Good leaders build trust and know when and how to adapt

The study of leadership dates back to early in the twentieth century and has gone through various theoretical influences.  However, what contemporary leadership theory is increasingly uncovering is that the most essential elements of leadership involve social behaviours that enable the leaders to motivate, influence, and, most importantly, inspire others to get things done. 

There is an abundant amount of empirical examination into leadership effectiveness, with research initially focusing on the role of dominant personality traits as predictors of both the likelihood of a person acquiring a leadership position as well as the specific traits that appear to translate into effective leadership. However, while personality seems to impact, there are many exceptions to this rule as such, contemporary research has shifted towards a more behavioural focus. What has emerged from this research is that above and beyond any trait factors, effective leaders tend to demonstrate specific behaviours and avoid displaying 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, a successful leader develops a deep level of trust with those around them.

What the research has also found is that there is a direct correlation between the strength of a leader's interpersonal relationships and organisational performance (Leroy, Anseel, Gardner, & Sels, 2015; Yang, Huang, & Wu, 2011) [i]. What this suggests is that successful leaders must not only inspire people towards the enterprise's mission and vision but also be able to transform the values of groups and teams by developing strong emotional bonds with their team. 

Unfortunately, the importance of leadership's supporting, interpersonal role often gets hidden underneath an obsessive focus on bottom-line metrics, increasing profits, and enhancing shareholder value.  While this approach may appear to be effective in the short term, the increased disenfranchisement of employees whose needs go unrecognised and unmet eventfully reverses the effect on organisational performance[ii]

When we start to talk about 'leadership style' the more recent research has focused on transformative, authentic, and servant leadership as providing specific behavioural measures for effective leadership [iii]. However, what is most notably acknowledged by contemporary leadership scholars is that high-performing leaders can adapt their leadership style based on the specific context and environment they find themselves in. This chameleon-like nature means that high-performing leaders ensure that their leadership toolkits contain various skills that can be pulled out and utilised when required. 

Lee Spencer BBus(Mgt), BSocSc(Psych)

Director Appreciate Consultancy

 References 

[i] 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

Wang, Z., Xu, H., & Liu, Y. (2017). Servant leadership as a driver of employee service performance: Test of a trickle-down model and its boundary conditions. Human Relations. doi:10.1177/0018726717738320

[ii] Tanskanen, J., Mäkelä, L., & Viitala, R. (2019). Linking Managerial Coaching and Leader–Member Exchange on Work Engagement and Performance. Journal of happiness studies, 20(4), 1217-1240. doi:10.1007/s10902-018-9996-9

[iii] Smith, B. N., Montagno, R. V., & Kuzmenko, T. N. (2004). Transformational and servant leadership: content and contextual comparisons. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 10(4), 80. doi:10.1177/107179190401000406