Leadership

Leadership

Commonly, the word leadership is related to:

The position associated with an authority figure such as a President.

The position associated with a person with technical skills or experience, as the leader of a team or a supervising engineer.

A group of people with some influence.

Guidance and direction, as in the phrase "the emperor does not show enough leadership."

The capacity or ability to lead.

In this article we will review some of the leadership theories, the worldwide application of different theories, and finally the leadership skill development methods.

Leadership Theories

Theory X

The sociologist Douglas McGregor (1906-1964) ran two opposing theories in his book The Human Side of Company (1960). On the one hand, the so-called X, that an average person does not like the job nature and try to avoid it. In fact, people like to be addressed, since this avoids any responsibility, do not harbor any ambition; they just want security (House, 2004).

The assumptions of Theory X are:

The ordinary human being feels an intrinsic aversion to work.

Because of this human tendency to govern the work most people have to be forced to work by force, controlled, directed and threatened with punishment for develop the appropriate effort to achieve the objectives of the organization.

The common man prefers to be directed like sidestep responsibility, has relatively little ambition and wants more than anything their safety.

Theory Y

The Theory Y managers believe that their subordinates are at work as a source of satisfaction and will always strive to achieve the best results for the organization. If so, the companies must deliver the skills of their workers for such results (House, 2004).

The assumptions underlying Theory Y are:

The development of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest. All average human being dislikes essentially no work.

External control and threat of punishment are not the only means of directing the effort humane goals of the organization.

Individuals are committed to achieve the objectives of the company with relevant compensation.

The ordinary human being is accustomed to seek responsibility. The lack of ambition and insistence on security are generally consequences of that experience and not essentially human characteristics.

The ability to develop relatively high degree of imagination, ingenuity and ability to solve organizational problems creatively, is characteristic of large sections of the population.

Administrative GRID

Robert R. Blake and Jane Srygley Mouton developed a fairly objective graph the two-dimensional view of leadership styles, which had already been investigated at Ohio State University and Michigan University. The administrative GRID was created from the conclusions drawn in previous studies, based in the styles of "concern for people" and "concern for production", which essentially represent dimensions of "consideration" and "initial structure" of Ohio State University, or the dimensions of "orientation to the employee "and" production orientation "of the University of Michigan. Using the four quadrants of the Ohio State model is a matrix of nine by nine, which outlines 81 different styles of leadership, describing explicitly the four extreme types (1.1 9.1 1.9 and 9.9) and average style (5.5).

The GRID does not show the results produced rather, the key factors in the thinking ...