A large part of effective leadership is dependent on something called " style". But style is difficult to teach, and what makes one leader great and another mediocre is not easily defined. Leadership always implies power, and a broad definition in this context is that leadership includes the power to influence thoughts and actions of others in such a way that they achieve higher satisfaction and/or performance. Over the past century, there have been three major approaches to understanding leadership.
Identifying leadership traits, or the physical and psychological characteristics of leaders, was die first formal approach, and had a lot of intuitive appeal. It owed its origins to the turn of the century (about 1904) when trait studies began. At this time most American leaders came from certain wealthy families, the vast majority were white males, and there were some social norms about what leaders looked like (tall, square jaw, well groomed, etc. ). The original assumption that " leaders are born, not made" has been discredited, because there were too many exceptions to the traits to give mem any credibility. Beginning after World War II, in sharp contrast to the trait approach, the behavioral approach looked at what a leader does, what behaviors leaders use that set them apart from others. This approach assumed that leadership could be learned. Virtually all of the studies focused on classifying behaviors according to whether they fell into a process or "people approach" (satisfying individual needs), or a "task approach" (getting the job done). The basis for this classification was in the discovery in social psychology that every group needs someone to fulfill both these roles in the group for it to be effective. The earliest of these studies began in Ohio State University and the University of Michigan in the late 1940s. Many of the early trait and behavioral writers tried to make their ideas applicable to all leadership situations. The earliest situational approach to leadership was developed in 1958. This approach strived to identify characteristics of the situation that allowed one leader to be effective where another was not. The trend later developed toward the third approach, understanding the unique characteristics of a situation and what kind of leadership style best matches with these.