 There are times we get caught up in this mindset that there's really only one way to lead and there's only one right way to lead or One best way to lead but the truth is there, you know, there's more than one road that leads to effective leadership There are many different paths that can take us to effective leadership and people approach it from all different kinds of ways So but we have over time Kind of you know tended to focus on one or the other So I want to take a look at and how this discussion of leadership is developed over time in the field of communication and and in in general in organizational communication in particular and look at some of the historical approaches to leadership kind of made the path that has led us to these different examinations of leadership so first of all a discussion of leadership and at specific leadership Skills really started with what we call the trait approach the idea that great leaders are born That was a historically one of the first examinations of leadership was that you know some people are just born Great leaders some people are just born to lead right and so they look at the different traits They try to examine the different traits that were involved in leadership So you had things like like drive and leadership motivation and honesty integrity charisma all these types of things You can see here that that people said well These are these are what make a great leader and some people are born with these abilities and others are not So either you have it or you don't kind of thing you're either born with it or you're not and so But but we know that really that was kind of a limiting thing, right? We know that some people are born with these things some people are not and we can look at leaders and say well But that leader doesn't have all of these things So we know that there that there's something beyond just trait leadership But that was the initial approach that led us to this Discussion of what is leadership and what makes a good leader and and how should we approach this up? So we've kind of set the lead the trait leadership aside in some ways although We recognize that leaders will have certain traits, you know undeniably, but that doesn't mean they're born with them They can be they can be taught they can be learned they can be developed over time And so it's not something that you're either born with or not necessarily as some people have a head start Maybe but anyway, it's not it's not just all about being born a great leader, right? So then we kind of started looking at leadership from a behavioral aspect thinking, you know Well leaders are what they do a leader is what a leader does and so what do leaders do then and so the behavior behavior behavioral approach really like like all great things started as a battle between the University of Michigan and That's cool down South right Ohio State University where they were competing schools of thought in between researchers at Michigan and in Ohio State About leadership and they were kind of going out at the same time and Inevitably as has is proper Michigan one out in a pair of researchers named Robert Blake and Jane mootin in 1964 published more on a behavioral approach to leadership that really led the way for a long time They developed what they called the leadership grid So let's just take a look at that the leadership grid basically starts with you know It's this axis of a concern for production and then a concern for people So they said you go we got to be you know some have some concern for what we're producing and task orientation But also the relational orientation and the concern for people And so you could have people on the hot leaders on the high and low end of each of those things and depending on where they fell In these things they would fall in kind of one of these categories, right? Either indifferent when they were didn't care about the production or people they were known as indifferent If they only can care about production and not people then they were known as controlling That's what we would call controlling if they fell in that part of the grid if they fell in the high concern for people But low concern for production They were accommodating and if they were high in both and that was sound leadership And then in the middle they developed what they called status quo balance and compromise So they were kind of equally concerned with both Concerned with people and concerned for production and kind of in the middle on both those things balancing it all out This is the basic leadership grid that they came up with right that the leadership grid And so then we've updated that terminology slightly now Typically carries these kind of terms, but we basically said what leaders are a leader is what a leader does So if they if they are a high Concern for people on low concern for production Then they would be a country club leader or they could be a team later They could be middle of the road or whatever it is And that's how we would identify leaders is by what they do and how they express concern for both people and production Which kind of somewhere, you know, that's there's there's some value to that and we still use that at times So people look at the behavior and so that's one aspect of leadership But over time we developed yet another approach as these thoughts and areas of study continued to evolve and develop Kim with the Situational approach which is kind of said well it depends, you know what makes a good leader Well, it really depends on the situation depends on the context depends on the person It just depends on what's needed in that moment really so the situational approach really was was developed and championed by Paul Hersey and and Ken Blanchard and really Published and came into popularity in the early 2000s and 2001 is when they first published their research and started Real examination of this and they also said that there's really there's there's a scale between a relationship and task behavior So similar to the the leadership grid Developed by Blake and Newton they were they were on that same kind of track and said basically Okay Yeah, I've still have a task behavior and a relationship behavior and we're high and low on that But what is needed in you know in that moment depends on where the group is at and where where the the individual is at Where the leaders at what will leadership styles needed and so they also said they're for poor Parts of this grid essentially and so then they developed accordingly for leadership styles And so if we go back to our grid, we've got the four areas Again high and task and low in relationship is what we call telling and there's also selling then which is high on both high in relationship and low in tasks participating and Delegating then it's the other type of of leadership style. So you have again, depending on whether that is high on relationship or high on on task and then The the leader though must match the style to the readiness of the individual the readiness of the group Okay, so the leader then in this situational perspective has to Match up meaning they have to determine and decide what is going to be appropriate in that in that moment. So we see that you know Early on really in the first stage s1 here We see that there's gonna be a lot of telling there's gonna be a lot of conservative task behavior and very little in relationship You don't really care about people's feelings when you're trying to teach them what to do and try and get them on The right track right then once we get that going a little bit. We can move into that selling aspect Okay, and s2 there we move into s2 where we have both concerned for the the task and also the the relationship or the person On the other end of that right as we get more comfortable We're selling them on what we're doing and and and selling them on what the team is trying to accomplish And what what their role is and all that then we get an s3 after we've been in it for a while The the manager and the leader really has to shift them into then into a I'm what we call participating style of leadership right where they're kind of Pitching in and and and everybody's everybody's it's a more participative style. Everybody's involved in discussion and involved in the process then it's not so much a Authoritative approach as a participative approach And then eventually though the leader ideally will be able to get into delegating where they're just really kind of giving out Tasks and when people go letting them run with it, right? So that's where you're at ideally in that situation So again the the situational perspective says that the the leader has to match What is needed with where that the readiness of that person or that that group? What it what is what is necessary at that time? Now we do need to note that these situational perspective is influenced by outside forces, right? It's influenced by timelines and economics and and and leadership outside of that Group and and that that that particular relationship. So there's all kinds of things to influence that that situational perspective Now move ahead then involve and continuing to evolve our ideas on leadership into what we call the transformational Approach and moving beyond the situational and into the transformational when we talk about let's shake things up transformational leaders are all about Changing the status quo and shaking things up So the transformational approach and transformational leadership the goal here the idea is to instill a vision Is to is to cast that vision for for everybody in the organization everybody in the group that and that they catch on that So your job as a leader is to instill a vision and then it's to demonstrate passion for what it is You're doing that the transformational approach does not work If the person who's leading is not passionate about that and that they don't demonstrate and show that passion They have to both demonstrate then and also receive from their their their team a commitment to the mission Everybody's got to be thrown in the same direction But he's gonna be pulled in the same direction But he's got to be on the same page and have a desire to move forward and to accomplish What it is they're working toward right Now the one kind of catch with the transformational post is that success can be tied to an individual It can success can be tied to that leader. You can kind of create sort of a cult of personality, right? Where people are not just committed to the mission and have a mission have a passion for that But they also become committed to that person. So if you have a change in leadership, then it can be an issue It's hard to sustain that transformational approach when you lose a leader And if you don't have somebody else step in who's also an equally effective Transformational leader that can be really really challenging. So and we see that for example in the case with GE Jack Walsh who was the chief executive officer of GE from 1981 to 2001 All right, so 20 years he worked with GE and ran GE and really shook things up when he came in he had a really Different attitude toward leadership and toward what the organization is doing He really flattened the corporate hierarchy For example GE was a huge organization lots of hierarchy lots of levels and he said nope We're flattening all that we're gonna get rid of some of these middle Areas and just you know flatten things flatten that hierarchy out He really lessened the formality of the workplace and made it not such a stuffy place Not so much a suit and tie type place But lessen the formality of it called people by first names and that kind of thing as well he embedded succession planning and Employee development into the GE kind of ethos right that wasn't something that was done before But he said you ought to be training your replacement essentially we ought to be thinking about what's that next? Generation gonna look like so we can have this continuation. How can we develop our employees? So that was another thing he brought with him. He was also really aggressive in demanding and in And had a really aggressive Demand for performance right so his motto was fix it close it or sell it Whatever the division whatever the product whatever the the project was going on in GE You either your goal is either your mandate was either to fix it close it or sell it if possible Then we're gonna spend a lot of time doing all this See we're either gonna be able to to get things right and get them on track or it was gonna be shut down or sold off Right. He also had this this philosopher He fired like the bottom 10% of Of his managers bottom 10% by whatever performance metric they were fired no matter what even if that performance metric was awesome If they were in the bottom 10% or whatever they got fired And so you're really aggressive in in his performance standards and in demanding performance from people And it worked really well until he left GE had this amazing turnaround some aging Amazing resurgence in the organization during the time that he was there But by the after he left within just a few years it at all fallen apart because it really did depend on his leadership specifically and he didn't do a very good job of of Having that succession planning and having somebody who could continue to carry that torch after he left and it all just kind of fell apart So transformative leadership can be amazing it can work wonders But you really have to think hard about is it you know make sure it's not tied to that person Or it's only gonna work as long as that person is there Or is that we've seen a visionary approach to leadership as well It's this is something that's really fueled by the leader's dreams of what could be All right, so specifically we look at somebody like Steve Jobs At Apple and the way he led Apple and just this idea of you know, he walked in and said look I don't like the way a computer looks. This is how it should look I went to his engineers and said this is how it should look now make a computer that looks like that and Works like this and does this and they would say but that's that's not possible. It's never been done He'd say well, that's what we're doing, you know This is what what could be what should be what I want to happen and expect people to get there and he got it out of them He made you know, it's not something that will work for everybody But but you know sometimes that visionary approach can be effective as well sort of the an offshoot of the transformative Approach of whatever kind of specific type of transformative leadership So so as we've seen here really again a reminder that there's not just one road to leadership There are many many ways that we can get to leadership about many paths to take us to kind of the same area It's just a matter of What's the best kind of leadership for you and for your situation and for your organization and and and we've seen these things evolve over time And we'll continue to evolve over the time the type of leadership That is necessary. So we need to remember that we've got these historical approaches that we've examined But we don't know what's next, you know, and that could that's still coming up down the pie chair, okay? There be questions about the historical approaches to leadership any of these types of approaches to leadership or anything Related to those please feel free to email me and let me know and I'd love to hear from you there In the meantime, I hope this has been enlightening for you as we've examined the different types of Categories of leadership that we've seen over time and and some of the ways that those have been effective and not so effective And as we continue to examine leadership of small groups and organizations