Three Leadership Styles Paper

To begin, it might be helpful to define leadership. Some theories suggest leaders are born by inheriting certain dispositional traits that lend themselves well to leading others (Judge et al, 2002), while others will argue that becoming a leader is a process which any person can go through with the right training (Keating et al, 2014). Leadership is usually the process of aligning a group of people to work towards a common goal, but sometimes in organisations and management it is far more complex than that and choosing the right leadership style is vital. This essay will provide an overview of three leadership styles (participatory, situational and transformative), the specific skill sets needed in each one, and discuss how these might be applied

Leaders may not even proclaim themselves, but the people who decide who they want to be lead bestow a ‘chosen’ individual with status and power: “Leadership is in the eyes of other people; it is they who proclaim you as a leader” (Gilstrap, in Kouzes & Posner, 2007, p.27). This highlights the extent to which people can abdicate responsibility for themselves by placing all their beliefs, hopes and anxieties in a leader. The benefits for the followers are that they can avoid making difficult choices in life, as the leader will make the choices for them. If those choices are profitable, the followers can reap the rewards. If the choices have dire consequences the leader will be the fall guy and take the blame. The danger of this dynamic is that the fear and anxiety of followers can be deliberately perpetuated by the leader to ensure a certain degree of compliance (Kelly & Kelly, 1998). Existentially speaking, such abdication of responsibility would not only be a form of ‘bad faith’ (Sartre, 1992) but would also ignore the ‘will to power’ Nietzsche posits is the life-affirming drive in humans to reach one’s potential through

Some theories suggest that great leaders are born from traumatic events which cause a great deal of self-reflection (Bass, 1990). This traumatic event can be anything from war, a divorce, the loss of a job or moving to another country. It does not have to be something catastrophic but it is usually something that will prompt the individual to re-evaluate their life and from which they emerge with more emotional intelligence (ibid). Referencing his own experience in a Nazi concentration camp, Frankl posits that trauma can become a catalyst for personal growth and positive change (Frankl, 1998). However, being an effective leader of others adds another dimension; the leader’s style should be a good fit with the group they are leading and to enable the group to achieve certain