Chapter 9: Leading
By Sajeevan

Nature of Leadership

Leadership:

Inspiring others to work hard

Leadership and Vision

Servant Leadership

Commitment to serving others

Followers more important than leader

Other-centered not self-centered

Focuses on empowerment, not on power

Empowerment meaning: managers enable and help others to gain power and achieve influence.

Instead of the people working to serve the leader, the leader exists to serve the people

Effective leaders empower others by providing

Information

Responsibility

Authority

Trust

Leadership and Power:

Power:

ability to get someone to do something

Two sources of managerial power:

Position power

the manager’s official status in the organization’s

Sources of position power:

Reward power: Capable of offering something of value

Coercive power: Capable of delivering punishment or
withhold positive outcomes

Legitimate power: Organizational position or status
confers the right to control those in subordinate positions

Personal power

Meaning: unique personal qualities that a person brings

Sources of personal power:

Expert power: is the perception that a certain person has an elevated level of knowledge or a specific skill set that others in an organization don't have

Referent power: Capacity to influence other people
because they admire you and want to identify positively
with you

Relational power: the ability to work and function well as
part of a team working toward a collective goal

Contemporary leadership challenges:

1. Shorter time frames for accomplishing things

2. Expectations for success on the first attempt

3. Complex, ambiguous, and multidimensional problems

4. Taking a long-term view while meeting short-term demands

Leadership Traits and Behaviours

Leadership Traits

Drive

Self-confidence

Creativity

Cognitive ability

Job-relevant knowledge

Motivation

Flexibility

Honesty and integrity

Leadership Behaviours

Theories focus on how leaders behave
when working with followers

Basic dimensions of leadership behaviors:

Concern for the task to be accomplished

Plans and defines work to be
done

Assigns task responsibilities

Sets clear work standards

Urges task completion

Monitors performance results

Concern for the people doing the work

Acts warm and supportive
toward followers

Develops social rapport with
followers

Respects the feelings of
followers

Is sensitive to followers’ needs

Shows trust in followers

Classical Leadership Styles

Recurring patterns of behaviours
exhibited by a leader.

Autocratic style:

where one person controls all the decisions and takes very little inputs from other group members

Laissez-faire style:

where let their employees use their creativity, resources, and experience to help them meet their goals

Democratic style:

where members of the group take a more participative role in the decision-making process, and
helping people develop skills and competencies

Communication

Communication:

An interpersonal process of sending and receiving symbols with messages attached to them

Key elements of the communication process

Sender

Message

Communication channel

Receiver

Interpreted meaning

Feedback

Communication Barriers

Poor choice of channels:

A communication channel is the pathway or medium through which a message moves from sender to receiver.

Written channels work for messages that

Are simple and easy to convey

Require extensive dissemination quickly

Convey formal policy or authoritative directives

Spoken channels work for messages that

Are complex or difficult to convey where immediate feedback is needed

Attempt to create a supportive, even inspirational, climate

Poor written or oral expression: How to make it successful?

Be prepared

Set the right tone

Sequence points

Support your points

Accent the presentation

Add the right amount of polish

Check your technology

Don’t bet on the internet

Be professional

Failure to recognize nonverbal signals:

Nonverbal communication takes place
through gestures, facial expressions,
body postures, eye contact, and use of
interpersonal space

Mixed messages occur when a person’s
words and nonverbal signals
communicate different things

The growing use of communication
technologies causes important
nonverbal communication to be lost

Physical Distraction:

Include interruptions from telephone calls, drop-in visitors, a lack of privacy, etc.

Can interfere with the effectiveness of a communication attempt

Can be avoided or at least minimized through proper planning

Subtopic

Status effects:

Occur when an organization’s hierarchy of authority creates a barrier to effective communication

Status effects include:

Filtering: the intentional distortion of information to make it
appear favourable to the recipient

Employees acing as “yes men”

Improving Communication

Active Listening

The process of taking action to help someone say exactly what they really means.

Rules for active listening:

Listen for message content

Listen for feelings

Response to feelings

Note all cues, verbal and nonverbal

Paraphrase and restate

Constructive Feedback

Feedback is the process of telling someone else how you feel about something that person did or said.

Constructive feedback guidelines:

Give it directly

Make it specific

Give it when the receiver is willing or able to accept it

Make sure it is valid

Give it in small doses

Space Design:

The range between people
carries varying purposes in
terms of intimacy, openness,
and state in interpersonal
communications.

Interpersonal space is an
important nonverbal cue.

Communication Channels Selection

Managers need to choose a channel with the appropriate richness for the communication.

Channel richness is the capacity of a communication channel to carry information in an effective manner.

Low channel richness is impersonal, one-way, and fast

High channel richness is personal, two-way, and slow

Electronic Communication

Read items once

Take action immediately

Purge folders of useless messages

Send short messages in the subject line

Send group mail and reply to all only when necessary

Get off distribution lists

Put large files on websites

Use instant messaging as an alternative

Don’t forget email privacy

Interactive Management

MBVA (Management by Wandering Around)

Managers spend time outside their offices to meet and talk with workers at all levels.

Refers to a style of business management which involves managers wandering around, in an unstructured manner, through the workplace, at random, to check with employees, equipment, or on the status of ongoing work.

Electronic Forms

Online discussion forums, chat rooms, electronic office hours,
executive blogs, and video conference, etc.

Cross-Cultural Communication

Non-verbal communication:

Eye movements

Touching

Body motions

Language

Ethnocentrism

The tendency to consider one’s culture superior to any and all others

Not listening to others

Inappropriate stereotypes

Issues in Leadership Development

Super leaders

Persons whose vision and strength of personality have an extraordinary impact on others

Charismatic leaders

Develop special leader-follower relationships and inspire others in extraordinary ways

Transformational leadership

Someone who is truly inspirational as a leader and who arouses others to seek extraordinary performance accomplishments

Characteristics of transformational leaders:

Vision

Charisma

Symbolism

Empowerment

Intellectual stimulation

Integrity

Transactional leadership

Someone who directs the efforts of others through tasks, rewards, and structures

Characteristics of transactional leadership:

Revel inefficiency

Tend to be inflexible

Opposed to change

Favour structured policies and procedures

Thrive on following rules and doing things correctly

Very left-brained

Emotional Intelligence and Leadership

The ability of people to manage themselves and their relationships effectively

Components of emotional intelligence:

Self-awareness

Self-regulation

Motivation

Empathy

Social skill

To be effective, leaders must have a solid understanding of how their emotions and actions affect the people around them

Gender and Leadership

Both women and men can be effective leaders.

Women tend to use interactive leadership.

Leaders who are strong communicators and act in a democratic and participative manner with followers.

Provide a good fit with the demands of a diverse workforce and the new workplace.

Men tend to use transactional leadership.

Someone who values order and structure

Depends on self-motivated people who work well in a structured, directed environment

Future leadership success will depend
on a person’s capacity to

Openness

Positive relationships

Empowerment

Support

Moral Leadership

Moral leadership is always “good” and “right” by ethical standards.

High ethical standards of behaviour

Build and maintain an ethical organizational cultural

Both help and require others to behave ethically in their work

A leader with integrity is honest, credible, and consistent in putting values into actions.

Authentic Leadership activates positive psychological states to achieve self-awareness and positive self-regulation.

Confident, hope, optimism, and resilience.

Authentic leaders clearly frame moral dilemmas, transparently respond to them, and consistently serve as ethical role models.

“A leader's behavior that demonstrates superior virtues, self-discipline, and unselfishness”

Drucker’s “Old-Fashioned” Leadership

Essentials of “old-fashioned” leadership:

Defining and establishing a sense of mission

Accepting leadership as a “responsibility” rather than a rank or class

Earning and keeping the trust of others

Hard working makes a successful leader.

Drucker strongly believed things such as "leadership qualities" or a "leadership personality" were given more emphasis than they should be

Contingency Approaches to Leadership

Fiedler’s Contingency Model

Good leadership depends on a match between leadership style and situational demands

To determine a person’s leadership style the least-preferred co-worker scale is used

Leadership is part of one’s personality, and therefore relatively enduring and difficult to change

Leadership style must be fit to the situation

LPC scale asks a person to think of someone they have difficulty with to get a job done

What is LPC score?

Low LPC: task-motivated leaders

High LPC: relationship-motivated leaders

"Least-preferred coworker" scale, developed by American scholar Fred Fiedler, identifies whether an individual's leadership style is either relationship-leaders or task-leaders

Fiedler's contingency model is a dynamic model where the personal characteristics and motivation of the leader are said to interact with the current situation that the group faces

Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Model

Leaders adjust their styles depending on the readiness of their followers
to perform in a given situation. Readiness: how able and willing or confident followers are to perform
required tasks.

Participating

Low-task, low-relationship style

Works best in high readiness situations

Delegating

Low-task, high-relationship style

Works best in low to moderate readiness situations

Selling

high-task, high-relationship style

Works best in moderate to high readiness situations

Telling

high-task, low-relationship style

Works best in low readiness situations

Hersey-Blanchard Model suggests no single leadership style is better than another. Instead of focusing on workplace factors, the model suggests leaders adjust their styles to those they lead and their abilities

House’s Path-Goal Leadership Theory

Directive leadership

Communicate expectations

Give directions

Schedule work

Maintain performance standards

Clarify leader’s role

When Job assignments are unclear

Supportive Leadership

Treat group members as equals

Be friendly and approachable

Show concern for employee's well-being

When Workers self-confidence is low

An effective leader clarifies paths by which followers can achieve goals. An employee's perception of expectancies between his effort and performance is greatly affected by a leader's behaviour

Achievement-Oriented Leadership