Describe psychological theories of leadership

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Describe psychological theories of leadership

Leadership is the process whereby one individual influences other group members towards the attainment of defined group or organisational goals (Yukl & Vanfleet 1992). Often the leader of a group is the one who holds a particular title e.g. manager or head teacher. There are such things as informal leaders. Thus a group leader can emerge and be a person with no title or status. Those leaders emerge because they possess characteristics that the group members value.

The Universalist Theories of Leadership all focus on one thing; that leaders have key characteristics in common. Psychologists believe people with these key traits will always emerge as leaders and be successful regardless of the situation.

The Great Man- Woman theory is another explanation of leadership. This theory states that great leaders posses key traits that set them apart from most human beings. The theory also contends that these traits remain stable over time and across different groups. Therefore it suggests that all great leaders share these characteristics regardless of when or where they lived and their precise role.

In the Trait Approach psychologists have tried to identify specific traits that leaders posses. Traits are consistent and involved identifying physical and personality attributes including height, appearance and energy levels. It was found that leaders tend to be slightly taller than their followers. Terman 1904 asked teachers to describe playgroup leaders. They were reported to be active, quick and skilful. Bavelas 1960 saw that leadership traits as quickness of decision, the courage to take risks, coolness under stress, intuition, and luck. Stogdill 1974 reviewed a large number of studies and found that leaders are slightly more intelligent, more extravert and more sociable. Bray and Campbell 1974, found that managers who were most frequently promoted tended to score highly on oral communication, human relationship skills and need for advancement. McClelland 1975 sees the need for power as a prerequisite to assuming a managerial role.

The Vroom and Yetton decision model assumes that leaders are decision makers who need to select an appropriate leadership style. They must take into account the demands and qualities of a particular situation, each situation being unique. The styles you can adopt are; Autocratic I, Autocratic II, Consultative I, Consultative II and Group. These range form leader making the decision totally alone to decisions that are fully participative. The model states the leader goes through a series of decisions to decide the best leadership strategy to adopt. In deciding how to make the decision to adopt a particular style of leadership the leader will be considering how to maximise the potential benefits but minimise potential costs. The leader selects the best approach by answering some questions about the situation. These relate from the quality of the decision to the acceptance of the decision.

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Behavioural theories begin to consider the effect of the leaders behaviour on performance and try to identify what behaviours effective leaders show. The behavioural approach was developed in the late 1950’s.

The Ohio State studies (Haplin et al 1957) carried out detailed observations and self reports from leaders and subordinates of leadership behaviour. They accumulated hundreds of lists and found that these could be condensed into 2 main categories of behaviour, initiating structure and consideration. Initiating structure refers to those leadership behaviours that define and organise the structure of the work situation. Consideration refers to showing concern for feelings ...

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