Leadership Competencies - Leadership & Navigation Flashcards
(95 cards)
Henri Fayol Defined functions of management
planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling.
Affects of leadership styles
Employees’ ability to make decisions that affect their work.
Employees’ sense of responsibility to the organization or team.
The standards employees seek to meet or exceed.
Employees’ belief that they will be rewarded for their work.
An understood mission and shared values.
A feeling of commitment to a shared goal.
Traits of effective HR Leaders
Develop and coach others.
Build positive relationships.
Model their values and fulfill their promises and commitments.
Have functional expertise.
Traits of ineffective HR Leaders
Focus internally rather than externally, failing to look outside the HR function to the organization’s internal and external stakeholders.
Lack strategic perspective, focusing on short-term objectives and daily tasks.
Do not anticipate or react well to change.
Resist “stretch” goals and act as a drag on the organization’s attempts to innovate.
Trait Theory
Leaders possess certain innate characteristics that followers do not possess (and probably cannot acquire), such as physical characteristics (for example, strength, stamina) and personality traits (for example, decisiveness, integrity). Sometimes referred to as the “Great Man” theory.
It equates these characteristics and leadership but without evidence.
It may discourage leader development by implying that the ability to lead cannot be acquired with study and practice.
Blake-Mouton Theory
Leadership involves managing:
Tasks (work that must be done to attain goals).
Employees (relationships based on social and emotional needs).
Five types of managers, only one of which (team leader) is considered a leader:
Country club managers (low task, high relationship) create a secure atmosphere and trust individuals to accomplish goals, avoiding punitive actions so as not to jeopardize relationships.
Impoverished managers (low task, low relationship) use a “delegate-and-disappear” management style. They detach themselves, often creating power struggles.
Authoritarian managers (high task, low relationship) expect people to do what they are told without question and tend not to foster collaboration.
Middle-of-the-road managers (midpoint on both task and relationship) get the work done but are not considered leaders.
Team leaders (high task, high relationship) lead by positive example, foster a team environment, and encourage individual and team development.
Situational Theories
Building on behavioral theories, situational theories propose that leaders can flex their behaviors to meet the needs of unique situations, employing both task or directive behaviors and relationship or supportive behaviors with employees.
Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership
Leaders adapt their behaviors to meet the evolving needs of team members. Like Blake-Mouton, the behaviors involve tasks and relationships.
As team members grow in skill and experience, leaders supply the appropriate behavior:
Telling when the employee is not yet motivated or competent.
Selling when the increasingly competent employee still needs focus and motivation (“why are we doing this”).
Participating when competent workers can be included in problem solving and coached on higher skills.
Delegating when very competent team members can benefit from greater levels of autonomy and self-direction.
Fiedler’s Contingency Theory
Leaders change the situation to make it more “favorable,” more likely to produce good outcomes.
“Situation favorableness” occurs when:
Leader-member relationships are strong.
Task structure and requirements are clear.
The leader can exert the necessary power to reach the group’s goal.
Unfavorable situations must be changed to improve group (and leader) effectiveness. This can include:
Improving relations between the leader and the team (for example, by building trust).
Changing aspects of the task (for example, breaking a project down into more manageable pieces, providing more resources for the team).
Increasing or decreasing the leader’s exercise of power (for example, to increase team involvement in and ownership of ideas, to decrease harmful conflict or resistance to change).
Path-Goal Theory
This theory emphasizes the leader’s role in coaching and developing followers’ competencies. The leader performs the behavior needed to help employees stay on track toward their goals. This involves addressing different types of employee needs:
Directive—Help the employee understand the task and its goal.
Supportive—Try to fulfill employee’s relationship needs.
Achievement—Motivate by setting challenging goals.
Participative—Provide more control over work and leverage group expertise through participative decision making.
Emergent Theory
Leaders are not appointed but emerge from the group, which chooses the leader based on interactions.
Transactional Leadership
This theory emphasizes a leader’s preference for order and structure. It focuses on control and short-term planning.
Employees and subordinates are expected to follow orders from above.
Employees and subordinates are motivated by rewards and consequences.
Employees and subordinates are closely monitored to ensure that work is done properly and on time.
Creativity and inventiveness are not typically encouraged or nurtured.
Transactional leadership is more commonly found in the military and large and multinational organizations.
Transformational Leadership
This theory emphasizes a leader’s ability to inspire employees to embrace change. Transformational leaders are able to encourage and motivate their employees to innovate in their work, to seek out changes that can add value and growth to the organization.
Transformational leaders do not micromanage. They give their employees greater autonomy to make decisions and come up with creative solutions. A leader will also lead by example, exemplifying moral and ethical standards and values, and encourage the same from others.
This leadership approach also encourages communication, cooperation, and collaboration with others and can use mentorship to help raise up future transformational leaders.
Leader-Member Exchange Theory
This theory focuses on a two-way relationship between leaders and chosen employees. The leader mentors a selected team member (or members) and gives them access to more information and resources in order to strengthen levels of trust and support. This mentorship is intended to maintain the leader’s position through the development of different two-way relationships.
This type of relationship can contribute to growth and productivity but can also create in- and out-groups within the team. The in-group may tend to strengthen and support the leader’s decisions and position due to their closer relationship. Members of the out-group may lag in development and productivity if they perceive that they are excluded or neglected.
Servant Leadership
The leaders’ goal is to serve the needs of their employees. This theory emphasizes the sharing of power. Leaders should work to help their employees develop and perform to the highest possible level, and this will generate benefits within and without the organization. It is a way of inverting the organizational/leadership norm of bottom-up service.
Servant leaders tend to be more empathetic and more trusted by employees. This can lead to greater innovation, collaboration, performance, and participation. This approach to leadership can be more resource-intensive and can take longer to produce results.
Places informal structure can be witnessed in Orgs
in org culture and social dynamics
Valuable tool for discovering informal organization structure
observation also looking at what types of behavior are rewarded and what are accepted
5 ways in which leaders can create power
Type of Power
Legitimate
Can save time in decision making and focus team on the organization’s goals.
May be insufficient if leader is not also competent and effective at leading.
Reward
Can appeal to team members’ individual motivators.
Is useful only when leader has access to and can extend to team members meaningful rewards.
Expert
Can improve a team’s efforts by offering advice and guidance. Can win respect for the team and its work throughout the organization.
Can create dependency and weaken team members’ initiative or discourage their own contributions. Effect will weaken if the individual is a weak team leader.
Referent
Appeals to social needs of individuals, the desire for affiliation.
Will weaken if leader is not competent, effective, and fair.
Coercive
Likely to get immediate results.
Damages team members’ motivation and self-direction over time.
Legitimate Power
Created formally through a title or position in the hierarchy that is associated with the rights of leadership (External Power)
Reward power
Created when leader can offer followers something they value in exchange for commitment (External Power)
Expert Power
Power is created when a leader is recognized as possessing great intelligence, insight or experience (internal power)
Referent Power
Created by the force of leaders personality the ability to attract admiration, affection and/or loyalty (Internal power)
Coercive
Power is created when the leader has the power to punish those who do not follow (external power)
what is motivation
Motivation can be defined as factors that initiate, direct, and sustain human behavior over time. Understanding why people behave the way they do helps leaders influence behavior by appealing to the right needs in the right way.
The perception of the role of motivation in organizations has changed over time. Motivation is seen as more central to the role of leaders and more complex.
