Personal characteristics that enable leaders to be effective Essay

Personal characteristics that enable leaders to be effective - Essay Example Humanistic approach of management has revolutionized the manner in which role of managers was perceived earlier.Now the emphasis is more on leading the teams instead of managing them. The management theories of leadership that emerged during 20th century also assert that personal attributes of leaders play a vital role in organizational efficiency and effectiveness. For today’s managers, it is important to identify what these personality characteristics are, in order to perform well in the leadership roles. This research is concerned with identifying personal characteristics of the leaders that enable leaders to be effective in their given roles through analysing literature available on the subject matter along with quantitative findings of a survey. Research Question What are the personal characteristics that enable leaders to be effective? Literature Review There are many leadership styles that have emerged over the period of time which include autocratic, transformative, tr ansactional, bureaucratic, charismatic, participative, Laissez-faire, task-oriented, servant and relationship oriented leadership styles (Kim and Yukl, 1995). Analysing these theories helps in understanding that there is no one ideal leadership style that can be adopted by today’s managers in perform effectively. However, there are various theories that explain that personal attributes and characteristics of the leaders have a direct impact on the motivation and performance levels of their respective teams and organizations (McCrae and Costa, 1995). Some of these theories include trait, contingency, situational and behavioural theories. Trait theories are a combination of theories presented by Gordon Allport and Odbert (1936), Raymond Cattell’s sixteen personality factor, Eyesenck’s three dimension of personality and five factor theory. A cumulative approach presented by these theories explains that the leaders possess certain personal characteristics that make them more suitable for a leadership role. According to trait theories, a leader is expected to be open to new experiences, conscientious, extravert, agreeable, emotionally stable with lack of psychoticism. Considering the impact of external factors, contingency theories were proposed (Fiedler, 1986). According to this set of theories, a leader is expected to be task and relationship oriented. The contingency theories themselves consist of path-goal theory, normative decision making and situational leadership theory (Fielder, 1964; House, 1996). All these theories recognize the notion that behaviour and skills inventory of the follower has a direct impact on the effectiveness of the leader. Therefore, a leader is expected to have capability of examining the needs of the follower and have reasonable flexibility to alter their leadership style accordingly. According to Hersey and Blanchard (1969), there are four leadership styles that can be used by the leader by combining directive an d supportive behavioural approach. These leadership styles include telling (high directive, low support), selling (high directive, high supporting), participating (low directive, high supportive), and delegating (low directive, low supportive). On the other hand, path goal theory claims that it is the nature of task and follower that should be considered by a leader while identifying a suitable behaviour according to requirement of the circumstances. These leadership styles include supportive (relations oriented), directive (task oriented), achievement oriented, and participative leader behavior (House, 1996). Another important theory that can be helpful in indentifying the effective leadership traits is transformational theory