Entries in the Category "251"
Three Theories of Managerial Style - Trait theory
I was looking for information on managerial styles online and I came across an article written by Lieutenant Colonel Merrell E. Dean. In this article, he talked about three different theories of managerial style: trait, behavior, and situation. Today I am going to focus on the trait theory. When talking about the trait theory, Colonel Dean talked about research studies that were conducted in the 1940s and 1950s by Edwin Ghiselli. Ghisselli cited the traits of initiative, self-assurance, individuality, supervisory ability, and intelligence as being traits that separated successful leaders from unsuccessful leaders. He went on to say other researchers brought in even more traits like personality, height, charisma, and image. I would have to say I agree with the each of the first set of traits, but I do not necessarily agree with all of the second set. Does a person's height really affect his or her ability to lead people? Maybe in the most extreme cases of lack of stature would something like height affect one's ability to lead, but for the most part I don't necessarily agree with that statment.
In response to some of the questions posed by my readers, I have encountered task-oriented managers with weak people schools. My first boss at my current job used to just post memos telling us about any rule changes, but he would almost never sit down with us and clarify what our policies were. I think this was largely due to the fact his people skills were very weak. Most of our staff would just roll our eyes at these memos and continue doing what we had been doing. Personally, I believe managers must be people-oriented first if they expect tasks to get accomplished. The reason for this is really pretty simple: tasks are not going to accomplish themselves, that is what people are there for.