The Leadership Process

On the Meaning of Leadership

• The historical impact of leadership

– Homer’s Odyssey

• The importance of self-confidence in successful leadership

– Confucian writings

• The importance of setting a moral example and using rewards and punishment

– Taoism

• Leaders maintain a low profile and work through others

– 20th Century

• Journals such as Leadership Quarterly and books such as Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Great Man theory of leadership

• Leaders were “born” with a set of personal qualities that destined them to be great leaders

• Focused on identifying the personal traits that characterized those individuals who:

– Emerged as leaders

–Came to be highly effective leaders

Several Approaches to Defining Leadership

• Leadership as:

– A focus of group processes

– Personality and its effects

– An act or behavior

– An instrument of goal achievement

– An emerging effect of interaction

– A differentiated role

– The initiation of structure

Defining Leadership Using Concepts of Influence, Power, and Compliance

• Leadership as:

– The art of inducing compliance

– The exercise of influence

–A form of persuasion

–A power relationship

Alternative Conceptualizations

• Levels of analysis

– Community

– Industry

– Organization

– Small group-work team

– Self-leadership

• Stylistic perspective

– Autocratic

– Democratic

– Servant

– People- and task-oriented

– Laissez-faire

Alternative Conceptualizations (Cont’d)

• Thematic perspective

– The free world

– Strategic leadership

– Ethics

–Campaign finance reform leadership

• Origins of leader

–Designated or emergent

– Formal or informal

–Vertical or horizontal

Alternative Conceptualizations (Cont’d)

• Other perspectives

–Co-leadership

–Symbolic

–Strategic

A Study of the Leadership Process

• Leadership is fundamentally sociological, not psychological

• It does not reside in a person; it is a function of the whole situation

– The word process focuses on the interplay of factors in a total

situation

• Groups do not act because they have leaders, but they secure leaders to

help them to act

• Leadership qualities vary indefinitely as the needs of groups vary

indefinitely

A Case From The Study Of Leaders In Work Camps

• Efficiency

– “He gets the work done”

• Reasonableness

– “He explains things to you and doesn’t yell”

• Justice

– “He plays no favorites and treats all men alike”

Leaders In Work Camps (Cont’d)

• Strictness

– “He isn’t so easy that you can step all over him”

• Carefulness

– “He watches out for the safety of the men in his crew”

The Leadership Process

• Step 1: The group has practical and emotional needs

• Step 2: The leader responds to the situation as a whole with appropriate activities

• Step 3: Those responses are classified and labeled with trait names

• Step 4: These names which are abstractions and summationalfictions are imputed to the leader as causal psychological entities

Contemporary Trends in the Analysis of Leadership Processes

• The psychological study of leadership

– Focused on personality characteristics

• Kurt Lewin: Social climates

– Leader style

– Situational approach

• The main focus of the situational approach was the study of leaders in different settings, defined especially in terms of different:

– Group tasks

– Group structure

Legitimacy and Social Exchange

• Perceived legitimacy

– How a leader attains and sustains legitimacy

– The exchange of rewards

• The “idiosyncrasy credit” concept

– A person’s potential to be influential arises out of the positive dispositions others hold toward him or her

Leader Effectiveness and Identification

• The leader is not effective merely by being influential, without regard to the processes at work and the ends achieved

• The leader’s contribution and its consequences vary with system demands

Leader Effectiveness (Cont’d)

• Followers’ identification with their leader can provide them with a shared outlook

• Systems approach

• The leader, the led, and the situation are seen as interdependent inputs variously engaged toward the production of desired outputs

Leadership: The Management of Meaning

• Leadership is socially constructed through interaction

• It is a process of defining reality in ways that are sensible to the led

• It involves a dependency relationship

– Individuals surrender their powers to interpret and define reality to others

The Management of Meaning (Cont’d)

• The emergence of formal leadership roles represents an additional stage of institutionalization

–Rights and obligations to define the nature of experience and activity are recognized and formalized

Leadership in Formalized Settings

• Formal organization truncates the leadership process observed in natural settings– Roles institutionalize the interactions and definitions that shape the

reality of organizational life

– Rules, conventions, and work practices present ready-made typifications through which experience is to be made sensible

– Authority relationships:• Legitimize the pattern of dependency relations

• Institutionalize hierarchical patterns of interaction

Leadership: A Figure–Ground Relationship Which Creates Figure–Ground Relationships

Implications For The Theory And Practice Of Contemporary Organization

• Leaders symbolize the organized situation in which they lead

• The role of power as a defining feature of the leadership process

• Analysis of the leadership process tells us about the nature of organization as a hierarchical phenomenon

• The concept of leadership is central building block of the conventional wisdom of organization and management

Implications For The Theory And Practice Of Contemporary Organization

• Leadership may work against the development of:

– Self responsibility

– Self-initiative

– Self-control

• “Trained inaction”

– A dominant characteristic of the bureaucratic personality