You have two options: (1) Pick one topic from this module and discuss how it affects either your current career or your future career, or (2) pick a topic from this module and relate it to something happening now in the world.
Be sure to write at least one, well-developed paragraph. How do you write a well-developed paragraph? According to Grammerly https://www.grammarly.com/blog/paragraph-structure/#:~:text=Good%20paragraphs%20begin%20with%20a,of%20support%20to%20wrap%20upLinks to an external site.., a well-developed paragraph contains three parts:
It begins with a topic sentence that briefly explains what the paragraph is about.
Next come a few sentences for development and support, elaborating on the topic with more detail.
Finally, a well-developed paragraph ends with a conclusion sentence that summarizes the topic or presents one final piece of support for wrap-up.
Good paragraphs begin with a topic sentence that briefly explains what the paragraph is about. Next come a few sentences for development and support, elaborating on the topic with more detail. Paragraphs end with a conclusion sentence that summarizes the topic or presents one final piece of support to wrap up.
module 2 reading down below (other info if needed)
Reading:: Introduction to Leadership Theory
People have studied leadership since ancient times, and theories of leadership have been around for centuries (Plato, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, and so on). However, it wasn’t until the 20th century that modern theories began to take shape. Today, researchers study leadership the same way that they study other aspects of psychology: they seek to get a better understanding of people’s behavior and motivation.
The problem with some of these theories is that they tend to contradict instead of complement each other. They seek to identify one set of rules or behaviors that turns someone into a leader. The reality is likely a combination of all the theories and some ideas that have yet to be defined. It is best to study these theories with an open mind and understand that they each have their own merits. Remember that emphasis should not be placed on any one theory.
Additionally, you might wonder how Leadership Theories and Leadership Styles differ?
Leadership theory is a discipline that focuses on finding out what makes successful leaders excel in what they do. The primary distinction between leadership theory and leadership style is that leadership style falls under the overall umbrella of leadership theory. In other words, leadership style is one of many examples covered with leadership theory. Leadership style focuses specifically on the traits and behaviors of leaders.
Leadership Theory
Since businesses are always striving to find great leaders that can lead them to success, much effort has been put forth into finding out how they operate. More specifically, businesses are trying to identify the characteristics and behaviors associated with the best leaders. As a result, many leadership theories have been developed over the years that attempt to explain what makes a leader great. Businesses figure if they can identify the traits that make a successful leader, they can not only identify potential leaders more readily, but also can hone in on those specific skills for improvement.
Examples of Leadership Theory
In the beginning, leadership theories focused primarily on specific characteristics and behaviors of leaders. However, as time went on, theories began to focus more on a leader’s followers and the contextual nature of leadership. For example, the early theories, such as the great man theory and the trait theory, focused specifically on innate qualities leaders are born with. Within the next phase — which includes behaviorist theory, situational leadership theory, and contingency theory — focus shifted more toward what leaders do versus what traits they have. The final stage includes transactional theory and transformational theory, where the relationship between the leader and his followers is explored.
Leadership Style
Leadership style is modeled after a leader’s behaviors, which is encompassed under behaviorist theory. Within this category, different patterns of leadership behavior are observed and then categorized as leadership styles. Practicing managers tend to be the most interested in researching this particular theory because with it leaders have the ability to alter their style based on the beliefs, values, preferences and culture of the organization they work for.
Examples of Leadership Style
Leadership styles can be broken down in several different ways depending on what information is being looked at. For example, an organization interested in how decisions are made may define leaders as either being autocratic or democratic. Another organization may have more interest in how leaders handle situations and choose to define them as being charismatic, participative, situational, transactional, transformational, quiet or servant-like. One more way to differentiate leadership styles is according to whether leaders are task-oriented or people-oriented. Task-oriented leaders are said to have a considerate style and people-oriented leaders an initiating-structure style..
Attributions:
Tonya Robertson, from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/leadership-theory-vs-leadership-style-32967.htmlLinks to an external site.
Reading: INTRODUCTION TO TRAIT THEORY
Trait Theory of Leadership
The trait theory of management is the belief that leaders are born with certain characteristics (or traits) that make them successful. In other words, being a leader is innate or based on the qualities of one’s personality. This theory assumes that a person who is born with certain traits will ultimately be a great leader.
Ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Chinese scholars were keenly interested in leaders and leadership. Their writings portray leaders as heroes. Homer, in his poem The Odyssey, portrays Odysseus during and after the Trojan War as a great leader who had vision and self-confidence. His son Telemachus, under the tutelage of Mentor, developed his father’s courage and leadership skills. Out of such stories there emerged the “great man” theory of leadership, and a starting point for the contemporary study of leadership.
The great man theory of leadership states that some people are born with the necessary attributes to be great leaders. Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Catherine the Great, Napoleon, and Mahatma Gandhi are cited as naturally great leaders, born with a set of personal qualities that made them effective leaders. Even today, the belief that truly great leaders are born is common. For example, Kenneth Labich, writer for Fortune magazine, commented that “the best leaders seem to possess a God-given spark.”
During the early 1900s, scholars endeavored to understand leaders and leadership. They wanted to know, from an organizational perspective, what characteristics leaders hold in common in the hope that people with these characteristics could be identified, recruited, and placed in key organizational positions. This gave rise to early research efforts and to what is referred to as the trait approach to leadership. Prompted by the great man theory of leadership and the emerging interest in understanding what leadership is, researchers focused on the leader—Who is a leader? What are the distinguishing characteristics of the great and effective leaders? The great man theory of leadership holds that some people are born with a set of personal qualities that make truly great leaders. Mahatma Gandhi is often cited as a naturally great leader.
Here’s a very good video on the Trait Theory of Leadership!
Attributions:
“Inspirational Quotes Leadership Andrew Crnegie”Links to an external site. by hot4sunnyLinks to an external site. is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0Links to an external site.
Adapted from https://openstax.org/books/principles-management/pages/1-introduction (Links to an external site.) under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 license.
Reading: The Trait Theory Approach
Trait leadership takes into account the distinction between proximal and distal character traits. Proximal characteristics are traits that are malleable and can be developed over time. These include interpersonal skills, problem-solving skills, and communication skills. Distal characteristics are more dispositional; that is, people are born with them. These include traits such as self-confidence, creativity, and charisma. Hoffman and others (2011) found that both types of characteristics are correlated with leader effectiveness, implying that while leaders can be born, they can also be made.
Trait Integration in Effective Leaders
Zaccoro and others (2004) introduced a model of leadership that categorized and specified six types of traits that influence leader effectiveness. The model rests on two basic premises about leadership traits. The first premise states that effective leadership derives not from any one trait, but from an integrated set of cognitive abilities, social capabilities, and dispositional tendencies, with each set of traits adding to the influence of the other. The second premise maintains that the traits differ in how directly they influence leadership. The premise suggests that distal attributes (such as dispositional attributes, cognitive abilities, and motives/values) come first and then lead to the development of proximal characteristics. This model contends the following traits are correlated with strong leadership potential: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness, neuroticism, honesty, charisma, intelligence, creativity, achievement motivation, need for power, communication skills, interpersonal skills, problem-solving skills, decision-making skills, technical knowledge, and management skills.
Honesty in Leadership: Kouzes and Posner
Leadership is the ability to motivate people and mobilize resources to accomplish a common goal. In leadership, honesty is an important virtue, as leaders serve as role models for their subordinates. Honesty refers to different aspects of moral character. It indicates positive and virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness, and straightforwardness. These characteristics create trust, which is critical to leaders in all positions. Honesty also implies the absence of lying, cheating, or theft.
Subordinates have faith in the leaders they follow. A leader who is not honest will lose legitimacy in the eyes of followers. Integrity and openness are essential to developing trust, and without honesty, a leader cannot gain and maintain the trust needed to build commitment to a shared vision.
Leadership experts Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner find honesty to be the most important trait of effective leaders. In its absence, leaders lack credibility, and their ability to influence others is diminished. Honesty also brings a degree of transparency to a leader’s interaction with others.
For Kouzes and Posner, honesty is a critical element of the five behaviors of effective leaders.
Five behaviors of effective leaders
This model was created by Kouzes and Posner to emphasize vital leadership practices.
Model the way: Leaders must clarify their values and set an example for their employees to imitate, underscoring the importance of modeling positive characteristics such as honesty.
Inspire vision: The vision is the emotional element of a company’s mission statement, and this vision must be communicated honestly and with passion. Promoting the company’s vision allows leaders to inspire employees.
Enable others to act: Leaders often make the critical mistake of micromanaging, as opposed to trusting others to do their job. Trust stems from honesty, and creating an honest environment allows other employees more personal autonomy.
Challenge the process: Leaders need to be attentive to how things are done, not just what gets done, and they must be willing to address areas that require change. These practices are essential for continuous improvement, progress toward goals, and innovation.
Encourage the heart: Leaders must nurture the emotional dimension of their relationships with followers. Showing appreciation, creating a supportive environment, and fostering community sentiment helps build commitment to the leader’s vision.
In summary, leaders are tasked with balancing the organizational strategies of management with the social elements of leading. This requires leaders to be in tune with their employees’ emotions and concerns in a meaningful and honest way. Effective leaders set strong behavioral examples while communicating their vision to inspire employees. The need for honesty is woven throughout the primary activities of effective leaders.
Leadership.jpg
Leadership and Gender
In many areas of society, men have long dominated leadership positions. This dominance was especially apparent in business, where female members of boards of directors and corporate executives had been scarce. Over the past three decades, however, women have entered more leadership positions throughout industry. The trend has provided an opportunity to examine differences in how men and women perform in the role of leaders.
Gender Differences in Leadership
Research reveals small but significant differences in the way men and women are perceived in leadership roles, their effectiveness in such positions, and their leadership styles. Studies conducted in the 1980s and early 1990s found that women adopt participative styles of leadership and were more often transformational leaders than men, who more commonly adopted directive, transactional styles. Women in management positions tend to demonstrate the importance of communication, cooperation, affiliation, and nurturing more than do men in the same positions. The studies also showed men as more goal- and task-oriented and less relationship- and process-focused than women.
Conflicting Studies
Nonetheless, studies demonstrating distinct leadership styles between men and woman do not represent the final word. Other research has found limited evidence for significant differences between the behaviors of male and female leaders. In 2011, Anderson and Hanson found differences in decision-making styles, but none linked directly to differences in leadership effectiveness. They found no distinction in types or degree of motivation or in leadership styles overall. Other studies show similar results, challenging the notion that leaders’ sex shapes their performance as a leader. Management guru Rosabeth Moss Kanter studied men and women in a large corporation and found that differences in their behavior resulted not from gender but from organizational factors. In Kanter’s study, men and women, given the same degree of power and opportunity, behaved in similar ways.
The GLOBE Project
The GLOBE Research Project is an international group of social scientists and management scholars who study cross-cultural leadership. Under the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) Research Project, an international group of social scientists and management scholars studied cross-cultural leadership. In 1993, Robert J. House founded the project at the University of Pennsylvania. The project looked at 62 societies with different cultures, which were studied by researchers working in their home countries. This international team collected data from 17,300 middle managers in 951 organizations. They used qualitative methods to assist their development of quantitative instruments. The research identified nine cultural competencies and grouped the 62 countries into ten geographic clusters, including Latin American, Nordic European, Sub-Saharan, and Confucian Asian.
Bases for Leadership Comparisons
The GLOBE project identified nine cultural dimensions, called competencies, with which the leadership approaches within geographic clusters can be compared and contrasted:
Performance orientation refers to the extent to which an organization or society encourages and rewards group members for performance improvement and excellence.
Assertiveness orientation is the degree to which individuals in organizations or societies are assertive, confrontational, and aggressive in social relationships.
Future orientation is the degree to which individuals in organizations or societies engage in future-oriented behaviors such as planning, investing in the future, and delaying gratification.
Human orientation is the degree to which individuals in organizations or societies encourage and reward individuals for being fair, altruistic, friendly, generous, caring, and kind to others.
Collectivism I (institutional collectivism) is the degree to which organizational and societal institutional practices encourage and reward collective distribution of resources and collective action.
Collectivism II (in-group collectivism) is the degree to which individuals express pride, loyalty, and cohesiveness in their organizations or families.
Gender egalitarianism is the extent to which an organization or a society minimizes gender role differences and gender discrimination.
Power distance is the degree to which members of an organization or society expect and agree that power should be unequally shared.
Uncertainty avoidance is the extent to which members of an organization or society strive to avoid uncertainty by reliance on social norms, rituals, and bureaucratic practices to alleviate the unpredictability of future events.
GLOBE Leadership Dimensions
Following an extensive review of the research, GLOBE participants grouped leadership characteristics into six dimensions. Researchers then made recommendations about how dimensions of culture and leadership could distinguish behavior in one country or culture from another.
Known as the six GLOBE dimensions of culturally endorsed implicit leadership, these leadership dimensions include:
Charismatic or value-based: Characterized by integrity and decisiveness; performance-oriented by appearing visionary, inspirational, and self-sacrificing; can also be toxic and allow for autocratic commanding.
Team-oriented: Characterized by diplomacy, administrative competence, team collaboration, and integration.
Self-protective: Characterized by self-centeredness, face-saving, and procedural behavior capable of inducing conflict when necessary, while being conscious of status.
Participative: Characterized by non-autocratic behavior that encourages involvement and engagement and that is supportive of those who are being led.
Human orientation: Characterized by modesty and compassion for others in an altruistic fashion.
Autonomous: Characterized by the ability to function without constant consultation.
While leaders may be “people with the right stuff,” effective leadership requires more than simply possessing the correct set of motives and traits. Knowledge, skills, ability, vision, strategy, and effective vision implementation are all necessary for the person who has the “right stuff” to realize their leadership potential. According to Locke, people endowed with these traits engage in behaviors that are associated with leadership. As followers, people are attracted to and inclined to follow individuals who display, for example, honesty and integrity, self-confidence, and the motivation to lead.
Attributions:
Adapted from Boundless. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 LicenseLinks to an external site..
Reading: INTRODUCTION TO SKILLS-BASED LEADERSHIP
Introduction to Competencies
Competencies are probably most closely related to abilities. However, the term ability normally means either able to do or a special talent; while competencies relate more to expertise and experience. Competencies can be thought of as the state or quality of being well qualified to perform a task. A person gains competency through education, training, experience, or natural abilities.
Attributes:
Saylor Academy 2010-2021 Content authored by Saylor Academy is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 UnportedLinks to an external site. license.
Reading: Introduction to Competencies
As the chart below shows, competence does not equal competency. Competence is skill-based can be trained and learned, while competency is behavior-based and describes the individual’s characteristics and personality. Competencies can also be learned, but due to their behavior-based nature, it is not possible simply to teach or measure them. (Sanghi, 2007)
Competence vs. Competency
Competence → Competency
Skill-based Behavior-based
Standard obtained Manner of behavior
What is measured ← How the standard is achieved
Klemp (1980, p21) defined competence as, “an underlying characteristic of a person which results in effective and/or superior performance on the job”.
While a more detailed definition is, “a cluster of related knowledge, skills, and attitudes that reflect a major portion of one’s job (a role or responsibility), that correlates with performance on the job, that can be measured with well-accepted standards, and that can be improved with training and development (Parry, 1996, p50)”.
While there are many definitions of competency, most of them have two common elements:
Competency is observable and measurable knowledge and skills.
The knowledge and skills must distinguish between superior or exemplary performers and other performers.
Since its initial conception, attitudes, traits, or personalities have also played a major role in competencies, even though they are not normally thought of as being observable and measurable. Some people group attitudes with competencies, such as McClelland, while others, such as the U.S. Army, separate them by listing attitudes under attributes to create a Capability Model (Northouse, 2004):
Attributes –> Competencies –> Performance Outcomes
David McClelland
The original use of competencies was conceived by David McClelland. He first used it as an alternative for the replacement of intelligence tests with criterion reference testing (McClelland, 1973). He argued that intelligence tests were not valid predictors of intelligence and irrelevant to the workforce. There used to be a joke among Psychologists that intelligence was what the intelligence test measured, but McClelland thought the joke was “uncomfortably near the whole truth and nothing but the truth”.
Following his groundbreaking 1973 article, a number of large organizations called him. McClelland selected to work with the U.S. State Department to improve their failing selection process, which was based on selecting the best and brightest from elite universities. McClelland developed competencies for each position based on behavioral interviews with superior performing Foreign Service Officers and underpinned each competency with behavior indicators. However, the State Department never really implemented his findings because it challenged their fundamental view – they came from the top schools themselves, thus they were personally committed to upholding the status quo, rather than improving their selection process (Berger, Berger, 2003). However, he was more successful in implementing similar programs for the U.S. Navy and other large organizations.
Contrasting Competencies with Tasks
If one had to contrast or contextualize competencies with something, it would probably be tasks (to include conditions and standards). Tasks are normally very specific in that they inform the task holder and other interested persons, such as supervisors and trainers, on the required actions needed to contribute a specified end result to the accomplishment of an objective.
The main benefit of tasks is that since they are normally very specific, especially when they include the required steps to perform the task. Thus, a good task statement leaves little room for error when it comes to evaluating the worthiness of task performance. However, being very specific, they can be extremely time-consuming to create, especially when a job may have 50 or 100 tasks or more. And with jobs and processes rapidly changing in many environments, they can quickly become outdated. In addition, when it comes to such professions as management, leadership, and knowledge workers, most job responsibilities are often ill-defined and very broad in scope, thus the specific nature of tasks do not work well.
Thus, the ideal way of creating competencies is to base them on the analysis of exemplary performers (McClelland, 1973). After an analysis, normally composed of interviews and/or observations, a few keywords are chosen to describe each competency. Each job normally has five to ten competencies. The number is normally kept small, otherwise, they run into the same problems as tasks – there are too many to properly evaluate, create, and then keep up-to-date.
For example, some of the competencies for a person in a leadership position might include Ethics, decision-making, Team Development, and Coaching.
Behavioral Indicators
As noted earlier, competencies are normally based on an analysis by interviewing and observing expert performers. During the analysis, key behavioral indicators are determined for the successful performance of the job. These behavioral indicators are linked to a competency. For example, the competency of decision-making might include the following behavioral indicators:
Dealing with difficult decisions:
Able to connect information together in order to diagnose problems.
Determines root cause to fully resolve issue
Sensitive to the needs of others when dealing with divisive issues.
Commits to a course of action:
Can make decisions quickly when necessary.
Seeks the correct answer and understands the impact that the decision could have on other organization issues.
The behavioral indicators are often contrasted with ineffective indicators, for example:
Dealing with difficult decisions:
Avoids making decisions and often waits for others to make the decision.
Does not take responsibility for wrong or ineffective decisions.
Since one of the main uses of competencies is to help in the interviewing and selection of new hires, questions may be created to elicit responses from the candidates that will reveal their past behaviors with the premise being that past behaviors will help in predicting the behaviors that you can expect from them if hired.
Listed below are two lines of questions to help in determining a person’s competency in decision-making. Note that each question is followed by one or more questions in case there is a need to draw additional information from the candidate:
Tell me about a recent decision you had to make in which there was little or no time to seek additional information? What impact did the decision have on the business? What did you do to help lessen the risk of making a bad decision?
Tell me about a time you made a bad decision? What lessons did you learn from it?
Competency models are also helpful in the growth of present employees. Few, if any employees will be expert performers in all the competencies listed for a position, thus the model is used to help them with their career growth within the organization. For example, in one organization where I worked, we had a manager who was very good, except for his decision-making abilities. He had a tendency to make decisions that were good for his department but were often not well suited for the organization as a whole, that is, according to the behavioral indicator given above, he failed to realize the impact his decisions had on other organizational issues. Thus, he was promoted to a department that had a history of making good decisions and was put under the mentorship of a person known to excel in making quality decisions (sometimes it pays to be not quite perfect).
Criticisms
The two major complaints about competencies seem to be its lack of a common definition and understanding and the possibility of becoming ethnocentric.
While many terms in our craft lack common definitions and understanding among its members, competencies seem to be about the worst offender. In some cases, the word entirely changes. For example, Behavioral-Based Interviewing looks as if it is mostly based upon the concept of the competency modeling process.
Since competencies often encompass attitudes, there is the danger of them becoming so specific that it could promote ethnocentrism, rather than diversity. One has to be quite careful when including attitudes with competencies.
Attributions:
Donald Clark This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 LicenseLinks to an external site..
Reading: INTRODUCTION TO 21ST CENTURY APPROACHES TO LEADERSHIP
21st Century Approaches to Leadership
Frequent headlines in popular business magazines like Fortune and Business Week call our attention to a major movement going on in the world of business. Organizations are being reengineered and restructured, and network, virtual, and modular corporations are emerging. People talk about the transnational organization, the boundaryless company, the post-hierarchical organization. By the end of the decade, the organizations that we will be living in, working with, and competing against are likely to be vastly different from what we know today.
The transition will not be easy; uncertainty tends to breed resistance. We are driven by linear and rational thinking, which leads us to believe that “we can get there from here” by making some incremental changes in who we are and what we are currently doing. Existing paradigms frame our perceptions and guide our thinking. Throwing away paradigms that have served us well in the past does not come easily.
A look back tells most observers that the past decade has been characterized by rapid change, intense competition, an explosion of new technologies, chaos, turbulence, and high levels of uncertainty. A quick scan of today’s business landscape suggests that this trend is not going away anytime soon. According to Professor Jay A. Conger from Canada’s McGill University, “In times of great transition, leadership becomes critically important. Leaders, in essence, offer us a pathway of confidence and direction as we move through seeming chaos. The magnitude of today’s changes will demand not only more leadership, but newer forms of leadership.”
According to Conger, two major forces are defining for us the genius of the next generation of leaders. The first force is the organization’s external environment. Global competitiveness is creating some unique leadership demands. The second force is the growing diversity in organizations’ internal environments. Diversity will significantly change the relationship between organizational members, work, and the organization in challenging, difficult, and also very positive ways.
What will the leaders of tomorrow be like? Professor Conger suggests that the effective leaders of the 21st century will have to be many things:
They will have to be strategic opportunists; only organizational visionaries will find strategic opportunities before competitors.
They will have to be globally aware; with 80 percent of today’s organizations facing significant foreign competition, knowledge of foreign markets, global economics, and geopolitics is crucial.
They will have to be capable of managing a highly decentralized organization; movement toward the high-involvement organization will accelerate as the environmental demands for organizational speed, flexibility, learning, and leanness increase.
They will have be sensitive to diversity; during the first few years of the 21st century, fewer than 10 percent of those entering the workforce in North America will be white, Anglo-Saxon males, and the incoming women, minorities, and immigrants will bring with them a very different set of needs and concerns.
They will have to be interpersonally competent; a highly diverse workforce will necessitate a leader who is extremely aware of and sensitive to multicultural expectations and needs.
They will have to be builders of an organizational community; work and organizations will serve as a major source of need fulfillment, and in the process leaders will be called on to help build this community in such a way that organizational members develop a sense of ownership for the organization and its mission.
Cross-Cultural Context
Gabriel Bristol, the CEO of Intelifluence Live, a full-service customer contact center offering affordable inbound customer service, outbound sales, lead generation and consulting services for small to mid-sized businesses, notes “diversity breeds innovation, which helps businesses achieve goals and tackle new challenges.” Multiculturalism is a new reality as today’s society and workforce become increasingly diverse. This naturally leads to the question “Is there a need for a new and different style of leadership?”
The vast majority of the contemporary scholarship directed toward understanding leaders and the leadership process has been conducted in North America and Western Europe. Westerners have “developed a highly romanticized, heroic view of leadership.” Leaders occupy center stage in organizational life. We use leaders in our attempts to make sense of the performance of our groups, clubs, organizations, and nations. We see them as key to organizational success and profitability, we credit them with organizational competitiveness, and we blame them for organizational failures. At the national level, recall that President Reagan brought down Communism and the Berlin Wall, President Bush won the Gulf War, and President Clinton brought unprecedented economic prosperity to the United States during the 1990s.
This larger-than-life role ascribed to leaders and the Western romance with successful leaders raise the question “How representative is our understanding of leaders and leadership across cultures?” That is, do the results that we have examined in this chapter generalize to other cultures?
Geert Hofstede points out that significant value differences (individualism-collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity-femininity, and time orientation) cut across societies. Thus, leaders of culturally diverse groups will encounter belief and value differences among their followers, as well as in their own leader-member exchanges.
There appears to be consensus that a universal approach to leadership and leader effectiveness does not exist. Cultural differences work to enhance and diminish the impact of leadership styles on group effectiveness. For example, when leaders empower their followers, the effect for job satisfaction in India has been found to be negative, while in the United States, Poland, and Mexico, the effect is positive. The existing evidence suggests similarities as well as differences in such areas as the effects of leadership styles, the acceptability of influence attempts, and the closeness and formality of relationships. The distinction between task and relationship-oriented leader behavior, however, does appear to be meaningful across cultures. Leaders whose behaviors reflect support, kindness, and concern for their followers are valued and effective in Western and Asian cultures. Yet it is also clear that democratic, participative, directive, and contingent-based rewards and punishment do not produce the same results across cultures. The United States is very different from Brazil, Korea, New Zealand, and Nigeria. The effective practice of leadership necessitates a careful look at, and understanding of, the individual differences brought to the leader-follower relationship by cross-cultural contexts.
Finally, it is important to note that leadership theory construction and empirical inquiry are an ongoing endeavor. While the study of traits, behavior, and contingency models of leadership provide us with a great deal of insight into leadership, the mosaic is far from complete. During the past 15 years, several new theories of leadership have emerged;
leader-member exchange theory,
implicit leadership theory,
value-based theory of leadership, and
virtual leader
Each of these theories, over time, will add to your bank of knowledge about leaders and the leadership process.
As leaders of the 21st-century organization, you have a monumental challenge awaiting you and a wealth of self-enriching and fulfilling opportunities. The challenge and rewards awaiting you as an effective leader are awesome!
Attributions:
Reading: The Leader-Member Exchange Theory
As a manager, it’s not always right to treat everyone on your team in the same way.
For instance, you probably have team members that you’ve developed a great relationship with: you trust them, they work hard, and they’ve never let you down. To you, these team members are invaluable, and you make an extra effort to send challenging projects their way.
It’s also likely that you have others on your team who you think less well of. They may not have far-reaching career goals, they’re less competent, and you simply don’t trust them to the same extent. These team members get everyday responsibilities, and are not considered for promotions or challenging assignments.
However, have you ever stopped to analyze why you don’t trust certain team members? Rightly or wrongly, do you let that distrust, or the belief that they’re unreliable, influence how you relate to them? Do you, even subconsciously, withhold opportunities that might help them grow and succeed?
This situation is at the heart of the Leader-Member Exchange Theory. This theory, also known as LMX or the Vertical Dyad Linkage Theory, explores how leaders and managers develop relationships with team members; and it explains how those relationships can either contribute to growth or hold people back.
Understanding the Theory
The Leader-Member Exchange Theory first emerged in the 1970s. It focuses on the relationship that develops between managers and members of their teams.
The theory states that all relationships between managers and subordinates go through three stages. These are:
Role-Taking. Role-taking occurs when team members first join the group. Managers use this time to assess new members’ skills and abilities.
Role-Making.
New team members then begin to work on projects and tasks as part of the team. In this stage, managers generally expect that new team members will work hard, be loyal and prove trustworthy as they get used to their new role.
The theory says that, during this stage, managers sort new team members (often subconsciously) into one of two groups.
In-Group – if team members prove themselves loyal, trustworthy and skilled, they’re put into the In-Group. This group is made up of the team members that the manager trusts the most. Managers give this group most of their attention, providing challenging and interesting work, and offering opportunities for additional training and advancement. This group also gets more one-to-one time with the manager. Often, people in this group have a similar personality and work-ethic to their manager.
Out-Group – if team members betray the trust of the manager, or prove that they’re unmotivated or incompetent, they’re put into the Out-Group. This group’s work is often restricted and unchallenging. Out-Group members tend to have less access to the manager, and often don’t receive opportunities for growth or advancement.
3. “Routinization.” During this last phase, routines between team members and their managers are established.
In-Group team members work hard to maintain the good opinion of their managers, by showing trust, respect, empathy, patience, and persistence.
Out-Group members may start to dislike or distrust their managers. Because it’s so hard to move out of the Out-Group once the perception has been established, Out-Group members may have to change departments or organizations in order to “start over.”
Once team members have been classified, even subconsciously, as In-Group or Out-Group, that classification affects how their managers relate to them from then on, and it can become self-fulfilling.
For instance, In-Group team members are often seen as rising stars and the manager trusts them to work and perform at a high level. This is also the group that the manager talks to most, offering support and advice, and they’re given the best opportunities to test their skills and grow. So, of course, they’re more likely to develop in their roles.
This also holds true for the Out-Group. The manager spends little, if any, time trying to support and develop this group. They receive few challenging assignments or opportunities for training and advancement. And, because they’re never tested, they have little chance to change the manager’s opinion.
Using the Theory
You can use the Leader-Member Exchange Theory to be aware of how you perceive members of your own team.
To do this, follow these steps:
1. Identify Your Out-Group
Chances are, you know who’s in your Out-Group already. Take a moment to note their names down.
Next, analyze why these people have fallen “out of favor.” Did they do something specifically to lose your trust? Do they exhibit bad behavior at work ? Are they truly incompetent, or do they have low motivation?
Analyze what they’ve actually done, and compare the facts with your perceptions. Do these match, or have you (perhaps subconsciously) blown things out of proportion?
2. Reestablish the Relationship
It’s important that, as the leader, you make a reasonable effort to reestablish a relationship with Out-Group team members. Research published in the Leadership Quarterly journal in 1995 showed that team members who have high quality relationships with their leader have higher morale, and are more productive than those who don’t. So you, and your organization, can benefit from creating a better relationship.
Keep in mind that this group will likely be wary of any attention or support from you; after all, they may not have had it in the past.
First, meet each team member one-on-one. Take the time to find out if they’re happy with their job. What are their career goals? What can you do to make their work more challenging or engaging?
A one-on-one meeting can also help you identify that person’s psychological contract with you – that is, the unspoken benefits they expect from you, as their leader. If they’re in the Out-Group, they may feel that the psychological contract has been broken.
You also need to discover what truly motivates them. Use McClelland’s Human Motivation Theory or Herzberg’s Motivators and Hygiene Factor TheoryLinks to an external site. to find out what drives them to succeed.
Once you’ve had a chance to reconnect with your team members through one-on-one meetings, do what you sensibly can to continue to touch base with them. Practice management by walking around , or drop by their office to see if they need help on projects or tasks. Work on getting to know these team members on a personal level.
3. Provide Training and Development Opportunities
Remember, the biggest advantage to the Leader-Member Exchange Theory is that it alerts you to the preference you might unconsciously – and possibly unfairly – be showing some team members; this allows you to offer all of your team members appropriate opportunities for training, development, and advancement.
Your Out-Group team members may benefit from a mentoring or coaching relationship with you.
You may also want to provide them with low risk opportunities to test and grow their skills. Use task allocation strategies to make sure you’re assigning the right task to the right person.
Warning:
A problem with the Leader-Member Exchange Theory is that it assumes that all team members are equally worthy of trust, prestigious projects and advancement. Although we may like to think that everyone is honest, hard-working and worthy of our esteem, the reality can be different!
Managers need to get the best possible results. This means putting the right people in the right places, and it means developing and reinforcing success. Of necessity, this means that talented people will get more interesting opportunities and may get more attention than less-talented ones.
Use the Leader-Member Exchange Theory to make sure that you’re objective in the way that you deal with people, but don’t be naïve in the way that you apply it.
Attributes:
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/leader-member-exchange.htm
Reading: Implicit Leadership Theory
Implicit Theory of Leadership
What is leadership? Is it leaders’ behavior or our image of it? For example, if you are a female manager, how often has an outsider taken you for your own secretary? How often does that happen to your male colleague? This is what research on implicit leadership theories (ILT) focuses on. What are our ideas of what a leader is like (e.g., male, as further explored later in this paragraph)?
Whereas prior leadership research has studied the leader and his or her behavior, scholars studying ILT have taken a different approach. According to ILT scholars, the actual behavior or characteristics of the leader are less important for finding out what leadership is than our particular ideas about what leaders are and what characteristics or behaviors they should exhibit. It has become clear that individuals are well able to produce ideas about leaders in general, ideal leaders, effective leaders, and so on, without referring to an actual leader they know. When meeting a person labeled leader, this image of a leader in general is activated.
To illustrate: Imagine you are at a party and your friend tells you that she is going to introduce you to a friend of hers who is a top leader of a Fortune 100 company. Immediately, you will have an idea about this.
person’s attributes. For example, you might imagine this person to be male, dominant, intelligent, and so on. These characteristics do not come out of the blue. Virginia Schein has found that we often imagine leaders to be male, and recent research on the contents of our implicit leadership theories has found that characteristics such as dominant and intelligent are often named as typical for leaders.
Similarly, not only do we have ideas about leaders before or when we meet them, but, as the Robert Lord research group found, we also tend to label a person a leader who fits our ideas of a leader. This means that we are well able to say whom we believe to be the leader of a group we are observing. But we would be wise to be cautious: We can, of course, be mistaken. Leaders who do not possess “typical” leader characteristics may often mistakenly be seen as subordinates.
According to Robert Lord and colleagues, the implicit theories of leadership that are stored in our minds are often associated with the idea of success. When individuals observe a group and are given information concerning the performance of that group, they tend to remember more leadership behavior when told that the group was successful than when told the group was not successful. Remember, we are talking about different observations of exactly the same behavior, simply owing to differing information concerning group success.
Interestingly, this is a tendency we can also find on a broader societal level. James Meindl and colleagues examined newspaper articles and found that particular emphasis was put on the leader of a specific company in times when companies performed well and in times when they performed poorly. We all know this phenomenon from our daily lives: Just think about how often sports coaches are made responsible for the failure and success of their team and are, in times of failure, consequently replaced.
What effects do implicit leadership theories have?
What consequences does the knowledge that people have ideas about leaders have for organizations and their leaders? Judith Nye has focused on the idea that a match between followers’ implicit leadership theories and their leaders’ behavior may have an impact on the evaluation of their leaders. Nye and her colleagues found that once followers have ideas about leaders that do not fit their leader’s actual behavior, their evaluation of their leader will be less positive.
This is of course important for leaders to know, as it can have an impact on their effectiveness with these followers. In addition, we have seen in leadership research that different followers may see the same leader in different ways. Implicit leadership theories can help us understand this fact. Birgit Schyns, Jorg Felfe, and colleagues undertook research on the perception of leadership and found that implicit leadership theories influence the perception of leadership. This means that implicit leadership theories, or the ideas we have about what leaders are like, affect what we see in our own leaders. This, then, can explain why one follower may see, in effect, a different leader than another follower sees. Taking into account how often followers are asked to rate their leaders, for example in the context of 360-degree feedback, the impact of such an effect should not be overlooked. Tiffany Keller reports another critical finding, namely that the match between the implicit leadership theory of an employee and his or her actual leader predicts job satisfaction.
Are implicit leadership theories generalizable?
In our world of diversity, intercultural cooperation, mergers, and expatriates, it is important to be aware of the differences in implicit leadership theories that exist among different members of the workforce as well as in different cultures. Laura Graves and Gary Powell found evidence that men and women differ in their implicit leadership theories. We also know from research by David Day and Charlotte Gerstner that students with different cultural backgrounds have different implicit leadership theories. The Global Leadership and Organizational Behavioral Effective-ness (GLOBE) research project undertook a cross-cultural examination of implicit leadership theories about effective leaders in 62 cultures. This group found that some of the attributes associated with charismatic leadership are considered indicators of effective leadership across different cultures, but the importance of other characteristics of effective leadership are different in different countries.
This research indicates that leaders working in different cultures may be confronted with followers who have different ideas about how leaders are and how they should be. This influences the expectations followers have concerning their leaders and, in turn, will probably affect their evaluation of these leaders and influence the amount of effort they are willing to exert to support them. Imagine, for example, an individualistic leader acting in a collectivist country. Strategies can be extremely successful in one country yet can trigger misunderstandings and even repudiation in another country. We can imagine that the idea of a leader in a collectivist country is more dominantly shaped by an emphasis on group identity than on individual achievements. So, because of such different implicit leadership theories, leaders may have different effects in different countries.
Summary and Conclusion
We have seen in this short overview that implicit leadership theories exist, which is to say that people have particular beliefs concerning leaders even before they encounter a leader and that they apply these beliefs to a person labeled leader. We have also seen that these theories develop early and are different for male and female individuals, as well as for individuals with different cultural backgrounds. In addition, this overview shows the consequences of implicit leadership theories for organizations. The following related issues have begun to be discussed only very recently.
The Future of Implicit Leadership Theories
Recently, the concept of implicit leadership theories has been broadened. In 2005, Reinout de Vries and Jean-Louis van Gelder introduced the term implicit followership theories, arguing that people not only have ideas about how leaders are, but also about how followers are. In a similar direction, Mary UhlBien has argued that individuals have implicit relationship theories. These theories affect the cooperation between, for example, leader and follower, as both enter the relationship with different or similar ideas about what such a relationship should look like. Brigitte Kroon introduced the idea of implicit organizational theories. Her line of argumentation has considered how these implicit organizational theories affect the start-up of a company—that is, how they shape our image of companies, as well as how actual companies are shaped by the idea of its founders.
These examples show how implicit theories in general, and implicit leadership theories specifically, have an impact on leaders, members, and organizations in general.
Attributions:
Graves, L. M., & Powell, G. N. (1982). Sex differences in implicit theories of leadership: An initial investigation. Psychological Reports, 50, 689-690.
House, R. J., Hanges, P. J., Javidan, M., Dorfman, P. W., & Gupta, V. (2004). Culture, leadership, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Meindl, J. R., Ehrlich, S. B., & Dukerich, J. M. (1985). The romance of leadership. Administrative Science Quarterly, 30, 78-102.
Nye, J. L., & Forsyth, D. R. (1991). The effects of prototype-based biases on leadership appraisals: A test of leadership categorization theory. Small Group Research, 22, 360-375.
Offermann, L. R., Kennedy, J. K., & Wirtz, P. W. (1994). Implicit leadership theories: Content, structure, and generalizability. Leadership Quarterly, 5, 43-58.
Schyns, B., & Meindl, J. R. (2005). Implicit leadership theories: Essays and explorations. The Leadership Horizon Series (Vol. 3). Greenwich, CT: Information Age.
