CHAPTER 4

LEADERSHIP IN PRACTICE

4.1 INTRODUCTION
 Changes in new millennium have triggered a radical shift in the role of the ‘captain of
the organization’ from authoritarian to participative management style. Apart of the
traditional dimensions of leader’s role, the interpersonal dimension becomes
essential which emphasize on cooperation, collaboration and communication.
 Leadership is a key to managing organizations in periods of change and crisis.
According to Graetz et.al (2006), key to leading change is by learning how to balance
between ‘continuity and change’; ‘short- and long-term actions’; ‘accountability and
freedom’ as well as ‘planning and flexibility’

4.1.1 Definition
 Hersey and Blanchard (1988) stated that leadership occurs when one attempts to
influence the behavior of an individual or group. Leadership is about authenticity and
character. They key attributes to strong leadership and effective management are
financial literacy, the ability to invest in people, trust; integrity; common sense and
empathy.
 Kotter (1996) notes ‘management is about coping with complexity. Leadership is
about coping with change’. Meanwhile, bennis and Nanus (1985) stated that
‘managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right
thing’.

4.1.2 Competency of Leader

• Hersey and Blanchard (1988) states three (3) general skills or competencies of leader as
the following:
• Diagnosing: a cognitive skills which require leader to be able to understand the current
and future situation. These two situations known as “performance gap” that the effective
leader will attempt to change.
• Adapting: a behavioral skill that requires leader to adapt with one’s behavior and others
resources that help to close the “performance gap”.
• Communicating: a process skill that requires leader to be able to communicate in ways
those others can understand and accept what he wants to achieve for the organization.

Competency of Leader.....
• On the other hand, Warren Bennis (1984) identifies four (4) areas of competency shared
by 90 leaders.
• Management of attention: the ability to create and communicate clear objectives and
direction to others.
• Management of meaning: the ability to create and communicate clearly, achieving
understanding and awareness.
• Management of trust: the ability to be consistent in often complex and dilemma
circumstances so that people can depend on them.
• Management of self: the ability to know oneself and to work with strengths and
weaknesses.
Competency of Leader
• Steward and Chadwick (1987) stated that capable leader share the following
characteristics’ such as:
• Decentralization.
• Combined with decentralization, evolution of roles for head office as consultant, power
breaker and financier rather than direct controller.
• Positive attempts to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit and risk taking.
• Breaking down of inter functional barriers.
• More emphasis on leadership and people focus
• An evolving client or customer focus.
• Established informal links at all levels.
• A move from controlling to enabling approaches. Systems control the minimum necessary,
rather than controlling each and every activity.

4.2 LEADERSHIP VISION AND STRATEGY

• Steward and Chadwick (1987) and Itami (1987) agree that corporate leaders enable
people to contribute, solve problems, and learn from and by experience and to accumulate
invisible assets.
• Invisible assets are: the technology; knowledge; value; consumer loyalty; brand image;
control of distribution; corporate culture and management skill.
• To do so, leader must make explicit strategy (vision) to people and using the process of
strategy formulation to mobilize the organization.

Leadership Vision and Strategy

• Benefits of clear vision by leader towards his organizational members are as follow:
• Allows for coordination of activity.
 Provides direction to people.
 Can boost morale and sustain self esteem,
 Provide a shield against anxiety in a period of change.
 Foster better planning (proactive rather than reactive plan)
 Allows people to plan, create and learn from the experience.
 Allows for the development of invisible assets.

Leadership Vision and Strategy

• How leaders can make the vision achievable by the organization members?
• Corporate leaders must make strategy explicit and achievable by the organization
members through the following:
• Ensure its diffusions throughout the organization.
• Communicate repeatedly with words and actions.
• Select people with strong reputations to lead new projects.
• Design reward systems to recognize excellent performance.
• Visits to departments to display the importance of the strategy with powerful symbolism
(such as slogan).
• Charismatic personality of the leader

Leadership Vision and Strategy

• How leaders can mobilize the strategy (vision)?
• According to Itami (1987), leaders can mobilize the organization towards strategy through
three (3) levels such as:

Leadership Vision and Strategy

• By providing a unifying focus.
To provide unifying focus, the strategy should be simple, clear, based on identifiable core
concept, prioritized, resources clearly allocated, continuous adaptation and improvement
and match with the corporate culture. Also, seeks for organizational consensus for wide
acceptance.
• By creating momentum.
To create momentum, leaders should sell the core concept (communicate clearly), ensure
and rewards early success, involve people with clears tasks and pay attention to timing.
Also, the consensus agreed upon by organization members’ needs careful but continual
pressure and questioning to gear up the momentum.

Leadership Vision and Strategy

• By providing a unifying focus.
To provide unifying focus, the strategy should be simple, clear, based on identifiable core
concept, prioritized, resources clearly allocated, continuous adaptation and improvement
and match with the corporate culture. Also, seeks for organizational consensus for wide
acceptance.
• By creating momentum.
To create momentum, leaders should sell the core concept (communicate clearly), ensure
and rewards early success, involve people with clears tasks and pay attention to timing.
Also, the consensus agreed upon by organization members’ needs careful but continual
pressure and questioning to gear up the momentum.

Leadership Vision and Strategy

• By sustaining creative tension.
To sustain creative tension, leaders should accumulate resources and people to create
invisible assets, put continuing pressure on the organization to avoid complacency,
constantly seeking new methods and procedures, continuous improvements of new
products/services. Also, place people in conditions where the resources are inadequate can
encourage a creative effort to resolve the problems.

4.3 LEADERS AND SITUATIONS

• Effective leader uses skills, knowledge and charisma to encourage the development of the
invisible assets to gain competitive advantage. This will lead to:
 involving people in change,
 enabling them to act,
 allow them to learn and develop,
 sustaining them with confidence and
 clear vision.

Leaders and Situations

• Early childhood experience: early feelings of insecurity and loss led to a subsequent drive
and need to control their own future.
 Later childhood experience: developed self reliance.
 Motivation and drive: strong self motivation and drive.
 Value system: had a well-developed value system with clear vision and purpose.
 Early responsibility: development of executive careers had been facilitated by early
high level responsibility.
 Charismatic leadership: leadership style and charisma were unimportant.
 Communicator: the ability to communicate was a powerful element that all change-
makers possessed, particularly the ability to be open and honest about feelings and
attitudes.

Leaders and Situations

• Key features that distinguish leader from other members of top management team
according to Norburn (1988) survey of 108 chief executive and 30 executive directors are as
follows:
 The lengths of tenure in the organization.
 The stage at which they began grooming for senior management responsibility.
 The variety of managerial functions they experienced.
 The rapidity of promotion to a general management position.
 Their exposure to overseas cultures and business

Leaders and Situations

• In a nutshell:
• Both authors point to early responsibility as a key feature to be a successful leader. The
successful leader also has the ability to communicate and having clear vision resulting from
wide experience and varied knowledge of tasks.
 The study about leadership has shifted from studying the traits of successful leaders
to looking at leadership style to focusing on the idea of contingency approach to
determine successful leader.
 Contingency approach argues that the effectiveness of leadership style or behavior
will be contingent on situation
Leaders and Situations
• There are various model of contingency approach such as
• Fiedler Model of Contingency Approach of Leadership by Fiedler (1967),
• Contingency model of leaders decision making by Vroom and Yetton (1973) as well as
• Situational leadership by Hersey and Blanchard (1988).
Vroom and Yetton (1973) focus on contingency model based on leader decision making in
which leaders might improve both the quality and the acceptability of decisions.

The contingency approach to leadership by Carnal 2007

4.3.1 Fiedler (1967) contingency approach

• Fiedler (1967) contingency approach looks at three (3) elements as situational variables
such as:
• Leader-member relations (quality of personal and effective relations between leader and
group members).
• Task structure (structured versus unstructured task given).
• Position power.

4.3.2 Hersey and Blanchard (1988)- Situational Leadership

 Hersey and Blanchard (1988) also offers contingency approach known as Situational
Leadership which identify the ‘readiness’ of followers as a key factor in deciding on
an appropriate leadership style.
 They believe that the leader’s task behavior (eg: providing guidance and direction)
and relationship behavior (eg: team building, providing socio-emotional support)
should accord with the readiness of followers.
• They define readiness as the willingness and ability of people to take responsibility for
defining and directing their own task behavior
HERSEY AND BLANCHARD (1988)
Situational Leadership
There are three (3) important variables in Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Model as
follows:-
∙ Task behavior
The extent to which a leader spells out to subordinates what to do,
where to do it, and how to do it.
∙ Relationship behavior
The extent to which a leader listens, provides support and
encouragement, and involves followers in the decision-making
process.
∙ Follower readiness
The subordinates’ ability and willingness to perform the tasks.

Hersey and Blanchard (1988)- Situational Leadership

• Hersey and Blanchard characterized leadership style in terms of the amount of Task
Behavior and Relationship Behavior that the leader provides to their followers. They
categorized all leadership styles into four behavior types, which they named S1 to S4:
 A) S1: Telling
 B) S2: Selling
 C) S3: Participating
 D) S4: Delegating

Hersey and Blanchard (1988)- Situational Leadership

• A ‘telling ‘style is proposed for those of ‘low readiness’ (people who are unable and
unwilling or insecure to take responsibility. Use when follower readiness is low.
• A ‘selling’ style is recommended for those who, though willing to take responsibility, are
unable to do so. It means that providing direction combined with explanation, support and
feedback to maintain motivation. Use when follower readiness is moderately low.

Hersey and Blanchard (1988)- Situational Leadership

• A ‘participating’ style, described as appropriate for those with ‘moderately high readiness’
whereby their motivation and commitment might be increased by involvement in decision
making. Use when follower readiness is moderately high.
• A ‘delegating’ style leaves ‘high readiness’ followers to take responsibility for what needs
to be done. Use when follower readiness is high.
Hersey and Blanchard (1988)- Situational Leadership

Advantages
 ∙ Easily understood model with clear recommendations
 ∙ Leader must constantly monitor employees’ readiness levels
 ∙ Leadership style should be changed to fit changing situations
Disadvantages
 ∙ Difficulty in addressing different readiness levels in a team situation
 ∙ Follower readiness is the only contingency variable used
 ∙ Some leaders may not be able to easily adapt their styles to fit the
situation
 ∙ Model is not strongly supported by scientific research

4.4 THE CONTEXT OF LEADERSHIP

• The leader context involves much more than their ‘followers’. Leaders faced with complex
and changing networks of people, institutions, opportunities and problems. To cope with
changing environment, leaders need to have the following five (5) sets of actions:
• Set values
• Support problem solving and risk
• Design systems to support action.
• Focus on manageable
• Develop skills in people

4.5 MANAGERS AND LEADERSHIP-DIFFERENCES (GRAETZ, 2006)

4.5.2 The Leadership Function
• ‘Broadband’ intelligence
• People with ‘broadband’ intelligence are able to draw on one, all or combinations of these
intelligences as the situation demands. Broadband intelligence is the ability to draw on and
make connections between the seven (7) distinctive forms of intelligence:
• Linguistic - the ability to manipulate language effectively.
• Logical mathematical - the ability to manipulate symbols, like the
scientists.
• Spatial - the ability to process information continuously in 3 dimensions.
• Musical - the ability to manipulate sound in a complex way.
• Bodily kinaesthetic - the ability for physical coordination.
• Interpersonal - the ability for self understanding without which all the others way may be
distorted in use.
• Intrapersonal - the ability for self understanding without which all the others may be
distorted in use.

The Leadership Function

• Personal Power
• Boulding identifies three (3) sources of personal power that leaders need to have. Leaders
need to blend these powers according to the situational contect. As leaders rather than
managers, personal attributes and abilities not position or status will be foundation of their
power source.
• Those powers are :
• (1) authority power, as in the power of threat or ‘power over’;
• (2) economic power, as in the power to exchange or ‘power to’ and
• (3) integrative power, as in inclusive, accepting or ‘power with’ that energize others to
action.

The Leadership Function

• Strong Leadership and knowhow from the top
• Leadership at the top must be ‘personalised’ because it provides a sense of shared values
and purpose that holds the organizational members together.
• At this stage, it requires strong leadership and know-how from the top.
• On top of that, distributed leadership which also known as decentralized leadership also
important in which leader at the top empowered the lower level leader some responsibility.
Leaders need to identify a group of influenced, experienced and trusted individuals in
formal and informal positions of authority at different levels of the organization.

The Leadership Function

• Succession planning.
• One of the leader functions is to identify people with talent and potential within a
company and creating opportunities for them to lead and develop.
• For an effective succession planning, leader should
• start the process early;
• ensuring the succession planning is built into the company’s strategic planning
process;
• promoting and grooming potential from within the company and
• implementing management training programs to help identify, support and
encourage talented employees throughout the organization not just at senior level.

4.5.3 Leadership Role

• Leadership roles
• Here are some of the leadership roles that considered important such
as:
o Energizing and instilling a readiness for change.
 Before change can take place, leaders must gain employees support and
commitment to change. Explaining the change will make the less likely to resist or
block the new ways of working. To make it tangible and real, leaders must link the
change process to key business processes and performance measures.
o Creating a vision and setting the direction.
Role of change leadership is to inspire ‘shared vision’ to ensure committed and
involved workforce. A vision is necessary to give meaning and structure to the
change efforts. A vision must provide clear set of direction, challenging, realistic and
acceptable by majority.

Leadership Role...cont
• Leadership commitment and involvement.
• Involvement of top or upper level management is fundamental to change efforts.
Communication by top management is a powerful lever in gaining employees commitment
towards change.
• Reinforcing the message and institutionalizing the new behaviors.
• Leaders can play this role by establishing the new organizational systems and structures
that represent the new work arrangements and reporting requirements. For example,
changing company logo, tagline, corporate color and dress code.

Dimensions of Change Leadership- Graetz, 2006

Charismatic role Instrumental role

Leaders who through their personal
attributes and strong interpersonal skills are More focus on organizational design, control
able to inspire and enthuse (motivate) others and reward through explaining and
to commit to their vision for the future. demonstrating the new behaviors;
Focus on envisioning; energizing and enabling implementing new systems and structures.
empowering.

4.6 LEADERSHIP AND ‘HUMAN SCALE’.

 The effective leaders bring human scale to risk, change, success, challenge and crisis.
They translate the pressures that can confuse or paralyze others into acceptable
level. They are not afraid to fail. Their approach to leadership is both skilled and
thoughtful (Mant, 1983).
 Leader can energize people and sustain people to act, to try things out and to get on
with the job in hand. Leaders require the ability and credibility to encourage others
into action. The leader who can bring human scale to organizational problems can do
two (2) things such as (1) cope with the pressure on themselves such as the fear of
failure, the stress and pressure of the circumstances to be handled and (2) find ways
of helping others to cope with the pressures on them.
4.6.1 The Roles of Effective Change Leaders
• Graetz et al. (2004) underlined some of the roles of effective leadership as the following:
• Challenge the status quo and create a readiness for change.
• Inspire a shared vision and personally communicate the
future direction.
• Enable others to act.
• Create additional sponsors at different levels of the organisation.
• Employ symbolic and substantive actions.
• Modelling the way (lead by examples).
• Communicate the message repeatedly.
CHAPTER 5
LINKING VISION AND CHANGE

5.1 VISION
• Having a vision is often linked to why successful organizational change is achieved
• Conversely, lack of vision is frequently associated with organizational decline
• The role of vision in producing organizational change is linked to the image one has of
managing change
• Vision is commonly thought of as a guide for the organization in identifying the
appropriateness of particular changes that are proposed

Images of Managing Change

Images Link Vision and Change
Director Vision is something that is essential to producing successful organizational
change. It should be articulated early on and it is up to leaders to do this.
Navigator Vision is important but not necessarily able to be achieved because of competing
visions that exist among various

organizational parties and stakeholders.

Caretaker Vision is in many ways immaterial to the way change will proceed. Change is
rarely the outcome of visionary actions
Coach Vision is something that is important and is more likely to emerge through the
facilitation skills of the change leader interacting with his or her followers, shaping their
agendas and desired futures.
Interpreter Vision is the ability to articulate the inner voice of the organization, that which
is lived, be it core ideology or values, and that underpins the identity of the organization.
Nurturer Vision is emergent from the clash of chaotic and unpredictable change forces.
Visions are likely to be temporary and always in the process of being rewritten.

.2 CONTENT OF MEANINGFUL VISION

 Thecontentofmeaningfulvisionhassparked considerable debate.
 Someconsiderationhasbeengivento attributes, its style, and how it is differentiated
from mission and organizational values.
 Herearesomeexamples:

– Attributes of vision:
• cognitive component – focusing on
achieving outcomes
• affective component – helping to motivate people and increase commitment to the
change

– Four generic characteristics of vision are:

• Possibility
• Desirability
• Actionability
• Articulation
– Three components of vision are:
• Why the change is needed (the problem) • The aim of the change (the solution)
• The change actions that will be taken
(the means)