Leadership Style Comparison

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How Leadership is Changing

In today’s continuously changing business environment with flatter organizations that primarily innovate and problem solve using special-purpose teams and operate within blurred organizational boundaries and unclear authority hierarchies, leadership takes on a completely different form than what is covered by the traditional leadership models which are primarily based upon positional authority.

The current trend is toward collaborative leadership which means management must learn to relinquish some control, step back and allow healthy debate to generate fresh ideas and perspectives and see new leaders emerge within the teams or work groups. The important distinction in collaborative leadership is that typically there is no position power or authority associated with leading the effort to achieve a goal. The technical group leader is often someone with strong organization and coordination skills, performing what is somewhat like a project management role.

Traditional leadership models treat the leader and leadership as the same thing. The focus is on the individual and their personal qualities no matter what the context. While there was recognition that informal leaders often emerged in group settings, the leadership responsibility, analysis, and evaluation of leadership effectiveness was focused on the leader with the hierarchical authority to make decisions and direct others’ activities. Any team members that were pulled together to work toward a goal in these situations were often subordinates of the leader or “person in charge” or at least at a lower level in the organization.

The evolution of the “Trait Theory” toward a focus on the process and not on the person to identify what traits could be consistently associated with effective leadership, gave the trait theory more relevance and application in current business models. Studies in 1991 and 2002 (Robbins and Coulter, p372-exhibit 16-1) identified seven...