Communication in Leadership Flashcards
What is leadership?
- The process by which an individual influences others in ways that help attain group or organisational goals
What are the characteristics of leadership?
- Non-coercive influence
- Influence is goal-directed
- Not interested in changing everything
- Requires followers
- Leaders ≠ managers
- A leader will watch the horizon whilst a manager will watch the bottom line
What are the broad sources of leadership power?
- Position Power
* Personal Power
What is position power and what are it’s sources?
- The formal power associated with their jobs - remains vested in the position and are available to anyone who holds it
- Legitimate power
- Reward power
- Coercive power
- Information power
What is legitimate power?
The power someone has because others recognise and accept their authority
What is reward power?
The power to control the rewards others receive
What is coercive power?
The capacity to control punishment
What is information power?
The power a person has by virtue of his or her access to valuable data or knowledge
What is personal power and what are it’s sources?
- The power derived from the leader’s own unique qualities or characteristics
- Rational Persuasion
- Expert power
- Referent power
- Charisma
What is rational persuasion?
The power leaders have by virtue of the logical arguments and factual evidence they provide to support their arguments
What is expert power?
The power leaders have to the extent that others recognise their expert knowledge on a topic
What is reference power?
The power that individuals have because they are liked and admired by others
What is charisma?
The power someone has over others because of their engaging and magnetic personality
What do leaders do?
- Communicate a vision
- Persuade followes
- Motivate other towards a common goal
- Maintain power through communication (e.g. through information dispersal, feedback)
What is strategic communication?
- Communication that is aligned with the company’s overall strategy, to enhance its strategic positioning
- When companies take a strategic approach to communication, communication becomes integral to the formulation and implementation of strategy
What is the great person theory?
Recognises that great leaders possess key traits that set them apart form most others, traits that remain stable over time and across different groups
What are the traits in the great person theory?
- Drive
- Honesty and Integrity
- Leadership Motivation
- Cognitive Ability
- Knowledge of the Business
- Creativity
- Flexibility
- Multiple domains of intelligence
What are the two types of leadership motivation?
- Personalised power motivation
- People’s desires to dominate others, which tend to be reflected in extreme levels of concern about status
- Socialised power motivation
- People’s desires for power as a means of achieving shared goals, which they do by cooperating with others
What are the multiple domains of intelligence?
- Cognitive intelligence
- The capacity to process great deals of information accurately
- Emotional intelligence
- The capacity to be sensitive to one’s own emotions and the emotional states of others
- Cultural intelligence
- Knowledge of the cultural norms of the countries in which a company conducts business
What is transformational leadership?
- Transform the world in which they operate
- Transformational leaders achieve great successes because their behaviour stands to benefit others, they generate excitement
What are the aspects of transformational leadership?
- Charisma
- Self-confidence
- Vision
- Environmental sensitivity
- Transformational leaders are highly realistic about the constraints imposed upon them and the resources needed to change things
- Intellectually stimulation
- Interpersonal consideration
- Transformational leaders give followers the support, encouragement, and attention they need to perform their jobs well
- Inspiration
- Morality
What are the dimensions of the behavioural approach to leadership and what is true of the choice of combination?
- Permissive-Directive dimension
- Autocratic-Democratic dimension
- Choice of combination depends on circumstance, no one style is universally the best
What is the permissive-directive dimension?
- The extent to which leaders direct the activities of subordinates and tell them how to carry out their jobs
- Permissive extreme
- Not telling subordinates how to do their jobs
- Directive extreme
- Telling subordinates precisely how to do their jobs
What is the autocratic-directive dimension?
- Autocratic
- Decisions are made unilaterally
- Democractic
- Decision making responsibility is delegated to others
- People who fall between these two extremes use participative leadership style
What is the person-oriented vs production oriented leader theory?
- Initiating structures
- Consideration
- Two dimensions are largely independent
- Research suggests that best results ocur when leaders demonstrate high degrees of concern with both people and production
- Effects morale and commitment
- Used in grid training
What is initiating structure?
- Production centred
- Focus mainly on getting the job done
- Engage in organising wok, inducing subordinates to follow rules, setting goals, making roles explicit
What is consideration?
- Person centred
- Concerned primarily with establishing good relations with their subordinates and being liked by them
- Engage in doing favours for subordinates, explaining things to them, ensuring their welfare
What is the leader-member exchange model?
- Some followers are favoured more than others
- Distinction is made very early in relationship on the basis of little information
- In group
- Favoured by the leader
- Receive more attention and larger share of resources
- Tend to perform better
- Out-group
- Disfavoured by the leader
- Receive fewer resources and less attention
- Tend to perform worse
What is servant leadership?
leaders exist to serve the needs of team members
What distinguishes team leaders?
- Instead of directing people, team leaders work at building trust and inspiring teamwork
- Rather than focusing simply on training individuals, effective team leaders concentrate on expanding team capacities - team leaders function primarily as coaches
- Instead of managing one-to-one, team leaders attempt to create a team identity
- Although traditional leaders work at preventing conflict between individuals, team leaders are encouraged to make the most of differences between members
- Unlike traditional leaders who simply react to change, team leaders try to forests and influence change
What is the LPC contingency theory?
- Matching leaders and tasks
- Underlying assumption is that a leader’s contribution to the successful performance of his or her group is determined both by the leader’s own traits together with various features of the situation
- Least Preferred Coworker
- Situation Favourableness
- Low LPC leaders are superior to high LPC leaders when situation control is either very low or very high
- High LPC leaders are superior when situation control falls within the moderate range
- Since leadership style is fixed, best way to enhance effectiveness is to fit the right kind of leaders to the situations they face or changing the situational control variables
What is the least preference coworker?
- The leader’s tendency to evaluate in a favrouable or unfavourable manner the person with whom they have found it most difficult to work
- Leaders who perceive this person in negative terms (low LPC) are concerned primarily with attaining successful task performance
- Leaders who perceive this person in positive terms (high LPC) are concerned primarily with establishing good relations with subordinates
- The theory views LPC as being fixed i.e. leadership styles are unchangeable
What is situational favourableness?
- Leaders relations with group members - extent to which he or she enjoys their support or loyalty
- Task structure
- Position power
What is task structure?
The extent to which task goals and subordinates roles are clearly defined
What is position power?
the formal capacity to enforce compliance by subordinates
What is the situational leadership theory?
- Focuses on the best leadership style for a specific employee
- Depends on the maturity of followers:
- Task behaviour
- The degree to which followers have the appropriate job knowledge and skills (i.e. the degree to which they require guidance and direction)
- Relationship behaviour
- The degree to which followers are willing to work without taking direction from others (i.e. their need for emotional support)
- Task behaviour
What are the situations of situational leadership theory?
- Telling
- High task behaviour, low relationship behaviour
- Specific instruction, close supervision
- Selling
- High task behaviour, high relationship behaviour
- Specific instruction, being very supportive
- Participating
- Low task behaviour, high relationship behaviour
- Delegating
- Low task behaviour, low relationship behaviour
What must leaders do in situational leadership theory?
- Diagnose the situation they face
- Identify appropriate behavioural style
- Implement that response
- Constantly reassess
What is action learning?
- Continuous process of learning and reflection designed to stop leaders from falling back to old methods after training is done
- Leaders develop most effectively when they are working on real orngaiastional problems
