Skills Approach to Leadership and Definition of Leadership

Introduction

Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal. Many people believe that leadership is a way to improve their personal, social, professional lives. There are four types of the approaches Trait approach, Skills approach, Behavioral approach, and Situational approach. In this essay, these approaches rates from best to worst; Behavioral approach, Skills approach, Situational approach and Trait approach.

Behavioral Approach to Leadership

Behavioral Approaches distinguish successful leaders from unsuccessful leaders. Leadership behavioral strategies are based on the idea that the development of strong leaders is not born.

People can learn to become leaders through training and observations, so if they want to, anyone can become a leader.

Strengths of Behavioral Approaches to Leadership

Behavioral approaches promote participatory decision-making and team growth by tackling individual needs and trying to associate an individual and group goals. It helps managers evaluate and recognize how their manager's behavioral style that impacts their team relationship and encourages engagement and contribution to organizational goals.

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This principle helps managers to find the right balance between different styles of leadership and helps them determine how to behave as a leader, based on individuals and concerns about efficiency.

Weaknesses of Behavioral Theory to Leadership

Behavioral Leadership Theory suggests models of leadership, but a particular style of leadership may not be the best in all cases. This theory can help managers establish specific behaviors of leadership, but they do provide some direction on what constitutes effective leadership in different circumstances.

Skills Approach to Leadership

Skills Approach Theory assumes a leader must learn and develop those skills that can make one a successful leader.

The approach to skills has a leader centered aspect. Skills suggest what leaders can accomplish, learn and develop. The skills approach suggests that thorough training and development can be developed for the skills, knowledge, and skills required for a leader to be successful.

Strengths of Skills Approach to Leadership

Skills Approach helps to build a strong awareness of leadership. It works to promote the idea of improving leadership skills, rather than concentrating on those already acquired. It appealing template defines leadership for all, does not define a specific individual. It incorporates several components. It provides a consistent framework that works well with various leadership education programs. It allows people to connect at many stages, even if they are in a low, medium or high management position.

Weaknesses of Skills Approach to Leadership

Widens beyond leadership, making it difficult to focus on developing just as a leader, becomes problematic when it comes to discussing more than just leadership qualities, makes it difficult to focus on specific skills, Poor in predictive value, does not clarify how specific skill sets can impact performance, makes it difficult to understand improvement if you are unclear which skills are focused on, Not suitable for all leadership situations, limits to the general public.

Situational Approach to Leadership

Situational leadership refers to when a leader or manager of an organization has to adjust its system to accommodate the level of development of its followers. It is up to the leader to change his approach of situational leadership, not the follower to conform to the style of the leader. The style can change in situational leadership on an ongoing basis to meet the needs of others in the organization.

Strengths of Situational Approach to Leadership

Recognizing the need for flexibility, providing a comfortable environment for staff, taking into account various developmental stages, growing leadership knowledge, allowing a group to work better together, improving the training routine.

Weaknesses of Situational Approach to Leadership

Situational Approach focuses mostly on urgent needs than on long-term needs, it can be inefficient in task-oriented settings, it can be difficult to identify competence, it does not provide sufficient information to some leaders, it is dependent on the leader’s skill level, it develops an organizational dependence, it can lead to confusion in the business.

Trait approach to Leadership

The leadership trait model is based on the attributes of many leaders, both successful and unsuccessful, and is used to assess the efficacy of leadership. Successful leaders certainly have different interests, talents, and personality traits from those of the less effective leaders. A trait model leadership should have a high level of effort, a higher level of motivation, power, and initiative, a deep desire to lead others to shared goals, honesty and integrity, self-confidence, ability to exercise good judgment, strong analytical and cognitive capacity, intelligence, well-adjusted emotional stability, do not suffer from severe psychological disorders, creativity and flexibility.

Strengths of Trait Approach to Leadership

Trait approach is a naturally pleasing theory, it provides the leader component in the leadership process a comprehensive knowledge and understanding.

Weaknesses of Trait Approach to Leadership

There is supposed to be some subjective judgment in evaluating who is considered a’ good’ or’ successful’ leader, there is also a disagreement about which characteristics are the most significant to an effective leader, the model makes an attempt to relate physical characteristics such as height and weight to effective leadership. Most of these variables are related to situational factors. The theory is very complex.

Conclusion

In this essay, it describes the definition of leadership and 4 different approaches of leadership. It explores how to improve leadership skills and assesses the value of leadership in organizations trying to achieve specific goals. Leadership approaches such as skills, trait, behavioral and situational approaches are examined to show how they support effective leadership. In this essay, I prefer the behavioral approach as the best approach because behavioral strategies are based on the idea that the development of strong leaders through knowledge and experience. Then, skills approach, it assumes a leader who learns and develops those skills that can make one a successful leader. The situational approach is based on the adjustment of a leader with the organization and followers and I gave the worse position for the trait approach because it concentrated on inborn leaders. So, everyone couldn't be able to become a good leader based on trait approach.