Leadership Thought

Management – French term “ménagement” which means “the directing” and from the
Latin term manu agree, which means “to lead by the hand”. Both word origins imply that
management is the process of leading and directing all or part of an organization, often a
business, through the deployment and manipulation of resources. The act, manner, or
practice of managing, handling, supervision, or control is another description of
management.

Managers:

 Have an assigned position within the formal organization.

 Have a legitimate source of power due to the delegated authority that
accompanies their position.
 Are expected to carry out specific functions, duties and responsibilities.
 Emphasize control, decision making, decision analysis, and results.
 Manipulate people, the environment, money, time, and other resources to achieve
organizational goals.
 Have a greater formal responsibility and accountability for rationality and control
than leaders.
 Direct willing and unwilling subordinates.
 A person responsible for controlling or administering all or part of a company or
similar organization.

Leadership – is a management skill that focuses on the development and deployment of

vision, mission and strategy as well as the creation of a motivated workforce. The action
of leading a group of people or an organization.

 Leaders often do not have delegated authority but obtain their power through
other means, such as influence. Leaders have a wider variety of roles than do
managers.
 Leaders focus on group process, information gathering, feedback, and
empowering other.
 Leaders emphasize interpersonal relationships.

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  Leaders direct willing followers.
 Leaders have goals that may or may not reflect those of the organization.

Descriptive vs. Prescriptive Theories

Descriptive

• Descriptive learning theories make statements about how learning occurs and
devise models that can be used to explain and predict learning results.

• Illustrates, defines and captures the description of leadership phenomena but do

not recommend or prescribe actions, behaviors or processes to employ.

Prescriptive

• Prescriptive learning theories are concerned with guidelines that describe what to
do in order to achieve specific outcomes. They are often based on descriptive
theories; sometimes they are derived from experience.

• Provides recommendation to the leader practitioner with regard to actions,

behaviors or processes to use to be a successful leader

Historical Development of Leadership Theory (1900-Present)

 The basis for most leadership research until the mid-1940s.

 From Aristotelian philosophy, asserts that some people are born to lead whereas
others are born to be led. It also suggests that great leaders will arise when the
situation demands it.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge in England recently reported that men

with longer ring fingers, compared to their index fingers, tended to be more successful
in the frantic high frequency trading in the London financial district. What does a study
of the finger lengths of financial traders have to do with trait theories of leadership?
Well, that’s also what leadership trait theories have attempted to do – identify certain
traits that all leaders have.

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 Leadership research in 1920’s and 1930’s focused on characteristics

 To differentiate leaders from non-leaders.

 Physical stature, appearance, social class, emotional stability.
 Fluency of speech and sociability.

 Despite the best efforts of researchers, it proved impossible to identify a set of

traits that would differentiate a leader (the person) from a non-leader.
 However, later attempts to identify traits consistently associated with leadership
(the process of leading, not the person) were more successful.
 Researchers eventually recognized that traits alone were not sufficient for
identifying effective leaders.

Seven Traits Associated with Leadership

• Drive. Leaders exhibit a high effort level. They have a relatively high desire for
achievement, they are ambitious, they have a lot of energy, they are tirelessly
persistent in their activities, and they show initiative.

• Desire to lead. Leaders have a strong desire to influence and lead others. They
demonstrate the willingness to take responsibility.

• Honesty and integrity. Leaders build trusting relationships with followers by being
truthful or non-deceitful and by showing high consistency between word and deed.

• Self-confidence. Followers look to leaders for an absence of self-doubt. Leaders,

therefore, need to show self-confidence in order to convince followers of the
rightness of their goals and decisions.

• Intelligence. Leaders need to be intelligent enough to gather, synthesize, and

interpret large amounts of information, and they need to be able to create visions,
solve problems, and make correct decisions.

• Job-relevant knowledge. Effective leaders have a high degree of knowledge about

the company, industry, and technical matters. In-depth knowledge allows leaders

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 to make well-informed decisions and to understand the implications of those
decisions.

• Extraversion. Leaders are energetic, lively people. They are sociable, assertive,
and rarely silent or withdrawn.

Leadership research from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s concentrated on the preferred
behavioral styles that leaders demonstrated. Researchers wondered whether something
unique in what effective leaders did—in other words, in their behavior—was the key.

Leadership Behavior Theories

Three Leadership Styles

University of Iowa

Autocratic Style

 Described a leader who dictated work, methods, made unilateral decisions and
limited employee participation.
 Dictating work methods, centralizing decision making, and limiting participation

Democratic Style

 Described a leader who involved employees in decision making, delegated

authority, and used feedback as an opportunity for coaching employees.
 Involving subordinates, delegating authority and encouraging participation.

Laissez – Faire Style

 Leader let the group make decisions and complete the work in whatever way it
saw fit.
 Giving group freedom to make decisions and complete work.

Ohio State

Initiating Structure - which referred to the extent to which a leader defined his or her role
and the roles of group members in attaining goals. It included behaviors that involved

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attempts to organize work, work relationships, and goals. Structuring work and work
relationships to meet job goals.

Consideration - which was defined as the extent to which a leader had work relationships
characterized by mutual trust and respect for group members’ ideas and feelings. Being
considerate of followers’ ideas and feelings.

University of Michigan

Employee Oriented - were described as emphasizing interpersonal relationships and

taking care of employees needs.

Production Oriented - leaders, in contrast, tended to emphasize the task aspects of the
job.

Michigan researchers concluded that leaders who were employee oriented were able to
get high group productivity and high group member satisfaction.

Managerial Grid

Concern for People - measured leaders concern for subordinates on a scale of 1 to 9.

(Slow to High)

Concern for Production - measured leaders concern for getting the job done on a scale
of 1 to 9. (Low to High)

Contingency Theories of Leadership

The Contingency Theory of Leadership states that a leader’s effectiveness is contingent

upon with how his or her leadership style matches to the situation. That is, the leader
must find out what kind of leadership style and situation he or she thrives in.

The Contingency Theory is concerned with the following:

 “There is no one best style of leadership”
 A leader is effective when his or her style of leadership fits with the situation.

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 The Fiedler Model
Fiedler contingency model proposed that effective group performance depended upon
properly matching the leader’s style and the amount of control and influence in the
situation.
Key factor in leadership success was an individual’s basic leadership style, either task
oriented or relationship oriented.
The Contingency theory is not concerned with having the leader adapt to a situation,
rather the goal is to match the leader’s style with a compatible situation. To make best
use of this theory, it is important to find what style a leader has. This is done through
the Least Preferred Coworker Scale (LPC)
The LPC is a list of questions designed to find out what kind of employee a leader would
most like to work with, and in turn shows the leaders style. Fiedler’s Contingency Model
attempts to match the leader’s style using LPC to the situation in which they would thrive.

 High LPC Score– leader with good personal skills and relies on relationships with
others to accomplish tasks; people-oriented.
 Low LPC Score– leader that accomplishes goals through focus on the task and
positional power; task-oriented.
Task-oriented leaders are most effective when their positional power is high, as well as
the task structure. People or relation-oriented leaders perform their best when the
relationship levels between themselves and followers are at their greatest. After finding
the style of the leader, Fiedler’s Model states that finding the best situation for the leader,
also known as “situational favorableness”.
A situation is defined by three factors in the contingency theory:

1. Leader-Member Relation- how the leader interacts with employees.

2. Task Structure- how tasks are set up by the leader.
3. Positional Power- the amount of power a leader has over followers.

These three factors combine to form the situation in which a leader’s style is effective or
ineffective. If the three factors match up to the style of the leader, success is projected. It
is important to remember that the opposite can happen as well. If a leader is put into a

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situation opposite of his or her favored task structure, member relation, and level of power,
then failure is to ensue. The three factors of contingency situation have less of an impact
on leaders who are task-oriented, or score low LPC’s, than leaders who are people-
oriented and score high LPC’s. By using the results from the LPC to find a person’s
leadership style, and analyzing their preferred leader-member relation, task structure, and
positional power, finding the right job or position for someone can be more accurately
accomplished.
• Fiedler did acknowledge that a small number of people might fall in between these
two extremes.
• Fiedler assumed a person’s leadership style was fixed regardless of the situation.
In other words, if you were a relationship-oriented leader, you’d always be one,
and the same for task-oriented.

Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Theory

• Situational Leadership Theory (SLT), is a contingency theory that focuses on

followers’ readiness.

Four specific leadership styles described as follows:

• Telling (high task–low relationship): The leader defines roles and tells people what,
how, when, and where to do various tasks.

• Selling (high task–high relationship): The leader provides both directive and
supportive behavior.

• Participating (low task–high relationship): The leader and followers share in

decision making; the main role of the leader is facilitating and communicating.

• Delegating (low task–low relationship): The leader provides little direction or

support.

The final component in the model is the four stages of follower readiness:

• R1: People are both unable and unwilling to take responsibility for doing
something. Followers aren’t competent or confident.

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 • R2: People are unable but willing to do the necessary job tasks. Followers are
motivated but lack the appropriate skills.

• R3: People are able but unwilling to do what the leader wants. Followers are
competent, but don’t want to do something.

• R4: People are both able and willing to do what is asked of them.

Pro's

 The simplicity of the theory makes it easy to apply.

 The theory has simple scales that a leader can use to give a "thumb in the wind"
assessment of what leadership style to use.
 Maturity and competence of the group are often overlooked factors in good
leadership and it helps to focus on these.

Con's

 The theory may not be applicable to managers as administrators or those with

limited power but in structurally in a leadership position.
 There are situations in which the theory may be less applicable such as those
involving time constraints and task complexity.
 Testing of the theory doesn't seem to bear out the predictions.

Path-Goal Model (Robert House)

 States that the leader’s job is to assist followers in attaining their goals and to
provide direction or support needed to ensure that their goals are compatible with
the goals of the group or organization.
 Is a theory based on specifying a leader's style or behavior that best fits
the employee and work environment in order to achieve a goal.
 The goal is to increase your employees' motivation, empowerment, and
satisfaction so they become productive members of the organization.

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  In contrast to Fiedler’s view that a leader couldn’t change his or her behavior,
House assumed that leaders are flexible and can display any or all of these
leadership styles depending on the situation.

The four path-goal types of leader behaviors are:

 Directive: The leader informs her followers on what is expected of them, such as
telling them what to do, how to perform a task, and scheduling and coordinating
work. It is most effective when people are unsure about the task or when there is
a lot of uncertainty within the environment.
 Supportive: The leader makes work pleasant for the workers by showing concern
for them and by being friendly and approachable. It is most effective in situations
in which tasks and relationships are physically or psychologically challenging.
 Participative: The leader consults with his followers before making a decision on
how to proceed. It is most effective when subordinates are highly trained and
involved in their work.
 Achievement: The leader sets challenging goals for her followers, expects them to
perform at their highest level, and shows confidence in their ability to meet this
expectation. It is most effective in professional work environments, such as
technical, scientific; or achievement environments, such as sales.

Contemporary Views of Leadership

Leader–Member Exchange (LMX) Theory

“Favorites”

 Leaders create in-groups and outgroups and those in the in-group will have higher
performance ratings, less turnover, and greater job satisfaction.
 It’s not exactly clear how a leader chooses who falls into each category, but
evidence shows that in-group members have demographic, attitude, personality,
and even gender similarities with the leader or they have a higher level of
competence than out-group members.

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  first emerged in the 1970s. It focuses on the relationship that develops between
managers and members of their teams.

The theory states that all relationships between managers and subordinates go through
three stages. These are:

Role-Taking - Role-taking occurs when team members first join the group. Managers use
this time to assess new members' skills and abilities.

Role-Making - New team members then begin to work on projects and tasks as part of
the team. In this stage, managers generally expect that new team members will work
hard, be loyal and prove trustworthy as they get used to their new role. The theory says
that, during this stage, managers sort new team members (often subconsciously) into one
of two groups.

 In-Group - if team members prove themselves loyal, trustworthy and skilled, they're
put into the In-Group. This group is made up of the team members that the manager
trusts the most. Managers give this group most of their attention, providing challenging
and interesting work, and offering opportunities for additional training and
advancement. This group also gets more one-to-one time with the manager. Often,
people in this group have a similar personality and work-ethic to their manager.
 Out-Group - if team members betray the trust of the manager, or prove that they're
unmotivated or incompetent, they're put into the Out-Group. This group's work is often
restricted and unchallenging. Out-Group members tend to have less access to the
manager, and often don't receive opportunities for growth or advancement.

Routinization - During this last phase, routines between team members and their
managers are established. In-Group team members work hard to maintain the good
opinion of their managers, by showing trust, respect, empathy, patience, and persistence.

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Transformational-Transactional Leadership

Transactional Leaders - Leaders that lead primarily by using social exchanges (or
transactions). Transactional leaders guide or motivate followers to work toward
established goals by exchanging rewards for their productivity. Promotes compliance with
existing organizational goals and performance expectations through supervision and the
use of rewards and punishments. Transactional leaders are task- and outcome-oriented.
Especially effective under strict time and resource constraints and in highly-specified
projects, this approach adheres to the status quo and employs a form of management
that pays close attention to how employees perform their tasks.

Transformational Leaders - stimulates and inspires (transforms) followers to achieve

extraordinary outcomes. Focuses on increasing employee motivation and engagement
and attempts to link employees’ sense of self with organizational values. This leadership
style emphasizes leading by example, so followers can identify with the leader’s vision
and values. A transformational approach focuses on individual strengths and weaknesses
of employees and on enhancing their capabilities and their commitment to organizational
goals, often by seeking their buy-in for decisions.

Transactional and transformational leadership exhibit five key differences:

1. Transactional leadership reacts to problems as they arise, whereas

transformational leadership is more likely to address issues before they become
problematic.

2. Transactional leaders work within existing an organizational culture, while

transformational leaders emphasize new ideas and thereby “transform”
organizational culture.

3. Transactional leaders reward and punish in traditional ways according to

organizational standards; transformational leaders attempt to achieve positive
results from employees by keeping them invested in projects, leading to an internal,
high-order reward system.

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 4. Transactional leaders appeal to the self-interest of employees who seek out
rewards for themselves, in contrast to transformational leaders, who appeal to group
interests and notions of organizational success.

5. Transactional leadership is more akin to the common notions of management,

whereas transformational leadership adheres more closely to what is colloquially
referred to as leadership.

Charismatic-Visionary Leadership

Charismatic Leader - that is, an enthusiastic, self-confident leader whose personality and
actions influence people to behave in certain ways. An enthusiastic, self-confident leader
whose personality and actions influence people to behave in certain ways. Are individuals
who gain a following because of their personality. They are charming individuals who
know how to make individuals think that they like them, and have the charisma to make
these individuals do as these leaders ask to retain this imagined affection. This charisma
can be a natural trait of how the leader conducts himself, or a skill that the leader cultivates
in order to carefully practice on the individuals he leads.

Visionary Leadership – is the ability to create and articulate a realistic, credible, and
attractive vision of the future that improves upon the present situation. The ability to create
and articulate a realistic, credible, and attractive vision of the future that improves upon
the present situation. Are individuals who use an idea about the way things could be to
motivate individuals to do as they say. This could be religious in nature, such as a vision
of a possible afterlife or a narrative of how humans fit into the big picture of the universe.
Alternatively, it could be a more worldly vision of how things here on Earth could function,
such as government policies to mandate better working conditions or how a new product
could change the world.

Reference:

Marquis, Bessie L. and Carol J. Huston, (2017), Leadership Roles and Management
Functions in Nursing Theory and Application, 9th edition. Lippincott Williams and Wilkins,
printed in the Philippines.

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