Emerging Issues
and Dilemmas
1
Orientation
 Developmental dilemmas and general maps
of the future
 Reworking existing maps for personal
leadership journey
 Yukl's integrative framework – the role of
power and influence of context
 Rost's guide for leadership in 21st Century
2
Yukl's map of the future
 Measuring and conceptualizing the leadership
process
 Leaders influence and are influenced by specifics
of situation
 Major issues
o
simplistic either/or thinking models of leadership
o
omission of relevant behaviours
o
focus on 'one-to-one' leader/follower processes
o
questionable methodologies for measuring
leadership
3
Emerging Themes and Conclusions
 Enthusiasm of 'new leadership' led to
abandonment of critical earlier concepts
 Concept of distributed leadership
overpowered by the new charismatic leader
 Adverse consequences of ego driven
charismatic leaders
 Awareness of ethical dilemmas and multiple
obligations of leaders
4
Rost's Map of 21st Century Leadership
 Rost critical of faulty foundations for much
leadership theory
 Lack of definitional clarity
o
leadership used to indicate a special kind of
management
 Fallacy of industrial paradigm
o
leadership seen as good management
perpetuates norms of industrial era
5
Rost's Universal definition
"Leadership is an influence relationship
among leaders and followers who intend real
changes that reflect their mutual purposes"
 Leadership needs to reinvent itself through a
universal and multidisciplinary approach
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Critque of Rost's view
 Thrust of Rost's arguments support
transformational leadership approach
 Appeal of leadership as a more flexible, distributed
and collaborative concept
 Criticized for inadequate treatment of ethical
dilemmas of leadership at work
 Avoids deeper issues of nature of 'real' leaders
 Rost offers a starting point for the journey – rather
than a complete map
7
Social Cognition & Social Identity
 How does a leader help followers make sense of
their world?
 Individuals develop shared beliefs and values
through process of social cognition
 Emerging leadership theory deals with how group
members develop sense of social identity
 self-categorization –gives individual behaviour a
distinct meaning
 Social Identity important part of a person's sense of
who they are within group membership
8
Prototypicality & 'extra-ordinariness' dilemma
 Accepted leaders are prototypical in-group members
 prototypical leader best epitomizes the social
category of which a member
 Followers look for leaders who are prototypical of the
map of their idealized selves
 High consensus groups - individuals shape own
sense of identity with perceptions of group identity
 Effective leaders are articulate, embody and direct
the social identity-based interests shared with group
members
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Dilemma of prejudiced leader
 Effective leaders create, coordinate and control
shared sense of 'we-ness'
 Leaders make biased judgements of subordinates
 Dominance supported through stereotyping and
derogating practices
 Success also through power relationships
 Such strategies always vulnerable to followers’
reflections and reappraisal of leader’s worth
10
Emotional intelligence and leadership
 Emotional intelligence (EI) deals with ‘affective skills’
such as empathy, awareness of impact of self on
others
 As with leadership, issues of definitional clarity, and
measurement reliability and validity remain
 EI claimed to be a stronger predictor of leader
competence than IQ
 Empirical evidence of this claim can be shown to be
dubious
 Concept offers to strengthen leadership maps that
have ignored ‘non-cognitive’ leadership factors
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Summary
 Leadership maps have become more complex, and
interpretive
 The heroic leader has become a problematic concept
(dark side etc)
 Emerging perspectives include shift from individual to
social identity mapping
 Power, trust, and other non-cognitive mappings (e.g.
emotional intelligence) also worth the attention of leaders
of the future
 Each leader has responsibility to create his or her map
through reflecting on and challenging existing maps
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