Exploring Self-Development As A Leader: Critical Analysis Of Leadership Theories

Great Man Theory

Leadership is both an art and a practical application of skill encompassing the ability of an individual to lead, influence and motivate the individual and the organization to achieve the goals and objectives of the organization (Storey, 2016). Leadership is the virtue of an individual to ensure that the business process, practices, policies and strategies all are inclined and streamlined to achieve the goals of the organization(Miner, 2015). Leaders are the flag bearers of an organization and they have to ensure that the means employed by them to achieve the end would be based on the concept of utilitarianism. Utilizing the above description as an introduction, the underlying purpose of the assignment here is to explore and reflect on self-development as a leader to build self-awareness. A personal leadership style will also be depicted by critically analysing different types of leadership styles. The focuses of the report will heavily li on creating a continuous and a self- development plan for consistent learning and sustained growth. Thus, the report will be a comprehensive reflection of my leadership ability, style and a self -development plan.

The section here will critically analyse 6 leadership theories, and will also help me in choosing the leadership style which suits me the best. The critical analysis will help in developing an insight on the best practices in the leadership to ensure application of the right leadership in the business organization.

This is one of the early theories in leadership which gave researches to further explore the study area in detail. According to the great man theory, the leaders are born, naturally. The leaders have certain intrinsic characteristics which defines them as a leader. The Great Man Theory sees that the leaders are born, because they are destined to become leader (Amanchukwu, Stanley & Ololube, 2015). It totally rules out the possibility of developing leadership ability in an individual. An addition to the theory was that leaders some rose out of situation, that is it implied that in times of grave concern, a leader is born to solve the trouble.

Critically analysing this theory, the biggest limitation of the theory is that it totally rules out the scope of development and training to create a leader. The theory also fails to recognize some of the traits which make a person a true and a global leader. Thus, thus to plethora of criticism and lack of empirical evidence, this theory was succeeded by the Trait theory of leadership (Landis, Hill & Harvey, 2014).

Trait Theory of Leadership

Trait theory of leadership is most certainly an improvement over the Great Man Theory. The theory states that a leader is either born or is made by certain qualities which would help him to ace in his role of leadership in any walk of life. The trait theory realized a lot of traits such as intelligence, honesty, integrity, creativity, value learning etc. to be some of the most vouched upon traits to become an effective and successful leader. The trait theory went a step ahead, and combined mental, physical and social elements in order to gain a deeper insight on the characteristics of an effective leader (Dutta & Sahney, 2016).

Despite the fact that trait theory of leadership was by far the most developed model, it too had a lot of limitation, which masked the efficiency of the theory. For instance, the lack of empirical evidence put the theory in jeopardy; also, the study was conducted on low level managers, which does not qualify for an organization wide leadership. Also, when some traits were analysed alongside the abilities, only intelligent and tall were the identified characteristics, which was not comprehensive. I too believe that Trait theory did have some improvement, but it wasn’t something which made sense to the people looking to develop their abilities to become an effective leader (Bolman & Deal, 2017).

Behavioural theories of leadership was propounded just after the trait theories, it was a reaction or an improvement over the earlier propounded trait theory. According to this theory, it focused on the behaviour of leader akin to his leadership, unlike the characteristics as mentioned in the trait theory of leadership. The theory was also in sync with the revolution in the technology which leads to psychometric analysis and the researchers were able to identify a causal effect of the behaviour akin to their leadership. Thus, the leadership can be viewed as anyone can become a leader if imposed to various conditioning and stimulating factors. Behaviour theories categorized leadership in two different categories; One who are concerned with the task, and other who are concerned with people (McCleskey, 2014).

The leadership theory was pretty advanced, but it was not complete in description. It failed to analyse the exact behaviour which made a person a true leader. The theory further gave rise to the Managerial grid model and the Role theory, which were fairly advanced and gave a good understanding of the behaviour specific to good leadership style (Swanwick & McKimm, 2017).

Behavioural Theories of Leadership

This is one theory which makes some sense in the present business organizational context. The theory states that there is no single way of leading and that every leadership style must and should be based on certain situations. This theory implies that there are some people who rise to the occasion in extreme situation and perform at their maximum level, whilst they perform at the minimum level in ordinary circumstances. In my view this is very situation type of leadership theory, and it calls for the leader to be flexible in their approach and apply leadership according to a specific context. This theory is most definitely an extension of the trait theory, as leaders rise to the occasion based on their traits, as identified in the trait theory of leadership (Piccolo, Buengeler & Judge, 2018).

The contingency theory is practices by many leaders in the present day, for Instance, the Ex Australian leader and captain used Contingency theory, and he always raised to the occasion when his team needed him the most. The contemporary theory gave birth to plenty of theories, which were created on the premise of contingency theory, such as:

• Fiedler’s Contingency theory.
• Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory
• Path-Goal Theory
• Vroom expectancy theory
• Cognitive Resource Theory (Yi & Zhao, 2018).
• Strategic Contingency Theory

I personally believe in this theory of leadership as the business ecosystem has become dynamic in nature, thus leaders have to adapt to the changing situation and create solution for the business organization.

Transactional leadership theory is also known as the exchange theories of leadership. This type of leadership is characterised by a transaction which is made between the leader and the follower. Thus, the leadership solely rests on a transaction, and depends on the mutual relationship. The theory though has certain demerits, but it is still seen as a positive and mutually beneficial relationship. In order to make the transactional theory of leadership effective, the leaders have to look up for a motivation value to push its followers. He has to create reward and punishment akin to the kind of tasks performed by the followers (Morris & Corlett, 2016).  It can only be said that transactional leaders can be efficient only and only if a mutually reinforcing environment is created in the organization. Thus, the theories imply that individuals in general are always looking to maximize their pleasurable experiences and alienate un-pleasurable experiences. And, people look forward to mostly associate themselves with their strengths. However, I see this theory has kind of lopsided in its implementation. Individuals are at times, unable to weigh the quantum of punishment in terms of the poor quality of work they have done, which leads to demotivation. Thus, I don’t personally follow this leadership style in any walk of my life (Sosik & Jung, 2018).

Contingency Theory of Leadership

This is the most recent and developed theory of leadership which is used by the plenty of visionaries in the present times. The transformational leadership theory states that it is the process in accordance to which a person interacts with others and is able to create a bond of strong relationship which would eventually result in increasing trust and motivation both for the followers and the leaders.  The essence of transformational leadership is that leaders transform their followers through the virtue of their inspirational nature and charismatic personality. In this style of leadership the rules are flexible, and are guided by the norms of the group. Transformational style of leadership helps in providing a sense of belonging to followers and they identify strongly with the leaders. Jeff Bezos is one of the present visionary of his time who practices transformational style of leadership at Amazon, Jeff Bezos uses his skill sets to not only motivate and empower the employees, but he effectively communicates the vision of the organization to the employees. He uses transformation as a virtue to communicate the goals of the organization to its employees and also provides them a path to achieve the goals (Braun et. al., 2018).

In my personal opinion, transformational leadership is the style which makes most sense. The leadership is extremely powerful and contemporary, and it provides for enhanced productivity of its employees. For instance, Amazon is the e-commerce behemoth, and has disrupted the entire e-commerce and the online shopping ecosystem. All the development done at Amazon and feet achieved at the company can be also viewed as the resultant of the transformational style of leadership practices by Jeff Bezos (Novo, Landis & Haley, 2017).

The critical analysis of the prevalent leadership theory has been useful to decide what has to be done, and what can be ignored to make the most of the situation. My Leadership development strategy is based on the three fold growth, which I created for myself, and will help me in creating my leadership development strategy:

• Consistent Learning-I am of the opinion that if the learning of the person stops, the clock of his life ticks off. Implication here is that there is too much to learn from the world, peer, culture, business organization, concepts learning, analysing the current landscape of business, human psychology and many more. With so much to learn, it would be very imbecile if a person stops learning, does not matter if one is at the pinnacle of his career. I concur with this notion, and that is one of the reason I read plenty of books related to various topics such as history of the world, understanding human psychology, autobiographies, business management case studies, real world case scenarios and plenty of management books to provide me a comprehensive understanding of a lot of topics which would help me in my leadership. I believe that by the virtue of consistent learning I can be a better leader and would be in a position to manage my followers effectively. Consistent learning leads me to my next goal which is of sustained growth, and also the basis of my leadership development strategy.
• Sustained Growth-Every step or action a human takes in his life has to be really thoughtful, what I meant to imply is that a person should always beforehand think of the possible ramification of the action. My actions, as much as possible are always in sync with my sustained growth. Hence, any skill I learn, or any new competency I acquire all points towards sustained growth. For instance, I believed that I need to work towards improving my people management skills, in order to do so, I changed my personality to more open types, and this helped me in making a better connect with people. Sustained growth is also a yardstick which can be used to measure the development and the growth of the individual. Thus, by focussing on the abilities and the competencies which are contemporary and are most required in business organization will get in becoming an effective leader.
• Overall Development-Just as human resources these days have started using a 360 degree Performance management system to evaluate the performance of the employee round the year, the same strategy has to be used in one’s personal life as well. The days are gone, when it mattered more if a person was “King of one trade”, it has been transformed into “Jack of all trade”. I on a personal level strongly agree with this hypothesis as this is the era of internet and globalization. People are privy to millions of literature which they can consume on the net, and learn something new. This would in –turn contributes towards the overall development of a human being. I for an instance focus on all the areas, such as business news, politics, sports, charity work, understanding the business climate and many more things. Learning about all the different kind of things fills me with confidence and contributes to my overall development.

Thus, it can be said that in order to become an inspirational and an effective leader, one has to never stop learning, it is easier if you unlearn something and then learn a new thing. But, the takeaway is that the development should be across all the areas possible and should harbinger towards the development of the individual and his leadership ability.

Transactional Leadership Theory

I really was not satisfied with my approach towards leadership and in my opinion there was most definitely a scope for significant improvement in approaching towards the leadership. Hence, I wanted to identify what are my strength, focussing upon which I will be able to better shape my leadership. Thus, Clifton Strength is a web based assessment test with a positive focus. It is also used for promotion and interpersonal development within the professional setting. The test undertaken gave me the following result, which will help me in focussing on my strength and create my leadership development plan.

The above figure is a strength assessment of mine in accordance to the 34 strength of Clifton test. The above mentioned characteristics are inherent in my personality or something which I have learnt and developed over the time. The Clifton strength is can be divided into four domains of Executing, influencing, relationship building and   strategic thinking. These skills will help me in polishing my leadership development skills:

• Restorative-Restorative falls into the domain of executives and the people with these characteristics enjoy the problem of challenge and work hard towards finding a solution for it. This is one of my strengths which also tells that I really love discovering new ways to work and finding new and better solutions to solve the problem. Thus my strength here will help in:
  • Discover something which is not working.
  • Finding resolution
  • Guiding people
  • Increasing the functionality
• Developer-This falls within the domain of relationship builder, and here the strength of developer lies in seeing and realizing potential of other people. These kinds of people feel that everybody has a potential and propensity to grow and excel in life. I totally agree with my assessment here because I really do believe in the abilities of the people and of the opinion that right guidance and path pushes the people to do even unrealistic tasks(Ward, 2016).
• Relator-As the name suggests, relator describes the person’s attitude towards his own relationship with people. In other terms, relator pulls one towards the people they already know. This is most definitely help in creating long term bonds with the internal and external stakeholders of the business organization and ensures long term loyalty of them.
• Positivity- The strength of positivity lies in the fact that a person has the capability to transform the mood of the people from negative to positive. Such people are also known as the mood healers and are very important for the morale of the organization. This element here makes me connect positively with people, and they can easily confide in me, certainly a trait or characteristic for effective leadership.

Based on the understanding and critical analysis of the leadership theory, I am creating a plan of self- development which will help in developing my skills and pull me closer to effective leadership. My ambition in life is to lead the digital marketing team of an e-commerce organization, thus on the basis of it, I am creating a self -development plan towards leadership.

This is created on the basis of my aspiration and analysis of my strength, weakness and the areas identified for improvement.

Time Period -2 Years

Conclusion

Leadership has evolved in the recent past due to evolution in technology and globalization. In the present business days, the need of the hour for leadership has to be flexible and not rigid, leaders have to adapt according to the changing business climate and make most of the situation. My personal leadership style is inspired by the CEO and Founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos. I believe that I am a transformational leader because my intentions are always to push, motivate and transform the people to delivery best for the organization and themselves.

References

Amanchukwu, R. N., Stanley, G. J., & Ololube, N. P. (2015). A review of leadership theories, principles and styles and their relevance to educational management. Management, 5(1), 6-14.

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership. John Wiley & Sons.

Braun, S., Junker, N., Stegmann, S., & Van Dick, R. (2018, July). Age and the Rule of Promotion in Implicit Followership and Leadership Theories. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2018, No. 1, p. 16718). Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of Management.

Dutta, V., & Sahney, S. (2016). School leadership and its impact on student achievement: The mediating role of school climate and teacher job satisfaction. International Journal of Educational Management, 30(6), 941-958.

Landis, E. A., Hill, D., & Harvey, M. R. (2014). A synthesis of leadership theories and styles. Journal of Management Policy and Practice, 15(2), 97.

Taylor, C., J. Cornelius, C., & Colvin, K. (2014). Visionary leadership and its relationship to organizational effectiveness. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 35(6), 566-583.

McCleskey, J. A. (2014). Situational, transformational, and transactional leadership and leadership development. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 5(4), 117.

Miner, J. B. (2015). Organizational behavior 4: From theory to practice. Routledge.

Novo, B., Landis, E. A., & Haley, M. L. (2017). Leadership and its role in the success of project management. Journal of Leadership, Accountability, and Ethics, 14(1), 73-78.

Piccolo, R. F., Buengeler, C., & Judge, T. A. (2018). 17 Leadership [Is] Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Review of. The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Citizenship Behavior, 297.

Sosik, J.J. and Jung, D., 2018. Full range leadership development: Pathways for people, profit, and planet. Routledge.

Storey, J., 2016. Changing theories of leadership and leadership development. In Leadership in Organizations (pp. 33-58). Routledge.

Swanwick, T., & McKimm, J. (2017). ABC of clinical leadership. John Wiley & Sons.

Ward, J. (2016). Keeping the family business healthy: How to plan for continuing growth, profitability, and family leadership. Springer.

Yi, M., & Zhao, C. (2018). Academic Supervisor Leadership and Its Influencing Mechanism on Postgraduate Creativity in China. Thinking Skills and Creativity.

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