Week 10: Leadership Flashcards
1
Q
Leadership
Formal leadership
Informal leadership
A
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Leadership is a special type of interpersonal influence that gets an individual or group to do what the leader wants done
- The ability to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness of the organisation
- Formal leadership: the process of exercising influence from a position of formal authority
- Informal leadership: the process of exercising influence through special skills or resources that meet the needs of other people
2
Q
Managers vs Leaders
A
- Managers: concerned with making things happen and working on a schedule, engaging in routine interactions to fulfil planned actions
- Leaders: provide inspiration, create opportunities, coach and motivate people to gain their support on fundamental long-term choices
- Managers see and solve problems, while leaders see possibilities to overcome by going beyond them*
- Most managers are expected to be leaders or to play leadership roles as well*
3
Q
Trait Theory of Leadership
A
- Attempts to identify traits (or competencies) that differentiate more effective leaders from less effective leaders (e.g., charisma, intelligence, etc.)
- These traits could be used to identify and select effective leaders
- However, theoretical and methodological issues have hampered the success of trait theory
4
Q
Leadership Competencies
A
- Personality: extraversion, conscientiousness
- Self-concept: positive self-evaluation, high self-esteem and self-efficacy
- Drive: inner motivation to pursue goals; inquisitiveness, action-oriented
- Integrity: truthfulness; consistency in words and actions
- Leadership motivation: high need for socialised power to achieve organisational goals
- Knowledge of business: understand external environment; aid intuitive decision making
- Cognitive/Practical intelligence: able to solve real-world problems
- Emotional intelligence: perceiving, assimilating, understand, regulating emotions
5
Q
Behavioural Theories of Leadership
A
Behavioural theories examine the behaviour and actions of effective leaders
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University of Michigan studies:
- Employee-centred (those who place strong emphasis on the welfare of employees) vs. production-centred supervisors (strong emphasis on getting work done than on welfare of employees)
- Employee-centred supervisors were found to have more productive work groups than those of production-centred supervisors
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Ohio State University studies:
- Consideration vs. initiating structure
- Highly considerate leaders are sensitive to people’s feelings, whereas leaders high in initiating structure are more concerned with spelling out task requirements and clarifying other aspects of work agenda
- Later results indicated that leaders should be high on both consideration and initiation structure behaviours
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Blake Mouton Leadership Grid:
- Concern for people vs. concern for production
- Measures concern for people and concern for production
- The ideal position is 9/9 ‘team manager’ (high on both dimensions) (see pic)
6
Q
Situational Contingency Theories: Fiedler
A
- Leadership effectiveness depends on match between leadership style and the demands of the situation
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Leadership style
- Situational control: the extent to which leaders can determine what their group is going to do and what the outcomes of their actions and decisions are going to be
- Least preferred co-worker (LPC) scale: a measure of a person’s leadership style based on a description of the person with whom respondents have been able to work least well
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Situational control determined by:
- Leader-member relations (good/poor)- member support for the leader
- Task structure (high/low)- spelling out of the leader’s task goals, procedures and guidelines in the group
- Position power (strong/weak)- the leaders task expertise and reward/punishment authority
A task-oriented leader behaving nondirectively would have the most effective group
7
Q
House’s Path-Goal Theory of Leadership
A
Path-goal theory emphasises a leader’s influence on subordinates’ perceptions of both work and personal goals, and the paths found between them
- Directive leadership: has to do with spelling out the what and how of employees’ tasks; it is much like the initiating structure
- Supportive leadership: focuses on employee needs and wellbeing and promotes a friendly work climate; it is similar to consideration
- Achievement-oriented leadership: emphasises setting challenging goals, stressing excellence in performance and showing confidence in the group member’s abilities to achieve high standards of performance
- Participative leadership: focuses on consulting with employees and seeking and accounting for their suggestion before making decisions
8
Q
Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Model
A
- Proposes that a leader should adjust her/his emphasis on task or relationship behaviours according to follower readiness (the extent to which people have the ability and willingness to accomplish a specific task)
- Argues that situational leadership requires adjusting the leader’s emphasis on task behaviours and relationship behaviours according to the readiness of followers to perform their tasks
- Four leadership styles:
- Delegating
- Participating
- Selling
- Telling
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Delegating (best for high readiness)
- Follower: high competence and commitment
- Leader: low task and relationship focus
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Participating (best for moderate to high follower readiness)
- Follower: high competence, variable commitment
- Leader: low task and high relationship focus
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Selling (best for low to moderate follower readiness)
- Follower: some competence, variable commitment
- Leader: high task and relationship focus
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Telling (best for low follower readiness)
- Follower: low competence and commitment
- Leader: high task and low relationship focus
9
Q
Leadership Substitutes and Neutralisers
A
The substitutes for leadership perspective argues that sometimes hierarchical leadership makes essentially no difference
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Substitutes for leadership: are organisation, individual or task-situational variables that substitute for leadership in causing performance/human resource maintenance
- They make a leader’s influence both impossible and unnecessary
- Neutralisers: make a leader’s influence possible but not necessary
10
Q
Inspirational Leadership Perspectives
Charismatic leaders
Transactional leaders
A
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Charismatic leaders are those who, by force of their personal abilities, are capable of having a profound and extraordinary effect on followers
- Negative charismatics emphasise personalised power
- Positive charismatics emphasise socialised power that tends to empower their followers
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Transactional leadership involves daily exchanges between leaders and followers necessary for achieving routine performance on which leaders and followers agree
- Contingent rewards: involves providing various kinds of reward in exchange for accomplishing mutually agreed goals (you could be subject to disciplinary action for failing to achieve the goals)
- Active management by exception: involves on concentrating on occurrences that deviate from expected norms, such as irregularities, mistakes, exceptions and standards and taking corrective action
- Passive management by exception: involves intervening only if standards are not met
- Laissez faire leadership: involves abdicating responsibilities and avoiding decisions
11
Q
Transformational vs. Transactional Leaders
A
Transformational leadership: is a leadership style by which the follower’s goals are broadened and elevated, and confidence is gained to go beyond expectations
- Four dimensions of transformational leadership:
- Charisma: provides vision and sense of mission and instils pride, along with respect and trust
- Inspiration: communicate high expectations, uses symbols to focus effort and expresses important purposes in simple ways
- Intellectual stimulation: promotes intelligence, rationality and careful problem solving
- Individualised consideration: provides personal attention, treats each employee individually and coaches and advises
- “Leading” – change organisation to fit environment
- Transform followers by making them more aware of the importance and value of task outcomes by activating their higher-order needs, and by inducing them to transcend self-interest for the sake of the organisation (Bass, 1998)
- Based on leader’s personal values, beliefs, qualities
Transactional leaders
- “Managing” – link job performance to rewards
- Ensure employees have necessary resources
- Apply contingency leadership – focus on leader behaviours that improve employee performance and satisfaction
12
Q
Emerging Leadership Perspectives
Intergrative leadership
- Full-range leadership theory (FRLT)
- Shared leadership
- Strategus leadership
- Innovation leadership
Crisis leadership
A
Integrative leadership
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Full-range leadership theory (FRLT): involves nine dimensions covering both transformational and transactional leadership, especially emphasising contextual variables
- Contextual variables: link observations to a set of relevant facts, events or points of view, such as organisational characteristics, work functions, external environment factors and demographic variables
- Shared leadership: is a dynamic, interactive influence process among individuals in groups for which the objective is to lead one another to the achievement of group or other organisational goals
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Strategic leadership: is identified by concern for the advancement of the organisation, including its evolving capabilities and goals
- Cognitive complexity: is the underlying assumptions that those high in cognitive complexity process information differently and perform certain tasks better than less cognitively complex people
- Absorptive capacity: ability to learn
- Adaptive capacity: refers to ability to change
- Managerial wisdom: the ability to perceive variations in the environment and having an understanding of social factors and their relationships
- Innovation leadership: leadership that makes a difference in the nature and success of creative efforts
Crisis leadership is leadership during a traumatic period or event and involves:
- Identifying critical goals and key causes
- Providing structure that enables followers to interpret the change event and the desirability of various actions
13
Q
Moral leadership approaches:
- Ethical
- Authentic
- Servant
- Spiritual
- Sustainabiliy
A
- Ethical leadership: leadership that abides by core values and standards acceptable to both the institution and society
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Authentic leadership: involves both owning one’s personal experiences (values, thoughts, emotions and beliefs) and acting in accordance with one’s true self (expressing what you really think and believe and acting accordingly)
- Modelling is important here
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Servant leadership: involves deliberately choosing to serve others and putting their needs, interests, aspirations first
- Usually seen as a philosophical movement and has not been empirically tested
- Spiritual leadership: religious and ethical values, behaviours, interests
- Sustainability leadership: take conscious actions, individually and collectively leading to outcomes that nurture, support and sustain healthy economic, environmental and social systems
14
Q
Sustainability leadership
A
Sustainability leadership: take conscious actions, individually and collectively leading to outcomes that nurture, support and sustain healthy:
- economic,
- environmental and
- social systems
15
Q
Emerging Leadership Perspectives and Questions
A
- Can people be trained in new leadership?
- Research argues that training in new leadership is possible
- Is new leadership always good?
- No, dark-side charismatics can have negative effects on the population of followers
- Is new leadership always needed?
- No, sometimes emphasis on vision diverts energy from more important day-to-day activities
- Is new leadership by itself sufficient?
- No, new leadership needs to be used in conjunction with traditional leadership
- Is new leadership important only at the top?
- Probably not, while generally considered most important at the top, new leadership is considered by some experts to apply to all organisational levels
17
Q
Characteristics of a Strong, New Leader
A
