There are many models and approaches to leadership. Traditional approaches, such as trait, behavioral and contingency will be considered in this study.
The main idea of the trait approach is that the leaders are born, not made and focuses on the leader and not on the followers or the situation. This approach is concerned with what traits leaders exhibit and who has these traits. It assumes that it is the leader and his/her personality that are central to the leadership process. For organizations it means that selecting the right people will increase organizational effectiveness. The managers can also analyze their own traits and understand their strengths and weaknesses and how others see them in organization. However, the term trait has been the source of considerable ambiguity and confusion in the literature, referring sometimes and variously to personality, temperaments, dispositions, and abilities, as well as to any enduring qualities of the individual, including physical and demographic attributes .
The most famous concept of the behavioral approach is “The Managerial Grid” of Blake and Mouton, a nine-by-nine matrix showing 81 different leadership styles. It has two scales with low and high concerns for people and production, accordingly, there are five basic management styles: impoverished, authority compliance, country club, team, and middle-of-the-road .
There are also two important behavioral studies. A series of studies at the Ohio State University indicated that two clusters of behaviors had an important role in successful leadership. Those dimensions are: Initiating Structure - (organizing work, organizing and defining relationships or roles, establishing well-defined patterns of organization, channels of communication, and ways of getting jobs done) and Consideration - (building friendship, mutual trust, respect and camaraderie) .
The Michigan University studies on leadership emphasized on employee orientation and production orientation of leader’s behavior. According to the conclusion of the Michigan studies an employee orientation along with moderate production orientation considered as fruitful .
Contingency approach includes four models: Fiedler Contingency Model, Cognitive Resource Theory, Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Model, Path Goal Theory. The contingency theory emphasizes the importance of both the leader's personality and the situation in which that leader operates. Fiedler and his associates outlined two styles of leadership: task-motivated and relationship-motivated and developed the Least Preferred Co-Worker Scale (LPC scale, according to which the leader’s motivation was measured .
Concept of the situation takes into account three factors: leader-member relations, including general atmosphere of the group and the feelings of the followers such as trust, loyalty and confidence that the group has for its leader; task structure, is related to task clarity and the means to perform the task; the position power regards to the amount of reward-punishment authority which can be imposed by the leader . These three factors determine the favorableness of various situations in organizations.
Based on two dimensions (leader supportive behavior and leader directive behavior), Hersey and Blanchard propose four basic types of leadership leaders can employ with various followers depending on the situational needs of the followers: directing, coaching, supporting, and delegating. However, Hersey and Blanchard’s theory of leadership starts with the basic notion that not all followers need the same task or relationship-based leadership, so the type of leadership a leader should utilize with a follower depends on the follower’s readiness. .
The cognitive resource theory of leadership states that the level of stress in a situation is what impacts whether a leader’s intelligence or experience will be more effective. According to this theory, the higher the stress level the more effective intelligent leader in performing challenging tasks, and conversely .
According to the path-goal theory, the leader fits his behavior to the situation which includes environmental contingency factors (task structure, formal authority system, work group) and subordinate contingency factors (locus of control, experience, perceived ability). But other than that, the leader has four ways of behavior: directive, participative, achievement-oriented and supportive. So, the main idea of this theory claims that the leader must help the followers reach goals and reduce roadblocks to success .
References
Basic Approaches to Leadership. (2007). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall Inc.
Blake, R. &. (2011). The managerial grid. В W. E. Hersey, Classics of Organizational Behavior (pp. 308-322). Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc.
Helms, M. M. (2009). Encyclopedia of Management. Detroit, MI: Gale .
Northouse, P. G. (2007). Leadership: Theory and Practice. 4th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Virkus, S. (2009). Leadership Models/Approaches. Retrieved from Leadership Models: http://www.tlu.ee/~sirvir/IKM/Leadership%20Models/leadership_modelsapproaches.html
Virkus, S. (2009). Page 4. Retrieved from Leadership Models: http://www.tlu.ee/~sirvir/IKM/Leadership%20Models/page_4.html
Zaccaro, S. J. (2004). Leader traits and attributes. The nature of leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
