Leadership Flashcards
- What is leadership?
Bass & Stogdill
Buchanan & Huczynski (2019: 610) and meaning?
Keith Grint?
“There are almost as many definitions of leadership as there are persons who have attempted to define the concept.”
(Bass & Stogdill, 1990: 11)
Buchanan & Huczynski (2019: 610) use a definition from Stogdill (1974: 3) which defines leadership as: “[t]he process of influencing the activities of an organized group in its efforts towards goal setting and goal achievement”
- This definition does not specify that the person doing the “influencing” has to be a manager. So ‘leading’ is not the same thing as ‘managing’ and anyone can in theory display leadership, even lower level employees or those not employed by the organization.
- The term “organized group” can refer not only to a business or other type of formal work organization (e.g. school, hospital, charity etc.). It applies to sports teams, street gangs, drug cartels and the political leaders that govern us. So studying leadership involves the study of any setting where the process of leading others takes place.
- The definition includes both “goal setting” and “goal achievement”. This means that leadership involves the process of inspiring others with a new goal or vision that they feel emotionally invested in working towards, not just a process of securing compliance with tasks required to meet existing goals. So leadership involves the study of how people are inspired by leaders to want to work together to achieve a common goal.
Keith Grint has the simplest definition in his book Leadership: A Very Short Introduction
“… without followers you cannot be a leader. Indeed, this might be the simplest definition of leadership: ‘having followers’.”
- Leadership vs Management
Bennis?
John Kotter?
Birkinshaw?
Henry Mintzberg?
Bennis:
- Managers “do things right”.
- Leaders “do the right thing”.
John Kotter:
Leaders
- Understood as the ‘visionaries’ who inspire and enthuse others and drive new initiatives.
Managers
- Understood as the ‘engineers’ who ensure the ‘machine’ keeps working: checking, monitoring and maintaining the organization to ensure stability and order
Julian Birkinshaw:
- management and leadership were different but equally important roles that the same person might need to play at different times (and the value of good management should not be dismissed).
Henry Mintzberg:
- asks two important questions to help us reflect on whether the distinction between management and leadership is necessary or helpful:
“How would you like to be managed by someone who doesn’t lead? That can be awfully dispiriting. Well, then, why would you want to be led by someone who doesn’t manage? That can be terribly disengaging: how are such ‘leaders’ to know what is going on? … [I]nstead of distinguishing managers from leaders, we should be seeing managers as leaders, and leadership as management practiced well.”
(Mintzberg, 2010: 8-9)
Trait theories of leadership
From as early as the mid-1800’s, researchers sought to study ‘great leaders’ from history to identify the personality traits that made them effective leaders
Became know as ‘Great Man Theory’ because they focused on the (typically male) military and political leaders that have shaped world history
‘Great Man Theory’ proposed that the fate of humanity lay in the hands of certain special men who were ‘natural born leaders’
Challenging Trait Theory
‘Fifty years of study have failed to produce one personality trait or set of qualities that can be used to discriminate between leaders and non-leaders’.
E.E. Jennings (1961:2), The Anatomy of Leadership
The end of trait theory?
Trait theory was abandoned by many (but not all) leadership scholars after the 1940s.
Despite widespread criticism of trait theory, it still has its advocates amongst contemporary scholars:
“While research shows that the possession of certain traits alone does not guarantee leadership success, there is evidence that effective leaders are different from other people in certain key respects. … We believe that the key leader traits help the leader acquire necessary skills; formulate an organizational vision and an effective plan for pursuing it; and take the necessary steps to implement the vision in reality.”
(Kirkpatrick & Locke, 1991: 48)
The Stogdill Critique
“Leadership is a relation that exists between persons in a social situation”. Therefore, “persons who are leaders in one situation may not necessarily be leaders in other situations”
(Stogdill 1974: 63-64)
If a leader in one situation might not be a leader in another situation, it makes little sense to identify the traits they have because those traits might not help them be a ‘leader’ in that other situation.
Example: those considered good leaders in stable organisational times might be different to those considered good leaders in turbulent times or times of crisis
Example: those considered good leaders in one organisational department might not be considered good leaders in other departments
Contingency theories of leadership style
Taking up Stogdill’s critique of trait theories, researchers began to ask how aspects of the context shape what is viewed as an effective way of leading
Contingency theories of leadership were developed by those who rejected the idea there was ‘one best way’ of leading
Contingency theories proposed that the best style of leadership depended on the features of the context or situation
Tannenbaum & Schmidt’s leadership style continuum
Tannenbaum & Schmidt (1958) rejected the ‘one best way’ approach, which proposed that more participative and democratic leadership styles were inherently superior
They proposed that effective leaders had to operate on a continuum between more ‘autocratic’ and more ‘democratic’ leadership styles, depending on the situation.
Tannenbaum & Schmidt’s 3 forces
Tannenbaum & Schmidt (1958) proposed that the ‘best fit’ style depended on a combination of three contextual factors which they called ‘forces’:
- Leader forces: The personality, values and preferences of the leader and beliefs the leader has about the level of confidence in subordinates and degree of employee participation needed
- Follower forces: Degree to which followers have a need for independence, a tolerance for ambiguity, knowledge of the problem and expectations about involvement
- Situation forces: The complexity of the problem, the importance of the decision, time pressure to make the decision, the norms of the organisation, and the effectiveness of those groups in teamworking (i.e. solving problems and resolving conflicts themselves).
Implications of contingency theories
Contingency theories such as Tannenbaum & Schmidt (1958) mean that leaders not only have to be good at leading others, they also need to be good at:
- Diagnosing the situation before they act to identify what kind of leadership style would be the best ‘fit’ for the situation.
- Adapting their style to suit the situation. In other words, leaders need to be like a ‘chameleon’ and be able to change their leadership style to fit their setting. This means that leadership must be as set of behavioural styles leaders can learn and switch between, not a set of fixed traits you are born with.
Follower readiness
- Hersey and Blanchard (1977) highlighted the need to consider the stage of development (or ‘readiness’) of the followers, which they broke down into “ability” and “willingness”
“Ability” refers to how competent the followers are in doing their tasks.
Ask: do followers have the ability to do the job to the required standard?
“Willingness” refers to how confident and committed followers are in getting on with the job themselves. Followers might be competent at their job (i.e. have ability), but be not willing to ‘lead’ themselves.
Ask: do followers have the confidence to make decisions themselves and the commitment to achieving the organisation’s aims or goals?
Note: Followers might be ‘unwilling’ to make lead themselves for different reasons. It might be because they lack confidence, or it might be because they do not accept the aims or goals of the organisation.
Hersey and Blanchard (1977) identify the four permutations of follower ‘readiness’, putting the dimensions of ability and willingness together:
R1: Unable and unwilling
R2: Unable but willing
R3: Able but unwilling
R4: Able and willing
Leader behaviour dimensions
Hersey and Blanchard (1977) proposed that two leadership behaviour ‘dimensions’ should be considered when deciding what leadership style should be used in each of the four :
- Directive behaviour: this is the degree to which the leader directs the behaviour of followers by instructing them on how to complete tasks. This dimension attends only to the task itself.
- Supportive behaviour: this is the degree to which the leader gives social consideration and emotional support to followers (e.g. listening, praising, encouraging, reassuring, etc.). This dimension attends to the social relationships.
Hersey-Blanchard Model
S1 Telling
- Instruct and direct followers about what tasks to do and how to do them.
S2 Selling
- Persuade, reassure and encourage followers to do the tasks you ask them to and how you want them to do it.
S3 Participating
- Involve and consult with followers about what tasks to do and how to do them.
S4 Delegating
- Empower and trust followers to have full responsibility to decide what to do and how to do it.
Implications of situational leadership theory (3)
- Leaders needs to adapt their style between teams they lead according to the degree of ‘follower readiness’ in those teams
- Leaders might also need to adapt their style at the individual level if individual followers in the same team differ in their level of ‘readiness’
- Leaders also need to change their leadership style over time as teams (or team members) develop their ability and/or willingness
Transformational leadership (3)
- Burns (1978) reviewed the great political, military, social and intellectual leaders of history to establish what made them so influential
- The theory focused on the skills and abilities the leader displayed (without assuming they were genetically inherited traits)
- Importantly, the theory also tried to identify the effects of leaders on followers
