Leadership qualities - Is there a perfect leader?

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,0, niversity of Applied Sciences Oldenburg/Ostfriesland/Wilhelmshaven; Oldenburg, course: Communication and Presentation Skills, language: English, abstract: The first thing most people think of when they hear leadership quality is the leading of other people. But there is more to it than that. 'In companies (...) people work towards a specific goal. Companies (...) are therefore (...) organizations. The activities, which are directed towards coordinating and arranging the different (resources and, added by authors) behavior patterns of the members of an organization can be named as leading and management activities.'1 To be successful in the above-mentioned activities requires leadership qualities. Proceeding globalization leads to tougher competition on the markets. Companies have to encounter this situation. To reach this goal the innovation and knowledge potential of the organization has to be activated. Therefore the significance of leadership increases. The goal of the report is to give the reader an insight on what leadership qualities are about, to bring together several existing approaches and to structure leadership qualities. It will be analyzed whether it is possible to find a set of leadership qualities, which constitutes an ideal leader. At first leadership will be described in a historical context. Then three theoretical concepts will be explained and brought in line with a synthesis. Those are the manager types by Maccoby, The continuum of leadership behavior of Tannenbaum and Schmidt and the fields of leadership qualities by Kets de Vries with amendments of the authors. To find out whether an ideal leader exists the theory will be applied on two Chief Executive Officers. The focus is on leadership in economic environments but leadership is also present in politics which will be taken into account as well. [...]