Business Essentials, 12/e

The Situational Approach to Leadership

1. Objective 9-3 Discuss the concept of situational approaches to leadership.

The situational approach to leadership assumes that appropriate leader behavior varies from one situation to another, as shown in Figure 9.2. The trait and behavioral approaches to leadership were both universal in nature. They attempted to prescribe leader behaviors that would lead to a set of universal outcomes and consequences. For instance, proponents of these universal perspectives might argue that tall and intelligent people or people who are consistently employee-focused will always be good leaders. In reality, though, research has found this simply is not true. So, the situational approach to leadership attempts to identify ...