Lecture 3 Flashcards
What are the two contrasting hypotheses about how people have leadership?
One hypothesis is that it’s a property which people do or don’t possess. The other hypothesis is that leadership is a process where the individual influences group members to achieve a goal.
What are the 5 theoretical accounts of how one becomes a leader?
Personality approach Behavioural approach Contingency theory Leadership is a process Gender and leadership
Discuss the personality approach in terms of leadership
Early explanations believed leaders are charismatic and have social and emotional intelligence. However, Stogdill found a weak relationship between personality (confidence, intelligence) and leadership.
Discuss the situational perspective
Leadership isn’t located in the individual, it’s located in the situation. When someone has the best requirements as a leader of a group in the current situation. When the situation changes, so does the leader. Sherif found this when the situation changed from peace to conflict.
Discuss the behavioural approach in terms of leadership
This focuses on what leaders do instead of who they are. People fall into two roles in a group; task specialists (task-oriented, offers opinions, give directions etc.) or socio-economic specialists (group-oriented, focused on feelings of group members). Leaders are more likely to be task-oriented as they are focused on the goal. There’s also two types of leader; initiating structure (achieving a group goal), consideration (maintaining harmonious). They’re equally as important as each other and aren’t mutually exclusive. A leader should have both qualities.
Describe Lippitt and White’s study
Lippitt and White found that children didn’t like autocratic leaders. It made the atmosphere more aggressive and there was high productivity only when the leader was present. Children liked democratic leaders and there was relatively high productivity and a friendly atmosphere. Children didn’t like the Laissez-faire leader (who left the children to themselves and just wanted them to be happy). They had low productivity and a friendly atmosphere.
Discuss how charisma was revisited in terms of leadership
It doesn’t arise from the leader, it arises from the relationship with one’s followers.
What are the two types of leader-group relationships?
Transformational: The leader provides vision and inspiration.
Transactional: The leader becomes involved when problems arise.
Describe Fielder’s contingency theory
The effectiveness on the style of leadership is contingent to their match with the situation. It’s all about the degree of control. This is determined by quality of leader-member relations, clarity of structure and intrinsic power/authority. This creates a scale of high to low control. When there is either high or low control, task-orientated leaders are best. When it’s intermediate, socio-emotional leaders are best.
Discuss the least-preferred co-worker scale
Co-workers that were scored lowly by peers were task-oriented and those who were scored highly were socio-emotional. This is different to situational factors.
Discuss a problem with the contingency theory
The focus is on the leader but leaders don’t exist by themselves, they need followers.
Discuss the new approaches about leadership as a process
Contemporary views put the leader in the group instead of keeping them separate. Leaders are also group members and must be loyal to the group. However, they must also be innovative and instigate things.
What is idiosyncrasy?
Hollander describes leadership as idiosyncrasy credits, which means that leader must develop a good reputation from existing members to make them a more legitimate leader. They can then deviate from existing norms. These credits can be built up via conforming, identifying with the group etc. For example, the older children aren’t more likely to be a leader of a group of younger children. The leader is the one that is compliant with the group’s wants.
Define leader prototypicality
The acceptance of a leader depends on how representative they are to the group. The representative to the group is the group prototype. This is a mental representation. The leader is the person who is most prototypical.
Describe some advantages of the prototypicality approach
It recognises that leadership is a social process. It’s dynamic and account for why leaders change. They lead their group towards goals and away from other groups. It’s an intergroup perspective (the prototype depends on who the group is being compared to).
