Theories of Leadership Essay

Theories of Leadership Essay

Ngan Thao Nguyen

Due date: January 08, 2017

BC 306

Submitted to

Prof. Daniel Hammes

            As The Art of War, the oldest known military text stated that "the leader of armies is the arbiter of the people's fate, the man on whom it depends whether the nation shall be in peace or in peril". It is true that leadership is the key factor to the survival and success of organizations. Leadership is the art of managing tasks and influencing people to get the common goals efficiently and effectively. Yet not everyone was born to become a leader. This also means that one cannot become a great leader only by learning. What they should keep in mind is to understand the various theories of leadership and also the importance of ethical leaders in the operating process of ethical business organizations. That way, they can know how to apply the right approaches for each situation. Hence, this essay will focus on two main parts, including a theory of leadership and the role of ethical leaders in creating and maintaining ethical business organizations.

Looking at some well-known leaders around in the 21st century, like Steve Job or President Obama, we may wonder if there are any special traits make them excellent leaders. Do their successes depend on certain personality characteristics, or do characteristics of the situation make it more likely that certain people will take charge? There are four core leadership theories, which are trait theory, behavioral theories, contingency theories and situational theories. However, this essay will talk only about the first approach – Trait theories. According to Cherry (2016), "trait theory assumes that people inherit certain qualities and traits that make them better suited to leadership. Trait theories often identify a particular personality or behavioral characteristics shared by leaders." Maybe it is not completely true to all successful leaders, nevertheless, the lesson learned for leaders from this approach is these characteristics are truly important for all leaders to have. The first crucial trait of a leader is the confidence. Confidence can be understood to be the trust of someone in their decision-making, opinions, and power of themselves. A leader with the insight consciousness about himself will express his abilities beyond any doubt as a captain, then transmit the faith to followers, win their respect, admire and make them willing to cope with the challenge. Indeed, they are the people who start to change and they also often have to make important decisions without enough information. They also have to solve challenging problems. If a leader has no belief to move forward and believe that everything will be fine, he would be knocked down just by an insignificant mistake. A confident leader is someone dared to overcome failure and accept risks. Confidence is a dignity that can help leaders to handle the challenge. Another trait of a person makes a good leader is honesty and integrity. Honesty is the quality of being fair and truthful. This quality makes the leader become open and people will feel like they are always treated with care and concern. The integrity of a leader is integrated and based on the principles of ethical solid and they act associated with that principles. Honesty and integrity established beliefs between leaders and followers. Leaders could not create belief, settings relationships if they don't have honesty and integrity. A survey has been done with 1,500 people discussed on what we need in a leader, the answer is integrity. Ultimately, if we decided to serve somebody, whether stepping in a war or in a conference room of the board of directors, the first thing that we want is to make sure they worth with our loyal. We want the people they have to be people worth reliable, ethical, and got rules. We want to perfectly believe in our leaders. The third trait is considered to be the most crucial dignities for leadership - the strength. The strength is seen as a motivation to create high efforts for leaders. Leaders with high strength always look for high performance. They usually have the power, tenacity and ambitious to get goals. Ambitious can help them to reach the challenging targets. The high strength also requires a good health. Leaders work for hours all year. That's why they need to be tolerance and healthy to control the progress, requests and challenges of leadership. Furthermore, leaders also have to regularly responsible initiated the new plans as well as the instructions to perform the plan successful completely. The characteristics of strength, confident and integrity have a huge impact on leaders. Nevertheless, these approaches do not entirely ensure to an excellent leader. When all of the other factors are the same, characteristics of leaders contribute to the success of the organization.