Communication & Leadership

Goals of today’s session:

• Further one’s reflection about the practice of

leadership incorporating a different perspective
from those seen so far...

• Gain new insights to include in one’s vision of

leadership and, if relevant, in the writing of one’s
final paper.
 Approaches to leadership

Individual approach:
Person’s characteristics
(How the leader is)

Interactional approach:
Behavioural approach:
Leadership/followership interaction
Leadership style
(What the leader may actually do
depending on its followers) (What the leader does)
 Leadership - individual approach

The individual’s necessary characteristics to become

a good leader:
• Personality traits
• Skills and competencies
• Motivation profile
• Values
• ...
E. Schein’s ‘Career Anchors’
Leadership - behavioural approach
Laissez-faire style
Transformational/Charismatic
leadership Empowering leadership
Authoritarian leadership Shared/distributed
9.9 leadership (high task and leadership
relationship orientation) Self-leadership

Manager-centred Subordinate-centred
leadership leadership

Robbins & Judge: ‘Basic Approaches to Leadership’,

‘Contemporary Issues in Leadership’
(available on the course website)
 Approaches to leadership

Individual approach:
Person’s characteristics
(How the leader is)

Interactional approach:
Leader/followers interaction Behavioural approach:
(What the leader can actually do Leadership style
depending on its followers) (What the leader does)
Leadership - interactional approach

• Leadership as an interpersonal relationship made

up, among other things, of power dynamics
(readings by G. Yukl: ‘Sources of Power and Influence’, ‘Influence
Processes and Managerial Effectiveness’ – available on the course website)

• Leadership as a socially co-constructed

phenomenon (‘constitutive approach’ - reading by K. Grint: ‘The
Arts of Leadership’)
Leadership: Interactional approach

INFLUENCE: capacity to affect the behaviour of a target

person making him/her act in a different way as s/he
would have acted without such influence

POWER: capacity to affect the behaviour of a target

person making him/her act in the manner the agent of
the influence wants

FORMAL AUTHORITY: legitimate right of one position

occupant in an organization to influence specific aspects
of the behaviour of other position occupants inside that
organization
Leadership - interactional approach

• Leadership as a socially co-constructed

phenomenon (‘constitutive approach’ - reading by K. Grint: ‘The
Arts of Leadership’)

“Leadership is in the eye of the beholder (i.e. follower)”.

Followers make the leader as much as, or even more
than, than the other way round.
 Leadership: Interactional Approach
Leadership is a process jointly constructed (co-constructed) by leader
and followers.
Leaders are neither born nor self-made but cooperatively crafted
through the interactions between them and their followers. At bottom,
leadership is in the eye of the beholder (i.e. the follower).
The leader and its followers should jointly perform a 4-pronged task for
the former’s leadership to be recognised:
• Define an identity: Who are we? (Philosophical Arts)
• Outline a strategic vision: Who do we want to become? (Fine Arts)
• Draw a course of action (organizational tactics): How will we achieve this
vision? (Martial Arts)
• Articulate a persuasive discourse: Why should we want to embody the
identity, pursue the vision and follow the organizational tactics? (Performing
Arts)
Keith Grint
Leadership: Interactional Approach

Text 1

Keith Grint - ‘The Arts of Leadership’ (Oxford University Press)

 Leadership: An Alternative Approach
Text 2

Although many books exist on parenting, a large proportion of learning to be a parent can
only come from the experience of ‘parenting’... In theory, parents teach their children
how to act as children, but of course the latter have a way of ignoring much of this worthy
advice. If this was not the case, then no parent would ever have misbehaving children, no
child would have a tantrum on the supermarket floor, no teenager would experiment with
alcohol or drugs, and none would come home late. Since this does occur regularly, the
superior resources of parents (physique, legal support, moral claims, source of pocket
money...) have only limited effect. The critical issue, then, is that parents have to learn
how to be parents by listening and responding to their children. In effect, we are taught to
be parents by our children...
If we map this learning model onto leadership, the implication is that, while leaders think
they are teaching followers to follow, in fact it is the followers who do most of the
teaching and the leaders who do most of the learning.
It may well be that one of the secrets of leadership is not a list of innate skills, how much
charisma you have, or whether you can articulate a vision and the strategy for attaining it,
but whether you have a capacity to learn from your followers...

Keith Grint - ‘Leadership: A Very Short Introduction’ (Oxford University Press)