The Approaches to Leadership

The Approaches to Leadership

Leadership is one of the issues in management that has received more attention by researchers and professionals from different sectors. It is considered one fundamental topic in labor relations since the followers identify leadership style as a trigger of human resource disputes. For many years, the concept of leadership has been studied and understood as a trace of personality that is dependent solely on personal characteristics and innate abilities of individuals. However today, we realize that an attitude of leadership depends on social learning of the individual, and therefore, can be trained / improved.

Leadership is closely related to communication skills and transmission of ideas (Hooper & Potter, 2003). They argue that it is the role that is defined by the frequency with which a person influences or directs the behavior of other group.

Leadership is the ability to promote coordinated action towards the achievement of the organizational objectives (Yukl, 1989). It is a phenomenon of interpersonal influence exercised in a particular situation by the human communication process, in order to communicate certain objectives. Yukl argues that leader's main activity is the production of change, with its action ruled upon three fundamental dimensions: setting the direction the company's strategy, communicate those goals to human resources and motivate them to fulfill these goals.

Theoretical Approaches to Leadership

Personality Trait Approach

This approach to leadership has it's emphasize on the leader's personal attributes. Early theories about leadership attribute the success of a leader to the possession of abstract skills, such as energy, intuition and perception. Some other individual traits that seem to be related to leadership success are self- confidence, integrity, emotional maturity, stress tolerance and high energy level.

Ability to tolerate and handle stress as well as maintaining a higher level of energy for consistent periods of time; are some of ...