Session One: Introduction to Leadership in

Theory and Practice

Dr. Bruce W. Dayton
School for International Training / World Learning
 ✓ Understand the concept of leadership.
Session One ✓ Identify alternative approaches to
Learning effective leadership.
✓ Begin to reflect on your own views of
Objectives leadership success.
 Leadership: a vague term with
significant conceptual
ambiguity.
What is
Leadership? Pause this video and write
down your own definition.
 “Leadership is process through
One common which one individual mobilizes
definition others to achieve a common
objective.” - Northouse 2019
 • How to best motivate people to
The central work together toward a common
question in goal?
leadership • Pause video: What has worked
studies when you have been in the role
of a follower? What has worked
when you have been in the role
of a leader?
 Three
approaches to
understanding
successful
leadership
 Leaders are born, not made.
1. Personality
“Great Man” Theories (early 1900s)
One of the first systematic attempts to
study leadership

• Focused on identifying innate qualities and

characteristics possessed by great social,
political, and military leaders
 • Intelligence--Verbal, perceptual, and reasoning
Great man theories capabilities.
have been replaced
• Self-Confidence--Certainty about one’s competencies and
by social- skills.
psychological studies
on traits correlated • Determination--Desire to get the job done (i.e., initiative,
persistence, drive).
with effective
leadership • Integrity--The quality of honesty and trustworthiness. For
example, Character Counts! program

• Sociability--Leader’s inclination to seek out pleasant social

relationships. For example, Michael Hughes, university
president
 Your reaction
to personality • There is some degree of leadership
as a key capacity that we may be ‘born’ with.
determinant of • However, mostly leadership is an
acquired skill that is related to a set of
successful core skills that all people can acquire and
leadership? practice.

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 Successful leaders all have a set
of common skills that are
correlated with a capacity to
2. Skills move people and organizations
toward a common goal.
 • Having knowledge about and being proficient in a
specific type of work or activity.

• Specialized competencies
Technical • Analytical ability
Skill
• Use of appropriate tools and techniques

• Technical skills involve hands-on ability with a

product or process

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.

• Having knowledge about and being able to work

with people.
• Being aware of one’s own perspective and
others’ perspectives at the same time.
Human Skill • Assisting group members in working.
cooperatively to achieve common goals
• Creating an atmosphere of trust and
empowerment of members.
 • The ability to do the mental work of shaping
meaning of organizational policy or issues (what
organization stands for and where it’s going)
Conceptual • Works easily with abstraction and
hypothetical notions
Skill
• Central to creating and articulating a vision
and strategic plan for an organization
• Most important at top management levels
 Your reaction
to skills as a
key to • It is a good thing that all people have a
determinant of capacity to develop skills (anyone can
successful become a leader).
• The problem of universality: The
leadership? situation, context, and culture will
determine which skills are salient to
leadership success.
 • Leadership success is a matter of the
strategic style that the leader adopts
3. Style to motivate followers.
 Transactional

Autocratic Transformational

Six
Leadership
Styles
Bureaucratic Authentic

Servant
Which style is
best? Fiddler’s (1967) Match Theory of
leadership proposes that: (a) effective
The Match leadership is dependent on a match
Theory of between the individual’s leadership
Leadership style and the group situation and (b)
that individuals usually find it difficult
to alter their established style of
leadership but (c) that leaders can be
trained to diagnose a situation and
alter it to fit their own style.
 Your reaction
to style as a
key to
determinant of • Allows for the impact of culture and the
role of followership.
successful
• But not an exhaustive list.
leadership? • Question is how easily can people change
their style.
 • Leadership is the process of motivating
others to work toward a common goal.
• Much disagreement exists in leadership
studies about how to best do that.
• Some claim great leadership is a matter of
Review personality, others claim that it is a matter
of skills, still others claim it is a matter of
style.
• What is your theory?