Modern concepts of leadership have evolved in response to today’s fast-changing environment. This means that there are inevitable stresses between the concepts of leadership developed in the industrial age and those of today.
In 1988, Richard Daft and Robert H Lengel created a model which charts the evolution of leadership over the previous century. They look at leadership with regard to two factors: whether leadership works on a micro or a macro level, and whether environmental conditions are stable or chaotic. Micro leadership involves the leader in the detail of the organisation, whereas macro leadership is involved with the overarching vision, ideals and strategy of the business.
How these levels interact within a stable or chaotic environment is the basis for the pair’s model. Daft and Lengel originally used these factors to create a four-box matrix which sets out four distinct eras in leadership.
Era 1 – Macro leadership in a stable environment
Daft and Lengel call this era ‘Great Man Leadership’. It was usually a man who occupied the leadership position and great leaders were frequently portrayed as heroes. The dominant leaders were often studied to see if there were common traits and/or behaviours that could be identified so that leadership could be predicted or trained.
Era 2 – Micro leadership in a stable environment
In this era, organisations had grown very large and needed to be carefully managed in order to make them efficient. It was a time when such ideas as ‘scientific management’ began to come to the fore and bureaucracy and administration started to impose set methods for workers to carry out tasks. Leaders studied the role, broke it into small pieces and then told the employee what to do. Employees were not expected to think beyond the specific task allocated to them.
Era 3 – Micro leadership in a chaotic environment
In era three, we are starting to get more up-to-date. The early 1970s saw rising oil prices and the emergence of greater global competition, particularly in the US where competition from Japan forced change upon most corporations. The increasing introduction of technology upped the pace further.
Many organisations tried new team-based approaches and empowerment was the buzz-word of the time. For the manager accustomed to managing in a stable environment, these were not comfortable times. Many felt overwhelmed in this changing environment with its new ways of working and the removal of layers of middle management leading to redundancies as organisations downsized.
Era 4 – Macro leadership in a chaotic environment
In era four, with the ‘facilitating leader’, we are in today’s world of fast-paced change and leaders who, as in ‘era one’ are looking at the big picture. However, this time the vision needs to be shared by everyone if an organisation is to succeed. Leaders need to lead through relationships, shared visions and by shaping the culture to meet the challenges ahead. They need to work with people rather than control them.
The journey through the four different types of leadership demonstrates that the requirements for successful leadership have changed in line with the environment in which they have operated. There is, of course, every reason to think that leadership requirements will continue to change in order to meet the challenges of the future.
Alongside these eras, different theories of leadership have been developed:
Traits and Behaviour approaches
The perceived wisdom for the most part of the 20th century was that leaders were born, not made. As John Adair, Professor of Leadership at Exeter University points out, ‘Those who hold it maintain that there are certain inborn qualities, such as initiative, courage, intelligence and humour, which together predestine a man to be a leader. This ‘qualities’ or ‘traits’ approach to leadership has two major drawbacks.
First, there is no universal agreement as to the qualities which combine to produce effective leadership. Indeed, a study of some of the great leaders of history will produce some contradictory characteristics when looking at what made them successful. Second, the qualities approach removes the rationale for leadership training and concentrates instead on selection.
Contingency and Situational approaches
Social scientists researching leadership in the mid-20th century began to realise that leadership exists because of a relationship between different people in a particular situation. This means that who becomes the leader in any group will depend upon the nature of the task and the particular setting in which it occurs. For example, at the scene of a road traffic accident, a doctor who happens on the scene is likely to take the lead.
This so-called ‘situational approach’ to leadership also had some disadvantages. First, the idea of leadership changing hands according to the nature of the situation was unsatisfactory in most organisations. Second, it did not explain the fact that some people seem to be able to exert an influence over others in a whole range of situations.
The important point to emerge from such research is that leadership is a relationship not a quality.
Transformational Leadership
During the 1990s, the scale and speed of organisational change led many thinkers, including Richard Pascale, Warren Bennis, Peter Senge and John Kotter, to postulate models of transformational leadership. These ideas saw the leader as the instigator of change, regenerating and reinvigorating their organisation.
Now outlooks on leadership are starting to suggest that no single individual is likely to display the requirements necessary to cope with many different situations. Leadership, therefore, is currently being examined from the perspective of role and team contribution.
Reference:
Richard L Daft and Robert H Lengel, Fusion Leadership: Unlocking the Subtle Forces that Change People and Organisations (Berret-Koehler Publishers, 1988).
John Adair, The Skills of Leadership (Gower, 1993).
W Bennis, Why Leaders Can't Lead: The Unconscious Conspiracy Continues (Jossey-Bass, 1989).
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