Traditional and Contemporary Leadership

Before we could tackle the complexities of traditional and contemporary leadership we should first answer the fundamental question as to what is leadership. A text book definition of leadership is the ability to influence a group towards the achievement of a vision or a set of goals . Hitler in his book Mein Kampf writes, the art of leadership consists of consolidating the attention of people to a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention. But my favorite quote on leadership comes from was the five-star general in the United States Army and the 34th President of the United States   Dwight D. Eisenhower Leadership: The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. I know not if either Hitler or Eisenhower had ever read a management text book but they had a pretty good idea of what Leadership was all about. It’s about leading people towards a common objective either that be corporate success of systematic genocide. But how does one become a leader? Are leader born or made? It’s the age old philosophical question of nature vs. nurture which brings us to the most basic oldest and popular leadership model “the traits model of leadership”.
Leadership traits theory is of the idea that people are born with certain characteristics which differentiate leaders from non leaders by focusing on personal qualities and characteristics. Most of the time traits are considered to be part of a person’s personality, hence traits theory tends to assume people are either born as leaders or not. Evidence suggests there are four common traits shared by most successful leaders. They are intelligence which means most leaders must be of somewhat higher intelligence than their subordinates. Maturity successful leaders tend to be emotionally mature and have a broad range of interests. Be achievement driven, successful leaders are result oriented and once they achieve one goal they look for another. Have integrity successful...