communicative and decision making. The main aspect of
influencing people by a leader is the power, which has many
sources. The leadership effectiveness covers the personality of
leader, past experience, expectations of superiors, the
characteristics of subordinates, the requirements of the task, and
the organizational climate and policies.

Reference
 Organizational Behavior, 16/e Sixteenth Edition, by Stephen
P. Robbins (Author), Timothy A. Judge (Author),
 Organization Behaviour ,9/e by Ashwathappa,
 Theories and styles of leadership jones and bartlett publishers