Contents

• Introduction
• Better business leaders
• Real Life Business Leaders
• Leadership – A Theoretical Perspective
• Conclusion
• References

Description

This essay provides answer to the following question –
When it comes to understanding what makes someone a better business leader, in what ways do the advice of successful business leaders and the findings of academic researchers converge, and in what ways do they diverge?
Leadership skills often arise from practical exposure and experience. Leadership skills come to the fore when a manager is put in a difficult organizational situation and the manager has to bring about all his skills to steer the ship out of troubled waters. These business leaders normally have useful suggestions to the inexperienced managers on leadership skills. Some of the example of exemplary leadership are Lee Iacocca, who revived Chrysler Corporation from financial crisis in the 80s (Hakim, 2005) or Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, who took the company to staggering heights after being sacked by Citibank (Hovanesian, 2009). These are the practical examples of business leaders that have something to say to the next generation business leaders. However, there also have been academic researchers that are eloquent in defining and explaining what the true leadership is all about such as Kouzes and Posner (2007). These researchers have brought about theories, attributes and frameworks to define leadership. It is a question for debate as to which of the above two categories is more relevant to the current organizational leadership issues. The essay discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the contribution by either category to organizational leadership. The essay finally concludes as to who among the two i.e. real life business leaders or academic researchers that are the authorities on leadership theories is more relevant to the present day businesses.