Dr. Halfdan Mahler, a former Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), was born on April 21, 1923, in Vivild, Denmark. He met his death at the age of 93 years in Geneva, Switzerland, on December 14, 2016. He acted as WHO’s Director-General between 1973 and 1988 (World Health Organization, 2008).
Dr. Halfden Mahler possessed specific traits that helped him steer the WHO forward during his reign as Director-General. He was a visionary and intelligent and action-oriented leader. As an innovative leader, Dr. Halden outlined his vision of achieving health by 2000 (World Health Organization, 2008). The Kazakh capital Alma-Ata was born because of this vision. His intelligence can be seen because he made choices that benefited all and moved the world forward regarding access to health care. He did not advocate for the complete eradication of disease and illness. However, his goal was to focus on achieving a world with equitable health access and an acceptable health distribution worldwide.
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Trait theory is advantageous because it brings a general picture in the society that leaders have unique characteristics that can help them do extraordinary things (Nahavandi, 2014). The people need to have the opinion of their leaders as gifted leaders, and thus the trait theory fills this view. The second advantage of trait theory is it only analyses the leader, focusing entirely on the leadership process. On the other hand, trait theory has its limitation- its subjective form of judgment in determining who is regarded as a good or bad leader (Nahavandi, 2014). Secondly, there is no consensus of which traits are essential for a leader to be effective.
The trait theory gives meaningful information about leadership. This theory helps leaders to access their strengths and weakness and thus enable them to know how to improve on their leadership traits.
References
Nahavandi, A. (2014). The art and science of leadership (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
World Health Organization. (2008). Primary health care comes full circle. An interview with Dr. Halfdan Mahler. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 86 (10), 737–816.
