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Leadership studies is a multidisciplinary academic field of study that focuses on leadership in organizational contexts and in human life. Leadership studies has origins in the social sciences (e.g., sociology, anthropology, psychology), in humanities (e.g., history and philosophy), as well as in professional and applied fields of study (e.g., management and education).
"At its heart is the leader's self-awareness, his progress toward self-mastery and technical competence, and his sense of connection with those around him. It's the inner core, the source, of a leader's outer leadership effectiveness." (Scouller, 2011). The idea is that if leaders want to be effective they must work on all three levels in parallel.
The research concluded that there is no single "best" style of leadership, and thus led to the creation of the situational leadership theory, which essentially argues that leaders should engage in a healthy dose of both task-oriented and relationship-oriented leadership fit for the situation, and the people being led. [2]
This leadership style can be seen as the absence of leadership, and is characterized by an attitude avoiding any responsibility. Decision-making is left to the employees themselves, and no rules are fixed. Laissez-faire is the least effective leadership style, when measured by the impact of the leader's opinion on the team.
A high LPC score suggests that the leader has a "human relations orientation", while a low LPC score indicates a "task orientation". Fiedler assumes that everybody's least preferred coworker in fact is on average about equally unpleasant, but people who are relationship-motivated tend to describe their least preferred coworkers in a more positive manner, e.g., more pleasant and more efficient.
Prior to 1945 most studies of leadership sought to identify the individual traits of effective leaders. Trait theories of leadership were the first to attempt a systematic approach of studying leadership. However, these studies yielded disappointing results when no set of traits were found that explained effective leadership.