Matakuliah
Tahun
: L0244 – Psikologi Kepemimpinan
: 2010
Leadership Involves an Interaction Between the
Leader, the Followers, and the Situation
Pertemuan 3 & 4
Bina Nusantara University
3
Looking at Leadership Through
Several Lenses
• Studying only leaders provides just a partial view of the
leadership process.
• Leadership depends on several factors, including the
situation and the followers, not just the leader’s
qualities.
• Leadership is more than just the kind of person the
leader is or the things the leader does.
• The clearest picture of the leadership process occurs
only when you use all three lenses to understand it.
Bina Nusantara University
4
The Interactional Framework for
Analyzing Leadership
Bina Nusantara University
5
The Interactional Framework for
Analyzing Leadership (continued)
• Depicts leadership as a function of three elements:
– The leader
– The followers
– The situation
• A particular leadership situation scenario can be
examined using each level of analysis separately.
– Examining interactions in the area of overlaps can lead to better
understanding.
• Leadership is the result of complex interactions among
the leader, the followers, and the situation.
Bina Nusantara University
6
The Interactional Framework for
Analyzing Leadership (continued)
• Leader-Member Exchange Theory describes two kinds of
relationships that occur among leaders and followers:
– In-group members
– Out-group members
• LMX theory has broadened to include entire continuum of
relationships that leaders may have with members.
• The theory looks at the nature of the relationship between
the leader and the followers.
Bina Nusantara University
7
The Leader
• Individual aspects of the leadership equation:
• Unique personal history
– Interests
– Character traits
– Motivation
• Effective leaders differ from their followers, and from
ineffective leaders on elements such as:
– Personality traits, cognitive abilities
– Skills, values
• Another way personality can affect leadership is through
temperament.
Bina Nusantara University
8
The Leader (continued)
• Leaders appointed by superiors may have less
credibility and may get less loyalty.
• Leaders elected or emerging by consensus from ranks
of followers are seen as more effective.
• A leader’s experience or history in a particular
organization is usually important to her or his
effectiveness.
• The extent of follower participation in leader’s
selection may affect a leader’s legitimacy.
Bina Nusantara University
9
The Followers
• Certain aspects of followers affect the leadership
process:
–
–
–
–
–
Expectations
Personality traits
Maturity levels
Levels of competence
Motivation
• Workers who share a leader’s goals and values will
be more motivated to do their work.
Bina Nusantara University
10
The Followers (continued)
• The number of followers reporting to a leader can
have significant implications.
• Other relevant variables include:
– Follower’s trust in the leader.
– Follower’s confidence or lack thereof in leader’s interest
in their well-being.
Bina Nusantara University
11
Changing Roles for Followers
• The leader-follower relationship is in a period of dynamic
change.
– Increased pressure to function with reduced resources.
– Trend toward greater power sharing and decentralized
authority in organizations.
– Increase in complex problems and rapid changes.
• Followers can become much more proactive in their stance
toward organizational problems.
• Followers can become better skilled at “influencing
upward,” flexible and open to opportunities.
Bina Nusantara University
12
The Situation
• Leadership often makes sense
only in the context of how the
leader and followers interact
in a given situation.
• The situation may be the most
ambiguous aspect of the
leadership framework.
Bina Nusantara University
“You’ve got to give loyalty down,
if you want loyalty up.”
~ Donald T. Regan,
Former CEO and White House
chief of staff
13
Are Good Women Leaders
Hard to Find?
• Women are taking on leadership roles in greater
numbers than ever before.
• Problems still exist that constrain the opportunity
for capable women to rise to the highest leadership
roles in organizations.
• Research shows that there are no statistically
significant differences between men’s and women’s
leadership styles.
Bina Nusantara University
14
Are Good Women Leaders
Hard to Find? (continued)
• Differences that were found:
– Women had significantly lower well-being scores.
– Women’s commitment to the organizations they worked
for was more guarded than that of their male
counterparts.
– Women were more likely to be willing to take career risks
by going to new areas of the company where women had
not been before.
Bina Nusantara University
15
Research on Second-Generation
Managerial Women
• Research suggests that many women appear to be
succeeding because of characteristics originally considered
too feminine for effective leadership.
• Tend to use interactive leadership, based on
– Enhancing others’ self-worth.
– The belief that the best performance results out of
satisfaction at work and higher sense of self-worth.
– Style developed due to women’s socialization experiences
and career paths.
Bina Nusantara University
16
The Shift Toward More
Women Leaders
• Factors that explain the shift toward more women
leaders:
–
–
–
–
Women themselves have changed.
Leadership roles have changed.
Organizational practices have changed.
Culture has changed.
Bina Nusantara University
17
Leadership and Management Revisited
Leaders
Managers
Innovate
Administer
Develop
Maintain
Inspire
Control
Long-term view
Short-term view
Ask what and why
Ask how and when
Originate
Initiate
Challenge the status quo
Accept the status quo
Do the right things
Do things right
Bina Nusantara University
18
Leader-Follower-Situation
Interactions
• Leaders create environments where follower’s innovations and
creative contributions are welcome.
• Leaders encourage growth and development in their followers
beyond the scope of the job.
• Leaders are generally more interested in the big picture of
followers’ work than managers.
• Leaders motivate followers through more personal and intangible
factors.
• Leaders redefine the parameters of tasks and responsibilities.
Bina Nusantara University
19
Manager-Follower-Situation
Interactions
• Managers are more likely to emphasize routinization and
control of follower’s behavior.
• Managers tend to assess followers’ performance in terms of
explicit, fairly specific job descriptions.
• Managers motivate followers more with extrinsic, even
contractual consequences.
• Managers tend to accept the definitions of situations
presented to them.
• Managers are likely to affect change officially, through
control tactics.
Bina Nusantara University
20
Leadership and Management as Solutions
to Different Kinds of Problems
• Heifetz offers that we often face challenges for which the
problem-solving resources already exist.
– Technical problems – Though complex, there are expert
solutions or experts available to solve them.
– Adaptive problems – They can only be solved by changing the
system itself.
• Adaptive problems involve people’s values.
• Adaptive leadership: Finding solutions requires the active
engagement of people’s hearts and minds, not just the leader’s.
Bina Nusantara University
21
Leadership and Management as Solutions to
Different Kinds of Problems (continued)
• A challenge is wholly or mostly adaptive in nature:
– When people’s hearts and minds need to change.
– By a process of elimination.
– If there is continuing conflict among people struggling with
the challenge.
– A crisis may be a reflection of an underlying or
unrecognized adaptive problem.
Bina Nusantara University
What’s the work?
Who does the work?
Technical
Applying current knowhow
Authorities
Adaptive
Discovering new ways
The people facing the
challenge
22
A Final Word
• Fairholm offers that an organization needs two
different kinds of people at the helm: good leaders
and good managers.
• Kotter suggests the development of leadermanagers.
– May be particularly important with regard to
developing the talents of younger leader–managers.
Bina Nusantara University
23
There is no Simple Recipe for
Effective Leadership
• Leadership must always be assessed in the context of the
leader, the followers, and the situation:
– A leader may need to respond to various followers
differently in the same situation.
– A leader may need to respond to the same follower
differently in different situations.
– Followers may respond to various leaders quite differently.
– Followers may respond to each other differently with
different leaders.
– Two leaders may have different perceptions of the same
followers or situations.
Bina Nusantara University
24
Drawing Lessons From Experience
• The right behavior in one situation is not necessarily the
right behavior in another situation.
• Though unable to agree on the one best behavior in a
given situation, agreement can exist on some clearly
inappropriate behaviors.
• Saying that the right behavior for a leader depends on
the situation differs from saying it does not matter what
the leader does.
Bina Nusantara University
25
Summary
• Leadership involves dynamic interaction between leaders
and followers in a particular situation.
• Study of leadership must include the followers and the
situation.
• The interactive nature of leader-followers-situation can help
us better understand
– The changing nature of the leader-follower relationship.
– The increasingly greater complexity of situations leaders and
followers face.
• Good leadership can be enhanced by greater awareness of
factors influencing the leadership process.
Bina Nusantara University
26
Reference
•
Hughes., Ginnett., & Curpy. (2009). Leadership: Enhancing
The Lesson of Experience. 6 eds. McGraw-Hill. Boston.
Bina Nusantara University
27