Team Summary

Week Four Summary

LDR531

July 18, 2011

Week Four Summary

Week four continues to enhance and enforce the importance of leadership and the skills required to be an effective leader or manager. Discussions focused on more of a personal level and where in an organization leaders would be most effective. In last week's learning, comparing and contrasting structures, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of established leadership styles, and evaluating the effectiveness of substitutes for leadership were items that inspired the class discussions in week four.

Compare and Contrast Leadership Theories

There are five leadership theory approaches that are described by Yuki (2010). The approaches are the trait approach, the behavior approach, the power-influence approach, the situational approach and the integrative approach. The trait approach focuses on personality, skills, motivation and the fact that some people are simply natural leaders. The behavior approach examines the behavior, pattern, and responsibilities of the leader. The power-influence approach focuses on how leaders use their power and how others, not just subordinates, react. The situational approach has two subcategories; the first subcategory compares leadership processes across similar jobs in various organizations and the other subcategory, situational approach, is based on how certain traits of a leader are most useful depending on the situation. Lastly, the integrative approach involves more than one of the leadership theories and it is the most commonly used theory today. The expected result of the integrative theory is that employees start to make sacrifices in order to achieve the organization's mission.

Evaluate the Strengths and Weaknesses of Established Leadership Styles

There are many traits and behaviors that can help to identify who will become leaders, however, these identifiers may not be able to distinguish between effective and ineffective leaders (Yukl, 2010)....