Leadership

1. “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.” Leadership Chapter 12

2. What is Leadership? (pg. 284) • Behavior/communication that influences, directs, or controls a group • Counteractive influence when groups get off track

3. Characteristics of Effective Leaders • Identifying attributes; • intelligence, enthusiasm, dominance, self confidence, and social participation • Physical traits; • Larger, more active, and better looking than other group members

4. Trait VS Functional Approach • Trait approach • indentify the sort of person who should be appointed to a leadership position • Functional approach • communicative behaviors a leader needs in order to help a group to function effectively

5. The Trait Perspective • View of leadership as the personal attributes or qualities that leaders posses. • useful in one situation may not be in another • Leading troops into battle vs conducting a business meeting • Does not identify • Traits important to becoming a leader • Traits important to maintaining the position. • Not the most useful approach

6. The Functional Perspective • Behavior that may be performed by any group member to maximize group effectiveness

7. Functional Perspective: Group Needs and Roles (Pg. 285) • The major leadership behavior fall in two categories • 1) task leadership- aim specifically at accomplishing a group goal • 2) process leadership (group building or maintenance)- help maintain a satisfactory interpersonal climate within a group • Both types of leadership are essential

8. When You Need Task Leadership (pg. 286) • Lose track of where they are going • Cannot seem to get started • One person monopolizes the conversations while others remain silent • Leader has a responsibility to keep a group moving. • “leader” does not mean they are the best equipped for the job

9. Task Leadership Behaviors • Initiating • Task oriented group discussions need to generate ideas. • Ex) “lets get this meeting under way” “lets consider an alternative plan” • Coordinating • Point out the “groupness” • Summarizing • How discussion has progress and what needs to be accomplished • Helps motivate toward end goal

10. Task Leadership Behaviors Cont’d • Elaborating • Ideas can be visualized • When an idea is brought up several things might happen; • 1. members might be in favor and some not • 2. another idea might be suggested and recorded • 3. idea might have fallen flat and elaboration might give it a fighting chance

11. Task Behaviors Summarized • Initiating, coordinating, summarizing, and elaborating are types of communicative behaviors • Making suggestions, offering new ideas, giving information, asking for information, and making procedural observations

12. Functional Approach Summary • The functional approach reveals; • leadership skill is associated with the ability to • analyze a groups process • choose appropriate behaviors to further that process

13. Process Leadership • For a group to function effectively, • Address external task of group • Address needs of each member • Maintain a satisfying group climate • Failure can lead to a breakdown in Group’s performance

14. Process Leadership • Four major process leadership behaviors that enhance the groups climate: • Releasing Tension • Gatekeeping • Encouraging • Mediating

15. Releasing Tension • Suggest a Coffee Break • Get a Good Laugh • Both can renew a groups energy and improve member satisfaction

16. Gatekeeping • Coordinated group discussions • Ensures more input along the task dimension • Higher member satisfaction

17. Encouraging • Increases • Cohesiveness • Member satisfaction • Productivity

18. Mediating • Aimed at: • Resolving conflicts • Releasing tension • Renewing a groups energy

19. IMPORTANT • Both task and process leadership are essential to the success of a small group.

20. Situational Perspective: Adapting Style to Context • A perspective that views leadership as the interaction among the group’s task needs, process needs and goals, leadership style, and situational variables that influence groups

21. Leadership Style (p 290) • Relatively consistent pattern of behavior reflecting a leader’s belief’s and attitudes • No two people can act as a leader at as a leader in the precisely the same way. • Three Styles: Authoritarian, Democratic, and Laissez-Faire

22. Authoritarian (p.291) • They assume positions of intellectual and behavioral superiority in groups • This leader usually dictates task, decisions and work companion for each member • Usually groups with highly structured goals and high stress moves towards this style.

23. Democratic (p.291) • They tend to try to encourage and direct members of the group in making decisions • Leader discusses steps for activities and goals and leaves division of tasks to the group • Let’s group member work freely with anyone • Leader tends to voice praise or criticism

24. Laissez-Faire • Avoids dominating group and assumes group will direct itself • Allows the group complete freedom in decisions • Supplies various materials and information when asked but doesn’t lead discussion on how to accomplish group’s task

25. Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Model (p.292) • This model uses various combinations of task and relationship leadership behavior to describe leadership style as it relates to different situations • The style of leaders in this model: telling, selling participating, and delegating • These four leadership styles usually start off at a low maturity and moves to high maturity.

26. Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Model • Telling- • Selling- • Participating- • Delegating-

27. Transformational Leadership (Pg 296) • Changes the organization by realigning its culture with a new vision and restructuring its shared assumptions and norms. • Have a sense of vision and purpose.

28. Four defining characteristics • Idealized leadership • Inspirational motivation • Intellectual stimulation • Individual consideration

29. 3 Critical skills of transformational leadership • Building shared vision • Surfacing and challenging mental models • Engaging in systems thinking

30. Building shared vision • Encouraging individuals to express their visions of group or organizational goals while encouraging the development of a common, positive view.

31. Surfacing and challenging mental models Identifying and challenging assumptions without creating defensiveness.

32. Engaging in systems thinking • Understanding groups and organizations and the great complexity that characterizes them requires that leaders look beyond day-to-day operations to find underlying themes, forces of change, and interrelationships.

33. The Minnesota Studies (pg 297) • Leaders emerge through a “method of residues,” whereby group members are rejected for the role of leader, until only one remains.

34. Phase I • Quiet ones who do not actively participate in discussions • Talkative but overaggressive or dogmatic group members

35. Phase II • Style is perceived as disturbing. • Ones who have an authoritarian style (too bossy or dictatorial) • Ones who are unable to contribute • Ones who are too process-oriented

36. Leadership and Gender (pg 300) • 1960s and 1970s – Women were reluctant to assume leadership roles. • 1980s – most effective leader is a leader who could draw from a repertoire of both traditionally male and traditionally female behaviors.

37. Task-relevant communication • Sole significant predictor of emergent leadership. • -Katherine Hawkins

38. Leadership and Self Deception • Leaders in organizations tend to ignore upward communication from non-managerial staff members, especially when that communication is critical of management. • The First step leaders can take to better themselves and their situation is to develop awareness of their own tendencies toward self deception. • To do this, higher status members of a group or organization can not always think they are going to have the best ideas and take everyone’s thoughts in to consideration.

39. Leadership Training… • “Research consistently indicates that the productivity of a group improves if its members are trained” • Training involves instruction to help and encourage the development of skills, rather than the way you think. • Training emphasizes what you can DO not necessarily just the way you THINK.

40. Leadership Training… • One proven method of training is providing feedback to the members of a group regarding their individual performance. • Studies show that when members know they are being evaluated, they tend to work harder. • People need a more objective eye than their own to see what they are doing and how the can do it better. • Another productive way of training is the use of simulations.

41. Leadership Training… • “A simulation is a structured exercise that creates conditions that participants might confront outside the training environment”. • It allows users to experiment without any unnecessary risks. • Many leadership or management training programs recreated conditions of the work environment.

42. Leadership Example • War games • The conditions of war are re-created so the trainees can experiment them in a way that is not life threatening.

43. Military War Games

44. Summary • Good training should provide you with a broad array of behaviors and give you the understanding and ability to know when, how, why, and where to use these behaviors.