Top Leadership Theories – Alex Lyon

Trait Approach
Trait’s theory of leadership. This is a valuable approach. but it's not without its critics, so let's get into
it. From two excellent books, Johnson and Hackman's book on Leadership, A Communication
Perspective and Peter Northouse's book on Leadership.
The study of leadership traits goes back to the early 1900s, it's the first systematic study of leadership
and it continues to this day. The social scientific approach reflects what was happening in the field of
psychology at the time, that was looking at individuals’ various personality traits.
A trait is a defining characteristic quality or enduring tendency of a person. According to this research,
traits are part of how we're born, they're woven into our DNA, just like eye color, heights, and other
physical traits. We also have various personality traits. The traits theory of leadership says that
"Leaders share a collection of distinguishing traits that the average person does not." Those
traits make natural born leaders, this is what we call it the great man quote, or great person theory.
Northouse lists well-known political and military leaders such as Catherine, the great Gandhi,
Abraham Lincoln, Joan of Arc, Napoleon Bonaparte as examples of born leaders. There are certain
traits that contribute to superior leadership performance and the thinking goes, everybody around these
individuals recognizes or perceives certain traits as leadership qualities. There have been scores of
these studies and it's important to mention that each study comes up with a different list of traits that
leaders possess. So, this can get a little confusing. So, one way to overcome that is to do a meta-
analysis that looks across these different leadership studies to determine the most common traits that
come up repeatedly.

The Five Major Leadership Traits that Peter Northouse presents in his book.
The first trait is intelligence, leaders have a higher intelligence than the average person. It's accurate
to say, for example, that the founding fathers of the US for all their personal flaws were extremely
intelligent leaders. They were well-educated and prolific writers. CEOs like Steve Jobs from Apple, Bill
Gates from Microsoft, and Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook, all have reputations as extraordinarily
intelligent people. Some people believe that extremely high levels of intelligence like this, make it a
challenge for some individuals to communicate effectively with the average person, still high levels of
intelligence consistently shows up as a trait among most leaders.
The second trait is self-confidence, as Northouse explains self-confidence includes a certainty about
our competencies and skills, high levels of self-esteem and self-assurance in our capacity to make a
difference. Barack Obama is a great current day example of self-confidence. It's clear from everything
I've seen and heard that he carries himself with a great deal of this self-confidence, when he walks in
a room he communicates a sense of unwavering self-assurance.
Third is determination. This is a strong drive to move forward. It's initiative, persistence, perseverance
to follow through despite the many obstacles. One of the most determined leaders I know of is Oprah
Winfrey. She was born into poverty, started working in radio while in high school, she overcame both
racial and gender barriers as she moved from local TV to the world of talk shows. And she built
ultimately a media empire, and she's now believed to be the richest person in Hollywood. Her journey
demonstrates incredible determination and the ability to overcome obstacles no matter what.
The fourth trait is integrity. This means being honest, trustworthy, living by a clear set of principles
and taking responsibility for our actions. We like these leaders because they are dependable, and we
know they're going to do and follow through on what they say. Two well-known leaders come to mind.
First is Martin Luther King, Jr. He is seen by many as a great example of a leader with integrity. He lived
by a set of principles, and he held himself to a high standard. Another example is Abraham Lincoln, he
is known as "Honest Abe," because people at the time saw him and thought he had a higher level of
integrity than many of the other politicians at the time.
The Fifth is sociability, this is the tendency to engage in friendly, courteous, and pleasant, social
relationships. Leaders like this are tactful, diplomatic, and sensitive to other's needs and well-being. In
other words, they have good interpersonal skills. These leaders both recognize the importance of
supportive communication, and they are good at it. One great example is the late Princess Diana, she's
compared to the other royals, she had the people's touch they say. She communicated comfortably
with people from all backgrounds. Another example is Warren Buffet, he is the fourth richest person in
the world, but he has a very comfortable, welcoming communication style and he frequently talks about
the importance of communication.
So those are the five key leadership traits. However, as mentioned, there are some important criticisms
of the traits approach to leadership.
These three criticisms represent a combination of what I have read and what I personally think. First,
almost every study that looks at leadership traits comes up with a different list. So sure we talked about
a list of five distilled traits but that doesn't explain why there's not more consistency between and among
these studies. So how can we be sure we got it right.
Second, I'm not convinced that these researchers are all really studying traits in the traditional sense.
We see within these studies traits like the ability to influence others or engage in problem solving, some
of these sound more like learnable behaviors than traits in our DNA in the classic sense. And
Third, some people say they can act as if they have the trait but they're just behaving that way, they
don't necessarily possess that trait. I know many people who admit privately that they're very nervous
and have high anxiety, but publicly they act like they are very self-confident, that's one of the five key
traits.
Despite these criticisms, I'm sure that studies on leadership traits will continue. Many people would
agree that top leaders do often seem to stand apart even from an early age. Some people really do
come across as born leaders. So question of the day, how do you line up with these five key traits?
As mentioned it seems at least some of these skills are learnable and there've been many historic and
current day leaders who did not seem like born leaders but work their way up and achieved great things.
So maybe it's a little more like Shakespeare said, some are born great, some achieve greatness, and
some have greatness thrust upon them.

Autocratic Style
Have you ever worked for an autocratic leader? Or even more importantly, do you have an autocratic
leadership style yourself? Let's look at the ins and outs. Foundational leadership research started in
the 1930s. Lewin Lippitt and White wrote an article in 1939 in the Journal of Social Psychology. That
many researchers still cite as the big first study that kicked off this area of research. Lewin and his co-
authors asked the question in their study, "Is not the democratic group life more pleasant, but
authoritarianism more efficient?"
People then and now have a lot of opinions about the different styles of leadership. Lewin and his
coauthors set out to get some research driven answers to these questions. We'll look at more of their
research in a moment. To help visualize it, there are some well-known autocratic leaders in movies
like Darth Vader from Star Wars, Captain Sobel and the Band of Brothers and Miranda Priestly in the
Devil Wears Prada played by Meryl Streep. These are obviously exaggerations, but they all have
autocratic tendencies in common. A basic description of the autocratic style goes like this.
It is an Authoritarian, boss-centered approach to leadership and management. The term
autocratic is perhaps more commonly used than the term authoritarianism but essentially they mean
the same thing. These leaders assume full control of the group, the goals and the decisions. These
leaders centralized decision-making and power. Some researchers describe this approach as an
absolute control approach for the leader over the entire operation. When it comes to communication,
it's no surprise that they have a top-down approach and they dictate instructions, policies and
activities to the group, and they expect followers to comply. It's a control compliance relationship.
These leaders take little or no input from group members, they are not asking followers for their
feedback. They make decisions based upon their own perspective of a situation.
When it comes to decision-making, I picture the autocratic leader coming to a room and just people
what to do. In terms of how they relate to followers, autocratic leaders establish a high-power
distance between themselves and everybody else, there are clear unequal power dynamics going on
between the leader and the followers. And that's because these leaders rely heavily on their positions
of authority.
French and Raven call this legitimate authority. When you are an official manager, you have a job
description that explains your official authority and responsibilities that come with that position. The
autocratic leader’s power in other words, comes from their job title. In contrast, autocratic leaders
don't rely on their strong relationships and influence to lead. You don't usually see autocratic leaders
socializing and connecting with their followers in warm ways. They don't eat meals together with
subordinates for example. They don't get to know them personally, very much, they distance
themselves relationally from others in ways that show that inequality.
So let's talk more about the research by Lewin and his co-authors. These authors did experiments
leading groups of ten-year-olds in fact. And to me, it's interesting that this research started with a
teacher-student dynamic. If you think of the various teachers that you have had over your life, it's
possible that some of them had an autocratic style.
The children were put into a number of small groups, and they were asked to perform various tasks
like making theatrical masks, painting murals, carving soap and making model airplanes. The adults
then acted as the teachers and used a variety of leadership styles with those groups, autocratic
democratic and laissez-faire styles. The researchers then watched how the children responded to the
different leadership styles. They also interviewed the children and the parents to get their perspective
on how their experience was under each leader.
So, what exactly did they find? Well, this early research had mixed results, but it laid the foundation
for how we still to this day think about autocratic leaders.
Under autocratic leaders, followers were more aggressive toward each other. And some versions of
the experiments, the children were 30 to 40 times more aggressive than they were under a
democratic leader. This was at times a general aggression among all the group members, but was
sometimes focused on one particular group member were say four members of the group, ganged up
on a person, a scapegoat to the point where that participant quit the group.
Participants tended to be more productive when the autocratic leader was watching them and directly
supervising them, but there was usually a sharp rise in aggression when the autocratic leader left the
room. In other experiments participants were much more resigned and apathetic and they did get
aggressive under an autocratic leader, they basically shut down.
So in terms of strengths and weaknesses, let's start with the Strengths.
• This style can be useful when a quick decision, a decisive decision is necessary. For example,
when there's a crisis situation, there's not enough time to gather everybody together and get
lots of feedback. Sometimes a delayed decision will be much worse than the leader just
making a decision on their own. It's also useful when you have low skilled workers who
essentially need to be told what to do. And this aligns with part of what Hersey and Blanchard's
model of situational leadership says. When a follower has low skill and low motivation their
model says you have to focus almost entirely on tasks and using directive communication.
• Also when there's a leadership void and people lack direction then it's better to have an
autocratic leader.
• Also, if there's already lots of conflict and autocratic leader can basically suppress the conflict
among participants in the short run. This doesn't solve the underlying problem that's causing
the conflict but this style can be used to contain conflict in the short run.
So autocratic leadership may not be your favorite style, but it is still a style that works
under certain circumstances, at least in the short run. However, in the long run, many people
believe that the drawbacks clearly outweigh the advantages.
• This is a very demanding and stressful style for both leader and follower. It requires
constant hands-on attention because followers will wait to be told what to do. That's the
norm this style establishes, the leader gives orders and subordinates comply with those
orders. Most followers won't take initiative under an autocratic leader, and participants
make more persistent demands for attention from autocratic leaders.
• So since followers are not taking action on their own, leading this way requires constant
pressure for the leader and the followers.
• Also followers will work hard when the boss is watching, that's true, which is a positive
aspect of this, but they act out when the leader leaves the room, when the leader literally
steps out of the room.
• Another problem is turnover, which is very expensive, followers are more likely to exit a
group or an organization when they are working under an autocratic leader. And this has
been shown in a 2004 article by Van Vugt, Jepson and Hart in the Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology.
As we wrap up, my question is this, does this style sound like your leadership style? If
so, clearly it can work under certain circumstances but only under limited circumstances. In
general most followers do not thrive under autocratic leaders.

Democratic Style
Have you ever worked for a democratic leader? This is the second lesson in a three-part series.
Be sure to take a look at the other lessons on the autocratic leadership style and the laissez-
faire style. To help us visualize it we see the democratic leadership style in characters like captain
Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek. Dick Winters the commander of Easy Company in the Band of
Brothers, and Nova Prime played by Glenn Close in Guardians of the Galaxy. These characters
echo what we see in the Democratic leadership style.
Democratic leaders take a collaborative approach with their followers, even though
democratic leaders still have a position of power, and still make many of the big decisions, they
prefer to get feedback and input from followers to help leaders shape those decisions. They like
to listen to a range of opinions to make sure they're hearing about all the good options, they
have what you call, the ”two heads are better than one philosophy”.
A leader might even test ideas with followers and say, "Hey, here's what I was thinking of
doing, what do you think?" Or I've been hearing negative feedback about this external vendor
we've been using, what has been your experience with this vendor?
In cases like these, the leader may still make the ultimate decision, but at other times,
democratic leaders may delegate power to followers when they can, especially when those
decisions directly influence the followers’ jobs. This is called a decentralized approach to
power and authority, that contrasts with the centralized approach of autocratic leaders.
In other words, as the official leader, a democratic leader still has the right to make decisions
just like the autocratic leader, but instead delegates those decisions and provides the freedom
to followers to make the best choices possible. So, let's say a department or a team is about to
purchase new computers, a democratic leader would likely give some basic criteria on cost or
compatibility but then delegate the final decision and each follower would purchase their own
computer. I'd like to make an important point about this, if a decision goes badly, the
democratic leader is not off the hook. They are still responsible for the outcomes and for the
team decisions. So, they're not handing their power and responsibility over. They can't delegate
their accountability, they just believe the best decisions will be made with lots of input from
their followers.
In terms of power distance democratic leaders tend to have more equal relationships
between themselves and followers. So, they establish a low power distance compared to
autocratic leaders. The gap between the leader and the follower does not feel as obvious. To
make that concrete, democratic leaders would be more approachable, and friendly in
conversations, and make efforts to connect with followers. They have good
communication and might ask followers about their projects and about their lives outside
of work and react more spontaneously in conversations. To be clear democratic leaders still
have what French and Raven call legitimate power that is tied to their position, but they don't
emphasize that, they tend to rely more on mutually beneficial relationships with followers
to have that influence. They trust their followers to provide helpful feedback and to make
good decisions. In terms of outcomes, many followers prefer to work for this type of leader.
At a 2019 study on the leadership styles, of headmasters over the teachers they supervise, in
the Journal of Education, Teaching and Learning. And these authors found that the headmasters
with the democratic style of leadership had a clear, positive influence in handling discipline
situations with teachers, it's important to note that the autocratic and laissez-faire headmasters
did still address discipline and showed some effectiveness with followers, but the democratic
style was the most effective. It was more effective than laissez Faire, and then lastly,
autocratic leaders were the least effective. So those other styles still were effective, just not
as effective as democratic leaders.
Let's look at the ups and downs of the style, we'll start with the Strengths.
• Democratic leaders tend to make high quality informed decisions. They gather lots
of inputs, so their decisions are very likely to be supported and executed by their followers.
Followers of democratic leaders can get more creative and innovative because they are
given room to practice problem solving.
• Democratic leaders get consistent, long-term productivity out of their followers.
And this is a key difference between democratic and autocratic leaders. When an
autocratic leader leaves the room, their followers do not work as hard, in contrast
democratic leaders, followers work hard whether they are in the room observing or not.
• Followers are brought into the decisions, goals, and directions, these leaders have also
good communication with followers and not surprisingly followers have a high satisfaction
level when working under democratic leaders.
In terms of drawbacks we see mainly weaknesses in certain situations, so
• First, when a situation is high pressure and time is short, like a crisis, maintaining the
democratic style probably will not help much, if something suddenly happens to an
organization, it might be the best response is the quickest response and sometimes that
means a democratic leader is not going be able to take a lot of time to gather input and
feedback. They're not going to have the luxury of collaborating in a situation like that, I
like to use the metaphor of professional sports, when there are just a few seconds left on
the clock, and your team is down by one point, that's not the time to have a long
democratic collaborative discussion. A democratic style is not going to fit that situation.
• A second weakness shows up in the situations that sometimes require a judgment call on
the part of a leader, because consensus is not possible. And you may have to make a
decision that fractures the harmony of the group for awhile. A third weakness shows up
when you have a follower who is not particularly trustworthy. So if the leader is a team
player, but the follower is not the democratic leadership style may not be as suitable for
that follower.
• Overall though, the democratic style is largely viewed as the most effective of the
three styles we're looking at. Most research sees it that way and most people with
practical experience see it that way too. It doesn't fit all situations equally, but it's a solid
leadership style for most people most of the time.
So my question for you is does this sound like your style of leadership? If so, you're probably
off to a good start, most followers will do well under your style. Just recognize that some
situations may call for another approach. At its core the laissez-faire leadership style is about
giving your people space to work so they can be at their best, and many followers like this style,
but this style does not have the best reputation and practice, so let's take a look.
Laissez-Faire Style
At its core the laissez-faire leadership style is about giving your people space to work so
they can be at their best, and many followers like this style, but this style does not have the
best reputation and practice, so let's take a look.
We are at the end of a three part series, the first two discussions are about the autocratic and
democratic leadership styles. And we're starting with some of the earliest research on this from
the late 1930s, by Lewin, Lippitt and White. They did a series of studies on how adult leaders
with one of these three styles interacted with groups of children to see how it worked out.
A brief history of the term laissez Faire goes like this. It ”means let do”, or “let them do it”, it's
a French term that was originally about how to handle the economy. At its root, it's about the
government not interfering with the economy, just let it go how it's going to go, don't
interfere. People in leadership studies took the sentiment and imported the term to describe the
hands-off leadership style. These leaders back off and give followers lots of room and
space, and autonomy to make their own decisions and solve their own problems. Ronald
Reagan, the president was often mentioned as a classic laissez-faire leader. He once said, in
fact, "Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere
as long as the policy you've decided upon is being carried out." In other words, let them do it.
And because of this some critics call this style a “zero-leadership style”. In other words,
some people say, it's not really leadership at all, but I think there's more to this as we will see.
To make it more concrete, some examples of laissez-faire leadership on TV and movies would
be Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec. He's a classic hands-off leader, he even says he has
a libertarian philosophy which is about less government. Michael Scott from the Office, he's
at least some aspects of his style are giving people space to work or not work as the case may
be. But my favorite example is Frigga she's Thor's mother in the Marvel universe. But you know,
as I was looking into this, I noticed that there aren't a lot of clear-cut examples of the laissez-
faire leadership style and in TVs and movies. And I think it's because it's a hands-off style.
So on screen, it doesn't look like much is happening, it doesn't translate to the viewer as
leadership behaviors when you're looking at it, it's not obvious like that but you see a positive
example in Frigga, so Thor's mother and we'll have a little science fiction moment here. She's
the Queen of Asgard, but she doesn't have a top-down style even though she's a queen. In most
instances, she stays out of the day-to-day operations of Asgard. She's not about pushing her
authority, but she does have authority, she just comes in at key moments, for example to nudge
Thor or to counsel the King or to encourage Loki. People come to her for guidance and she
helps them figure it out without telling them what to do, she's a bit hands-off. But these
examples give you a taste of what it looks like in daily life, compared to autocratic leaders and
democratic styles, the laissez-faire leader will give some overall directions and deadlines
and goals and resources but they will then encourage you to do it on your own. They will
have fewer meetings, they're less likely to check in on you for progress updates, and
they're not going to observe you or watch you very much. It's a philosophy of
noninterference, so when they do interact with you they are more likely to listen and give some
general advice and not as likely to micro manage you. They are not going to tell you how to
do it. And this is because they have a lot of trust in their people. If you come to them for
advice, in fact, they might tell you what they would do personally, but ultimately, they expect
that you'll take that conversation and go make your own decisions. And it can be a very
empowering style in this way. Followers feel freedom, agency and responsibility for their
project, and that's really the whole key, laissez-faire leaders believe that their followers are
at their best, and are most motivated by autonomy. Followers will do great if you just let
them do it.
So let's begin to look at whether or not this is effective. Many followers prefer this style compared
to working with autocratic leaders in Lewin study, 70% of participants preferred the laissez-
faire style of leadership. Only 30% preferred autocratic leaders, and in practice some
successful leaders use this style. Warren Buffet is currently the fourth wealthiest person in the
world, he runs Berkshire Hathaway, and he's a laissez-faire leader and he's famous for only
scheduling about three or four meetings per month. So he's not watching people very closely,
but he can do this because he has a key feature in common with most effective laissez-faire
leaders and it's a feature that Ronald Reagan mentioned. That best case scenario is that these
leaders surround themselves with the very best people they can possibly find. If you're only
dealing with followers who are the smartest, most educated, self-motivated and competent
people, then you really don't need to supervise them very closely. They know how to do it, they're
excited to do it.
So giving them space to do their work makes sense, but this style is not generally effective.
There are lots of studies that say this amount of freedom can cause stress for followers. In fact,
in Lewin's original study, some participants preferred working under autocratic leaders. These
participants said about their laissez-faire leaders, "He had too few things for us to do," and
"He let us figure things out too much." The ambiguity and lack of clarity can be stressful for
some followers, but still head to head, 70% of Lewin's participants preferred laissez-faire
leaders over autocratic leaders. In the discussion on the democratic leadership style, I
mentioned the 2019 study on leadership styles of headmasters, over the teachers they
supervise. The author's note that all three styles were effective in dealing with discipline
issues. And when they rank them, the democratic leadership style was the best, next was
laissez Faire, and the last was the autocratic style. But they were still all effective to some
degree, so yes, leadership in the laissez-faire style can be effective, but it may not be the most
effective in most situations.
Let's clarify a few misunderstandings about this style. In the real world, no effective leaders
are completely hands off. That's really not leadership, no leader can avoid accountability.
The leader is still on the hook for results, so laissez-faire leaders still expect results from
their followers. At minimum, they establish goals, milestones and provide resources to help
their followers move forward. What makes them different from the other styles is they leave
almost all of the day-to-day execution up to their followers, another point of clarification is
that this style sometimes has a bad reputation because people make a huge mistake and
they think it means ”lazy” which it doesn't, lazy is that common word, that means a person is
unwilling to work hard. The words just sound similar, but laissez-faire again, which is French has
an entirely different motivation, it's about providing autonomy to your followers, so they can work
on their own.
A summary of the pros and cons goes like this, on the positive side, and there are some
positives,
• it works great in some situations, namely, when your followers are highly motivated,
skilled, and educated. If you're leading high-end engineers, doctors, lawyers, professors,
and other topflight professionals then it can work really well.
• It can work well in creative industries where people are driven. In these situations, the
laissez-faire leadership style can be very satisfying for followers. It can be very motivating
because followers can lead a more creative life and in the workplace and think of solutions
that the leader might not think of.
• It also requires less top-down pressure and direct supervision. So it frees the leader to
think about the bigger goals of the organization.
On the negative side,
• it only works well in specific situations, so the big criticism is that it results in low
productivity in most cases. For many situations, followers do not use the autonomy mainly
as a way to be more productive.
• It's not useful when competence and motivation are low.
• Ambiguity is another big problem, followers can get really stressed out when they're
confused and lack direction.
• And the laissez-faire style is not going to help much in that case. It also involves other
risks, if your followers are not doing a good job, it might be that a hands-off approach
doesn't help you notice the problem. It can also create more rooms for undesirable
activities like bullying or conflict that you don't notice. Some people will take advantage of
this freedom and autonomy in other words, to do things other than working hard.
In some the laissez-faire leadership style can work in an ideal situation, but when real problems
do come up, leaders should really adapt to the situation and take a more hands-on approach
when needed.