Chapter 7

LEADERSHIP

CHAPTER OBJECTIVES TO UNDERSTAND

The Nature Of LeadershipThe Difference between Traits and behaviorDifference Leadership StylesEarlyApproches to LeadershipContingency Approches to LeadershipSubstitudes for LeadershipSelf-Leadership and SuperleadershipCoaching as a Leadership Role

THE NATURE OF LEADERSHIPLeadership is the process of influencing and supporting

others work enthusiastically toward achieving objectives.

It’s the critical factor that helps an individual or a group identify its goals and then motivates and assists in achieving the stated goals.

The three important elements in the definition are: - - Influence/support, - Voluntary effort, - Goal achievement.

Without leadership, an organization would be only a confusion of people and machines.

Management and Leadership

Leadership is an important part of management, but its not the whole story.

The primary role of a leader is to influence others to voluntarily seek defined objectives.

Managers also plan activities, organize appropriate structures, and control resources. Managers hold formal influence while acting as a leader.

Traits of Effective LeadersPeople have been concerned about the nature of

leadershipsince the beginning of history.

Early research tried to identify the traits—physical, intellectual, or personality characteristics—that differed between leaders and non leaders or between successful and unsuccessful leaders.

Many cognitive and psychological factors, such as intelligence, ambition, and aggressiveness, were studied. Other researchers examined physical characteristics, such as height, body size and shape, and personal attractiveness.

Leadership BehaviorMuch research has focused on identifying the LeadershipBehaviors.

- In this view, successful leadership depends more on appropriate behavior, skills, and actions, and less on personal traits.

The difference is similar to that between latent energy and kinetic energy in physics: one type (the traits) provides the latent potential, and the other (the behaviors, skills, and actions) is the successful release and expression of those traits, much like kinetic energy.

The three broad types of skills leaders use are Technical, Human, and Conceptual.

Technical Skills refers to a person’s knowledge of and ability in any type of process or technique. Technical skills is the distinguishing feature of job performance at the operating and professional levels, but as employees are promoted to leadership responsibilities, their technical skills become proportionality less Important.

Human Skills is the ability to work effectively with people and to build teamwork. No leader at any organizational level escapes the requirement for effective human skill. It is a major part of leadership behavior and is discussed throughout this book. Lack of human skills has been the downfall of many managers.

Conceptual skill: Is the ability to think in terms of models, frameworks, and broad relation ships, such as long range plans. It becomes increasingly important in higher managerial jobs. Conceptual skill deals with ideas, whereas human skill concerns people and technical skill involves things.

Variation in the use of leadership skills at different organizational level

Situational AspectsSuccessful leadership require behavior that

unites and stimulates followers toward defined objectives in specific situations.

All three elements— Leader, Followers, and Situation—are variables that affect one another in determining appropriate leadership behavior.

FollowershipWith few exception, leaders in organizations

are alsofollowers.

They nearly always report to someone else. Even the president of a public firm or nonprofit organization report to a board of directors. Leaders must be able to wear both hats , relating effectively both upward and downward.

Followership behavior include:

Not competing with the leader to be in the limelight

Being loyal and supportive, a team playerNot being a “yes person” who automatically

agreeActing as a devil’s advocated by raising

penetrating questionConstructively confronting the leader’s ideas,

values, and actionsAnticipating potential problems and preventing

them

BEHAVIORAL APPROCHES TO LEADERSHIP STYLE

The total pattern of Explicit and Implicit leaders’ action as seen by employees is called Leadership style.

It represent a consistent combination of philosophy. Each style also reflects, implicitly or explicitly, a manager’s beliefs about a subordinate’s capabilities.

Positive and Negative Leaders

There are differences in the ways leaders approach people to motivate them. If the approach emphasizes rewards—economic or otherwise —the leader uses positive leadership.

Better employee education, greater demands for independence , and other factors have made satisfactory employee motivation more dependent on positive leadership.

If emphasis is placed on penalties, the leader is applying negative relationship. This approach can get acceptable performance in many situations, but it has high human costs. Negative leaders act domineering and superior with people.

A continuum of leadership styles exist, ranging from strongly positive to strongly negative.

Style is related to one’s model of organizational behavior. The autocratic model tends to produce a negative style; the custodial model is somewhat positive; and the supportive, collegial, and system models are clearly positive. Positive leadership generally results in higher job satisfaction and performance.

Autocratic, Consultative, and Participative Leaders

Autocratic Leaders: Centralize power and decision making in themselves.

Advantages: Satisfying for the leadersPermits quick decisionAllows the use of less components

subordinates

Consultative leaders: approach one or more employees and ask them for inputs prior to making a decision.

Participative leaders: Clearly decentralize authority. The leader and the group are acting as a social unit. Employees are informed about conditions affecting their job and encourage to express their ideas make suggestions, and take action.

Leader use of consideration and structure

Two different leadership styles used with employees are consideration and structure also known as employee orientation and task orientation.

Considerate leaders are concerned about the human needs of their employees.

Structured, task-oriented leaders, on the other hand believe that they get results by keeping people constantly busy, ignoring personal issues and emotions and urging them to produce.

The most successful managers are those who combine relatively high consideration and structure, giving somewhat more emphasis to consideration.

Contingency approaches to leadership style

The positive, participative, considerate leadership style is not always the best style to use. At times there are exceptions, and the prime need for leaders is to identify when to use a different style. A number of models have been developed that explained these exceptions, and they are called contingency approaches. These models states that the most appropriate style of leadership depends on an analysis of nature of situation facing the leader.

Fiedler’s Contingency Model

Fiedler shows that a leader’s effectiveness is determined by the interaction of employee-orientation with three additional variables that relate to the followers, the task, and the organization. They are leader-member relations, task structure and leader position power.

Leader-member relations are determined by the manner in which the leader is accepted by the group.

Task structure reflects the degree to which one specific way is required to do the job.

Leader position power describes the organizational power that goes with the position the leader occupies.

Hersey & Blanchart’s Situational Leadership Model

Another contingency approach, the situational leadership(or life-cycle) model developed by Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchart, suggest that the most important factor affecting the selection of the leader’s style is the development level of the subordinate. Development level is the task – specific combination of and employee's task competence and motivation to perform.

Employees typically become better develped on a task as they reside appropriate guidance, gain job experience, and see the reward for cooperative behavior both the competence to perform a given task and the commitment to do so can vary among employees, therefore development levels demand different response from leaders.

Path-Gold Model of the Leadership

Robert halls and others have further developed a Path-Gold view of leadership initially presented by Martin G. Evans, which is derive from the expectancy model of motivation. Path-Gold leadership states that the leader’s job is to use structure, support, and rewards to create a work environment that helps employees reach the organizations goal. The two major rules involved are to create a goal-orientation and to improve the path toward the goals so that they will be attained.

The Path-Goal Leadership ProcessLeader

identifies employee

needs

Appropriate goal are

established

Leader connects

reward with goals

Leaders provide assistant on

employee path toward goals

Employees become satisfied and motivated, and they are

accept the leader

Effective performance

occurs

Both employees and organization are better able to which their goals

Vroom’s Decision-making Model

The useful decision-making model for selecting among various degrees of leadership style developed by V.H. Vroom and others they recognize the problem-solving situation differ, so they developed the structure approach for managers to examine the nature of those differences and to respond appropriately.

Guiding questions in the Vroom’s Decision-making Model:

1. How important is technical quality with regard to the decision being made?

2. How important is subordinate commitment to the decision?

3. Do you already have sufficient information to make high-quality decision?

4. Is the problem well structured?5. If you made the decision, would the subordinate be likely

to accept it?6. Do subordinate share the goals to be attained in solving

the problem?7. Is there likely to be conflict among subordinate over

alternative solutions?8. Do subordinate have sufficient information to allow them

to reach a high-quality solution?

Emerging Approaches to Leadership

Substitutes and Enhancers for leadership a totally different approach to leadership that still has a modest contingency flavor has been proposed by Steven Kerr and others.

Substitutes for leadership are factors that make leadership roles unnecessary through replacing them with other sources.

Enhancers for leadership are elements that amplify a leader’s impact on the employees.

Potential neutralizers, substitute, and enhancers for leadership:

Neutralizers Substitutes EnhancersPhysical distance peer appraisal/feedback superordinate goalsBetween leader and Employee gain-sharing reward Increased group systems statusEmployee indifference toward rewards staff available for Increased leader’s problems status and rewardIntrinsically satisfying power tasks jobs redesigned for more feedback Leader as the centralInflexible work rules source of information methods for resolving supplyRigid reward systems interpersonal conflict

Increased subordinates’Cohesive work groups team building to help view of leaders expertise

solve work-related influence, and imagingEmployees with high problems Ability, experience, or use of crises to Knowledge intrinsic satisfaction demonstrate leader’s from the work itself capabilities

Self-Leadership and Superleadership the substitute for leadership provide partial compensation for a leader’s weakness and the enhancers build on a leader’s strengths. In another emerging approach to leadership, a dramatic substitute for leadership is the idea of self-leadership, which has been advocated by Charles Mans and Henry Sims. This process has to thrusts :leading oneself to perform naturally motivating tasks and managing oneself to do work that is required but not naturally rewarding. Self-leadership requires employees to apply the behavior of skills of self-observation, self-set goals, self-criticism.

It also involves the mental activities of building natural rewards into tasks, focusing thinking on natural rewards, and establishing effective thought patterns such as mental imagery and self-talk. The net result is employees who influence themselves to use their self-motivation and self-direction to perform well.

Superleadership begins with a set of positive beliefs about workers. it requires practicing self-leadership oneself and modeling it for others to see. Superleaders also communicate positive self-expectation to employees, reward their progress toward self-leadership, and make self-leadership and essential part of the unit’s desired culture.

Coaching:

A rapidly emerging metaphor for the leader is that of a coach. borrowed and adapted from the sports domain, coaching means that the leader prepares, guides, and directs a “player” but does not play the game. these leaders recognize that they are on the sidelines, not on the playing field. Their role is to select the right players, to teach and develop subordinates, to be available for problem-oriented consultation, review resource needs, to ask question, and to listen to input from employees.

Coaches see themselves as cheerleaders and facilitators while also recognizing the occasional need to be tough and demanding.

Coaching can be a powerful leadership tool, if handled correctly. Good coaching focuses mostly on enhanced performance as supported by high expectation and timely feed-back while building on the tools of trust, mutual respect, integrity, openness, and common purpose.

The specific areas that most managers admit needing coaching in are:

Improving their interaction styleDealing more effectively with changeDeveloping their listening and speaking skills

Other Approaches

Two other perspectives on leadership deserve mention. Visionary leaders—those who can paint a portrait of what the organization needs to become and then use the communication skills to motivate others to achieve the vision—play specially important rules during times of transition. A second approach looks at the reciprocal nature of influence between managers and their employees and studies the exchanges that take place between them.

SUMMARY

Leadership is the process of influencing and supporting others to work enthusiastically toward achieving objectives. It is determined partially by traits, which provide the potential for leadership, and also by rule behavior. Leaders’ roles combine technical, human, and conceptual skills, which leaders apply in different degrees at various organizational levels. Their behavior as followers is also important to the organization.