Leadership is probably researched and discussed more than any other topic in the field of management. New suggestions, methods, and tips for improving leadership skills are offered each year. Everyone seems to acknowledge the importance of leadership to managerial and organizational success.
Power, Authority and Leadership
Before undertaking a study of leadership, a clear understanding must be developed of the relationships among power, authority, and leadership.
Power is a measure of a person's potential to get others to do what he or she wants them to do, as well as to avoid being forced by others to do what he or she does not want to do. Power can have both a positive and negative form. Positive power results when the exchange is voluntary and both parties feel good about the exchange. Negative power results when the individual is forced to change. Power in organization can be exercised upward, downward, or horizontally. It does not necessarily follow the organizational hierarchy from top to bottom.
Authority, which is the right to issue directives and expend resources, is related to power but is narrower in scope. Basically, the amount of authority a manager has depends on the amount of coercive, reward, and legitimate power the manager can exert. Authority is a function of position in the organizational hierarchy, flowing from the top to the bottom of the organization. An individual can have power - expert or referent - without having formal authority. Furthermore, a manager's authority can 14114h717o be diminished by reducing the coercive and reward power in the position.
Leadership is the ability to influence people to willingly follow one's guidance or adhere to one's decisions. Obtaining flowers and influencing them in setting and achieving objectives makes a leader. Leaders use power in influencing group behaviour. For instance, political leaders often use referent power. Informal leaders in organizations generally combine referent power and expert power. Some managers rely only on authority, while others use different combinations of power.
Leadership and Management
Leadership and management are not necessarily the same but are not incompatible. Effective leadership in organizations creates a vision of the future that considers the legitimate long-term interest of the parties involved in the organization, develops a strategy for moving toward that vision, enlists the support of employees to produce the movement, and motivates employees to implement the strategy. Management is a process of planning, organizing, staffing, motivating and controlling through the use of formal authority. In practice, effective leadership and effective management must ultimately be the same.
Leader Attitudes
Douglas McGregor developed two attitude profiles, or assumptions, about the basic nature of people. These attitudes were termed as Theory X and Theory Y. He maintained that many leaders in essence subscribe to either X or Y theory and behave accordingly.
A theory X leader would likely use a much more authoritarian style of leadership than a leader who believes in theory Y assumptions.
Generally, it has been found that if a manager's expectations are high, productivity is likely to be high. On the other hand, if the manager's expectations are low, productivity is likely to be poor. He called this phenomenon the self-fulfilling prophecy. It has also been called Pygmalion in management.
Framework for Classifying Leadership Studies
Many studies have been conducted on leadership.
Trait theory - stressed what the leader was like rather than what the leader did. Many personality traits (such as originality, initiative, persistence, knowledge, enthusiasm), social traits (tract, patience, sympathy, etc.), and physical characteristics (height, weight, attractiveness) have been examined to differentiate leaders.
Research in this area has generally been fruitless - largely because the traits related to leadership in one case usually did not prove to be predictive in other cases. In general, it can be said that traits may to some extent influence the capacity to lead. But these traits must be analyzed in terms of the leadership situation.
Basic leadership styles - Three basic leadership styles are:
Autocratic leader makes more decisions for the group;
Laissez-faire leader allows people within the group to make all decisions, and
Democratic leader guides and encourages the group to make decisions.
In using this questionnaire, two leader behaviours emerged consistently as being the most important:
Consideration - refers to the leader behaviour of showing concern for individual group members and satisfying their needs.
Initiating structure refers to the leader behaviour of structuring the work of group members and directing the group toward the attainment of the group's goal.
The major
conclusions that can be drawn from these studies (i.e.
Leaders scoring high on consideration tend to have more satisfied subordinates than do leaders scoring on low consideration.
The relationship between the score on consideration and leader effectiveness depends on the group being led. In other words, a high score on consideration was positively correlated with leader effectiveness for managers and office staff in a large industrial firm, whereas a high score on consideration was negatively correlated with leader effectiveness for production foremen.
There is also no consistent relationship between imitating structure and leader effectiveness; rather, the relationship varies depending on the group that is being lead.
The institute for
Social Research of the
Interviews were conducted with 24 managers and 419 non-managers employees. Results of the interviews showed that managers of high-producing work groups were more likely:
To receive general rather than close supervision from their superiors
To like the amount of authority and responsibility they have in their job
To spend more time in supervision
To give general rather than close supervision to their employees
To be employee oriented rather than production oriented.
Supervisors of low-producing work groups had basically opposite characteristics and techniques. They were production oriented and gave close supervision.
Rensis Likert, then director of the institute, published the results of his years of research in the book New Patterns of Management, which is classic in its field. He believes there are four patterns or styles of leadership or management employed by organizations. He has identified and labelled these styles as follows:
System 1: Exploitative authoritative. Authoritarian form of management that attempts to exploit subordinates.
System 2: Benevolent authoritative. Authoritarian form of management, but paternalistic in nature.
System 3: Consultative. Manager requests and receives inputs from subordinates but maintains the right to make the final decision.
System 4: Participative. Manager gives some direction, but decisions are made by consensus and majority, based on total participation.
Managerial Grid
Robert Blake and Jane Mouton - developed a method of classifying the leadership style of an individual. The managerial grid is a two dimensional framework rating a leader on the basis of concern for people and concern for production.
Fiedler's Contingency Studies of Leadership
The leadership studies discussed so far are similar in that they did not specifically address the complex differences between groups (such as production workers versus accountants) and their influences on leader behaviour. To imply that a manager should be employee oriented rather than production-oriented (Michigan studies) or that the manager should exhibit concern for both production and people (Blake and Mouton) does not say much about what the manager should do in particular situations. Nor does it offer much guidance for daily leadership situations. As a result, research began to focus on the style of leadership that is most effective in particular situations. This is called the Contingency approach to leadership.
One of the first studies using the contingency approach was conducted by Fred Fiedler. He studied the match between the leader's personality and the situation. He defined two basic leader personality traits:
Task motivated leaders gain satisfaction from the performance of a task.
Relationship motivated leaders gain satisfaction from interpersonal relationships.
He viewed task versus relationship as a leader trait that was relatively constant for any given person.
Fiedler next turned to the situation in which the leader was operating. He placed leadership situations along a favourable-unfavourable continuum based on three major dimensions:
Leader-member relations refer to the degree others trust and respect the leader and to the leader's friendliness. This compares somewhat to referent power.
Task structure is the degree to which job tasks are structured. For example, assembly-line jobs are more structured than managerial jobs.
Position power refers to the power and influence that go with a job. A manager has more position power who is able to hire, fire, and discipline. Position power compares to coercive, reward, and legitimate power. Using these three dimensions, an eight-celled classification scheme was developed.
Continuum of Leader Behaviours
Robert Tannenbaum and Warren Schmidt also contend that different combinations of situational elements require different styles of leadership. They suggest that there are three important factors, or forces, involved in finding the most effective leadership style: force in the manager, the subordinate, and the situation. Furthermore, all of these forces are interdependent.
In fact, Tannenbaum and Schmidt argue that there is a continuum of behaviours that the leader may employ, depending on the situation.
Path-Goal Theory of Leadership
This theory attempts to define the relationships between a leader's behaviour and the subordinates' performance and work activities. Leader behaviour influences the motivation of subordinates when it makes the satisfaction of their needs contingent on successful performance; and it provides the guidance, support, and rewards needed for effective performance (but that are not already present in the environment). The path goal theory of leadership and the expectancy theory of motivation, which was described in the previous chapter, are closely related in that leader behaviours can either increase or decrease employee expectancies.
In path goal theory, leader behaviour falls into one of the four basic types:
Role classification leadership - lets subordinates know what is expected of them, gives guidance as to what should be done and how, schedules and coordinates work among the subordinates, and maintains definite standards of performance. Role classification leads to high satisfaction and performance for subordinates engaged in unstructured tasks.
Supportive leadership - has a friendly, approachable leader who attempts to make the work environment more pleasant for subordinates. Supportive leadership brings the most satisfaction to those who work on highly structured tasks.
Participative leadership - involves consulting with subordinates and asking for their suggestions in the decision-making process. Participative leader behaviour enhances performance and satisfaction for subordinates engaged in ambiguous tasks.
Autocratic leadership - comes from a leader who gives orders that are not to be questioned by subordinates. Autocratic leadership behaviour has a negative effect on both satisfaction and performance in both structured and unstructured task situations.
Life Cycle Theory of Leadership
Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard include maturity of the followers as an important factor in leader behaviour. According to the Life Cycle Theory of Leadership, as the level of maturity of followers increases, structure (task) should be reduced while socio-emotional support (relationship) should first be increased and then gradually deceased. The maturity level of the followers is determined by their relative independence, their ability to take responsibility, and their achievement-motivational level.
The cycle of the basic leadership styles that should be used by the leader, depending on the maturity of the followers. The life-cycle theory proposes that as the followers progress from immaturity to maturity, the leader's behaviour should move from:
high task low relationships to
high task high relationships to
low task relationships to
low task low relationships
Transformational and Transactional Leaders
One final approach to the analysis leadership has been based on how leaders and followers influence one another. Under this approach, leadership is viewed as either a transactional or transformational process.
Transactional leadership - takes the approach that leaders engage in a bargaining relationship with their followers. Under this approach, the leader (manager):
Tells employees what they need to do to obtain rewards.
Takes corrective action only when employees fail to meet performance objectives.
Transformational leadership - involves cultivating employee acceptance of the group mission. The manager employee relationship is one of mutual stimulation and is characterized by charisma on the part of the leader, inspiration by the leader, consideration by the leader of individual needs, and intellectual stimulation between the leader and followers. Transformational leaders go beyond transacting with their followers and transform not only the situation but also the followers.
Lessons from Leadership studies
The dynamic, changing nature of managerial roles further complicates the situation. Even if the initial process could select effective leaders, the dynamics of the managerial situation might make the selection invalid. Further, contrary to the conclusions of many studies, most leadership training today seems to assume there is one best way to lead.
Such training is not so much a process of changing individual traits as it is one of ensuring that the person is operating in an appropriate situation or of teaching the individual how to act in a given situation. The following points on effective leadership can tentatively be made:
High consideration and initiating structure often provide a successful leadership style.
Under emergency or high-pressure situations, emphasis on initiating structure is desirable and often preferred by subordinates.
When the manager is the only information source for subordinates regarding their task, they often expect the manager to structure their behaviour.
Subordinates have differing preferences regarding the degree of consideration and initiating structure exhibited by their managers.
Higher management often has set preferences regarding the leadership styles employed by lower-level managers.
Some managers can adjust their behaviour to fit the situation; while others, in attempting to make this adjustment, appear to be fake and manipulative.
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