Now I want to look closer at the tasks of these three leaders. The hotel manager works with daily leadership and strategic planning. Since it is a little hotel with few departments, most of the leaders have additional responsibility. Quality Arcticus Hotel does not have a marketing department and the hotel leader has marketing as an additional task to his main tasks. This leader has a number of tasks which he handles alone, e.g. problems outside the hotel: the marked, competition, promotion. He can take decisions alone, having consulted the economy chief if it is possible to put his ideas into reality. In my opinion, this fact that he can solve some problems by himself helps him to avoid possible conflicts with the subordinates. Actually there are fields where he does not need to lead a team.

The economy chief takes charge of economy and budget, this is her main responsibility. Her additional responsibility is the personnel. Her tasks are more management tasks than leadership, as she works mostly with calculating and controlling, and this is the work that she handles alone. Still, she also works with the personnel, deciding who and how much is going to work in different situations.

The restaurant chief takes responsibility for the personnel in the restaurant and for the budget. She also takes charge of the arranging, marketing and selling of all the products that the restaurant can offer.

3.2 Trait approach in practice

First, I want to find out if these three leaders have some traits that explain their success. I have interviewed the leaders and asked what particular traits help them in their work, in their opinion. I have asked their subordinates as well to describe these persons as chiefs. At last I have tested the three leaders, using the questionnaire from the book “Leadership” , to find out if these persons have potential leadership qualities. The test showed that all the three of them may have such qualities, especially the restaurant chief. On my question, if they could be leaders of a big concern/company, the economy chief answered “no”, the restaurant chief answered “yes” and the hotel chief was not sure. The restaurant chief was very excited of the thought to lead a big company, which, to my mind, means that she has qualities and abilities necessary for a leader.

Among the qualities the hotel chief possesses his subordinates mentioned: democratic, flexible, not so demanding, motivating, honest, social, result-oriented, fair, friendly, well-organised, purposeful. He himself means that what helps him in work is an ability to listen to other people and to foresee the situation.

The economy chief was characterised as fair, polite, well-organised, nice, understanding, with sense of humour, flexible, democratic, precise, consequent, hardworking, and motivating. She herself considers the most important for her success is being social, friendly and co-operative.

The restaurant chief got a variety of characteristics from her subordinates: flexible, understanding, drive, motivating, demanding, obliging, stressful, funny, purposeful, open, helpful, optimistic, active, with a sense of humour, charismatic, absent-minded, messy, enthusiastic, precise, co-operative, concerned about quality. She herself pointed out such traits as open, helpful, purposeful, tough, and a bit autocratic.

As we can see all the three leaders possess a number of qualities that many researchers consider having great value for leaders, such as drive, honesty, friendliness, and motivating. Still, all the three possess different qualities, what does not prevent their success. Such traits as messy and stressful, for example, can be an obstacle in handling situations that demand responsibility and self-confidence. To my mind, this approach does not go deep enough to explain the success of the leaders.

3.3 Behaviour approach in practice

Further, I have tried to find out what kind of behaviour these three leaders practise. I have tested all of them, using two questionnaires from the book “Leadership” . I have also interviewed both the leaders and their subordinates.

One of the approaches, which I have described above, recognises autocratic versus democratic leadership styles. The hotel chief is a democratic leader. All his subordinates pointed it out. The characteristics he got from the personnel, such as flexible, fair, friendly, not so demanding, indicate his democratic relations with the subordinates. In the interview the hotel chief explained that although the organisation has a hierarchic structure, in practice he and his subordinates is one team, working together. When there is a problem to lose, he is on one line with the other leaders. Everyone has the right to say what they mean.

One of the tests I have used was designed to assess aggressive, passive and assertive behaviour. According to the test, the hotel chief’s behaviour is assertive. This behaviour is considered to be the most effective for leadership. Assertive people ask for what they believe, and stand up for their rights in a way that others can accept. The quality of assertiveness means being straightforward yet open to the needs of others. Assertiveness strikes the correct balance between being too dominant and too “soft”, which are not effective ways to influence others.

Another test shows if a person is people-oriented or task-oriented. The hotel chief is task-oriented according to the test, but only with a one point’s difference.

The economy chief is also rather democratic than autocratic. All her subordinates named her social characteristics. She delegates authority to others, encourages participation and relies on her subordinates.

However, the test showed that she practises passive behaviour, which is not effective for leadership. She prefers conflict avoidance, suppressing her own needs, being inhibited and submissive.

She is also more people-oriented than task-oriented. She trusts her colleagues and asks their opinion. For example, is there are too many rooms to clean, she never insists on cleaning all of them the same day. Satisfied room-maids are more important for her than 100% done work.

The restaurant chief is both democratic and autocratic. Her subordinates mentioned her social qualities as well as her concern for work, e.g. demanding, drive etc. She is a person who always helps her subordinates, asks for their opinion, in some cases fully delegates authority to the team of waiters and lets them decide how to complete the tasks. But in some cases, especially demanding to represent the restaurant at its best, she becomes autocratic and tells how to do the work. In such cases perfectly-done work is more important for her than satisfied subordinates. When a new waiter/waitress is being trained up, she pays much attention to every detail in doing the everyday tasks, such as laying up the table, talking to the guests and so on. When she lets her subordinates do the job without her supervision, every worker knows how to do the tasks so that the chief would like it. It is obvious that she is more task-oriented than people-oriented. She characterises her relationship with the subordinates as good, but she is aware of the fact that some persons are discontent with her pressure and a great deal of work which she expects to be done.

Another test showed her assertive behaviour, which is considered the most effective for leadership. (Daft..)

3.4 Situational approach in practice

All the three leaders behave in different ways. It is interesting that the hotel chief, having serious tasks, allows higher degree of democracy than the restaurant chief. To my mind the difference is the situations they work in. Both the hotel chief and the economy chief have a number of tasks they can handle alone and the number of their subordinates they work with on the other tasks is little. ² The restaurant chief has around 20 waiters under her charge. And there is almost no task she can do alone without any help. Moreover, she needs to co-operate with the kitchen. Her working surroundings are more conflictable and she needs to be firm. I think it is incorrect to say that some behaviour is more effective than other, without taking into consideration in what situation the leader work. The leader effectiveness is in other words contingent on the situation.

The situational theory of Hersey and Blanchard focuses on the characteristics of followers. According to this theory I can say that the restaurant chief has telling style, as she gives explicit directions about how tasks should be accomplished. And this is an appropriate style in her situation if we take into consideration the fact that 50% of the subordinates are not professional waiters. Half of the waters started to work without any knowledge about the specificity of the job, many of them work part-time. So, not all the waiters show high degree of readiness. Letting them decide and giving them responsibility is not the right thing to do.

On the opposite, the hotel chief and the economy chief work with a team that has high readiness and shares the goals of the organisation. The department chiefs can take responsibility for their own task behaviour. The hotel chief prefers delegating and participating styles of work. The economy chief has delegating style.

Fiedler takes more factors into consideration than just the characteristics of the followers. He also means that task structure and the degree of leader power are important. Here is the table showing different situations the leaders can work at.

Figure 2.

Source: Richard L. Daft: Leadership: theory and practice. (1999: 97)

Knowing the situation we can say what is more effective for a leader: being people-oriented or task-oriented.

The leader-member relations are good with all the three leaders in our case. The task structure is high. There are little ill-defined tasks or researches, the hotel chief and the economy chief handle such tasks alone. At the restaurant it can be a challenge to work with new unexpected tasks, here we have work that sometimes needs creativeness. The task structure at the restaurant is lower. I would place the restaurant chief in the situation with unstructured tasks.

The formal position power is strong with all the three leaders. Although the hotel chief and the economy chief prefer to work on one line with their subordinates, formally they have power to evaluate, reward or punish.

I can conclude that the hotel and economy chiefs work in a favourable situation, while the restaurant chief- in an intermediate. In both cases task-oriented leaders perform better. As I have found out before, the hotel chief and the restaurant chief are task-oriented leaders, while the economy chief is more people-oriented. But as she is as popular as a chief and does her work successfully, I presume she can allow being people-oriented in her situation as well. The tasks for her subordinates are so clear and routine, and the relations with her team are so favourable that she does not need focus on tasks.

Conclusion

In this paper we have tried to analyse different approaches to leadership and implement them in practice using Quality Arcticus Hotel as a model. I think that all the three approaches are relevant to some extent. All the three leaders possess traits that are necessary to succeed in a leading position. The leaders in my analysis possess different behaviour styles but it is understandable. If a leader has to handle with tasks demanding high degree of responsibility from the subordinates he is more task-oriented. To be a hotel chief is a responsible work, the leader should be more task-oriented than people-oriented. On the operative level as well there are a lot of daily tasks which need to be performed with high quality. All the goals that the leaders on the upper levels set up for the organisations shall be realised on the operative level. We can judge the work of the hotel by the work of the departments on the operative level (reception, kitchen, restaurant, bar, selling department). That is why it is more natural, to my mind, for these leaders to focus more on the tasks than on their subordinates.

Situational approach takes more factors into consideration and that is why I think it is a more applicable theory to find out the best style of leadership. Leadership is a complex phenomenon and it can not been explained with simple concepts. I do not mean to say that contingency approaches are the best in explaining success in leadership. There are many theories about this phenomenon. But out of the three approaches analysed it gives more concrete answers on the question, why exactly this leader performs well in exactly these surroundings.

Literature

• Yukl, Gary Leadership in organisations, fifth edition, 2002

• Daft, Richard L. Leadership: theory and practice, 1999

1 The hotell manager is married to the economy chief and one of the operative leaders is their son-in-law.

2 The hotel chief normally handles problems with the economy chief and the five operative leaders. The economy chief has two persons working with economy under her supervision. Besides she takes charge of the 8 room-maids.

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