ader. In his later study, in 1970 he identified aggressiveness, being resistant to stress and being independent as additions to his earlier discoveries.
David Bertocci (2009) puts forward the biggest criticism of the trait theory. He asked a question as to the reasons why some of the great leaders do not come from generations of great men, would it then mean the theory is not valid as leaders do not actually possess the inborn attributes? The clarification may come from Gibson, Ivancevich and Donnelly (2012) who suggest that leadership traits work in combination and are dependent very much on the situation and environment an individual is found in. They carry on by stating that new traits are added every year which creates an additional confusion as to the true traits of a leader.

The uncertainty whether leaders are born with the above attributes or again, those can be learnt or acquired during their life influence their relevance in today’s organisations. As stated above, new traits are researched with time therefore it may be deemed difficult to substantiate and standardise a set list of attributes. Some of those traits, for example confidence, honesty or integrity will always be respected and valued very high in leadership roles but their importance is dependent on a number of factors within organisations. The culture within an organisation, diversity, type of workforce or even type of organisation itself would all have an impact. For instance, the level of honesty and integrity in financial background would bear a different significance as opposed to manufacturing environment. What is more, an interesting insight into the variations in leadership traits between men and women is given by Badura et all (2018). With an increase of women in leadership roles in modern organisations we can observe a diminishing gap between female and male traits, where communal (such as kindness) and agentic (such as assertive or dominant) traits merge.

Various literature sources outline transactional and transformational approaches to leadership. Both of those leadership styles differ from each other significantly. According to Bertocci (2009) a leader operating transactional style identifies what needs to be taken into consideration, such as needs of the individuals, their perception and self-esteem requirements in order to enable them to work towards achieving set goal. The leader then establishes the reward for achieving a goal and demonstrates how to do it. The individual is then left on its own and there is no intervention unless there are issues in achieving the goal. This concept is often called ‘management by exception’. George J. & Jones G. (2014) agree with the above stating that this specific type of leadership focuses on rewarding in exchange for high performance levels with the use of performance management systems. The goals can be adjusted as flexibility is v