Leadership Qualities

Is there a perfect leader?

Authors: Tobias Meyer & Oliver Wellinger

Bachelor of International Business Administration

Marina Alvares-Wegner

15.07.2008

Communication & Presentation Skills

Table of Contents

I. List of Illustrations 4

II. List of abbreviation 5

1. Introduction 6

2. History 8

2.1. Historical development of leadership 8

2.2. Parallels with Maslow′s Hierarchy of Needs 9

3. Theoretical Concepts 11

3.1. Manager types 11

3.2. Continuum of leadership behavior 13

3.3. Fields of leadership qualities 15

3.3.1. Visions 15

3.3.2. Sense Management 16

3.3.3. Social Competence 16

3.3.4. Analysis Capabilities 17

3.3.5. Authenticity 17

3.3.6. Leading Others 18

3.3.7. Expert Knowledge 19

3.3.8. Power to resist/Staying power 19

3.3.9. Translation into action 20

4. Synthesis 21

4.1. The Expert 21

4.2. The Helper 21

4.3. The Defender 21

4.4. The Innovator/The Self-Developer 22

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5. Practical orientation 23

5.1. Portraits: Frank Appel and Thomas Enders 23

5.2. Classification of Enders and Appel into the fields 24

5.2.1. Specification of the attributes for Appel and Enders 24

5.2.2. Comparison of Appel and Enders 26

5.3. Classification into Syntheses types 27

6. Critical Analysis 29

7. Conclusion 30

III. List of references 32

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I. List of Illustrations

Illustration 1: Maslow′s Hierarchy of Needs 9

Illustration 2: Continuum of leadership behavior 14

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II. List of abbreviation

AG: Aktiengesellschaft (German Corporation)

CEO: Chief Executive Officer

DAX: Deutscher Aktienindex (Germen stock index)

N.V.: Naamloze Vennootschap (Dutch Corporation)

S.A.S.: Société par Actions Simplifiée (Simple form of a French Corpo-

ration)

USA: United States of America

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1.

Introduction

The first thing most people think of when they hear leadership quality is

the leading of other people. But there is more to it than that.

"In companies (...) people work towards a specific goal. Companies

(...) are therefore (...) organizations. The activities, which are di-

rected towards coordinating and arranging the different (resources

and, added by authors) behavior patterns of the members of an or-

ganization can be named as leading and management activities."1

To be successful in the above-mentioned activities requires leadership

qualities.

Proceeding globalization leads to tougher competition on the markets.

Companies have to encounter this situation. To reach this goal the in-

novation and knowledge potential of the organization has to be acti-

vated. Therefore the significance of leadership increases.

The goal of the report is to give the reader an insight on what leadership

qualities are about, to bring together several existing approaches and to

structure leadership qualities. It will be analyzed whether it is possible to

find a set of leadership qualities, which constitutes an ideal leader.

At first leadership will be described in a historical context. Then three

theoretical concepts will be explained and brought in line with a synthe-

sis. Those are the manager types by Maccoby, The continuum of lea-

dership behavior of Tannenbaum and Schmidt and the fields of leader-

ship qualities by Kets de Vries with amendments of the authors. To find

out whether an ideal leader exists the theory will be applied on two

Chief Executive Officers.

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