Good Leadership is Defined by Specific Behaviours

The study of leadership dates back to early in the twentieth century and has gone through various waves of thinking.  However, what can be seen as consistent is that leadership is a social and behavioural construct that is largely about an ability to motivate, influence and most importantly inspire others to get things done. 

“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.” – Niccolò Machiavelli. 

There is an extensive volume of empirical research into leadership effectiveness which began largely with a focus on the role of dominant personality traits as predictors of both the likelihoods of a person acquiring a leadership position as well as the specific traits that appear to generally relate to leadership effectiveness. However, while personality seems to impact there are many exceptions to this rule and as such research shifted towards a more behavioural focus. And what has emerged from this research is that above and beyond any trait factors, effective leaders demonstrate specific behaviours and avoid demonstrating others. 

These behaviours include paying specific attention to the antecedents to task performance and understanding how to remove the barriers to desired outcomes.  While leadership includes giving people direction when necessary, the successful leader develops a deep level of trust with those around them and promotes autonomy  The importance of the supporting, interpersonal role of leadership often goes unrecognised as it gets hidden behind an obsessional focus on bottom line metrics with success as increasing shareholder value.  However, research has found a direct correlation between leaders who build strong interpersonal relationships and increased organisational performance (Leroy, Anseel, Gardner, & Sels, 2015; Yang, Huang, & Wu, 2011).  

Successful leaders must be able to not only inspire people towards the organisations mission and vision, but also be able to transform the values of groups and teams so that the vision is realised.  They must be able to motivate by ensuring that high performance is rewarded, while also ensuring employee social, psychological and physical needs are met.  

Contemporary research focuses on three dominant leadership styles, transformative, authentic and servant, however what is most importantly acknowledged by contemporary leadership scholars is the chameleon like nature of effective leadership, where leaders essentially have many tools in their toolkit, and they understand which tools to use and when. 

Lee Spencer 

BBus(Mgt), BSocSc(Psych)

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References

Leroy, H., Anseel, F., Gardner, W. L., & Sels, L. (2015). Authentic Leadership, Authentic Followership, Basic Need Satisfaction, and Work Role Performance: A Cross-Level Study. Journal of Management, 41(6), 1677-1697. doi:10.1177/0149206312457822

Yang, L.-R., Huang, C.-F., & Wu, K.-S. (2011). The association among project manager's leadership style, teamwork and project success. International Journal of Project Management, 29(3), 258-267. doi:10.1016/j.ijproman.2010.03.006

Zubair, A., & Kamal, A. (2015). Authentic Leadership and Creativity: Mediating Role of Work-Related Flow and Psychological Capital. Journal of Behavioural Sciences, 25(1), 150-171.