Is it Criterion or Traits that Define Great Leadership?

What truly defines a “good” leader? How is someone selected to be placed within a management role and lead a group of individuals?
Some say that leaders are born, and others say leaders are molded, can we determine what truly defines good leadership?

Leader Emergence is a part of a trait theory that suggests, certain types of people will become leaders and certain types will not. The term Theory is a systematic set of assumptions regarding the cause and nature of behavior.

The lack of agreement on a list of traits consistently related to Leader Emergence is, that the motivation to lead is more complex then thought. In a study, Chan and Drasgrow (2001) found that the motivation to lead has three aspects. Affective Identify Motivation, Non-calculative Motivation, and Social-Normative Motivation which means the following:

• Affective Identify Motivation: become leaders because they love being in charge and leading others.

• Non-Calculative Motivation: seek leadership positions when they perceive that such positions will result in personal gain.

• Social-Normative Motivation: become leaders out of a sense of duty.

in contrast to Leader Emergence is, Leader Performance which states the idea that leaders who perform well posses certain characteristics that poorly performing leaders, do not. Research on the relationship between personal characteristics and leader performance has concentrated on three areas such as:

traits, needs, and orientation.

How does Criterion define good leadership?

Well …

          Criterion is the standard in which you can judge performance distinguishing good from bad performance.

Classifications of Criteria are:

Theoretical Criterion - an abstract definition of good performance.

Actual Criterion - is similar to the way theoretical criterion is assed or measured.
For Example: A performance appraisal technique is used. This is open to criterion complexities because people multitask at their job, multiple criterion measures are needed to assess performance adequately.

Dynamic Criterion - how performance varies over time.

Ultimate Criterion - a guide or goal to measure good performance / success.

This leads us to our next Theory which is: The Goal-Setting Theory

The Goal-Setting Theory was brought about by Locke & Lantham (2002) and the theories research says the more specific the goal the greater the productivity.

For Example; Through properly setting specific goals, goals can be measured. The more difficult the goal is, it will lead to better task performance rather than an easy goal.

Since training is a planned effort by an organization to facilitate the learning of job-related behavior on the part of its employees. Some companies or organizations may consider training as a benefit for exposure to new skills and better performance.

The Criteria for training evaluation is …

·      Employee reactions: How was the experience?

·      Employee learning: What was learned in training?

·      Application of training: Is the trainee doing what they learned?

·      Business impact: Did training have desired affect?

·      Return on investment: Was the training cost effective?

All relevant inquiries to obtain information on the usefulness of utilizing a training program.

There is an idea that if you approach the matter by weeding out individuals who are deemed “valuable" within an organization the following approaches can determine how they would be within a leadership role.

Trait Approach: The first approach to studying leadership, that believes an individual is a “born this way” good leader, in any situation. Its assumed that some people are better leaders than others and can also determine the good traits of others. The problems and limitations regarding this approach are inconsistency of results, lack of insight into process, ignores situational circumstances and abandons personality in favor of situational influences.

For Example; The traits of a born leader are similar to: Intelligence, Aggressiveness, Decisiveness, and Dominance.

Behavior Approach: The second major method, this approach says leaders can be made not born. This differs from the Trait Approach, which says that people are born leaders. The Problem and limitations of this approach is it ignores situational and individual differences.

Contingency Approach: Takes into consideration the role of the situation in leadership and how effective the leader emerges. It asks under a given situation who will be a good leader and what behavior is likely to be effective. Unlike both Behavior and Trait, both approaches do not focus on the situation.

Lastly the Leadership Excellence Approach, which is the function of one person being in the right place at the right time. The fact that some traits flounders may not be any no more better than the rest.

So what does this all mean?
Well… the organization goals sets the tone for its corporate culture while balancing the demands of its evolving environment.

Does the organization believe that leadership is based on merit, or someone’s innate capacity to do the best possible job? Is the focus on a leader who can embody specific characteristics and influence a team?

I believe all theories, traits and criterions should be taken into account, to obtain the best results.