Use charismatic theory to remind you that you should constantly act as a role model for your followers, even if you aren’t particularly charismatic. Charismatic theory has been around for a long time but it was Robert House who established it in the popular imagination during the 1970s. He sees charisma as a particularly powerful…
Tag: Project Manager
Exchange Theory – Leadership Theories Series
Use exchange theory if you wish to (potentially) develop a close working relationship with every member of your team and ensure their loyalty to you and you alone. Dansereau, Graen and Haga’s theory is unusual in that it both describes what leaders do and suggests a strategy for how they should act. The exchange theory suggests…
Transactional Theory – Leadership Theories Series
Use transactional theory to obtain compliance from a member of staff who needs to be persuaded to comply with your request. It was James MacGregor Burns who popularized the transactional theory. In doing so he described a process that has been going on between leaders and followers, managers and staff and parents and children since…
Situational Theory – Leadership Theories Series
Use situational theory with staff every time you give them a new task to perform. If you’ve ever been on a middle managers’ leadership course there is a good chance that you are familiar with Ken Blanchard’s and Paul Hersey’s situational leadership theory. It’s widely used by trainers and popular with managers because it provides…
Action Centered Leadership – Leadership Theories Series
Use action centered leadership to remind you that you have to continually balance the needs of the task, the team and the individual and that on occasions you will have to emphasize the needs of one over the other two. John Adair’s action centered leadership model contains elements of both style and contingency theory. He…
Leadership Grid – Leadership Theories Series
Use the leadership grid to confirm your preferred leadership style while recognizing that you can change your style as circumstances require. Blake and Mouton built upon basic style theory and produced their leadership grid. The grid identifies how much concern the leader has for getting the job done (task-centered) and for their staff (person-centered). They…
Basic Style Theory – Leadership Theories Series
Use basic style theory to identify your default leadership style: are you a task or person-oriented person? In the 1940s the University of Michigan suggested that leadership behavior could be described as either person or task oriented. Person oriented leaders are concerned with maintaining good relationships with staff and believe in a participative and democratic…
Trait Theory – Leadership Theories Series
Use trait theory to identify the key traits that you need to exhibit consistently if you wish to be considered a leader. The origins of trait theory are unknown but its purpose is simple. It tries to identify the innate characteristics that distinguish leaders from followers. Unfortunately, over a century of research has failed to reveal…
How to lead people, 12 leadership theories you should know and use
So why take advantage of leadership theories? The word lead means ‘to guide on a way by going in advance’ (Longman New Universal Dictionary). So its safe to say that leading involves taking someone on a journey from their current position to somewhere else. The journey can be physical as when Moses led the Israelites…
Do you have a Project Sponsor? No? Too bad…
The project sponsor role has grown in importance over the last years and I aim to provide some context attesting to that fact. But until then let’s focus a bit on the project manager. It is widely agreed that project managers fill a complex role within an organization. By definition their job requires them to…