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The psychology of leadership: six main approaches

By Charles Woodruffe (October 2004 Issue)
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Organisations must respond rapidly to change if they are to thrive or even survive in the current environment. This necessity has resulted in the current emphasis on leadership in organisations and is bound up with the following chain of circumstances.

1. Change is endemic. People are needed to lead people through constant change.
2. Organisations have delayered and downsized to be flexible and to cut costs. As a result, customer-facing staff are empowered. They can answer customer needs rapidly and do not have someone else to refer to. Leaders are needed for empowered groups. Their role is different to simply managing a resource.
3. The teams that deliver the service to the customer are critical to success. Firms compete by their excellence. They don’t just need managing. They need coaching.
4. The deliverers of service are vital. Yet in the aggressive 1990s they had their psychological contracts disrupted. Organisations made clear that jobs were no longer for life. In turn, commitment to an employer now seems to be ‘bad faith’. Leaders must motivate staff by meeting their individual needs if they are to stay.
5. Teams need to be inspired to give their best – to go the extra mile.

In short, we are in an era of hardly being able to stress too much the importance of team leadership rather than just management. So what is the role of team leaders?

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