Leadership Theories Essay

Leadership theories, by their nature, are comparatively modern phenomena, and they have been put forward by the unexpected interest in different historical leaders. In addition, it was the desire to define the behaviors, and the characteristics that those leaders demonstrated. In order to understand the leader’s characteristics, his failures and successes, as well as the work and political environment, the modern full-time employee can believe to reiterate that success.
In this paper, we are going to research and describe the three widely-known Leadership Theories of Max Weber (1948), James MacGregor Burns (1978), and Daniel Goleman (1995). These three theories will help us to understand the development of the transformational leadership’s concept through the background of emotional intelligence.
Max Weber emphasized three types of leaders of the various forms of authority: legal-rational, charismatic, and traditional. Legal–rational leadership is based on the concept of reasonableness, lawfulness of the order of electing a leader, handing over certain powers. The leader’s power is based on legal norms recognized by the community.
The competence of each power holders is clearly outlined by the constitution and different internal regulations.
The term of a “charismatic leader” is widely used in psychology. The charismatic leader is a man who by virtue of his/her personal abilities and qualities can have a profound and extraordinary effect on people. The charismatic leader is in demand, especially in society, where there are always some crisis situations, and there is no the control’s system of power by the citizens. Basing on Weber’s work, a charismatic personality receives a “right to rule” from their extraordinary personal qualities and the belief of the ruled in their superhuman inspirations” (Karlberg, 2005). Leaders of this type have a high need for power. They have a strong need for any action and are convinced of their moral rightness of what they believe. The need for power motivates them in the quest to become the leaders. These qualities develop the features, such as charismatic behaviors, modeling of a role, image creation, etc.
Traditional leadership is based on the mechanism of traditions, rituals, or habits. The right to rule, the leader acquires due to his/her origin. This type of leadership is typical for the traditional society, which is based on the authority of “ever ruling government.” It is not superfluous to mention that Weber was one of the first theorists who recognized the fact that leadership, by its nature, was situational. The true leaders have to pass actively from one type of leadership theory to another one in order to be and keep well-known and successful. Furthermore, Weber stated that there were two main principles within which the leaders operated. They are: transformations and transactions. In Weber’s opinion, the transformational leaders were charismatic leaders, who were considered to be almost “divine” by his/her nature and sometimes likened to the heroes. In their work, they always used their charisma and charm to achieve the desired goals. Weber stated that transactional leaders were people who operated within environment and different existing systems in order to achieve positive results.
According to Burns (1978), “leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth.” Leadership theory of Burns borders with some thoughts and opinions of Weber. Burns added his own points of views about the leaders. It is important to mention that though the theories of Weber and Burns identified both transformational and transactional leaderships, Burns developed a universal aspect of the moral leaders with respect to the amoral leaders.
Burns’ transformational leaders include the following types of leadership:
Reform leaders – they change the community with the help of estimating a single moral problem;
Intellectual leaders – they reform the community or society with the help of distinctiveness of vision;
Charismatic leaders – they apply their own charisma or charm to achieve the changes;
Revolutionary leaders – they bring changes in society by the radical and wide reorganization and transformation.
Burns researched and described the five main types of leaders among the transactional leadership styles:
Opinion leaders are the leaders who have the ability to affect the public opinion;
Bureaucratic leaders are those leaders who keep their position power over people;
Party leaders are the leaders who keep their political titles or positions in one or particular country;
Executive leaders are the leaders, who can deal with some political parties, but it is not compulsory, and they are often characterized as the country’s president;
Legislative leaders are those leaders; they also are called political leaders, who work behind different scenes.
One of the most important discoveries in the field of Leadership Theories at the present stage is the concept of “Emotional Intelligence” – EQ. This critical component of leadership was substantiated by Daniel Goleman. That theory of emotional intelligence answers the following question: what are the main elements, which can describe a leader?
In his work, Goleman wanted to define the behaviors, which can made people effective and useful leaders.
The model of emotional leadership, perhaps, is only one of all management theory, which relies on the discoveries of neuroscience. The results obtained in the study of the brain, quite convincingly help to explain why mood and behavior of leaders have a powerful influence on their followers.
Goleman stated that it was not enough to have just intelligence and, consequently, to be a good leader.
He admitted that there was some element that distinguished the leaders from the ordinary intellectuals – it was their emotional intelligence. In addition, Goleman characterized five main components of emotional intelligence:
Self-Awareness: an analysis of own emotions and understanding them. This is also the ability to understand own weaknesses and strengths.
Social Skills: the ability to manage their relationships with people, the ability to listen to the feelings of others, understanding their positions, etc.
Self-Regulation: the ability to control disruptive emotions and impulses, the leader’s ability to think over the consequences before responding to a situation.
Motivation: an emotional state that impels to an action, a strong desire to succeed in something.
Empathy: understanding of another person’s emotional state through empathy, and penetration into his subjective world.
This is a well-known fact that recent leadership theories are based on the earlier theorists’ works. The people’s understanding of leadership and leaders has been improving as a more precise definition to the existing models. Like any theory, leadership theory has both negative and positive sides, but despite this fact Weber, Burns, and Goleman contributed greatly to the development of leadership theories and laid the basis for the major themes and concepts.
To sum up the above-stated information, it is possible to draw a conclusion that leadership is a very important component of modern society. Leadership is the art of influencing people, the ability to inspire them to the fact that they should strive to achieve the desired goals. Nowadays, the concerns of leadership are quite sharp, and therefore the study of leadership has the great importance among different researchers.