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Leadership Theory Key Terms

Leadership theories help business owners learn leadership skills and achieve success

By Jessica Drew, Freelance Business Writer & Editor
Theories of leadership aim to understand the characteristics and skills that great historical leaders possessed in an effort to help modern day managers, employees and business owners. It’s important to have a basic understanding of general business leadership theories, if effective leadership will help your business grow and be successful. There are many different leadership theorists and theories and each has several leadership theory key terms.

Nearly all leadership theory pinpoints some main key terms that are common to all effective leaders. For instance, all leaders must have emotional intelligence and this means understanding how persons behave and react on an emotional level. Self-regulation is another important trait of leaders, which is a leader's ability to think things through before acting. Similar to this is also self-awareness, or a leader's understanding of his or her abilities and limitations. Other key leadership traits include:

1. Leadership theories in business stress social skills or the ability to build rapport quickly.

2. Empathy or the ability to see another point of view is also essential for leaders.

3. Motivation is also a necessary means for leaders to create action.

 

Understand how modern leadership theory works overall

Before choosing a leadership theory to apply to your company's practices, gain an understanding of the general knowledge and concepts that all leadership theories use. Doing this will allow you to have a better, more in depth understanding of a specific theory and leadership theory key terms is an important aspect of this understanding.
Try: North Georgia College and State University has a quick and easy to read overview of leadership theory, including definitions of some related key terms. Money-Zine.com also has a good overview, but offers a more detailed look at some of the most popular theories and some related key term definitions.

Choose a theory of leadership that is best for your business

Once you have an idea of what leadership theory is all about, assess your leadership needs and then pick a leadership theory that best suits those needs. Do this by learning more about specific theories and the key terms required to understand these theories.
Try: Syque’s Changing Minds website has a comprehensive list of leadership theories and a ton of information on each and detailed descriptions to help you understand all the terms. Pearson Education has a handy outline of several different theories and criteria terms for each.

Find more information about leadership and management theory

Consider buying books or other media for yourself, your management staff or any employer who would benefit from greater leadership skills.
Try: Simon & Schuster sells a book by Bernard M. Bass and Ruth Bass that details specific ways to implement and reinforce leadership theory in business. The book includes concepts and key definitions regarding leadership. Onepine also sells a book that focuses solely on leadership skills for managers and the site offers some definitions of what certain theories are.

 

  • If you have a business that deals heavily with cross cultural differences, it is important to keep in mind that even most modern day leadership theories are of North America origin, and unfortunately do not account for such differences.

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