Wk 8

• Leadership


  The ability to influence a group toward the achievement of a vision or set of goals
• Not all leaders are managers, nor are all managers leaders
• Nonsanctioned leadership is often as important or more important than formal influence
• Behavioral theories of leadership

  Imply we can train people to be leaders
• University of Iowa studies explored three leadership styles

  1. Autocratic style

  2. Democratic style

  3. Laissez-faire style
• Autocratic style


  • A leader who dictates work methods, makes unilateral decisions, and limits employee participation
• Democratic style


  • A leader who involves employees in decision making, delegates authority, and uses feedback as an opportunity for coaching employees
• Laissez-faire style


  • A leader who lets the group make decisions and complete the work in whatever way it sees fit
• Ohio State Studies


  • Found two behaviors that accounted for most leadership behavior: Initiating structure and Consideration
• Initiating structure


  The extent to which a leader defines and structures their role and those of their followers to facilitate goal attainment
• Consideration


  The extent to which a leader has job relationships that are characterized by mutual trust, respect for subordinates' ideas, and regard for their feelings
• Employee-oriented leaders


  • Emphasize interpersonal relationships
• Production-oriented leaders


  • Tend to emphasize the task aspects of the job
• Trait theories of leadership focus on personal qualities and characteristics
• The search for personality, social, physical, or intellectual attributes that differentiate leaders from non-leaders goes back to the earliest stages of leadership research
• Trait theories of leadership

  • Extraversion is the most predictive trait of effective leaders, but it is more strongly related to the way leaders emerge than to their effectiveness
  • Conscientiousness and openness to experience also showed strong relationships to leadership, though not quite as strong as extraversion
• Good leaders who like being around people

  • Are able to assert themselves (extraverted)
  • Are disciplined and able to keep commitments they make (conscientious)
  • Have an apparent advantage when it comes to leadership
• Emotional intelligence


  • A core component of EI is empathy
  • People high in EI are more likely to emerge as leaders, even after taking cognitive ability and personality into account
• Traits can predict leadership
• Traits do a better job predicting the emergence of leaders than they do at distinguishing between effective and ineffective leaders
• Leader–Member Exchange Theory


  A theory that suggests (1) leaders and followers have unique relationships that vary in quality and (2) these followers comprise ingroups and outgroups; subordinates with ingroup status will likely have higher performance ratings, less turnover, and greater job satisfaction
• Fiedler contingency model


  • Effective group performance depends upon the proper match between the leader's style of interacting with subordinates and the degree to which the situation gives control to the leader
• Least-preferred coworker (LPC) questionnaire


  Developed by Fiedler to define the situation
• Contingency dimensions


  • Leader-member relations
  • Task structure
  • Position power
• Situational leadership theory (SLT)

  Suggests that the appropriate leadership style depends on followers' readiness (e.g., willingness and competence) to accomplish a specific task
• Stages of follower readiness

  1. R1: Unable and unwilling (Telling)

  2. R2: Unable but willing (Selling)

  3. R3: Able but unwilling (Participating)

  4. R4: Able and willing (Delegating)
• Charismatic leadership


  • Vision and articulation
  • Personal risk
  • Sensitivity to follower needs
  • Unconventional behavior
• When people sense a crisis or are under stress

  They are especially receptive to effective charismatic leadership
• Many charismatic leaders don't necessarily act in the best interest of their companies, and have allowed their personal goals to override the goals of the organization
• Transformational leaders


  Act as role models to intellectually stimulate and develop or mentor their followers, having a profound and extraordinary effect on them
• Transactional leaders


  Guide their followers toward established goals by clarifying role and task requirements
• Characteristics of transactional and transformational leaders

  • Transactional: Contingent Reward, Management by Exception (active), Management by Exception (passive), Laissez-Faire

  Transformational: Idealized Influence, Inspirational Motivation, Intellectual Stimulation, Individualized Consideration
• Transformational leadership has a greater impact on the bottom line in smaller, privately-held firms than in more complex organizations
• Transformational leadership is highly related to contingent reward leadership, to the point of being redundant
• The four I's of transformational leadership are not always superior in effectiveness to transactional leadership; contingent reward leadership sometimes works as well as transformational leadership
• Trust


  A psychological state of mutual positive expectations between people—both depend on each other and are genuinely concerned for each other's welfare
• Dimensions of trust


  • Integrity, Competence, Consistency, Loyalty, Openness
• Trust between supervisors and employees has several specific advantages, including encouraging risk-taking, facilitating information sharing, improving group effectiveness, and enhancing productivity
• Key characteristics that lead us to believe a leader is trustworthy


  • Integrity, Benevolence, Ability