Behavioral and Situational Theories

By now, we've covered a few more leadership theories in addition to the earliest trait theory-among these are behavioral theory and situational theory.  Basically, behavioral theory is the opposite of what trait theory was-instead of leadership being innate (being born with leadership traits), leadership is now defined by a pre-determined set of behaviors that may or may not be innate but can definitely be learned like any other behavior. On the other hand, situational theory states that what is acceptably defined as leadership can change depending on the context.  For example, it may be more appropriate to define leadership by trait theory in one situation and behavior in another.  Personally, I feel like situational theory is a blend of both the trait and behavior theories that incorporates the best of both, which essentially makes each theory individually useless.  If it's possible to combine two theories into a new one because they are both right on some aspects, then logically there is no point to each individual theory since the new one simply encompasses aspects of both.

As we have discussed in class, there are both pros and cons to the trait theory and behavioral theory.  Long story short, the pros of each are possible explanations for the way leadership works, but the cons of each are that both are too rigid in their definitions.  Neither theory allows for change or extenuating circumstances.  For example, trait theory states that leadership capabilities are beyond the control of the leader-they either have them or they don't, while behavioral theory states that leadership is only defined by the behaviors that leaders exhibit, and thus anyone can be a leader by copying those behaviors.  From these opposing definitions, neither  allows any room for compromise.  However, situational theory basically states that depending on the context, many theories could be incorporated, including both trait theory and behavioral theory.  This makes more sense to me, since it makes sense logically that different circumstances might require different definitions of leadership.  For example, any leader that is not male, tall, and physically strong (such as the renowned mayor of my hometown) disproves trait theory.  Likewise, in societies where only certain "types" of people-certain gender, race, etc-are found in leadership positions, behavioral theory does not apply because simply emulating the behavior does not guarantee leadership.  Examples of this include many countries that appear regularly on the news (mostly in the Middle East/Africa), where the high prevalence of male politicians show that cultural norm and not behavior dictates who is a leader.

I think that situational theory sums up various definitions of leadership nicely in that it accommodates for a variety of possible scenarios.  It basically admits that there is not always one right definition of leadership, but instead suggests that leadership changes as the context changes.