Discuss how one’s leadership style is developed, and the process one would follow to modify their leadership style.
Leadership development comes in many forms for leaders such as through ones educational training and background and/or ones experience in leadership roles. The nature vs. nurture argument has been used frequently when trying to explain leadership competencies. Some have argued that a true leader is born with the appropriate traits needed to lead, whereas, others have argued that leadership can be taught and is a function of one’s environment i.e., education and experience. While both schools of thought are appropriate, because we never really know how much of one’s genetics contribute to the variance in one’s ability to lead, a strong focus on education and experience is warranted.
There are several ways in which a leader can further their development. According to Van Velsor, McCauley, and Ruderman (2010), a leader is defined as the expansion of a person’s capacity to be effective in leadership roles and processes. Therefore, when we talk about expansion of capacity, one can do so throughout the course of their life by several ways. First, leaders can be developed by participating in a variety of training and development programs offered either through their employer or by an external training vendor. Other ways leaders can develop may be by observing others behaviors, role-playing, role modeling, simulation, and hosts of other methods one can use to learn and develop.
One model that helps explain how observation influences leaders is the Action-Observation-Reflection Model (Hughes, Ginnett & Curphy, 2009). This model asserts that leaders observe actions within a given situation and then the leaders reflect on what they observed. Essentially, between each of the three components of the model, leaders have experiences that help shape their way of