The Role of the Situation in Leadership

In the 21st century, the concept of leadership is still perplexing since scholars have different approaches on defining this term. However, most of them agree that the term leadership tightly correlates with the term influence. In this case, there is always an independent person who controls and guides a process (a leader), and dependent people who are subordinate and should perform the order’s of an independent person. Consequently, leadership can be defined as an ability of the person to provide effective guidance and decision making within the colleagues and organization. In this case, a leader always is a fundamental figure who controls the process and motivates other people to collaborate with each other, to discharge their orders in order to reach success and primary goals.

Undoubtedly, scientists have always accentuated that leadership is a personal trait with the help of which the leader can perform his duties. In this context, leadership is seen through a heroic conception. This theory was developed by Carlyle, Galton, and Nietzsche in the 18th century. According to the heroic conception of leadership, there is always a great man who is mature and intelligent enough to control and to manipulate society. However, in the 20th century, this model was deeply tested with the help of individual tests on measuring traits (dominance, extroversion, and masculinity) and was determined as inaccurate since it was identified that leadership highly depends not only on personal traits of the leader, but also on the situation that considerably influences leader’s behavior and the way of thinking. Moreover, in 1950-1960ies, scholars tried to find out universal traits of a leader. At this time, most of the scientific investigations were concentrated at the Ohio State University and the University of Michigan. In these educational institutions, a step in the direction of situational context was made since it was determined that leader’s behavior is under the impact of the situation that a leader faces and confronts.

In 1967, Fred Fielder developed the contingency model in which leader’s traits and situational context were analyzed. The contingence model demonstrates that favorability of the leadership situation plays an important role in the relationship between the leader and his/her colleagues. There are three main peculiarities that determine the leader among other people. They are leader member relationship, task structure, and leader position power. First of all, the leader member relationship demonstrates the trust, respect, and faith to the leader who organizes the work. Secondly, the task structure helps to make a detailed instruction of the work and guides the employees in the right direction of accomplishing the work. Thirdly, the leader position power shows what kind of manipulative tools are used by the leader with the aim to control the workers and organize their performance of the tasks. Moreover, the position power is very vital since it demonstrates the ability of the leader to direct the employees and provide effective methods of reward and punishment.

Indisputably, situational context is considerably important comparing to leader’s traits. Firstly, situation determines organizational effectiveness. For instance, new technological devices, team collaboration, interest rates, human consciousness can highly deteriorate or ameliorate the efficiency of organization, despite leader’s efforts. Secondly, situation controls and guides leader’s behavior. In this case, the power of situation can be concentrated in two levels, such as external and internal. External power of the situation can be amplified by the fact that human environment can significantly influence the leader’s behavior. For example, a mobile phone helps the leader to reach his/her subordinates. Internal power of the situation becomes apparent when psychological state, fair, and mood changes influence leader’s behavior. For instance, a pilot will be not able to control an airplane in the zone of turbulence if he is afraid of the possible crash. Finally, situation has an impact on consequences of leader’s behavior since it determines effective and ineffective conditions of leadership.

All in all, until nowadays, scholars have defined features of a true leader taking into account only his/her traits. In the beginning of 1950s, scientists paid attention to the role of the situation that determines leader’s behavior and influences the effectiveness of organizational processes. Undoubtedly, situational context plays a significant role in the successful management; however, the concept of leadership is plurilateral; thus it cannot be amplified only through the influence of situation. Thus, it is hard to define what is more important leader’s trait or the role of situation. In this case, it is highly recommended to investigate leadership by paying attention to various approaches, without concentrating on its one-sided feature.

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