Leadership Theory And Situational Leadership - 1621 Words

Robert Fleming Lieutenant Colonel Michael G. LaFeve AS 301 30 October 2015 Midterm Paper Leadership is one of the human traits that are looked up to the most. When a task is at hand many people look around for someone to lead them and take charge. Leadership has been a part of The Air Force since it was created in 1947. Recently more emphasis and researching went into leadership and scholars provided leadership theories. Two of the theories are the Full Range Leadership model and the Situational Leadership model. Both of these theories provide ideas on how to lead and a strategy. The Full Range Leadership model shows many different ways of approaching leadership based on motivation and needs. The Situational Leadership model gives a†¦show more content†¦Laissez-faire leadership is a hands off approach. This approach leaves an absence of action or commands at time and leads to a very chaotic environment (Nath). The people in a group with a laissez-faire leader have very little guidance and experience a lot of freedom in their own decision-making ab ilities. This approach has many different positives and negatives. The benefits of this leadership style are that the group can be very successful when the group is skilled, motivated and capable of working on their own (Lewin). This model is negative when the group lacks their own knowledge in the area. Most people have trouble with setting their own deadlines and sticking to them. This could cause the group to fail and is a downside in laissez-faire leadership (Lewin). Transactional leadership is more involved with the day-to-day workings of the group. It is more contract based rather than inspiring them. This is where the reward systems come in and a leadership gets results by rewards and management of tasks (Nath). The only downfall to this type of leadership is the leader is not involved in their subordinate’s life and doesn’t really find out their driving motivation. Transformational leadership is the opposite, it focus’s on motivating the group and drive them to better themselves. This gives the subordinates to drive to do better and the leader acts more of a role model then a manager of