Week 1 Leadership Flashcards
What does an organisational psychologist do?
- Leadership development
- Change management
- Coaching and mentoring
- Career development
- Recruitment and selection
- Human factors
- User experience (UX Tech)
What is leadership?
Leadership is the process of influencing activities towards goal setting and goal achievement (Stogdill, 1974)
Leadership is EFFECTIVE influence (Argyris, 1976)
Why is leadership important?
- Decision-making under uncertainty
- Role and task clarity
- Performance management, feedback and goal-setting
- Motivation and attitudes
- Vision and values
Leadership vs Management
What is the difference between a leader and a manager?
Leadership Functions:
- Establishes direction
- aligning people
- motivating and inspiring
- produces positive and sometimes dramatic change
Management functions:
- Plans and budgets
- organising and staffing
- controlling, problem solving
- produces order, consistency and predictability
Leadership - Trait theories
Personality traits and other related attributes are used to facilitate the selection of leaders.
Establishing leadership traits should make it possible to select individuals that possess them for leadership positions.
Leadership - Behaviour theories
Attempt to characterise different leadership behaviour patterns to identify effective and ineffective leadership styles, to improve the training and development of leaders
Leadership - Contingency models
Argue the effectiveness of a particular leadership behaviour is dependent on the organisational and cultural setting
What are the limitations of trait spotting
- They are more attributes than personalities
- Some attributes are vague
- Many items describe skills which have to be observed rather than traits that can be assessed
- It is difficult to see how trait spotting can be used effectively in a leadership context, as originally intended
There is little evidence consistently linking specific traits with followers’ task performance:
- traits can indicate risk of leaders “derailing” (being detail oriented, under pressure, can turn into perfectionism, which slows down production)
- traits have different effects in different contexts
Transformational leadership strategies
- Identifies principles to be upheld
- Identifies broad vision and motivates pursuit of aligned goals
- Relational contract
- Idealised Influence
- Inspirational motivation
- Intellectual stimulation
- Individualised consideration
Effects of transformational leadership
- Inspire more citizenship behaviour (Purvanova et al., 2006)
- Foster organisational identification, people identify as being members of the team (Epitropaki & Martin, 2005)
- Reduce cynicism about organisational change
What is ethical leadership?
Should a leader be ethical?
An ethical leader:
• Conducts personal life in an ethical manner
• Defines success not just by results but also by the way they are
obtained
• Listens to what employees have to say
• Disciplines employees who violate ethical standards
• Makes fair and balanced decisions
• Can be trusted
• Discusses business ethics or values with employees
• Sets an example of how to do things the right way
• Has the best interests of employees in mind
• When making decision, asks “what is the right thing to do?”
What are the issues women face as managers due to the politics of the organisation?
Huczynski and Buchanan (2013) review evidence suggesting that the lack of women in senior management may be partly because they use less political tactics.
Reasons for this include:
Personality stereotypes of being more accommodating, less aggressive and self promoting and not wanting to be seen as a “battle axe” (although Buchanan and Badham point out that the evidence is dated – still relevant?).
Structure of organisations including “old boy networks”, long working hours, 24/7 lifestyle with travel based on wife at home, need to compromise personal life, unethical leadership that allows
politics to influence promotion.
Women Managers and Politics: solutions?
Eagly and Carli (2007) – solutions to navigating the leadership obstacles for women include:
• Increasing awareness of prejudice against women in leadership
• Changing the long working hours culture
• Less subjective performance evaluations
• A critical mass of women in management
• Preparing women for management with demanding
assignments
• More family friendly HR practices
• Providing a network of professional colleagues
• Supportive mentoring relationship, links to powerful networks
What are leadership qualities?
Stogdill (1948, 1974) reviewed hundreds of trait studies and compiled the following list of qualities:
• Strong drive for responsibility
• Focus on completing the task
• Vigour and persistence in pursuit of goals
• Venturesomeness and originality in problem solving
• Drive to exercise initiative in social settings
• Self-confidence
• Sense of personal identity
• Willingness to accept consequences of decisions and actions
• Readiness to absorb interpersonal stress
• Willingness to tolerate frustration and delay
• Ability to influence the behaviour of others
• Capacity to structure social systems to the purpose in hand
• Trustworthiness
What are the types of leadership styles?
- Laissez-faire (let people do what they are doing)
- Management by exception (let people do what they are doing until they fall out of their expected range)
- Management by objectives (very popular, set up clearly defined objectives defined by management and employees, employee works towards those objectives, management tries to ensure that employees meet those objectives)
