In this chapter, we will look at leadership and differentiate between a manager and a leader. We will then compare various theories of leadership and discuss contemporary leadership styles. We will conclude with the Islamic perspective on leadership.
What is Leadership?
What is leadership? Leadership is a process of influencing other people to achieve group or organisational goals. Who then, are leaders? Are managers also leaders? Let us look at each one in turn.
Managers are generally very efficient people and manage the status quo. They study the processes in the organisation and make sure these processes run smoothly. They manage any problems that arise and are known as problem solvers. They execute the commands given by top management,
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Approaches to Leadership
There are three main approaches to leadership – the leader-centred approach, follower-centred approach and interactive approach.
The Leader-centred approach focuses on the personality features or traits of leaders such as physical form and behaviour and includes studies by Ohio State University, Michigan University, Blake and Mouton’s managerial grid and studies on leadership styles (Certo and Certo, 2016). Studies by Ohio State University look at the consideration and structural behaviour of leaders.
Consideration behaviour refer to feelings of consideration towards employees while structural behaviour refers to behaviour of forming the work procedures of subordinates. The study found that leaders with a high level of consideration are more inclined to have satisfied subordinates compared to leaders with a low level of consideration. Leaders who have a high level of structural behaviour but are low in terms of consideration will face a high frequency of complaints and resignation among
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They suggested that the team management is the best as these leaders have both high consideration towards employees and high consideration towards products. Country club management leaders have high consideration for employees but low consideration for products while authoritarian leaders are just the opposite. Middle of the road leaders are moderate leaders while impoverished leaders are the weakest as they do not care about either employees or production!
The last approach to leader centred leadership divides leadership into three types of styles- autocratic leaders, laisser faire leaders and democratic leaders. Autocratic leaders make decisions for the whole group. Laissez-faire leaders allow members of the group to make all the decisions while democratic leaders guide and encourage the group to make decisions.
Which leaders are we? Telling people what they want to hear or taking people where they need to be?
Under the Follower-centred approach, self-leadership is a paradigm for creating leaders who are ready to lead themselves. Under this approach, variables such as employees, tasks, and features can make it difficult for leaders to influence followers or cause them to be