Classification Essay Sample on Theories of Leadership

Introduction

Leadership is acts of guiding or inspiring a collective group of people to attain a frequent target successfully. One becomes a leader in the action of how he or she influences a collective group to achieve the set goal as stated by Graen, [1995] for example; a school can set a familiar mean score to accomplish at the end of an academic year. The leadership theories include; adaptive leadership, transformational, leader-member exchange theory, strengths-based and servant leadership as discussed below.

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Transformational leadership is a kind of leadership where a leader and his followers work together to achieve teamwork and high level of motivation. This theory is different from others because the leader inspirers' individuals to adjust or change attitudes, expectations or motivation towards work to achieve the set target. The leaders do not use dictatorship to the workers but only inspire for good results. According to Bass, [199] leaders in this theory should always have great fate and hope to achieve. If the leaders lose, hope so does the group hence, failure to achieve the goal. The advantages of this theory include; Lowers turnover costs because the leadership retains its worker. This is because expenses incurred to employ new worker may be costly thus accumulating more fees to maintain the system. Another advantage is that new corporate vision is quickly formulated because the friendship bond between the leader and the worker are cordial and friendly thus adapting to new ideas is cheap. Lastly, creation and management of time are comfortable because of the motivation and teamwork existence. The disadvantages of this theory include; it requires continuous communication that may fail at some point resulting in a breakdown of the set goal. Difficulty in maintaining constant and consistent feedback for the progress of the project is another advantage. There may be obstacles to give regular and consistent feedback. The approach can be applied in a school where the teamwork of teachers, parents, and students can yield a good outcome.

Leader-member exchange theory explains the relationship leaders create with their group or the subordinate members. Leaders divide individuals into two groups, the in-group and out-group. The in-group is believed to have a more significant influence of the decision made by the leader due to them being responsible for the roles endowed on them. Due to their hard work and responsibility, they have easy access to the substantial resources compared to the out-group. Out-group falls in this category due to their reluctance to carry their leader's roles appropriately. The advantages of the theory are; easy to apply due to the ability to recognize the responsible workers. Creation of in-group makes them put effort to retain the status but also the out-group work extra to be promoted to the other group. Out-group creates a win-win environment this because the in-group beliefs they best thus making them do best to retain the post. The limitation of this leadership theory is that the leader belief everyone starts at the same baseline without a clue that not all people are equal. Some people are sharp, and others take time to adjust to the situation. The theory helps leaders to group workers in a firm according to how they achieve their target. It assists leaders to identify ways how workers can adjust the decision made by the company.

Adaptive leadership theory requires a leader who inspires his workers to adjust to take tough decisions to achieve the set goals. Responsible leaders must be exposed to all leadership skills so that they can correctly direct the workers. The approach is different from others, as it requires more authoritative. The advantages include; placing people into the position, they do best. This categorization needs one to work according to his ability or strength. Leaders must think outside the box and employ more techniques apart from the common ones in leadership. The disadvantage is that the workers may be forced to avoid their assignments due to pressure from the leaders. The president of a state can employ this to govern his cabinet for better service delivery from the secretaries.

Strength-based leadership involves the identification of leaders own strengths and strengths of workers to achieve a common goal. The approach is best as it places one on where he can work best thus leaders cannot give roles to an individual where he is not qualified. The advantage of the approach is that it enables leaders to find opportunities for people to work in areas they work best following their abilities. The disadvantage is that people may have similar strengths in a specific field thus cause crowding while other opportunities may miss people who fit in them. Human resource managers in hospitals find the approach the best to locate physicians in their areas of specialization.

Servant leadership approach requires leaders who consider the needs of others before they recognize theirs. Giving needs other the employees, the priority to self-interests is a better service tool to any leader. Its advantage is that the needs of the company are given the preference to that of the staff thus the development of loyalty from the workers to the company. According to Greenleaf, [2009] this approach motivates workers because their needs are considered thus achieving the set target in time. The disadvantage is that finding the needs of the workers first may also limit the company from meeting its strategies in time.

References

Bass, B. M. (1999). Two decades of research and development in transformational leadership. European journal of work and organizational psychology, 8(1), 9-32.

Green, G. B., & Uhl-Bien, M. (1995). Relationship-based approach to leadership: Development of leader-member exchange (LMX) theory of leadership over 25 years: Applying a multi-level multi-domain perspective. The leadership quarterly, 6(2), 219-247.

Greenleaf, R. K. (1997). The servant as leader. University of Notre Dame Press.

Heifetz, R. A., Grashow, A., & Linsky, M. (2009). The practice of adaptive leadership: Tools and tactics for changing your organization and the world. Harvard Business Press.