BA105: BA105: Organizational BehaviorOrganizational Behavior

Professor Jim LincolnProfessor Jim Lincoln

Week 5: LectureWeek 5: Lecture

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Class agenda: Leadership in Organizations

Discuss meanings and types of leadership roles and how they differ from “management”

Consider examples of leaders in business and politics

Discuss how can organizations find or make leaders

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What is leadership?

The use of personal capabilities and relationships to direct,

inspire, motivate, and empower others

“A leader is a person who leads because of people's confidence and trust in their ability, as opposed to their formal title and their ability to do a command-and-control mentality”

Cisco CEO John Chambers, quoted by Don Gillmore, SiliconValley.com, May 20, 2000

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“Leaders are living individuals whom employees can smell, feel, touch their

presence” [the elevator test] … “Leaders love their work. That passion is

infectious.” … “ ‘It’s only business, not personal’ … IT ALWAYS IS

PERSONAL.” … “If you love what you do, it shows. You cannot fake love

and succeed.” -Tom Peters

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What does leadership do? Personifies (gives the organization a

human face; puts flesh on core values) Creates accountability (attributes

agency; assigns credit- and blame) Simplifies (cuts through

complexities & ambiguities) Directs (gives guidance) Aligns/coordinates (unifies the

organization around the leader’s goals)

Inspires & motivates (drives, enthralls, impassions followers to subordinate self-interest to the good of the group)

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“Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everyone can understand”

--Colin Powell

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Leadership as an alignment or coordination mechanism

Market-ing

Market-ing

Engineering

Engineering

Manu-facturing

Manu-facturing

Human Resources

Human Resources

AccountingAccounting

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Jack Welch: coordinating with charisma Business Week May 28, 1998

GE is a set of operating companies that cooperate through a small, very talented, very thoughtful corporate headquarters.’ It takes a very, very strong personality and tremendous character to be able to keep pushing that kind of an organization

Welch acts as the galvanizing agent, crossing company borders and layers and regularly delivering shocks with his wit and incisiveness. (H)e is exceptionally hands-on and a large force in the minds and hearts of employees, who refer to him as Jack and quote his maxims.

(He) has been a combination of charismatic preacher, all-knowing judge, internal ombudsman and hard-driving coach. He cultivates and rewards the same qualities in the system and in his employees -- aggressiveness, high energy -- that he prizes in himself. Employees who don't measure up are weeded out.

Charisma is part of his MO: Welch is blunt, quick and often very funny.

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Debi Marchovik, a Southwest flight attendant for six years, sums up what motivates a lot of the airline’s employees: “you don’t want to let Herb (Southwest Airlines CEO Herb Kelleher) down.”

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Leadership is power; but not all power is leadership

What are some other forms of power?

• Leveraging the formal organization– Exercising authority– Designing and implementing systems

• Trading on scarce skills or resources

• Maneuvering, manipulation

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Leadership versus management• Management: the design and implementation of formal systems

of control, coordination, and decision-making

• Management is about coping with complexity• Ensuring reliable and efficient operation without undue dependence on people

• Leadership is about coping with change– In times of change and uncertainty, “management” is insufficient;

leadership is critical • Particularly true of “paradigm-breaking,” discontinuous change• Times of change/uncertainty may call forth great leadership

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Carly Fiorina gets the axe at HP; fails as a leader of change

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While Lou Gerstner succeeded at

Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. was chairman of the board of IBM Corporation from April 1993 until his retirement in December 2002. He served as chief executive officer of IBM from 1993 until March 2002. In January 2003 he assumed the position of chairman of The Carlyle Group, a global private equity firm located in Washington, DC.

Prior to joining IBM, Mr. Gerstner served for four years as chairman and chief executive officer of RJR Nabisco, Inc. This was preceded by an 11-year career at American Express Company, where he was president of the parent company and chairman and CEO of its largest subsidiary, American Express Travel Related Services Company. Prior to that, Mr. Gerstner was a director of the management consulting firm of McKinsey & Co., Inc., which he joined in 1965.

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Why did Carly fail?

The HP board deliberately hired Fiorina in 1999 to be a virus that the ``corporate antibodies'' would attack. HP had missed the Internet boom, and board members thought the company needed a kick in the pants.

Fiorina rejected her predecessors' low-key style of ``management by walking around.'' She complained about the ``HP Way,'' the corporate philosophy put forth by founders William Hewlett and David Packard. ``Everyone gets to say no, and no one gets to say yes,'' she reportedly said.

Fiorina was a whirling dervish of motivational speeches, e-mails and voice mails -- a self-professed change agent at a company that wasn't operating on ``Internet time.'‘

Employees questioned whether Fiorina understood the special place that HP holds in Silicon Valley lore. She turned the hallowed image of the garage where Hewlett and Packard started HP into a television commercial starring herself.

--New York Times 2/10/05

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Although leadership is personal, it is a group or organization role, not an individual attribute

• Leadership is inherently relational– Requires followership– a bond of trust & commitment

between leader & follower • But some people are better at building it than others

• Leadership is also situation- or context-specific– Leadership styles that work in one setting may not

work in another• Charisma may derive from being different

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Two faces of leadership

• Vision: directing and inspiring• Clear picture of future

• Passion to achieve

• Charisma: motivating & empowering– Personal qualities & capabilities that attract &

motivate others

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Crafting a vision

• A vision need not be unique nor altogether new

• A vision should:– Be simple, clear, sharp, “eureka” evoking

• Represented with symbols, metaphors, icons, slogans

– Be holistic-- a gestalt or frame on reality– Be emotional, intuitive, inspiring– Motivate change but build on core values & beliefs

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Martin Luther King as visionary leader

Strong, clear vision – Put an end to “de jure”

discrimination– Consistent strategy of nonviolence– Appeals to core American values

Powerful communicator of vision– “I have a dream speech”

Less charismatic a personality than other civil rights leaders (e.g., Malcolm X or Stokely Carmichael)

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Steve Jobs as visionary and charismatic leader

“Do you want to sell sugar water to children for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?”Steve Jobs’ 1983 recruitment pitch to Pepsi CEO John Sculley

“His defining characteristic is an unalloyed confidence—some might call it arrogance—that his own judgment is correct, whatever other people say. This is coupled with extraordinary powers of persuasion: he is said to be surrounded by a “reality distortion field” that enables him to convince everyone in his immediate vicinity that he is right. And he is unquestionably the greatest showman in the computer industry.”

The Economist

2/5/04

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Dividing leadership at Microsoft: Bill Gates as visionary, Steve Ballmer as charismatic coach

There's the Gates variety -- what Ballmer calls thought leadership. ``By dint of your ideas, your thinking, your force of will behind some concept that you're working on, you bring people with you.''

Then there's the administrative leader -- ``somebody who basically focuses in on keeping the train running,'' Ballmer says. ``I'm not pejorative about that. It's an important thing, and for many people, that is most of the leadership that they see and hear.''

And then there's the style Ballmer thinks is his best suit: the coach. Those leaders ``may not make everybody better around them, or they might. They might have good ideas and might not. They might be good at keeping the railroads running on time. But man, can they fire people up.''

Dan Gillmore, SiliconValley.com, July 8, 2000

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The charismatic and visionary leader as deviant, eccentric, slightly mad

Deviant, exotic, eccentric, iconoclast; a cut apart; symbolic of a new direction

• Charisma may be context-specific

Different mind-set, style, gestalt, way of framing reality Steve Jobs’ “reality distortion field”

Leaders emerge from unconventional career paths

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Larry Ellison’s (FAKE) Yale Commencement Speech "Graduates of Yale University, I apologize if you have endured this type of prologue before, but I want

you to do something for me. Please, take a good look around you. Look at the classmate on your left. Look at the classmate on your right. Now, consider this: Five years from now, 10 years from now, even 30 thirty years from now, odds are the person on your left is going to be a loser. The person on your right, meanwhile, will also be a loser. And you, in the middle? What can you expect? Loser. Loserhood. Loser Cum Laude.

"In fact, as I look out before me today, I don't see a thousand hopes for a bright tomorrow. I don't see a thousand future leaders in a thousand industries. I see a thousand losers.

"You're upset. That's understandable. After all, how can I, Larry Ellison, college dropout, have the audacity to spout such heresy to the graduating class of one of the nation's most prestigious institutions? I'll tell you why. Because I, Lawrence "Larry" Ellison, second richest man on the planet, am a college dropout, and you are not.

"Because Bill Gates, richest man on the planet is a college dropout, and you are not."Because Paul Allen, the third richest man on the planet, dropped out of college and you did not."And for good measure, because Michael Dell, No. 9 on the list and moving up fast, is a college dropout, and you, yet again, are not.“

Oh sure, you may, perhaps, work your way up to No. 10 or No. 11, like Steve Ballmer. But then, I don't have to tell you who he really works for, do I? And for the record, he dropped out of grad school. Bit of a late bloomer."

"Finally, I realize that many of you, and hopefully by now most of you, are wondering, 'Is there anything I can do? Is there any hope for me at all?' Actually, no. It's too late. You've absorbed too much, think you know too much. You're not 19 anymore. You have a built-in cap, and I'm not referring to the mortar boards on your heads."

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Are leaders born or made?Leadership traits and skillsQuality/behavior Immutable

(trait)Learnable

(skill)

Passion, commitment Med Med

Aggressiveness/toughness Hi Med

Energy Hi Lo

Extroversion Hi Lo-med

Empathy, sensitivity, “emotional intelligence” Med Med

Confidence Lo Hi

Cognitive intelligence Hi Lo

Networking/team-building ability Med Med

Genius/imagination Hi Lo

Charm, smoothness Hi Med

Eccentricity, zaniness Hi Lo

Public speaking skills Med Med

Physical features (voice, height, looks, gender) Hi Lo

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Tom Peters on gender differences

“AS LEADERS, WOMEN RULE: New Studies find

that female managers outshine their male

counterparts in almost every measure”

Title, Special Report, Business Week, 11.20.00

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More Tom Peters on gender differences

Women’s Stuff = New Economy Match

Improv skillsRelationship-centric

Less “rank consciousness”Self determinedTrust sensitive

IntuitiveNatural “empowerment freaks” [less

threatened by strong people]Intrinsic [motivation] > Extrinsic

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Charlotte Beers’ leadership style

Charlotte Beers is known for sweeping theatrically into client meetings. Even before hellos are exchanged, she'll drawl to the group, "Now, you're gonna give us this business today, aren't you?" To most men, she's beguiling. Sears CEO Arthur Martinez, an Ogilvy client, says, "I think a lot of male-female business relationships get stilted. What I like so much about Charlotte is that you can have fun with her." Beers' former colleague BBDO International President Jean-Michel Goudard says, "Charlotte, more than anyone in this business, wants to seduce. There's something deep about Charlotte, and also frivolous. She is a woman, a woman, a woman."

It is the women, the women, the women who knock her style. Some say she sets feminism back years. "The criticism really ticks me off," says Beers, who comes across in an interview as intimate, incisive, tough, funny, and a decade younger than her 61 years. A cowboy's daughter from southeast Texas, she first learned to dazzle the crowd when she was in her 20s, teaching algebra to oil-patch engineers. Beers reckons that Southern charm is simply smart business. "Yes, I call CEOs 'honey,' but to me, that's wry Texas humor," she says. "I'm likely to say the most outrageous thing in the room--to liven things up."

--Fortune, 1966: “Women, sex, and power”

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How to find and build leadership

• Selection: (recruit and promote on leadership traits & skills: avoid the “Peter Principle”)

• Socialization: conditions that breed leadership • Formal organization

• Structure: (divisional/process vs. functional; horizontal vs. hierarchical)

• Appraisal and reward systems• Measure outcomes, not process• Reward risk-taking, entrepreneurship

• Training programs• Mentoring• Role play• Outward Bound

• Informal organization

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Leadership is hard to come by when the informal organization is undeveloped

• Weak/fragmented culture– Lack of shared values & beliefs

• Weak networks– Low trust & reciprocity– Low connectivity, high cliquing

• Negative politics

But that makes it all the more important • The leader’s task is to create the context

• Strong cultures usually originate with visionary leaders

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Heroic versus developmental (post-heroic) leadership

Heroic Leaders• Are high-impact

• Become an icon for the organization

• Create a huge gulf between leader and follower

• Put followers in awe of the great (wo)man.

• May foster high trust but also low sharing

• Appropriate most responsibility and accountability for outcomes

• Disempower followers

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Are American executives excessively prone to “heroic” leadership?

• American individualism leads to attribution bias

• American obsession with celebrities

– The U. S. business press fixates on leaders

• The cult of the CEO

• Sky-high executive compensation in the U. S.

motivates heroic styles of leadership

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Insiders say Mr. Dell continues to set a gung-ho tone at the company. His 2 a.m. e-mail messages and notes scribbled on pages torn from magazines remind employees that their boss works as if he is running a start-up. "If Michael weren't as involved, I'd worry. There's no one who can make that company run like Michael," says Doug MacGregor, a former Dell vice president who is now a researcher at Harvard Business School.

Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2000

Is Michael Dell a heroic leader?

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Is Steve Jobs’ a heroic leader?

“But with so much of its future resting on the power--and instincts--of one person, Apple is vulnerable. What if Jobs gets distracted or falls off his game?”

From “Yes, Steve, you fixed it. Congrats! Now what's Act Two?” (Business Week, July 31, 2000)

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Was Jack Welch a heroic leader?This is face-to-face with Jack, not so much as the celebrated chairman and chief executive of GE, the company he has made the most valuable in the world, but rather as Professor Welch, coach and teacher to 71 high-potential managers attending a three-week development course.

In this classroom, where Welch has appeared more than 250 times in the past 17 years to engage some 15,000 GE managers and executives, something extraordinary happens. The legendary chairman of GE, the take-no-prisoners tough guy who gets results at any cost, becomes human. His slight stutter, a handicap that has bedeviled him since childhood, makes him oddly vulnerable.

The students see all of Jack here: the management theorist, strategic thinker, business teacher, and corporate icon who made it to the top despite his working-class background. No one leaves the room untouched.

If leadership is an art, then surely Welch has proved himself a master painter. Few have personified corporate leadership more dramatically.

Business Week May 28, 1998

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It's an old joke in Silicon Valley: Q: What's the difference between God and Larry Ellison?

A: God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison.

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Heroic versus developmental (post-heroic) leadership

Developmental Leaders• Stay behind-the-scenes; do not hog the limelight

• Increase subordinates’ awareness of the importance of their tasks and of doing them well.

• Share responsibility and encourage ownership– “strategic humility”

• Foster teamwork• Direct subordinates by sharing vision• Support subordinates in taking risks

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Developmental leadership is about teamwork

Picture a dog sled. A human is riding, holding a whip, as the team pulls the sled. ``The leader in that group is the lead dog,'' Chambers says.

“(A leader) is able to set the course for the team, who never asks the team to do something that she or he is not willing to do themselves, who has the confidence of the team that they will follow him, that when it really gets tough, will be able to set the pace and know how hard the team can run without breaking down.

Cisco CEO John Chambers, quoted by Don Gillmore, SiliconValley.com, May 20, 2000

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Roles in teams: leaders & followers

Leadership roles in teams

• Ask questions• Get the group to solve problems• Promote real participation• Help resolve conflict• Train others• Positive reinforcement• Encourage high performance

goals• Encourage self-evaluation• Tell the truth, even when it’s

disagreeable• Liaison with higher

management

A definition of teamwork: leader and follower roles rotate smoothly and continuously among the members of a group

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L

L

L

L

L = Leader

Start - up

Transitional

Experienced

Mature

C. Manz & H. SimsBusiness Without BossesJohn Wiley, 1993

Transitioning from “heroic” leadership to developmental leadership

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Takeaway Points• Leadership is:

– Personalistic, charismatic– Relational (requires followership/teamwork)

• Leadership consists of vision and charisma– Crafting a vision is the easy part; selling it is hard– Anyone can become charismatic

• Leadership requires fertile ground to fluorish• There is no one best style of leadership (congruence model).

However:– Heroic leadership is effective in the short run but disempowers

followers and creates succession crisis– Developmental leadership empowers followers & grows next-

generation leaders

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Thursday discussion

• Other business; lecture tie-ups

• Charlotte Beers case

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Preparing for the Charlotte Beers case

1. Assess Ogilyv’s problems in relation to its strategy and environment2. Analyze cause and effect relationships behind problems

a. Consider all the of O’s existing organizational architecture3. What were Charlotte’s strengths and weaknesses as a leader?4. Critique Charlotte’s analysis of Ogilvy’s problems5. Evaluate her approach to:

a. Crafting the brand stewardship vision b. Communicating the visionc. Aligning Ogilvy’s organization with the vision

6. What would you have done differently?7. Was there real substance to “brand stewardship” or was Charlotte just

a good saleswoman?8. How much of what Charlotte did was “leadership” and how much of it

was “management”?