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Leadership - A Short History of Leadership Theory
The Rationalist Revolution of the 18th Century
During the Enlightenment, philosophers such as Voltaire claimed that through the application of reason alone, people could control their destiny. This marked an incredibly optimistic turn in world history.
The 19th century belief in progress and in the perfectibility of man
In the nineteenth century, two beliefs stemmed from this rationalist notion: a belief in progress and a belief in the perfectibility of man. This produced an even rosier world view than before.
Sigmund Freud and Max Weber
It wasn’t until the end of the nineteenth century, with the writings first of Sigmund Freud and later of Max Weber, that the chinks in the armour appeared. These two thinkers destroyed western man’s belief in rationality and progress. The current quest for leadership is a direct consequence of their work.
The founder of psychoanalysis, Freud, theorized that beneath the surface of the rational mind was the unconscious. He supposed that the unconscious was responsible for a fair proportion of human behaviour. Weber, the leading critic of Marx and a brilliant sociologist, also explored the limits of reason. Indeed, for him, the most destructive force operating in institutions was something he called technical rationality – that is, rationality without morality.
For Weber, technical rationality was embodied in one particular organizational form – the bureaucracy. Bureaucracies, he said, were frightening not for their inefficiencies but for their efficiencies and their capacity to dehumanize people. The tragic novels of Franz Kafka bear stark testimony to the debilitating effects of bureaucracy. Even more chilling was the testimony of Hitler’s lieutenant Adolf Eichmann that “I was just a good bureaucrat.” Weber believed that the only power that could resist bureaucratization was charismatic leadership. But even this has a very mixed record in the twentieth century.
Although there have been inspirational and transformational wartime leaders, there have also been charismatic leaders like Hitler, Stalin and Mao Tse-tung who committed horrendous atrocities.
The 20th century emergence of Trait and Style Theory
By the twentieth century, there was much scepticism about the power of reason and man’s ability to progress continuously. Thus, for both pragmatic and philosophic reasons, and intense interest in the concept of leadership began to develop. And indeed in the 1920s, the first serous research started.
The first leadership theory – trait theory – attempted to identify the common characteristics of effective leaders. To that end, leaders were weighed and measured and subjected to a battery of psychological tests. But on one could identify what effective leaders had in common. Trait theory fell into disfavour soon after expensive studies concluded that effective leaders were either above average height or below.
Trait theory was replaced by style theory in the 1940s, primarily in the United States. One particular style of leadership was singled out as having the most potential. It was a hail-fellow-well-met democratic style of leadership, and thousands of American executives were sent to training courses to learn how to behave this way. There was only one drawback. The theory was essentially capturing the spirit of FDR’s America – open, democratic and meritocratic. And so when McCarthyism and the Cold War surpassed the New Deal, a completely new style was required. Suddenly, everyone was encouraged to behave like a Cold War warrior! The poor executive was completely confused.
The Emergence of Contingency Theory
Recent leadership thinking is dominated by contingency theory, which says that leadership is dependent on a particular situation. That is fundamentally true but given that there are endless contingencies in life, there are endless varieties of leadership. Once again the beleaguered executive looking for a model to help him is hopelessly lost.
So there you have it a whirl wind tour of leadership theory. Confused? At Gryffindor we have extracted the essence of each theory to develop a leadership model that develops modern leaders. Contact us if you are interested…