Summary of Chapter 17 - Skills for Optimizing Leadership as Situations Change Outline

Creating a Compelling Vision

Ideas: The Future Picture
Expectations: Values and Performance Standards
Emotional Energy: The Power and the Passion
Edge: Stories, Analogies, and Metaphors

Managing Conflict
What is Conflict?
Is Conflict Always Bad?
Conflict Resolution Strategies

Negotiation
Prepare for the Negotiation
Separate the People from the Problem
Focus on Interests, Not Positions

Diagnosing Performance Problems in Individuals, Groups, and Organizations

Expectations
Capabilities
Opportunities
Motivation
Concluding Comments on the Diagnostic Model

Team Building at the Top

Executive Teams are Different
Applying Individual Skills and Team Skills
Trip wire Lessons
Trip wire 1: Call the performing unit a team but really manage members as individuals
Trip wire 2: Create an inappropriate authority balance
Trip wire 3: Assemble a large group of people, tell them in general terms what needs to be
accomplished, and let them “work out the details”
Trip wire 4: Specify challenging team objectives, but skimp on organizational supports
Trip wire 5: Assume that members already have all the competence they need to work well
as a team

Punishment
Myths Surrounding the Use of Punishment
Punishment, Satisfaction, and Performance
Administering Punishment

Creating a Compelling Vision

Leaders often struggle to give a compelling description of how they add value and to get anyone excited to become
part of their team
A leader’s vision can have a pervasive effect on followers and teams
• Should be a personal statement that answers the following questions:
• Where is the team going, and how will it get there?
• How does the team win, and how does it contribute to the broader organization’s success?
• How does the speaker define leadership?
• What gets the speaker excited about being a leader?
• What are the speaker’s key values?

Conflict
Occurs when:
• Opposing parties have seemingly incompatible interests or goals, such as when team members:
• Have strong differences in values, beliefs, or goals
• Have high levels of task or lateral interdependence
• Are competing for scarce resources or rewards
• Are under high levels of stress
• Face uncertain or incompatible demands
• Leaders’ actions are inconsistent with their stated goals and vision
 • There is lack of communication
•
Managing Conflict

Conflict resolution process is affected by several factors

• Size of an issue, extent to which the problem is defined egocentrically, and the existence of hidden agendas
• Seeing a conflict situation in win-lose, either-or, or zero-sum terms
• Perceiving the conflict as unresolvable
Some level of conflict may help boost innovation and performance
• Conflict is viewed as useful when it enhances group productivity and as counterproductive when it hinders
group performance
Conflict resolution can be thought of in terms of the following independent dimensions:
• Cooperativeness versus uncooperativeness
• Assertiveness versus unassertiveness
Approaches to managing conflict using the two-dimension scheme
• Competition: Desire to achieve one’s own ends at the expense of someone else
• Accommodation: Entirely giving in to someone else’s concerns without making any effort to achieve one’s
own ends
• Sharing: Both parties give up something, yet gain something
• Collaboration: Effort to fully satisfy both parties
• Avoidance: Indifference to the concerns of both parties
Leaders should attempt to work out a resolution by looking at long-term rather than short-term goals
• Should seek win-win outcomes that try to satisfy both sides’ needs and continuing interests

Fisher and Ury’s Tips for Negotiating

Prepare for the negotiation

• Anticipate each side’s key concerns, issues, attitudes, negotiating strategies, and goals
Separate the people from the problem
• Do not place blame
• Communicate clearly
Focus on interests, not positions
• One should focus on one’s own interests and one’s counterpart’s interests

Diagnosing Performance Problems

Model of Performance
• Performance is a function of the product of expectations, capabilities, opportunities, and motivation
• Framework for understanding why a follower or team may not be performing up to expectations and what
the leader can do to improve the situation
• Multiplicative rather than a compensatory model
• Deficit in any component results in a substantial decrement in performance that cannot be easily
made up by increasing the other components
Expectations
• Leaders should ensure that followers understand their roles, goals, performance standards, and the key
metrics for determining success
Capabilities
• Abilities and skills are the components that make up capabilities
Opportunities
• Leaders should ensure that followers and teams have the needed equipment, financial resources, and
opportunities to exhibit their skills
Motivation
• Leaders can resolve motivation problems in followers and teams in the following manner:

• Select followers who have higher levels of achievement or intrinsic motivation for the task
• Set clear goals or do a better job of providing performance feedback
• Reallocate work across the team or redesign the tasks to improve skill variety, task significance, and
task identity
• Restructure rewards and punishments to closely link them to performance levels

Team Building at the Top

Executive teams are similar to other types of teams but different in the following ways:
• Most top teams never function as a whole
 • When a team-related situation arises, team members must use their technical individual skills and
the skills required for high-performance teamwork
• Executive teams can enhance teamwork throughout the organization and can change organizational systems

Punishment

Administration of an aversive event or the withdrawal of a desirable event or stimulus, which decreases the likelihood
that a particular behavior will be repeated
Myths about punishment
• Punishment results in undesirable emotional side effects in the recipient
• Punishment is unethical and inhumane
• Punishment rarely eliminates the undesirable behavior

Effects of Punishment on Satisfaction and Performance

If administered properly, punishment can lead to positive organizational outcomes

• May help increase job satisfaction, may decrease role ambiguity and absenteeism, and may improve
performance
Intense levels of punishment in a noncontingent manner can have a devastating effect on the work unit