CHAPTER 7
LEADERSHIP
The Nature of Leadership
• The process through which a person tries
to get organization members to do
something that the person desires
• Leaders and managers are not equivalent
terms, someone may be the formal group
manager, yet another person may
actually be the group’s leader
The Nature of Leadership
(cont.)
• Leadership: the incremental influence
that a person has beyond his or her
formal authority
• Informal leaders: lack formal authority
but actually possess substantial
incremental influence
Does Leadership Make a
Difference?
• One of the best ways to assess impact of
leadership is to study instances of leader
succession
• Evidence suggests that succession
(leadership) can have strong impact on
measurable performance outcomes
• However, frequently changing leaders
can have adverse effects
What Managers Actually
Do
• Managers’ jobs involve a lot less glamour
than one might think; in fact studies
reveal that the popular notion of the
harried executive is fairly accurate
• Most perform a large number of brief,
highly varied, and fragmented activities
Trait Approach
• Prior to the 1950s researchers believed
that leaders possessed some special traits
• By and large, the trait studies did not
show any simple pattern of traits that
was both strongly and consistently
related to leadership
Trait Approach (cont.)
• Several traits do appear to have some
modes association with leadership, e.g.,
intelligence
• People who hold leadership positions
tend to be somewhat more intelligent
• However, if leaders are extremely
intelligent, it may interfere with their
ability to communicate with followers
Trait Approach (cont.)
• Cognitive resource theory argues that
intelligence can be used to predict
leadership success in very specific cases
in which directive leaders who are
intelligent and possess relevant job
experience are in stress-free settings in
which subordinates are supportive
Trait Approach (cont.)
• Recent work by Robert Sternberg
suggests that intelligence may be better
conceptualized as being comprised of
several major components
Trait Approach (cont.)
• Triarchic model of intelligence is
comprised of three components:
– Analytical reasoning ability: ability to solve
problems with an abstract element;
deductive thinking, e.g. math problems
– Social intelligence: ability to understand
motives and actions of others, and to interact
effectively with others, e.g. “street smarts”
Trait Approach (cont.)
– Creativity: ability to identify many possible
solutions to a given problem
• Model suggests that managers may be
screened on each of these forms of
intelligence, and placed into appropriate
jobs based on the job itself
Trait Approach: Gender
Issues
• A review of available literature on malefemale gender differences reveals that
women and men differ in their leadership
styles
• Women are more democratic, men are
more directive
Trait Approach: Gender
Issues (cont.)
• However, there is little reason to believe
that either women or men will be
superior in role of manager
• Mentoring has a significant impact on
development of managers
• Recent evidences suggests that female
managers-in-training have less access to
same-gender mentors
Trait Approach: Gender
Issues (cont.)
• Given sensitivity surrounding crossgender relationships, female managers
often seek out peer mentors
Behavioral Approach to
Leadership
• Tried to identify specific styles of leader
conduct and attempted to discover
whether leader behavior was associated
with employee attitudes and performance
• An early study sought to determine which
form of leader behavior was more
effective: authoritarianism, or democratic
leadership
Behavioral Approach to
Leadership (cont.)
• Autocratic leadership may be required in
certain situations in which followers
actually prefer autocracy, or in which
urgent action is required
Interaction Process
Analysis System
• Developed a process through which all
group interactions could be classified into
12 different behaviors
• Concluded that groups have two roles
that must be fulfilled for effective group
functioning: a task oriented role and a
socio-emotional role
Ohio State Leadership Studies
• Focused on task vs. employee orientation;
they termed the variables initiating
structure and consideration
• Consideration: extent to which the leader
has job relationships that rely on mutual
trust, respect for subordinates, and
sensitivity to subordinate’s feelings
Ohio State Leadership Studies
(cont.)
• Initiating structure: the extent to which a
leader defines and structures the work
that he and his subordinates perform,
with the focus being on task
accomplishment
Ohio State Leadership Studies
(cont.)
• Early results suggested that the
combination of high consideration and
high initiating structure constitute the
most successful managerial style, but
other studies have not corroborated this
finding
Ohio State Leadership Studies
(cont.)
• Certain variables, e.g., subordinate
characteristics, supervisor
characteristics, and task characteristics,
can moderate the relationship between
leader behavior and outcome
Managerial Grid
• Explains leadership styles in the context
of a grid
• Five different styles of leadership are
categorized using various combinations
of concern for people and concern for
production
Managerial Grid (cont.)
• The five major leadership styles are:
– Authority/Obedience management (9, 1
style)
– Country-Club management (1, 9 style)
– Laissez-faire or impoverished management
(1, 1 style)
– Organization man management (5, 5 style)
– Team management (9, 9 style)
Managerial Grid (cont.)
• Model assumes that there is only one best
or most effective style of management,
the team management style—the team
management or 9,9 style
Charismatic Leadership
• Refers to the possession of a form of
influence over followers that can best be
described as referent power
• Characteristics of charismatic leaders:
– Exude self-confidence, sense of purpose
– Often reject formal authority
– Willing to take personal risks because of
strong convictions
Charismatic Leadership (cont.)
• Once thought rare, charismatics are now
thought to be found in all kinds of
organizations
• Dark side of charisma: witness the
charismatic effects of Adolph Hitler, Jim
Jones, David Koresh
Transformational
Leadership
• Expands the notion of charismatic
leadership to include these other factors:
– Elevation of subordinate’s goals
– Underscores the importance of manager’s
vision
– Emphasizes manager’s intellectual
stimulation of followers
– Acknowledges the importance of leader’s
individualized consideration of employees
Situational Approaches to
Leadership
• Fiedler’s Contingency Model of
Leadership Effectiveness assumes that
group performance is a function of the
combination of a leader’s style and the
situation in which a leader is placed
Situational Approaches to
Leadership (cont.)
• Leadership style in Fiedler’s model is
measured via his least preferred
coworker, or LPC, scale
– People who score high give lenient responses,
and are said to be relationship oriented
– People who score low judge others harshly,
and are said to be task oriented
Situational Approaches to
Leadership (cont.)
• The leadership situation is measured via
examination of several variables intended to
gauge the leader’s ease or difficulty in leading,
known as situational favorableness
• Three important factor that underlie
situational favorableness:
– Leader-member relations
– Task structure
– Position power
Situational Approaches to
Leadership (cont.)
• Low LPC leaders were determined to be
more effective than high-LPC leaders in
extremely favorable and unfavorable
situations
• High-LPC leaders were relatively more
effective in octants of moderate
favorability
Situational Approaches to
Leadership (cont.)
• Critics argue that the Contingency Model
is still little more than a black box
Implications of Contingency
Model
• A leader effective in one situation may be
ineffective in another
• Leaders need to engineer facets of their
work setting to enhance their personal
effectiveness rather than changing
leadership styles
Implications of Contingency
Model (cont.)
• Performance decreases across octants as
we move toward the unfavorable end of
situational favorability
Other Contingency Models
•
•
•
•
Path Goal Theory
Situational Theory
Vroom-Yetton Leadership Model
Vertical Dyad Linkage Model or LeaderMember Exchange Model
Path Goal Theory
• Suggest that leaders can affect the
satisfaction, motivation, and performance
of group members in several ways
• The primary means of affecting workers’
feelings toward work, and their
performance, is by making rewards
contingent on the accomplishment of
performing goals
Path Goal Theory (cont.)
• Another related way that leaders can aid
employees is to clarify available paths
that workers can use to achieve
performance goals
• In order to accomplish both the linkage
of rewards with performance, and the
clarification of paths, leaders may have to
adopt various leadership styles
Path Goal Theory (cont.)
–
–
–
–
Directive leadership
Supportive leadership
Participative leadership
Achievement-oriented leadership
• All four styles of leadership are used by
individual leaders at various times
Path Goal Theory (cont.)
• Evidence suggests that when
subordinates are involved with
ambiguous tasks, directive leadership can
increase satisfaction and motivation
• With fairly unambiguous tasks directive
leadership can decrease satisfaction and
motivation
Path Goal Theory (cont.)
• Supportive leadership behavior typically
is associated with increased subordinate
satisfaction
Situational LeadershipTheory
• Based on the leadership styles created in
the Ohio State model, yet provides a twist
in that it says that leaders should vary
their styles of leadership according to
followers’ maturity levels
• Subordinate maturity:
– Job maturity: technical knowledge
Situational Leadership Theory
(cont.)
– Psychological maturity: feelings of selfconfidence and the willingness and
ability to accept responsibility
– A subordinate who is highly mature
possesses both technical competence
and self-confidence for a given task
Situational Leadership Theory
(cont.)
• Central thesis of model is that as follower
maturity increases, a leader should rely
more on relationship-oriented behavior
and less on task-oriented behavior
• Very immature subordinates should be
led via task-oriented behaviors; the
leaders should be very directive and
autocratic--workers are told what to do
Situational Leadership Theory
(cont.)
• Somewhat immature subordinates;
leaders should focus on being more
relationship-oriented--the leader sells the
followers
• Fairly mature subordinates; leaders
should use a fair degree of support and
considerate treatment--workers
participate with subordinates
Situational Leadership Theory
(cont.)
• Highly mature subordinates are selfmotivated; leaders should allow them to
enjoy a great deal of autonomy
• The model is highly criticized for its lack
of empirical evidence
Vroom-Yetton Leadership
Model
• Helps leaders decide on a precise style of
leadership to use in making decisions
• Five styles are offered that vary in terms of
their degree of participation
–
–
–
–
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Autocratic I
Autocratic II
Consultative I
Consultative II
Group
Vroom-Yetton Leadership
Model (cont.)
• Model uses a decision tree in which key
questions lead to other questions, and the
ultimate product is a decision style
• Provides a useful device for diagnosing a
situation
Vertical Dyad Linkage Model
• Also know as Leader-Member Exchange
Model of Leadership
• Argues that leaders do not typically
display an uniform, or average, style of
leadership toward all group members,
but rather, that they behave somewhat
differently toward each subordinate
Vertical Dyad Linkage Model
(cont.)
• In each work unit pairs of relations, or
dyads, can be judged in terms of whether
an individual is relatively “in” or “out”
with the supervisor
– In-group members are invited to share in
decision making and are given added
responsibility; they are treated like trusted
assistants
Vertical Dyad Linkage Model
(cont.)
– Out-group members are supervised within
the narrow terms of their formal
employment contract; they are treated like
hired hands
• In-group members are hypothesized to
display greater job satisfaction, superior
performance, higher commitment, lower
turnover; enjoy enriched jobs
Vertical Dyad Linkage Model
(cont.)
• The thesis that in-group members are
more satisfied, and that they are better
performers has been supported with
validating studies, but the notion that
they experience less turnover has not
received consistent support
Substitutes for Leadership
• Leader behavior may sometimes be
unnecessary or superfluous because
factors in the situation offer sufficient aid
to subordinates
Substitutes for Leadership
(cont.)
• Two variables account for cases in which
leadership may be unimportant or
redundant:
– Leadership substitutes make leadership
redundant or unnecessary
– Leadership neutralizers prevent a leader
from taking action in some fashion
Obstacles to Personal
Effectiveness in Leadership
• Van Fleet lists the “top ten” mistakes
managers make
Obstacles to Personal
Effectiveness in Leadership
(cont.)
• Interviews with former leaders suggest
external factors are often associated with
leader failure:
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Defensiveness
Emotional instability
Poor interpersonal skills
Weak technical and cognitive skills