A report on Margaret Thatcher’s leadership style, approaches and personality attributes

Name: Noor Al Abdulla

Student Number: 08434474

Module: Leadership in Context

Table of contents: Page Number

1.0 Introduction 3

2.0 Leadership defined 3

3.0 Margaret Thatcher 3

4.0 Leadership Theories 4

4.1 An illustration of four theories 4

4.2 Trait Theory 4

4.3 Trait Theory Application to Margaret Thatcher 5

4.4 Trait Theory limitations 5

5.0 Personal Attributes 5

5.1 Personal attributes and leadership 6

5.2 Margaret Thatcher’s personal attributes 6

5.3 Traits and accomplishments 6

6.0 Motivation: Brief definition 6

6.1
Thatcher attended Somerville College, Oxford, where she earned a chemistry degree (1947) and was president of the student Conservative Association. In the 1950s she trained as a lawyer and then was elected to Parliament as the member for Finchley in 1959. Her reputation as a rock-ribbed conservative grew over the next two decades, and she was named prime minister on 4 May 1979.” (Answers, online) this shows that the aforementioned traits are very relative to her personality, especially when it comes to intelligence, dominance and self-confidence. Infed (online) article has mentioned that Leaders are people, who are able to express themselves fully. They also know what they want, why they want it, and how to communicate what they want to others, in order to gain their co-operation and support. Lastly, they know how to achieve their goals. But what is it that makes someone exceptional in this respect? As soon as we study the lives of people who have been labelled as great or effective leaders, it becomes clear that they have very different qualities. We only have to think of political figures like Margaret Thatcher to confirm this.

4.4 Trait theory limitations

A review of 20 different studies identified nearly 80 leadership traits, but only five of these traits were common to four or more of the investigations. the search was intended to identify traits that were consistently associated with leadership, the six traits on which