Roles and Responsibilities of a Portfolio Manager
A portfolio manager is one who helps an individual invest in the best available investment plans for guaranteed returns in the future. Let us go through some roles and responsibilities of a Portfolio manager: A portfolio manager plays a pivotal role in deciding the best investment plan for an individual as per his income, age […]
Difference between Personnel Management & HRM
Many students of management and laypeople often hear the term HRM or Human Resource Management and wonder about the difference between HRM and the traditional term Personnel Management. In earlier times, the Personnel Manager of a factory or firm was the person in charge of ensuring employee welfare and interceding between the management and the […]
What is Illusion of Control Bias and How to Avoid it
Any stock market around the world is huge in size. It is made up of many participants who regularly buy and sell assets. Since there are so many buyers and sellers, and the money is spread out amongst them, none of them has complete control over the events that take place in the market. The […]
Effective Team Building Strategies that can be Implemented by any Organization
The Importance of Team Building Team Building is significant for organizations to actualize optimal performance and enhanced levels of results. Indeed, without team cohesion and the sense of unity of purpose, no organization can hope to survive the neck tight competition as otherwise, the teams would be working at cross purposes with that of the […]
Job Analysis – Job Description and Job Specification
Job analysis is primary tool in personnel management. In this method, a personnel manager tries to gather, synthesize and implement the information available regarding the workforce in the concern. A personnel manager has to undertake job analysis so as to put right man on right job. There are two outcomes of job analysis: Job description […]
Are some people born to lead? If we look at the great leaders of the past such as Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Queen Elizabeth I, and Abraham Lincoln, we will find that they do seem to differ from ordinary human beings in several aspects. The same applies to the contemporary leaders like George W. Bush and Mahatma Gandhi. They definitely possess high levels of ambition coupled with clear visions of precisely where they want to go.
These leaders are cited as naturally great leaders, born with a set of personal qualities that made them effective leaders. Even today, the belief that truly great leaders are born is common.
Top executives, sports personalities, and even politicians often seem to possess an aura that sets them apart from others. According to the contemporary theorists, leaders are not like other people. They do not need to be intellectually genius or omniscient prophets to succeed, but they definitely should have the right stuff which is not equally present in all people. This orientation expresses an approach to the study of leadership known as the great man theory.
Much of the work on this theory was done in the 19th century and is often linked to the work of the historian Thomas Carlyle who commented on the great men or heroes of the history saying that “the history of the world is but the biography of great men”. According to him, a leader is the one gifted with unique qualities that capture the imagination of the masses.
Earlier leadership was considered as a quality associated mostly with the males, and therefore the theory was named as the great man theory. But later with the emergence of many great women leaders as well, the theory was recognized as the Great Person Theory.
The great man theory of leadership states that some people are born with the necessary attributes that set them apart from others and that these traits are responsible for their assuming positions of power and authority. A leader is a hero who accomplishes goals against all odds for his followers.
The theory implies that those in power deserve to be there because of their special endowment. Furthermore, the theory contends that these traits remain stable over time and across different groups. Thus, it suggests that all great leaders share these characteristic regardless of when and where they lived or the precise role in the history they fulfilled.
Many of the traits cited as being important to be an effective leader are typical masculine traits. In contemporary research, there is a significant shift in such a mentality.
Prompted by the great man theory of leadership, and the emerging interest in understanding what leadership is, researchers focused on the leader - Who is a leader? What are the distinguishing characteristics of great and effective leaders? This gave rise to the early research efforts to the trait approach to leadership.
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