Combining Leadership Theory and Practice For Success

By Wayne Kwan

There are many different leadership theories that can be put into practice to achieve success. But what eludes most is that they did not achieve a synergy between the leadership theory and practice to actually achieve the level of success they want.

I will briefly explain some of the different types of leadership theories.

Ethical leadership do not ignore profit and loss, costs and performance but rather it is the addition of other various elements such as taking into account of the purpose of the action made and the moral standards.

So as Daft, 1999 had said "Moral leadership is about distinguishing right from wrong and doing right, seeking the just, the honest, the good, and the right conduct in its practice" will truly show the essence of ethical leadership. Situational leadership by Hersey and Blanchard mainly focuses on the characteristics of followers. This will consequently determine the leader behavior.

Alternatively, the behavior of leaders are influenced by the level of readiness exhibited by the followers which in turn affected the entire situation. Daft further elaborated that the relationship between leader style and follower readiness into four categories, namely telling, selling, participatory and delegating. From this, it just means that we look at the world from a different perspective.

Strategic leadership is the direct relationship of the external environment to elements such as vision, mission, strategy and their implementation. This style of leadership provides directions for translating the vision into action and is the foundation for developing implementation methods.

To summarize, the historical factors such as the growth of the organization and the level of influence of the leader will affect the opportunity by the vision of the leader and the overall performance of the organization.

With all these common leadership styles, one might think that anyone could succeed easily with these in mind. But in actuality, it is quite far off from that unless one puts in the effort and time to practice it continuously. Therefore, here are five ways where you can use to combine leadership theory and practice for success.

Be a non-stop learner. As the popular saying that goes "practice makes perfect". So one really need to learn everything about the leadership style that he or she is going to practice and really put them into application in the real life. Only then, will you get better and better and will achieve success sooner.

Gather feedback. Feedback allows you to reflect on what your actions yield and necessary modification along the way is required to get what you aimed for initially.

Reflect. After you have done gathering feedback, you might want to take some time out to ponder why the feedback targeting this particular thing did. Be mindful of your results and review them in your head. Always make decisions beforehand in preparation for the next step.

Experiment new things. All the previous three things are rendered useless unless you are willing to try out new things and approaches. After all, if you never try anything new, how will you get better at anything, including leadership?
Apply your skills in various other situations as well. Always find opportunities that can allow you to display your skills especially other aspects of your life other than the main organizational life. You can try organizing a neighborhood event or even leading a group of youths at your church.

Apply all of these things that you learnt at work in your life and use them on your life as your personal leadership training ground and you will definitely achieve the essence of combining leadership theory and practice for success.
If you would like to discover more about how to efficiently combine leadership theories to put into real practice to gain measurable results and how you can use this knowledge to succeed in your career, relationships, and personal life, you can find this information at http://www.neuroprofiler.com

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