To be successful, every company, regardless of the industry they are in or how big they are, requires good leadership. Effective business practices require good leaders. Being a good leader does not come naturally to most people. That is why there are entire degree programs dedicated to management and assisting students in becoming great business leaders.
There are many theories about how leadership works, what qualities make good leaders, and how to be effective. HR managers can use a variety of leadership styles, and their impact varies depending on the group they lead and the industry they work in. These leadership theories explain how different leadership styles work together to achieve success within a company. To be an HR leader or manager, you should understand the various leadership theories and how they affect your leadership and management style.
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Leadership Theories and Styles for Every HR Manager
To be successful, every company, regardless of the industry they are in or how big they are, requires good leadership. Effective business practices require good leaders. Being a good leader does not come naturally to most people. That is why there are entire degree programs dedicated to management and assisting students in becoming great business leaders.
There are many theories about how leadership works, what qualities make good leaders, and how to be effective. HR managers can use a variety of leadership styles, and their impact varies depending on the group they lead and the industry they work in. These leadership theories explain how different leadership styles work together to achieve success within a company. To be an HR leader or manager, you should understand the various leadership theories and how they affect your leadership and management style.
What is a leadership theory?
Leadership theories explain why and how certain people become leaders. They concentrate on the traits and behaviors that people can adopt to improve their leadership abilities. Some of the top qualities that leaders say are essential for good leadership include:
- Strong ethics and moral standards
- Excellent self-organization skills
- Learner who is efficient
- Employee development is encouraged.
- Promotes connection and belonging
According to research, these characteristics are the most crucial for leaders all over the world. And leadership theories explain how leaders can leverage and develop these characteristics. Leadership theories have recently become more formalized, seeking to make them easier to understand, debate, and analyze, in action.
As per Ralph Nader, “the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not followers.” This is known as transformational leadership—a leader can change the perspective or psychology of a follower, inspiring them to want to be a leader as well. This implies that leadership should, at the end of the day, be elevating and inspiring. Leaders should push those they lead to new heights, allowing them to develop into the people they know they can be. Transformative leadership is a critical psychological outlook for leaders to study and comprehend if they are to indeed influence and impact others. Different leadership theories discuss how to create more robust and efficient leadership, encouraging followers to become leaders themselves.
Different Types of Leadership Theory
Outstanding theorists such as Stogdill, Likert, Fieldler, Bass, and Blake have proposed leadership theories based on a wide range of psychological research on interpersonal and group behavior.
They have not only developed principles of leader behavior based on the research findings, but they have also tested their theories or principles in their own research investigations.
The following are some of the major leadership theories: 1. Theory of the “Managerial Grid” 2. Likert’s Leadership Behavioral Theory 3. Fiedler’s Situational Leadership Theory 4. Character traits Approach 5. Bass’s Leadership Motivational Theory
1. Theory of the “Managerial Grid”
This effective management theory is also known as the “Managerial grid.” It was created by Blake and Mountain and focuses on different combinations of leadership styles.
According to Blake, effective leadership has two critical dimensions:
a)Concern for others, and
b) Concern for production :
According to him, a manager can score highly on either, both, or any other combination of these two independent dimensions. He can operate well in one dimension while falling short in another. Any combination of infractions is possible.
The grid’s two dimensions depict concern for production on one side and ‘concern for people’ on the other, indicating the degree of concern for both production and people. There are 81 possible leadership styles by varying the permutation and combination of these two dimensions, namely concern for production and concern for people. Blake, on the other hand, reinforces only five of these styles: the one in the center of the grid and the four in the corners.
These are the styles:
i) The 1,1 – HR Manager shows little concern for both production and people. They make the bare minimum of effort to complete the required work in an appropriate manner and then let things drift. Their efforts are merely to maintain organizational membership because they do not meet the needs of the workforce or production requirements.
ii) The 1, 9 – HR Managers believe that if they take care of their employees, they will take care of the production. As a result, HR devotes its full attention to the needs of its staff and keeps them happy by creating a comfortable and friendly environment with satisfying relationships. In order to satisfy employees, the HR manager disregards production and sacrifices work speed.
iii) According to Blake, the optimal management is the 9, 9 – HR Manager. This type of leader takes precedence over both production and the people who work for the organization. Employees with individual goals that are linked to the organization’s goals facilitate work completion. This model emphasizes the interrelatedness of employee involvement, need satisfaction, and production for the development of trust and respect relationships, team spirit, and the development of HR managers as effective leaders.
iv) The 9, 1 – HR Manager is production oriented because they are most concerned with production and least concerned with the people who will enable this production. HR’s authoritarian leadership demands efficiency in work operations, using threats and coercion to get things done.
v) The 5, 5 – Manager prioritizes adequate organizational performance by aligning employee and production needs. ‘Maximum’ is not the effort put in; rather, just an acceptable level is maintained in both dimensions. This center-ground management involves employees in decision-making and creates an environment in which employees’ needs are met. It falls far short in its attempts to optimize either of the two components.
2. Likert’s Behavioral Theory of Leadership:
According to Rensis Likert, successful management leadership is critical to organizational effectiveness. An HR manager can effectively lead the staff towards achieving organizational goals by involving the process of employee engagement in structuring the work and the work environment.
An effective leader can create a supportive environment for employees to realize their sense of personal worth by involving employees in decision-making, establishing an effective communication system, and providing opportunities for employees to fulfill their personal and group needs.
As per Likert, there are four types of leadership styles: Exploitative, Benign Authoritative, Consultative, and Participative, or Democratic.
i) Exploitative Leadership Style is extremely effective. These leaders do not involve their subordinates in decision-making. To coerce his subordinates into compliance, he employs fear, threat, rewards, or punishments.
(ii) Benevolent Authoritative Leadership Style is very condescending leadership style. For them, the leader-employee relationship is analogous to a master-servant relationship. This type of leader has enough faith in their employees to seek out and use their ideas. He is benevolent enough to grant some delegation in decision-making and utilizes rewards and punishments to motivate his subordinates.
iii) Consultative Leadership Style is demonstrated by managers who have such trust in their colleagues that they consult them before making any decision concerning the organization’s function.
iv) Participative or Democratic Leadership Style: Democratic leaders believe in open communication within the group and encourage workers to participate in decision-making. They place a strong emphasis on group goals and work to achieve common organizational goals.
These democratic participative leaders foster a culture of teamwork, with mutual support and trust among team members. This type of leadership is most effective because it is successful in motivating subordinates to achieve high levels of performance.
Based on the Behavioral Approach, leadership can be behavioral, situational, or related to the leader’s interaction with the group. Leadership, according to this viewpoint, should be defined as “what leaders do” rather than “what leaders are.”
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3. Fiedler’s Situational Theory of Leadership:
The Contingency Approach is another name for this theory developed by Fred. E. Fiedler.
The type of leader attitude required for effective group performance, according to Fiedler, “depends on the extent to which the group situation is advantageous or disadvantageous to the leader.”
According to Fiedler’s model for leadership effectiveness, the qualities required for effectiveness vary depending on the situation.
Situational factors have three critical dimensions:
i) A leader’s personal relationship with his group members
ii) Formal authority seems to be inherent in the position of leadership.
iii) The level of task structure expected of group members
The situation is most favorable if all three dimensions are favorable, i.e., if the leader has good personal relationships with his group members, if his position gives him a lot of power and authority, and if the task to be executed by the group is well-structured.
4. Traits Approach:
The Traits Approach defines leadership characteristics because it is based on the belief that “successful leaders are assumed to acquire more of certain traits than unsuccessful leaders,” as well as the belief that “certain inborn traits make a person a good leader.”
This approach concentrates on creating a profile of an ideal leader utilizing observations of positive and negative leaders as well as the personal characteristics they possess.
The personality traits and individual characteristics attained by good and bad leaders are then analyzed to identify ‘critical leadership traits,’ which are traits possessed in massively different amounts by good and bad leaders.
According to Stogdill, based on numerous research findings, the traits of a good leader are:
i) Intelligence
ii) Ability to tolerate ambiguity
iii) Administrative ability
iv) Interpersonal skills
v) Ability to motivate people
vi) Initiative and Drive
vii) Foresight
5. Bass’s Leadership Motivational Theory:
Bass defines leadership as “the observed effort of one member to change the behavior of another member by modifying the motivation of the other members or changing their habits.”
According to Bass, the recognizable changes brought about as an outcome of the leader’s motivation can determine a leader’s effectiveness. A leader can motivate a worker using any method, such as a promise of consideration, reward, or support, and so on. Bass suggests that another way to achieve successful leadership is to “make others more capable of overcoming the obstacles subverting goal attainment.”
Conclusion
If you are an aspiring HR manager, it is critical that you understand leadership theories and how they affect you and your leadership style. Recognizing your preferred leadership style or leadership theory can assist you in determining how to be the most effective leader possible. Recognizing leadership theories and styles in the company you work for is beneficial, as is understanding what you can do to carry on or improve on that leadership theory.
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