There are many internal as well as external factors contributing to the relevance of the above described theories within organisations today. There is some relevance with all of those, the origins and age of those theories are probably the most important as it can be argued that the older the theory is, the less relevant it would be today. With all of the older theories concentrated around ‘men’, the transformational approach to leadership may be the most up-to-date and relevant to modern organisations. Even the lack of flexibility of the ‘great man’ theory forced the evolution of the ‘great woman’ theory, it suggests that gender relevance is very important in today’s world. The changing audience of followers is also very meaningful, with increasing influence of millennials the leaders must constantly adapt and find new ways of ensuring their needs as satisfied. Theories which are 100 years old were designed to suit a different type of followers, the needs of middle-aged men a 100 years ago were much different to the needs of individuals today. The pressure is not so much on salaries or bonuses but on flexibility and work life balance. Constantly developing technology also requires finding new ways to motivate and engage employees. It is worth to conclude therefore that a leader would never only expose one type of leadership technique, depending on situation a mixture of different styles may be required, or even a creation of a new style is one possible option.

To summarise, there are many leadership theories found in contemporary literature, all of them are slightly different and outline different characteristics of a good leader. There is many arguments as to the relevance of those theories within contemporary organisations, it is concluded however that most of them do not take the gender and change factors into considerations, although many are still of some level of relevance today, it can be argued that they were the most relevant to the times they were created in and therefore require adjustments if they were to be used nowadays.