Leadership and Responsibility - Essay Example

This paper illustrates that the article strives to demonstrate the relationship between historical leadership style and the leadership proposal of Smith, Montagno, and Kuzmenko and highlighting the support offered by the historical record for the proposal of Smith et al. also forms a part of this article. In an order to represent the important concepts like transformational leadership and servant leadership, the author has chosen to use two historical leaders in his article- Xenophon, who was a transformational leader and Chief Joseph, who was a servant leader.

The research contained in this article may be considered valuable considering the efficacy offered by adding a historical approach for understanding such intricate leadership constructs as transformational leadership, which is considered to be more appropriate by the author when a definite organizational change is desired. The author stresses on the fact that the importance of contextual factors has increased in the recent years and that they really play an important role in determining the effectiveness of certain leadership constructs.

As Smith et al.’s proposal also stressed on using contextual factors for validating transformational and servant leadership, the research work in this article aims at presenting a historical approach for investigating the contextual complications, which is a strategy that never did appear in any management and leadership article before. According to the author, transformational leadership comes into practice when the interests of each individual become united for the overall interest of an organization.

A transformational leader should be able to maintain his/her charisma and should provide a unique vision to his/her followers. The author tries to identify in the article that servant leadership style has some definite deficiencies compared to transformational leadership style because its topmost priority is based on serving others and then considering the step to lead others constructively.