Prepared for UHS 2062 at UTM Skudai, Johore,
MALAYSIA by Siti Rokiah Siwok. srsiwok@gmail.com
Leadership
 Many questions are being asked related to
leadership, such as:
 Are leaders born?
 Are leaders “bred”/developed?
 What makes a good organizational
leader?
 Many theories are associated with
leadership.
Leader emergence
 It is the idea that people who become
leader have traits or characteristics
different from people who do not
become leaders.
Characteristics of Leaders
 Leaders have special characteristics .
 Recent reviews show that :
 People high in openness, conscientiousness,
extraversion and low in neuroticism are more likely to
emerge as leaders (Judge, Bono, Ilies and Gerhardt,
2002)
 High self monitors emerge as leaders more often then
low self-monitors.
 More intelligent
 Leadership emergence seems to be stable across the lifespan
Traits of leader emergence and the
motivation to lead
 There is lack of agreement on a list of traits
consistently related to leader emergence.
 This can be explained by the complexity of motivation
to lead, which has three aspects :
 Affective identity motivation ( enjoy being a leader)
 Noncalculative motivation (with personal gain in mind)
 Social-normative motivation (sense of duty)
Leader Performance
 Leader performance involves the idea that people who
perform well have certain characteristics that poor
performing leaders do not.
 Rather then thinking that a leader “emerge”, we can look
into the performance of the leaders. We see what are the
characteristics of leaders who perform well vis-à-vis those
not performing well.
 Example: we say that a good leader is intelligent, assertive
and friendly while a poor leader is not intelligent, nonassertive and shy.
Characteristics and leader
performance
 There is a relationship between personal
characteristics and leader performance.

Three areas are given focus:
 Traits
 Needs
 Orientation
Traits
 Meta-analysis by Youngjohn (1999) found that
individual-difference variables were good predictors of
leadership performance:
 Charismatic
 Dominant
 Energetic
 High in self monitoring
Personal characteristics and leader
performance: Traits
 In another meta-analysis (Judge et al, 2002), these
traits are found to be positively correlate to leader
performance:
 Extraversion
 Openness
 Agreeableness
 Conscientiousness
 Neuroticism negatively relates to leader performance.
Personal Characteristics and leader
performance :Needs
 Need for power
 Need for achievement
 Need for affiliation
Characteristics and leader
performance :Needs
 Research by Mc Clelland and Burnham
(1976) and McClelland and Boyatzis (1982)
demonstrates that high performance
managers have a leadership motive pattern;
high need for power and low need for
affiliation. The need for power is NOT for
personal power but for ORGANIZATIONAL
POWER.
Personal characteristics and leader
performance :Needs test
 Needs for power, achievement and
affiliation can be measured through various
psychological tests; such as the Thematic
Appreciation Test(TAT) or the Job Choice
Exercise(JCE) or by examining their themes
in their speeches and writings.
Personal characteristics and leader
performance :orientation
 Three major school of thoughts have
postulated that differences in leader
performance can be attributed to the
extent to which leaders are TASK vs
PERSON ORIENTED.
Consequences of leader
orientation
High
Low performance
Low turnover
Low grievance rate
High performance
Low turnover
Low grievance rate
Low
Low performance
High turnover
High grievance rate
High performance
High turnover
High grievance rate
Person
orientation
Low
High
Task orientation
Task oriented leaders
 Task-oriented leaders see their employees as lazy ,
extrinsically motivated, undisciplined etc, so taskoriented leaders lead by giving directives, setting
goals and making decision without consulting
their subordinates.
 Included in the task oriented leaders are :
 Task-centered leaders
 Theory X leaders
 High initiating structure
Person oriented leaders
 act in a warm, supportive manner and show
concern for the employees
 believe employees are intrinsically motivated
Instruments
 The orientation of a leader can be measured by several
instruments such as:
 Leadership Opinion Questionnaire ( LOQ)
 Leader Behaviour Description Questionnaire (LBDQ)
Unsuccessful or poor leaders
 According to Hogan (1989):
 Lack of leadership training

Trained after being hired
 Cognitive deficiencies
 Unable to learn from experience
 Do not able to think strategically
 Personality
 Paranoid, Passive –aggressive, narcissist, highlikeability floater.
Interaction between leader and
situation
 Leader’s effectiveness not only depends on traits that
s/he posses but also on the particular situation in
which the leader is in.
 Several theories ( or models) have emerged to explain
the situational nature of leadership.
Leader and situation: Contingency
Model
 Fiedler’s contingency model holds that any leader is



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effective only in certain situations.
Thus Fiedler argue that rather than change the leadership
style , leadership training should concentrate on helping
people understand their leadership style and manipulate
the environment to make a perfect match.
Fiedler developed Least Preferred coworker scale
( LPC)
Fiedler’s ideas supported by researches
Fiedler’s training : Leader match
Leader and situation: IMPACT
 IMPACT theory, developed by Geier,
Downey and Johnson (1980).
 Leaders have 6 behaviour styles : informational,
magnetic, position, affiliation, coercive and
tactical.
 Each style is effective with only one particular
situation or organizational climate.
IMPACT THEORY
 Informational style in climate of ignorance
 Magnetic style in a climate of despair
 Position style in a climate of instability
 Affiliation style in a climate of anxiety
 Coercive style in a climate of crisis
 Tactical style in a climate of disorganization
IMPACT THEORY: STRATEGIES
 Find a climate consistent with your
leadership style
 Change your leadership style to better fit the
climate
 Change your followers perception of the
climate
 Change the actual climate
Leader and situation: Path-goal
Theory
 Leaders who can adapt their behaviour to match the
needs of their subordinates will be more effective
than leaders who stick to one leadership style ( Foster,
1999, in Aamodt, 2010)
 According to the path-goal theory ( House, 1971, in
Aamodt, 2010), a leader can adopt one of the
leadership styles to manage different situations:
 Instrumental
 Supportive
 Participative
 Achievement -oriented
Leader and situation: Path-goal
Theory
 Each style will work in certain situations and also
depends on the subordinates’ abilities and the extent
the task is structured.
 The higher the level of subordinates’ abilities, the less
directive the leader should be.
 On the contrary, the less structured the situation , the
more directive will the leader be ( Schriesheim and
DeNisi, 1981)
Leader and situation: Path-goal
Theory
 In addition, according to this theory, a leader should:
 Recognize the needs of subordinates and work to satisfy
those needs.
 Reward subordinates who reach their goals.
 Help subordinates identify the best paths to take in
reaching particular goals.
 Clear those paths so that employees can reach their
goals.
As path-goal theory is behaviour based, the theory could
be used in training.
Leader and situation: Situational
leadership theory
 Developed by Hersey and Blanchard (1988), a
leader uses four leadership styles :
 Delegating
 Directing
 Supporting
 Coaching
Leader and situation: LMX (VDL)
 LMX is another leadership theory and was originally
called vertical dyad linkage ( VDL) theory.
 The uniqueness of this theory is the focus on
interaction between ,leaders and subordinates.
 These interactions are called leader-member
exchanges ( LMX).
 The idea originates from the relationship between two
people( dyad) whereby the leader is in the position
above the subordinate ( vertical) plus their interrelated
behaviours ( linkage). Hence VDL.
Summary of leadership theories
Theory
Components
Model type
Great man-great women
theory
Effective leaders are born, Descriptive
not made
Trait theory
Common traits to all
effective leaders
Descriptive
Theory X , theory Y
Two types of leaders:
traditional and nontraditional
Descriptive
Fiedler’s Contingency
theory
Leader must be matched
to situational
characteristics
Predictive
Path –goal theory
Leader must play roles to
help groups attain goals
Descriptive-predictive
Summary of leadership theories
Theory
Vroom –Yetton Decision
Making Model
Components
Model
type
Leader asks situation-related
questions before choosing
decision-making style
Prescriptive
Leader-member exchange Focuses on quality of leadermember relationship
Descriptivepredictive
Transformational
leadership
Leaders inspire and provides
“vision” for followers
Descriptive
Charismatic leadership
Followers drawn to exceptional
characteristics possessed by
leader
Descriptive
Means of being a leader
Means to be a leader
 Leadership through decision making (Vroom-Yetton
model).
 Leadership through contact (management by walking
around).
 Leadership through power ( expert power, legitimate
power, reward and coercive powers, referent power).
 Leadership through vision (transformational
leadership).
Two ways of describing
leadership styles
 Another way of looking at leadership styles is to
categorise it into two broad categories, namely :
 Transactional
 Transformational
Each style has its own dimensions.
Please read more
Main reference: Aamodt 2010