Great Man Theory And Trait Theory

Great Man theory that evolved in 19th century suggested that traits of leader are intrinsic, or simply that one has to be born with certain characteristics in order to be a great leader. According to this theory, leadership is something that comes from within, and that there are not many people who are designated to become great leaders, and it can happen only when the right situation arises. The pillars of this theory are work of Thomas Carlyle in his book ”On Heroes, Hero-worship, and Heroic in History”. The theory was disputed by Herbert Spencer in 1860, when he insisted that the great men are only the product of times they lived in. Trait theories approach argues that leaders have some traits that allow them to lead, such as personality,

What differs trait theory from the great man theory is the fact that they enumerate specific characteristics (being clever, conceptually skilled, creative, persuasive, persistent, assertive, etc.) that leader should

; (2) initiating structure, is about leaders who are task oriented, who criticise poor work, who follow standard procedures, and coordi- nate activities of subordinates. Michigan Leadership Studies focused on identifying relationships among leader behaviour, group processes, and measures of group performance. It found three types of behaviour differenti- ated between effective and non-effective managers: (1) Task-oriented behaviour; (2) Relations- oriented behaviour; (3) Participative leadership. According to this theories, there is no single best leadership style, but each one depends on a situation. The subject of the research of these theories is the situation or context of the leadership processes, that is, characteristics of followers, the nature of work performed by unit of operation, the type of organisation, and the external environment of