LEADERSHIP

INTRODUCTION

 Leadership is both a process and a property

 Leadership is the use of non-coercive influence to shape the group’s or organization’s goals,
motivate behavior toward the achievement of those goals, and help define group or
organizational culture.
 As a property, leadership is the set of characteristics attributed to individuals who are
perceived to be leaders
 Someone who can influence others and who has managerial authority.
 Leadership is a process of leading a group and influencing that group to achieve its goals.
It’s what leaders do.
 Informal Leaders emerge
Features of Leadership

 A leader must have followers

 Working relationship between leader and his followers
 Achieve some common goals
 Influences followers willingly
 Exercised in a given situation
 Social Interaction influence process between leader and his followers
 Power relationship
 Continuous and dynamic process
Management &
Leadership
Early Leadership Theories – Leadership Traits

 Identify certain traits that all leaders have

 Research in 1920s and 1930s
 Physical stature, appearance, social class, emotional stability
 Initially, it proved impossible to identify a set of traits that would distinguish a leader
from a non leader.
 Later efforts were more successful.
Eight traits of leadership
Leadership Traits

 Traits alone were not sufficient for identifying effective leaders since explanations based
solely on traits ignored the interactions of leaders and their group members as well as
situational factors.
 Possessing the appropriate traits only made it more likely that an individual would be an
effective leader.
 Therefore, 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.
University of IOWA Studies

 Autocratic Style - dictated work methods, made unilateral decisions, and limited
employee participation
 Democratic Style - involved employees in decision making, delegated authority, and used
feedback as an opportunity for coaching employees.
 Laissez fare - let the group make decisions and complete the work in whatever way it saw
fit.
 This recognition of the dual nature of a leader’s behavior—that is, focus on the task and
focus on the people
OHIO State Studies

 Questionnaire Surveys
 Initiating Structure - clearly defines the leader–subordinate role so that everyone knows
what is expected, establishes formal lines of communication, and determines how tasks
will be performed
 Consideration -extent to which a leader had work relationships characterized by mutual
trust and respect for group members’ ideas and feelings.
 A leader who was high in consideration helped group members with personal problems,
was friendly and approachable, and treated all group members as equals. He or she
showed concern for (was considerate of) his or her followers’ comfort, well-being, status,
and satisfaction.
OHIO State Studies

 Each behavior was assumed to be independent of the other.

 The researchers found that employees of supervisors who ranked high on initiating
structure were high performers but expressed low levels of satisfaction and had a higher
absence rate.
 Conversely, employees of supervisors who ranked high on consideration had low
performance ratings but high levels of satisfaction and few absences from work.
 Later research isolated other variables that make consistent prediction difficult and
determined that situational influences also occurred
University of Michigan Studies

 Led by Renis Likert

 Interviews with both Leaders and Subordinates
 Employee Oriented – Emphasizing interpersonal relationships. Able to conclude that this
led to high group productivity and high group member satisfaction
 Production Oriented – Emphasize the task aspects of the job. Pay close attention to
subordinate’s work, explain work procedures, keenly interested in performance.
 Presumed to be the ends of a single continuum
Likert Four Systems of Management

 Style of Management used in successful organizations – System 4

 System 1 – Exploitative Management
 Autocratic, Top –Down approach
 System 2 – Benevolent Autocratic
 Similar to 1. More paternalistic. Carrot and Stick Approach
 System 3 – Consultative Approach
 Involves more employee interaction, communication and decision making
Likert Four Systems of Management
Likert Four Systems of Management

 System 4 – Participative ( Team view of Management) – Teamwork, Participation,

Delegation, Self Guidance.
 Designed around group decision making and supervision,
 Communication is lateral and vertical.
 Decisions linked by overlapping group membership
Tannenbaum & Schmidt

 Leader Behavior as a continuum of

behavior from boss centered to subordinate
centered.
 Depends on a variety of factors
 Leader’s personality
 Perceived quality of subordinates
 Range of action
 Degree of authority used by leader or
manager
 Area of freedom available to non managers
Tannenbaum & Schmidt

 TELLS - Leader identifies problems, makes decision and announces to subordinates;

expects implementation
 SELLS - Leader still makes decision, but attempts to overcome resistance through
discussion & persuasion
 CONSULTS - Leader identifies problem and presents it to the group. Listens to advice
and suggestions before making a decision
 JOINS - Leader defines the problem and passes on the solving & decision-making to the
group (which manager is part of)
Continued….

 Provides wide range of leader behaviours

 The appropriate style would depend on
 The manager – value system, confidence in staff, inclination, toleration of ambiguity
 The Subordinates – need for independence, willingness to assume responsibility, interest and
understanding of problems, expectation from leadership
 The Situation – Type of organization, nature of problems, time pressure, effectiveness
Managerial Grid

 The Managerial Grid provides a means for evaluating leadership styles and then training
managers to move toward an ideal style of behavior.
 The horizontal axis represents concern for production (similar to job-centered and
initiating-structure behaviors.
 The vertical axis represents concern for people (similar to employee-centered and
consideration behaviors)
Managerial Grid
Continued…

 The leader-behavior theories have played an important role in the development of

contemporary thinking about leadership.
 In particular, they urge us not to be preoccupied with who leaders are (the trait approach)
but to concentrate on what leaders do (their behaviors).
 Universal generic prescriptions about what constitutes effective leadership.
 However, when we are dealing with complex social systems composed of complex
individuals, few, if any, relationships are consistently predictable, and certainly no
formulas for success are infallible.
Continued…

 Yet, the behavior theorists tried to identify consistent relationships between leader
behaviors and employee responses in the hope of finding a dependable prescription for
effective leadership.
 Other approaches to understanding leadership were therefore needed. The catalyst for
these new approaches was the realization that although interpersonal and task-oriented
dimensions might be useful for describing the behavior of leaders, they were not useful
for predicting or prescribing it.
 The next step in the evolution of leadership theory was the creation of situational models.