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Early 20th-century perspectives on leadership typically reflected leader-centric approaches focusing on the leader as a positional authority. Largely examined in organizational or management contexts, these perspectives led to theories and research on how positional leaders accomplished goals in organizational settings, on what traits and styles were effective to achieve outcomes, and eventually on how the leader influenced others in the organization. These theories reflected prevailing social constructions of leadership that were associated with traditionally masculine, industrial, and structural approaches such as hierarchical relationships, achievement orientations, and leveraging of power. Families of leadership theory consistent with this approach include great man theories and trait-based leadership models.

Over time, leadership theories began to explore the topic from more of a production orientation, examining not only individuals as positional authorities, but also the role followers' play in the leadership process. These theories emphasized positional roles, but they acknowledged that outcome achievement was often dependent on the degree to which the leader could mobilize, motivate, and otherwise influence the commitment and productivity of followers. Thus, leadership became synonymous with effective management and influence of human resources. Leadership theories consistent with this interpretation include behavioral theories, contingency and situational theories, path-goal theory, and leader-member exchange theory (LMX).

Joseph C. Rost (1991) suggests that perhaps the most dramatic and noted shift in the evolution of leadership theory occurred in the late 1970s with the release of James MacGregor Burns's book Leadership (1978). This seminal work re-conceptualized leadership as not only process oriented but also as necessarily focused on follower development. This reframing situated the end goal as equally important and as more easily achieved in a process that valued the development and empowerment of the follower (Burns, 1978). Rost argued that this represented a paradigmatic shift in leadership theory, moving away from ...