Organization and Leadership Lecture 3

Who is a leader? Which attributes do leaders have? Which personal leader attributes determine success? You either have it or not, leadership is a matter of talent!

-Attributes: Personality traits e.g. Abilities (Intelligence, power of judgement etc.), Attainments (Success in school, knowledge etc.), Responsibility (Reliability, stamina, self assuredness etc.), Participation (social activity, humor etc.), Status (socioeconomic popularity) 

But also stability in different environments.

Studies show only marginal correlatio between those attributes and leadership success and also contradiction with regard to relevance of examines attributes.

Moderate relatioship between leadership success and big five personality traits (Extraversion, Openness to experience, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism)

Believed that the ability to lead is congenital, although it can be learned and trained to large extent. 

Describes leadership styles as difference between mere autocratic to completly democratic (autocratic, paternalistic, informatory, consultative, cooperative, delegation, democratic)

Distinction between two leadership orientations:

- Considerartion (Relationship orientated): Leader regards wellbeing of followers, seeks good relationship, treats them as equal, supports with current practices and concerns, commits to develop employees' skills and abilities

- Initiating structure (Task orientation): criticizes inadequate work, emphasize work load, rules with iron fist, enforces full work engagement, demands more from inefficient workers

Both show moderate, positive relationship with perfomance. Although Consideration is more strongly related with indicators of leadership success (e.g. employe motivations and satisfaction) and also with employe job satisfaction than Initiating Structure

Matrix with Axis: Concern for People (Y-axis) and Concern for results (X-axis)

Strengths: Integration of both dimensions (consideration and initiating structure), the interplay of both is considered. It is intuitively understood, and it provides a shared understanding and vocabulary in business world

Weaknesses: Inconsistent result, no clear match between leader behavior and situational charactersitics, and leaves the question what leadership skills are required to balance task and relational leadership behaviors over time --> should focus more on the situation and try to improve this and not the results

Strengths: Considers the behaviors and actions of leaders, leader can assese their actions and develop alternative/additional leadership styles, adequate leadership behavioral is learnable

Weaknesses: Style as the only determinant of leadership success is oversimplified in a complex world, neglects the situation and organizational structure in measuring leadership success

The follower is utmost important - any leader depends on the quality of his followers

4 different styles: Telling (low to average maturity level, able and unwilling), Selling (high maturity levek, able and willing), Participating (average maturity, unable and willing), Delegating (low maturity, unable and unwilling)

Leadership style depends heavily on the employes, regarding their engagement and maturity level, a leader has to operate differently with his followers. Leaders should use the whole spectrum of styles, need to analyse the competencies and potentials of his followers. All 4 styles need to be applied parallel and adpated to the situation. Invest into maturity of employes for better delegation.

Stregths: incorportation of situation into leadership style

Weaknesses: High demands on the leaders, they should have no preferred leadership style, classification of followers into different styles is difficult, only maturity is situational factor taken into account

Shared Leadership: chaning leadership role rather than fixed leadership --> growing relevance with new forms of working and flatening hierarchies, particular fo complex tasks with highly specialized individual expert knwoledge, boosts motiavtion trust and performance in teams --> higher focues on the relationship between leader and follower