Path- Goal Leadership: The Best Theory of Leadership?

Of all the leadership theories, It seems to me that 'Path-Goal' leadership is the most practical. Not that I'm knocking the other theories, It just seems to be the easiest to grasp and implement in practical situations in my opinion. In path-goal leadership, the leader's behavior is contingent to the satisfaction and motivation of his or her followers.

In order for a person to be a good path-goal leader, they need to be able to effectively remove 'obstacles' and solve problems that are making it difficult for their followers to reach the ultimate goal(s). The leader must define the goals, clarify the path, remove obstacles as well as provide support to the followers. to sum it all up, the main goal of path-goal leadership is to enhance employee/ followers performance and satisfaction by focusing on employee motivation. Here is a picture to help illustrate the idea.

It is easy to see how the path-goal leadership theory could be considered the most practical leadership theory. It seems like many of us have had to be a leader at some point for certain situations and path-goal leadership was probably used to help lead. I know I have used this several times in my life. It seems to be the natural way for me to lead. How about you?

Skills, Skills, Skills

Technical skills, human skills and concept skills are all very important in leadership positions. The people at the bottom of the chain all need to have an even distribution of human and technical skills. The middle management needs to have an even distribution of all 3 and the top management needs to have conceptual skills at the top of their list. If distributed this way, a company will be very effective.

for example, this summer, I was working in an office. I was at the bottom of the 'work chain' so to speak. I had to do a lot of work and use my technical skills to preform tasks assigned to me, such as working on social media and marketing by using computers, etc. I also had to be very good with my human skills because I had to talk to customers on the phone and get along and collaborate with my fellow employees. It may seem like as you go up in the ladder, you have less work to do. this is not true though. It is just a different type of work, focusing more on conceptual skills to lead you employees and bring your company where it needs to go. By every level of workers applying their level of skills correctly, we achieved out goal of attaining more customers through social media outlets.

As you can tell, every level of management has a certain amount of skills that are useful for business and leadership. If applied correctly, you can make your company a more effective business with a better atmosphere.