Exploring Leadership in Public Administration

James Oglethorpe Picture source:  http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/government-politics/james-oglethorpe-1696-1785 This week in Leadership we discussed two leadership theories—the path-goal theory and the leader-member exchange theory. This week I was most impressed with the path-goal theory so it will be the focus of this week’s post. The path-goal theory focuses on the follower's motivations and suggests that good leaders adjust their style to what motivates their followers. According to this theory, leaders may demonstrate directive leadership, supportive leadership, participative leadership, or achievement oriented leadership. The style of leadership used depends on the follower and the situation. For example, in the instance of a new project with a new employee, leaders would likely behave in a more directive manner. Most notably the leader in the path-goal theory does four main things for followers: he defines the goal, clarifies the path, removes any obstacles...

This week’s discussion covered two other approaches in leadership theory—the behavioral and situational approach. Each of these approaches considers the leader’s behavior across two main dimensions—task and relationship behaviors. Consider this diagram from our text that depicts the behavioral approach: Picture source: Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice (7 th edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishers. P. 76 The Behavioral Approach Figure 4.1 depicts the behavioral approach to leadership. As you can tell the two dimensions considered are the concern for people or relationship behaviors and concern for results or task behaviors. This diagram does a great job of portraying the approach. I especially like the names given to each type of leader. Beginning in the top left we have “country club management”. These types of managers are almost wholly concerned with relationship behaviors. They are interested in being the follower’s friend and likely making...

This week in Leadership we explored two approaches to leadership—the trait approach and the skills approach. I found both of these topics to be interesting. In this blog post, I will apply one significant trait approach—the Big 5 Personality Factor assessment to the first President of the United States, George Washington.   IMPORTANT NOTE: This post and its conclusions are complete opinion. I am in no way an expert on this theory or the leader I examine. I am merely seeking to demonstrate a practical application of the theory. The Trait Approach Image source: https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/ boundless-psychology-textbook/personality-16/trait-perspectives-on-personality-79/ the-five-factor-model-311-12846/ The trait approach seeks to describe traits that leaders have. Trait theories can be limiting because they tend to be a little too black and white. You either have this trait or you cannot be a leader. However, one trait theory—the Big 5 Pers...

       Hello and welcome to my blog! My name is Mary Beth, and I reside in Alabama. I am working towards my Master’s of Public Administration with a concentration in Public Management at Troy University. Over the next nine weeks, we will be exploring many components of leadership together as I complete my Leadership in Public Administration course. I hope that through this experience, we will all learn something that will make each of us better leaders. After all, whether we realize it or not, we are all leaders in our own right.       It’s been a whirlwind week in the realm of graduate school, and I have been diving into leadership topics headfirst. As a self-proclaimed history nerd, one topic from this week’s materials really caught my eye—the progression of leadership theory through time. So, this week, we will briefly explore some of the most interesting historic leadership theories . NOTE: This blog post is only a highlights post. It in...