1- Why is culture important? 2- Be familiar with the person-based theories of le

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Question

1- Why is culture important?
2- Be familiar with the person-based theories of leadership. Be able to name and explain/discuss one of these. The same for the situation-based theories, dispersed theories, and exchanged theories of leadership?
1- Why is culture important? 1- Why is culture important?
2- Be familiar with the person-based theories of leadership. Be able to name and explain/discuss one of these. The same for the situation-based theories, dispersed theories, and exchanged theories of leadership?

2- Be familiar with the person-based theories of leadership. Be able to name and explain/discuss one of these. The same for the situation-based theories, dispersed theories, and exchanged theories of leadership?

Explanation / Answer

Why is culture important?

Culture is an important part of people's lives. All people live in some culture, some group. Every person needs some culture to be belonged to. Because culture influences people's views, values, their lifestyle, their worries, their loyalties and hopes.

Each culture have specific common people in their own group. And each culture is different from other. So the differences do exist amongst people, but they are to be understood and people should accept the other culture and live in it happily.

Leadership theories.

Person-based theories:

Every leader has different approach and characteristics to lead which makes him a successful leader. The four core theroy are:

1. Trait theories:

Traits are the external behaviors that come up from our mind and it's these our internal processes that are needed to become an effective leader.

This theory says that effective leaders should have some common personality traits or specific characteristics. It helps us identify some qualities of leadership such as integrity, good decision-making, empathy, etc.

2. Behavioral theories:

This theory focuses on what type of leader is. A leader can be of three types.

*Autocratic leaders: this type of leader makes decision on his own without consulting or involving his team. This style is approriate when quick decisions are to be made and team involvement is not necessary.

*Democratic leaders: this type of leader consults and involves his team in decision-making.

*Laissez-faire leaders: such type of leader do not interfere and allows his team to make decisions. But this can be only effective when the team is highly capable and does not need close supervision. But it may happen that leaders who might be lazy can take this approach of leadership.

3. Contingency theories:

This theory suggests that there is no one correct method of leadership. A leader has to behave and make decisions according to the situations. Different situations demand different approaches of leadership.

The most popular Contingency theories are Path-Goal theory and Fiedler's Contingency Model.

4. Power and Influence theories: this type of leaders use power and influence to get the work done. The popular theories here are French and Raven's Foms of Power which highlights three positional power i.e. legitimate, reward and coercive power and two personal power i.e. expert and referent.

Another leadership style is transactional leadership which says that people work for rewards and no other reason. Thus to focus on assisgning tasks that brings rewards is important here.

Situational-based theories.

This type of theories says that no particular skill of a leader is always used in leadership. A leader has to approach different styles and skills for leadership according to the situations.

There are two main types of Situational-based theories:

1. The Goleman theory of situational leadership which defines six types of leaders.

*Coaching leaders, who coach people and work on their personal development and job-related skills.

*Pacesetting leaders, the one who sets too high expectations for its followers.

*Democratic leaders are the one who involves their team in the decison-making.

*Affiliative leaders are the ones who put their employees first. This type of leadership is used when the morale of employees is very low.

*Authoritative leaders are those who are good at finding and analyzing problems and challenges.

*Coercive leaders are those who tell their followers what to do.

2. Blanchard and Hersey theory.

This theory is based on two things, the leadership itself and the level of the follower. Blanchard and Hersey has developed a matriz which conists of four styles:

*Telling leaders who make decisions and communicate it to their followers.

*Selling, means leaders sell their ideas to followers and are open their opinions.

*Participating, which allows the followers to make decisions.

*Delegating, means letting others do. Here, leaders provides minimum support to its followers in solving problems.

Dispersed Leadership.

This leadership says that here the leadership or decision-making is dipersed amongst the group of followers. Every follower has some responsibility of his specified task.

This theory includes

interactional leadership which is exerted by the leaders;

team leadership which is carried on by its team members and

structureal leadership which is influenced by the task and organizational factors.

Exchange leadership.

This theory says that here the approach of leadership is based upon the relationship of the leader and followers. It says that the leaders do not treat every follower in the same manner and thus the work-related behavior of the follower depends on how he is being treated by the leader.

The three primary categories here are:

*follower characteristics which include competence, agreeableness, openness, locus of control, etc.

*leader characteristics which include transformational leadership, agrreableness, extraversion, etc.

*interpersonal relationship which includes leader trust, self-promotion, assertivness, etc.

Other categories of this theory includes contextual variables such as work-setting, cultural dimensions,etc. and the consequences which may be role ambiguity, actual turnover, role conflict, empowerment, job satifaction, etc.