Leadership theory: past, present and future

Over the years, leadership has been studied extensively in various contexts and theoretical foundations. In some cases, leadership has been described as a process, but most theories and research on leadership look at a person to gain Leadership is typically defined by the traits, qualities, and behaviours of a leader. The study of leadership has spanned across cultures, decades, and theoretical beliefs. A summary of what is known and understood about leadership is important to conducting further research on team leadership. History of leadership theory and research. In a comprehensive review of leadership theories (Stogdill, 1974), several different categories were identified that capture the essence of the study of leadership in the twentieth century. The first trend dealt with the attributes of great leaders. Leadership was explained by the internal qualities with which a person is born (Bernard, 1926). The thought was that if the traits that differentiated leaders from followers could be identified, successful leaders could be quickly assessed and put into positions of leadership. Personality, physical, and mental characteristics were examined. This research was based on the idea that leaders were born, not made, and the key to success was simply in identifying those people who were born to be great leaders. Though much research was done to identify the traits, no clear answer was found with regard to what traits consistently were associated with great leadership. One flaw with this line of thought was in ignoring the situational and environmental factors that play a role in a leader's level of effectiveness. A second major thrust looked at leader behaviours in an attempt to determine what successful leaders do, not how they look to others (Halpin and Winer, 1957; Hemphill and Coons, 1957). These studies began to look at leaders in the context of the organization, identifying the behaviours leaders exhibit that increase the effectiveness of the company. The well-known and documented Michigan and Ohio State leadership studies took this approach. Two primary, independent factors were identified by these studies: consideration and initiation of structure. Research was simultaneously being conducted in other universities and similar results were found. The impact of this work was in part the notion that leadership was not necessarily an inborn trait, but instead effective leadership methods could be taught to employees (Saal and Knight, 1988). These researchers were making progress in identifying what behaviours differentiated leaders from followers so that the behaviours could …