Leadership and Decision Making (VL 8)

Question 1

Who is the leader of a Group?

How can one become the leader of a group

Answer 1

• Leader of a group is the person who has the most impact of the group behavior and beliefs
• Leaders can be appointed, elected or emerge over time

Question 2

Great-person theory

Answer 2

Suggests that leaders possess particular characteristics (as excelling in abilities that meet the group´s goals, strong interpersonal skills, high motivation, confidence, optimism) –> too many exceptions to support an explanation of leadership purely in terms of personality for certain personality traits

Question 3

Behavior of leaders

Answer 3

Must perform task leadership and social leadership

• Effective task leader: efficient, directive, knowledgeable
• Effective social leader: friendly, agreeable, concerned with feelings, socially oriented
• -> Groups can have different leaders for each task

Question 4

Types of leadership

Answer 4

• Task-oriented
• Relationship-oriented
• -> Interaction of leadership style (task-oriented or relationship-oriented) and task demands  each style can be more effective depending on the task

Question 5

Fiedler´s Contingency Model of Leadership Effectiveness

Answer 5

• Claims that there is no best way to lead a company/group/… but the optimal course of action is contingent (dependent) on the internal and external situation
• Task-oriented leaders are more effective in high-control and low-control situations
• Emotion-focused leaders are more effective in moderate-control situations
• LPC scale (Least-preferred-coworker scale)
  o Low Score: Task-oriented leader
  o High Score: Emotion-focused leader

Question 6

Levin, Lippitt and White´s Research

• What did they do?
• Types of Leaders?
• Results

Answer 6

• Survey children working in after-school clubs
• 3 types of leaders: Autocratic leader, Democratic leader, Laissez-faire leader
• Results:
  o Autocratic and democratic lead groups spend the same time on projects, but laissez-faire led groups spent less
  o When leader left the room, work in autocratic groups decreased, stayed the same in democratic groups and increased in laissez-faire groups
  o Democratic leaders produced acceptance of the rules and norms, authoritarian leaders produced compliance
  o Children in autocratic groups showed more reliance on the leader, complained more and needed more attention

Question 7

Leadership as a group process

Answer 7

• Affected by leader-member relations and extent to which leaders and members identify with the group and are prototypical of the group
• With high group salience, prototypical leaders are perceived as more effective, while with low group salience, non-prototypical leaders are perceived to be more effective

Question 8

Social Identity Model of Leadership (by Van Dick and others)

Answer 8

Groups with a higher leader identification and also a higher group identification did perform significantly better

Question 9

Types of Leadership

Answer 9

• Laissez-faire
• Management by exception: Laissez-faire, but intervenes when there is a problem
• Transactional leaders: regular leaders, work with their subordinates to help them understand what is required of them to get the job done
• Transformational leaders: charismatic leaders, have a vision and inspire their workers to create a better future
  o 4 forms: inspiring vision, inspirational communication, inspirational motivation, individual communication

Question 10

Group decision making

Answer 10

Can sometimes be predicted by the pre-discussion distribution of opinions and the decision-making rule prevailing (vorherrschen) in the group

Question 11

Types of Group decision making

Answer 11

Brainstorming
Group Memory
Groupthink

Question 12

Brainstorming

Answer 12

Is believed to enhance individual creativity, illusion may be due distorted (verzerrt) perceptions and enjoyment during group brainstorming

Question 13

Group memory

Answer 13

Transactive memory structure that is often more effective than individuals at remembering information

Question 14

Groupthink

Answer 14

Process based of faulty decision-making

• based on an overzealous (übereifrig) desire to reach consensus
• Occurs in groups with a strong leader and under stress
• Members become more concerned with group acceptance than correctness (information is evaluated in a biased way and there is no full information search done)

Question 15

How to overcome group think?

Answer 15

Leaders remain neutral and encourage dissent, subcommittees are used to discuss the same issue

Question 16

Why is the potential to make better decisions in a Group than individuals not always used?

Answer 16

• Group members tend to discuss shared information rather than unshared information
• Meetings may be used to confirm rather than challenge initial beliefs