Leaders don’t always know about, understand, or recognize the many leadership theories that are in operation each day within organizations. Leadership theories provide the foundation for motivation and leadership, helping us to form ideas and setting the stage for strategies and goals.
Name one leadership theory that realistically could be in place and exhibited by supervisors/employees without their even knowing it. Explain your answer and back it up with research.
Discuss how the leadership theory is put in place to motivate, nurture, and increase performance of employees or followers.
Practical Application: Describe a situation where you or another colleague had to make a tough decision at work. What leadership or decision-making theory was at play? Did you recognize this at the time? If not, might you have used more intricate pieces of the theory to make the situation go smoothly?
Note: If you do not have a work experience upon which to base this answer, you may research an organization or leader, but name the organization and provide evidence of your research (e.g., a newspaper article, for example, that describes the scenario).
Chow, T., Salleh, L. & Ismail, I. (2017). Lessons from the major leadership theories in comparison to the competency theory for leadership practice. Journal of Business and Social Review in Emerging Economies, 3(2), 147-156. (To view this reading, please open the link provided and select “Full Text then select “PDF on the next screen.)
Lisak, A., Erez, M, Sui, Y., & Lee, C. (2016). The positive role of global leaders in enhancing multicultural team innovation. Journal of International Business Studies, 47(6), 655-673.
Pathak, M. (2016). Authenticity: The new leadership standard. Human Capital, 20(5), 52-53. (To view this reading, please open the link provided and download the “PDF full text.”)
Yi-Feng, Y. (2016). Examining competing models of transformational leadership, leadership trust, change commitment, and job satisfaction. Psychological Reports, 119(1), 154-173. (To view this reading, please open the link provided and download the “PDF full text.”)
Robbins, S. R., & Judge, T. A. (2017). Essentials of organizational behavior (14th ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pears
