Leadership is the ability of an individual to influence, motivate and enable others to contribute towards the effectiveness and success of the organization. There are many leadership theories which are applicable in different organization under the different situation. These theories have been categorized in form of Leaders and followers, Descriptive and prescriptive, universal and contingency theory. By differentiating the theories in these categories it is easy to understand the type of the theories, either theory is based on leader or followers there are the characteristic which differentiate the actions. Most of the theories are based on the leaders without any interaction to the followers.
Another way to differentiate theories is to understand descriptive in which a leader use to do routine work and followers follow him while in prescriptive a leader has to put efforts to get the result by motivating . Universal theories are used in every situation, weather it is descriptive or prescriptive while contingency theories are only used in specific conditions. Leadership is a process in which a leader guides a specific group of a people to achieve the common task for the organization and to develop the skills there are many leadership theories which distinguish between the followers and leaders. According to Kendra Cherry, 2004 there are some common theories which are widely used in the organizations.
“Great Man” Theories: Trait Theories: Contingency Theories: Is the selection of best method according to the situation. Situational Theories: Leader choose the best strategy of action Behavioural Theories: There are certain actions which make a leader effective Participative Theories: Every member in the group participates to give his suggestions. Management Theories: Are called as transactional theories which focus on group performance. Relationship Theories: are called as transformational theories which focus both on group and individual performance.
