Week 5 - Leadership Flashcards
What is leadership?
The process by which an individual influences others in ways that
help attain group or organizational goals.
Characteristics of Good Leadership
- Leadership involves non-coercive influence.
- Leadership influence is goal-directed.
- Leadership requires followers.
- Leaders and managers are distinct.
How are leadership and communication intrinsically linked?
- Communicate a vision
- Persuade followers
- Motivate others towards a common goal
- Maintain power through communication (e.g., amount of information given)
What are the two categories of leadership language?
- Framing the message (i.e., the process of defining the purpose)
- The ability to use symbolic language to give emotional power (i.e., rhetorical crafting)
What is framing?
Framing is about focusing, shaping and organizing the world around you
What are some rhetorical techniques to the leadership language?
- Metaphors, analogies and organizational stories: excites imagination and creates tension and tension release.
- Gearing language to different audiences.
- Repetition, rhythm, balance, and alliteration.
What is power?
- The capacity to produce intended and foreseen effects on others.
- The probability that a person will act as another person wishes.
- The greater B’s dependency on A, the greater the power A has over B. (The General Dependency Postulate)
- The more people rely on you, the more power you have over them
- Power is intended to influence.
Three outcomes of influence tactics
- Commitment
- Compliance
- Resistance
Rational persuasion
Using logical arguments or factual evidence to influence others and convince them a proposal or request is workable and likely to achieve a goal.
Inspirational Appeal
Developing emotional commitment by appealing to a target’s values, needs, hopes, and aspirations.
Legitimacy
Influence tactics
Relying on your authority position or saying a request accords with organizational policies or rules
Consultation
Influence tactics
When a group member is asked to participate in planning an activity
Exchange
Influence tactics
Striking a bargain through an exchange
Ingratiation
Influence tactics
Using flattery, praise, or friendly behavior prior to making a request.
Personal appeals
Influence tactics
Asking for a favor before explaining what the favor is.
Pressure
Using warnings, repeated demands, and threats.
Coalitions
Seeking the aid or support of others
Informal influence tactics
Gossip
* A subversive form of power over.
* Most commonly used to influence those with more formal sources of power.
* Can have a utilitarian function.
Ostracism
* A social sanction whereby a group member is excluded.
* A powerful method of punishing free riders and enforcing cooperation.
What is organisational politics?
Those activities that are not required as part of one’s formal role in the organisation, but that influence the distribution of advantages within the organisation.
* It encompasses efforts to influence decision-making goals, criteria, or processes.
* It includes, but is not limited to such behaviors as:
withholding information, spreading rumors, whistle blowing, leaking confidential information.
Self-promotion (IM technique)
Highlighting one’s best qualities, downplaying one’s deficits, and calling attention to one’s achievements is a self-focused technique.
Enhancement
Claiming that something you did is more valuable than most other members of the organisations would think is a self-focused technique.
Flattery (IM technique)
Complimenting others about their virtues in an effort to make oneself appear perceptive and likeable is an assertive IM technique.
Exemplification (IM technique)
Doing more than you need to in an effort to show how dedicated and hard working you are is an assertive IM technique.
Conformity
Agreeing with someone else’s opinion to gain his or her approval is a form of ingratiation.
Favours
Doing something nice for someone to gain that person’s approval is a form of ingratiation.
Excuses
Explanations of a predicament-creating event aimed at minimising the apparent severity of the predicament is a defensive technique.
Apologies
Admitting responsibility for an undesirable event and simultaneously seeking to get a pardon for the action is a defensive techniue
