Masters in Arts in Project Planning and Management

UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI

MASTERS IN ARTS IN PROJECT PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT

COURSE CODE: LDP 601:

FUNDAMENTALS OF MANAGEMENT

SUBMITTED AS PARTIAL FULFILMENT FOR THE AWARD OF MASTER OF ART IN PROJECT PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT

MULIANDE, DUNCAN IMBAMBA

L50/61607/2013

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT

QUESTION

Are leaders born or made? Discuss these contentions, drawing from the different streams of literature on leaders and leadership effectiveness.

INTRODUCTION

There is extensive literature on leaders and leadership, but despite this, there is still no consensus as to why and under what circumstances some become great leaders, others average leaders while others remain followers.‘Whether leaders areborn with talents and traits that allow and even cause them to be successful leaders, or whethereffective leadership behaviors can be learned through experience is a difficult question’

Jay Conger defining leadership with three dimensions: Leaders are individuals who establish direction for a working group of individuals, who gain commitment from these group members to this direction, and who then motivate these members to achieve the direction's outcomes.

When 361 chief executive officers at theCenter for Creative Leadership’s (CCL) World Leadership Survey (WLS)were asked “are leaders born or made”, 19.1% believe that leaders are more born (Born), 52.4% believe they are more made (Made), and 28.5% believe they are about equally born and made.

IMPORTANCE OF THE DEBATE

Our beliefs about how people become leaders affect how we evaluate people’s leadership potential.

Understanding whether people in your organization think leaders are born or made is critical because these attitudes play out in recruiting, promotion and development decisions.

Those who believe they are born leaders are likely to be more supportive of individual actions and moreleader- or authority-focused, while those who believe they are made will be more supportive of influencing and other-focusedactions.

If you are in a role that includes persuading others to invest in training or other developmental opportunities, it helps to know whether those people are born leaders or made leaders, or somewhere in the middle.

LEADERSHIP THEORIES

Different theories have been used to support the two sides of the debate. These can be summarized as follows:

1. The Great Man’s theory
2. Traits Theory and
3. Behavioral Theory
4. Contingency Theories
5. Situational Theories
6. Role theory
7. Participative theory
8. Transactional theory
9. Transformational leadership theory

GREAT MAN’S THEORY

In the 1940s and 1950s, studies on leadership tended to lean more on the Traits Theory and the Great Man’s theory.

According to the Great Man’s theory “Leaders are born not madeand they possess certain traits which were inherited and that great leaders can arise when there is a great need” Leaders such as Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Queen Elizabeth I, and Abraham Lincoln were cited as naturally great leaders, born with a set of personal qualities that made them effective leaders.

This theory is linked to the work of the historian “Thomas Carlyle” and was proposed during the 19thcentury(1840’s)

It was named as the great man theory because leadership was considered as a quality found mostly in men. With the emergence of many great women leaders as well, the theory was recognized as the great person theory.

Because many of the traits cited as being important to be an effective leader were typical masculine traits and the significant shift in such a mentality researchers now focused on understanding what leadership was andwho a leader was? This led to the trait approach to leadership.

TRAIT THEORIES

According to this theory “People are born with inherited traits. Some traits are particularly suited to lead, making them excellent leadership qualities. People who make good leaders have the right combination of traits”. Stogdill (1974) listed the following traits and skills as vital to leaders:

TRAITS / SKILLS
Adaptable to situations
Alert to social environment
Ambitious and achievement oriented
Assertive
Cooperative
Decisive
Dependable
Dominant
Energetic
Persistent
Self confident
Tolerant of stress
Willing to assume responsibility / Clever
Conceptually skilled
Creative
Diplomatic and tactful
Fluent in speaking
Knowledgeable about group task
Organized
Persuasive
Social skilled

The leader traits were defined as “relatively stable andcoherent integrations of personal characteristics that foster a consistent patternof leadership performance across a variety of group and organizational situation.”

These characteristics reflect a range of stable individual differences, including personality, temperament, motives, cognitive abilities, skills, and expertise.

Stephen J. Zaccaro, Cary Kemp, Paige Bader

Galton (1869) examined the correlated status of leaders and geniuses across generations. He defined extraordinary intelligence as a key leader attribute and argued that such leader qualities were inherited, not developed. He also proposed eugenics, which relied on selective mating to produce individuals with the best combination of leadership qualities. Terman (1904) produced the first empirical study of leadership, examining the qualities that differentiated leaders from non-leaders in schoolchildren. He reported such attributes as verbal fluency, intelligence, low emotionality, daring, congeniality, goodness, and liveliness as characterizing youthful leaders. Similar studies burgeoned after Terman’s (see Stogdill, 1948, for a review), forming the initial empirical backdrop for trait research.

After detailed studies this inherited traits theory had been kept at bay and situational and learned factors became more accepted.

On contrary to leadership as an inborn trait,the theories below are based upon belief that leaders are made and not born. It focuses on actions of leaders and not on mental qualities or internal states

Contingency Theories
After it was observed that some leaders successful at one place or in one situation were found not to be so successful in another place or situation it was concluded that the leader's ability to lead was contingent upon various situational factors, including the leader's preferred style, the capabilities and behaviors of followers and other situational factors.

Situational Theories
Here actions of the leader is solely dependent upon the factors that prevail in the situation.

These models perhaps werestarted with A. J. Murphy (1941), who argued, “Leadership does not reside in the person. It is a function of the whole situation.” (p. 674).

Situational decisions demand the motivation and capabilities of team member or followers. A leader's behavior is dependent upon the perception of themselves and other factors such as stress.
Yukl (1989) identifies six other variables, the motivation and actual effort expended, followers knowing what to do and how to do it, the structure of the work and utilization of resources, of the group in working together, the availability of tools, materials, people, etc and the need to collaborate with other groups.

Leaders here work on such factors as external relationships, acquisition of resources, managing demands on the group, managing the structures and culture of the group.

Behavioral Theories
Opposed to the trait theory, behavioral leadership is not only inherited but learned. Statistical analysis of the leadership successes and actions of leaders provides the scientific clues for behavioral patterns involved. Here success can be defined in terms of describable actions and it is easy for others to follow it.

Role Theory
According to this theory, people define roles for themselves and for others based on their readings and social learning. In a broad sense people have internal points of view for the role of the leaders based on what they read, discuss and so on.
These are all delivered to the leaders in different forms, thus the public defines the role of their leaders. In an organization formal and informal chains develop to carry out messages in both directions.
Participative Theories
According to this theory involvement of the team in decision-making improves the understanding of the issue and makes them more committed to the actions, less competitive, and more collaborative. Several people make better decision than single one.

Transactional Theory
This theory is based on the reward and punishment and it works best with a clear chain of command. Here leaders allocate the work and subordinates are responsible to accomplish it. Feedback is given according to their performance. The early stage of Transactional leadership is to negotiating the contract at that time their style is “selling”. Once the contract is in place then the leadership adopts the “telling” style.
Transactional Theory is further explained by Leader-Member Exchange Theory (LMX): According to this theory, the leader often forms two circles: an inner and an outer. The inner circle consists of the people who are more trusted and loyal to the leaders. They carry more responsibility, have more decision influence and are empowered with more access to the resources.

Transformational Leadership theory
These kinds of leaders inspire the team, injecting enthusiasm and energy. This leads to things getting done. These leaders have vision and passion to do great things. They constantly sell the vision and show how this vision can be manifested. They are forefront fighters and never hide themselves behind the troops. They are people oriented.

Burn’s Transformational Leadership theory
Social and spiritual levels are great motivational factors. It gives people an uplifting sense of being connected for higher purposes and a sense of meaning and identity.

RESURGENCE OF LEADER TRAIT PERSPECTIVES

The general resurgence of leader trait perspectives came in the 1980s and can be attributed to several research lines. The first was a statistical reexamination of both the early leader trait reviews and the rotation design studies.

The results of a recent research, “Born to lead? A twin design and genetic association study of leadershipRole occupancy,” Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Slava Mikhaylov , Christopher T. Dawes, Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler of University College London, UK, Centre for Economic Performance (LSE), UK, New York University, USA, Harvard Medical School, USA, University of California, San Diego, USA suggest “that what determines whether an individual occupies a leadership position is the complex product of genetic and environmental influences, with a particular role for rs4950, a specific genotype associated with the tendency to occupy a leadership position.

The results report suggest that what determines whether people occupy leadership positions may be a complex product of genetic and environmental influences. But this is just the beginning. To better understand the causal mechanisms underlying leadership role occupancy, future research should investigate whether the genetic variant rs4950 and the neuronal acetylcholine receptor genes affect alternative measures of leadership emergence, leadership types, and personality traits that are essential components of leadership emergence and effectiveness. It should also focus on the way these and other genetic variants interact with contextual influences to jointly shape leadership. But most importantly, future work should not assume that the environment is all that matters. If we really want to understand leadership and its effect on organizational, institutional, economic, and political outcomes, we must study both nature and nurture.

The traits-centered approach has not vanished from modern studies of leadership but it has been broadened and made more flexible. Traits have come to be seen as consistent patterns of personality rather than inherited characteristics. This definition mixes nature and nurture, and means that “traits” can to some extent be learned rather than merely inherited. Leaders can be said to be more energetic, more risk-taking, more optimistic, more persuasive, and more empathetic than other people, but these traits are affected partly by a leader’s genetic makeup and partly by the environments in which the traits were learned and developed.

Stephen J. Zaccaro, Cary Kemp and Paige Bader propose the following: “A leader’s cognitive capacities, personality, motives, and values are necessary but not sufficient in isolation to influence growth and utilization of proximal skills and expertise; the influence of these distal traits derives from their joint application. A leader’s social appraisal skills, problem-solving competencies, expertise, and tacit knowledge are necessary but not sufficient in isolation to influence the display and quality of particular leadership processes; the influence of these proximal traits derives from their joint application.”

CONCLUSION

Results of research done in this area indicate that one cannot conclusively say that either leaders are born or they are made. The current consensus is that both play an important role. While genetics and early family experiences play an important role in developing the personality and character needs that motivate the individual to lead and thus contributing to the development of the intellectual and interpersonal skills necessary to lead, origins of leadership go beyond genes and family to other sources. Work experiences, hardship, opportunity, education, role models and mentors all go together to craft a leader.

References:

Leadership: Theories and Controversies by Linda D. Henman, Ph.D.

Leadership: A Theoretical Perspective to Practical Application

Nature and Nurture in Leadership: By Joseph S. Nye, 2009

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