Leadership

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Leadership
Leadership Theory and Practice, 3/e Peter G.
Northouse, Ph.D.
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Chapter 1Introduction
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Leadership Defined

• Leadership
• is a process whereby an individual influences a
  group of individuals to achieve a common goal.

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Components Central to the Phenomenon of
Leadership
Leadership

• Is a process
• Involves influence
• Occurs within a group context
• Involves goal attainment

Leaders

• Are not above followers
• Are not better than followers
• Rather, an interactive relationship with
  followers

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LEADERSHIPDESCRIBED

• Trait vs. Process Leadership
• Assigned vs. Emergent Leadership
• Leadership Power
• Leadership Coercion
• Leadership Management

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Trait vs. Process Leadership
Trait definition of leadership

• Certain individuals have special innate or inborn
  characteristics or qualities that differentiate
  them from nonleaders.
• Resides in select people
• Restricted to those with inborn talent

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Trait vs. Process Leadership
The process definition of Leadership

• Leadership is a property or set of properties
  possessed in varying degrees by different people
  (Jago, 1982).
• Observed in leadership behaviors
• Can be learned

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Assigned vs. Emergent Leadership
Assigned
Emergent

• Leadership based on occupying a position within
  an organization
• Team leaders
• Plant managers
• Department heads
• Directors

• An individual perceived by others as the most
  influential member of a group or organization
  regardless of the individuals title
• Emerges over time through communication
• Personality

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Leadership Power
Bases of Social Power French Raven (1959) See
Rusaw p. 38
Power

• Power is the capacity or potential to influence
• Two kinds of power
• Position
• Personal

• Reward
• Coercive
• Legitimate
• Referent
• Expert

Power is a relational concern for both leaders
and followers.
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Leadership Coercion
Coercion Involves
Examples of Coercive Leaders

• The use of force to effect change
• Influencing others to do something via
  manipulation of rewards and penalties in the work
  environment
• Use of threats, punishments, negative rewards

• Adolf Hitler
• Jim Jones
• David Koresh

Power restraint used to force followers
to engage in extreme behavior
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Leadership Management Kotter (1990)
Leadership Activities
Management Activities
Produces change and movement
Produces order and consistency

• Planning / Budgeting
• Organizing / Staffing
• Controlling / Problem
• Solving

• Establishing direction
• Aligning people
• Motivating / Inspiring

Major activities of management and leadership are
played out differently BUT both are
essential for an organization to prosper.
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Leadership ManagementZaleznik (1977)
Managers Unidirectional Authority
Leaders Multidirectional Influence
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Chapter 2Trait Approach
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Great Person Theories
Trait Approach one of the first
systematic attempts to study leadership

• Great Man Theories (early 1900s)
• Focused on identifying intrinsic qualities and
  characteristics possessed by great social,
  political, military leaders

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Discuss historical shifts in Trait research - Now
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Leadership Traits
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Major Leadership Traits

• Intelligence - Intellectual ability including
  verbal, perceptual, and reasoning capabilities
• Self-Confidence - Ability to be certain about
  ones competencies and skills
• Determination - The desire to get the job done
  (i.e., initiative, persistence, dominance, drive)

• Integrity - The quality of honesty and
  trustworthiness
• Sociability - Leaders inclination to seek out
  pleasant social relationships

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How Does the Trait Approach Work?

• Focus of Trait Approach
• Strengths
• Criticisms
• Application

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Focus of Trait Approach
Personality Assessments
Leader

• Focuses exclusively on leader
• What traits leaders exhibit
• Who has these traits

• Organizations use personality assessments to
  find Right people
• Assumption - will increase organizational
  effectiveness
• Specify characteristics/traits for specific
  positions
• Personality assessment measures for fit

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Strengths

• Highlights leadership component in the leadership
  process
• Deeper level understanding of how
  leader/personality related to leadership process
• Provides benchmarks for what to look for in a
  leader

• Intuitively appealing
• Perception that leaders are different in that
  they possess special traits
• People need to view leaders as gifted
• Credibility due to a century of research support

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Criticisms

• Fails to delimit a definitive list of leadership
  traits
• Endless lists have emerged
• Doesnt take into account situational effects
• Leaders in one situation may not be leaders in
  another situation

• List of most important leadership traits is
  highly subjective
• Much subjective experience observations serve
  as basis for identified leadership traits
• Research fails to look at traits in relationship
  to leadership outcomes
• Not useful for training development

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Application

• Provides direction as to which traits are good to
  have if one aspires to a leadership position
• Through various tests and questionnaires,
  individuals can determine whether they have the
  select leadership traits and can pinpoint their
  strengths and weaknesses
• Can be used by managers to assess where they
  stand within their organization and what is
  needed to strengthen their position

• Leadership Traits
• Intelligence
• Self-Confidence
• Determination
• Integrity
• Sociability

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Chapter 3Skills Approach
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Skills Approach Description
Definition
Perspective

• Leadership skills - The ability to use ones
  knowledge and competencies to accomplish a set of
  goals and objectives

• Leader-centered perspective
• Emphasis on skills and abilities that can be
  acquired and developed

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Three-Skill Approach

• Technical Skill
• Human Skill
• Conceptual Skill

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Basic Administrative SkillsKatz (1995)
Level of Skill Needed
(ideas) Conceptual Skills
Human Skills (people)
Technical Skills (things)
Manager
Director
VP
Exec VP
CEO
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Technical Skill

• Technical skill - is having knowledge about and
  being proficient in a specific type of work or
  activity.
• Specialized competencies
• Analytical ability
• Capability to use appropriate tools and
  techniques
• Technical skills involve hands-on ability with a
  product or process
• Most important at lower levels of management

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Human Skill

• Human skill - is having knowledge about and being
  able to work with people.
• Awareness of ones own perspective and others
  perspectives at the same time
• People skills allow a leader to assist group
  members in working cooperatively to achieve
  common goals
• Creates an atmosphere of trust where members feel
  they can become involved and impact decisions in
  the organization
• Important at all levels of the organization

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Conceptual Skill

• Conceptual skill - the ability to do the mental
  work of shaping the meaning of organizational
  policy or issues (what the company stands for and
  where its going)
• Works easily with abstraction and hypothetical
  notions
• Central to creating and articulating a vision and
  strategic plan for an organization
• Most important at top management levels

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Skills Model of Learning
Leadership Outcomes
Individual Attributes
Competencies
Career Experience
Environmental Influences
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Individual Attributes
Individual Attributes
General Cognitive Ability
Crystallized Cognitive Ability
Motivation
Personality

• Persons intelligence
• - Perceptual processing
• - Information processing
• - General reasoning
• - Creative divergent
• thinking
• - Memory

• Intellectual ability
• learned or acquired
• over time

• Three aspects of
• motivation
• - Willingness
• - Dominance
• - Social good

• Any characteristic
• that helps people
• cope with complex
• organizational
• situations is
• probably related to
• leader performance

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Competency Skills
Competencies
Problem Solving
Social Judgment
Knowledge

• Creative ability to solve
• novel, ill-defined
• organizational problems

• Capacity to understand
• people and social systems
• - Perspective taking
• - Social perceptiveness
• - Social performance

• The accumulation of
• information the mental
• structures to organize the
• information

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Leadership Outcomes
Leadership Outcomes
Problem Solving
Performance

• Originality quality of
• solutions to problem
• situations
• - Logical
• - Effective
• - Unique
• - Go beyond give information

• Degree to which a leader has
• successfully performed his/her
• assigned duties

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Career Experiences
Career Experiences
Challenging Assignments
Mentoring
Appropriate Training
Hands-on Experience With Novelty

• Experience gained during career influences
  leaders knowledge skills to
• solve complex problems
• Leaders learn and develop higher levels of
  conceptual capacity if they
• progressively confront more complex and
  long-term problems as they ascend
• the organizational hierarchy

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Environmental Influences
Environmental Influences
Factors Outside of Leaders Control

• Factors in a leaders situation that lie
  outside
• of the leaders competencies, characteristics,
  and
• experiences
• - Outdated technology
• - Subordinates skill inadequacies

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Strengths

• First approach to conceptualize and create a
  structure of the process of leadership around
  skills
• Describing leadership in terms of skills makes it
  available to everyone
• Provides an overarching view of leadership that
  incorporates a variety of components (i.e.,
  problem-solving skills, social judgment skills)
• Provides a structure consistent with leadership
  education programs

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Criticisms

• Breadth of the skills approach appears to extend
  beyond the boundaries of leadership
• Skills model is weak in predictive value
• Skills model is partially trait-driven

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Application

• The Skills Approach provides a way to delineate
  the skills of a leader
• It is applicable to leaders at all levels within
  the organization
• The skills inventory can provide insights into
  the individuals leadership competencies
• Test scores allow leaders to learn about areas in
  which they may wish to seek further training