Functional/group approach
This idea focuses on the functions of leadership. What this means is that a leader has responsibilities for key functions within a business and must be able to know how to juggle these effectively.
In Action-Centred Leadership, John Adair (1973) argues that there are three areas within the working environment in which a leader must concentrate in order to be successful:
- Task - The job that needs done at a particular time.
- Team - The group of people that the leader is responsible for that must work together in order to achieve the task.
- Individual - The individual people that make up the team. Each person will have different personalities, motivations and skills.
The effectiveness of the leader is dependent upon meeting 3 areas of need within the work group:
- Need to achieve the common task
- Need for team maintenance
- Individual needs of group members
Therefore a good leader needs awareness and understanding. This could turn an ordinary manager into a good leader too. However, this pre-supposes that a leader is able to just look at these three areas and make the best decision at the time. It ignores the personality traits of the leader which will have an impact upon their decision. The next idea attempts to recognise this.
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Project
Contact
This resource was developed as part of an Erasmus+ project, funded with support from the European Commission under grant agreement 2016-1-SE01-KA203-22064.
The project was a collaboration between:
- The University of Borås, Sweden
- The University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland
- The University of Alcalá, Spain
- Digital Connections, Scotland
This resource has been released under Creative Commons license CC-BY-SA 4.0.
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- Academic content – The University of the Highlands and Islands (www.uhi.ac.uk)
- Technical resource development – The University of the Highlands and Islands Educational Development Unit - EDU (edu@uhi.ac.uk)
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