LFIN

Leader Behavior
1) Directive: gives subordinates instructions about their task including what is expected of them, how it is to be done, and a timeline, clear standards of performance, makes rules & regulations clear, set time-bounds
2) Supportive (personal expertise): being friendly and approachable, attending to the well-being and human needs of subordinates, treat them as equal and give them respect, create a pleasant environment
3) Participative: inviting subordinates to share in the decision-making, consults with subordinate, obtains their ideas and opinions and integrate their suggestions into the decisions
4) Achievement oriented: challenge subordinates to perform work at the highest level possible, establish high standard of excellence, seek continuous improvement

Subordinate characteristics

1) Need for affiliation: supportive leadership preferred
2) Preferences for structure: subordinates are dogmatic and authoritarian: directive leadership to provide certainty/stability in the work setting, looking for secure environment
3) Locus on control (Rotter 1966): internal locus of control: participative leadership, subordinates want to feel in charge of their tasks

External locus on control: directive leadership, subordinates accept that outside forces control their circumstances

Task Characteristics
Subordinates task: unclear and ambiguous, leader needs to provide structure -> directive
Formal authority system: weak formal authority – leader needs to assist subordinates by making rules and work requirements clear -> directive
Primary Work group: non-supportive / weak group norms – leader needs to help build cohesion and role responsibility
highly repetitive – leader needs to provide support to maintain subordinate’s motivation supportive style 

Pro’s:

• useful theoretical framework for understanding how various leadership behaviors affect subordinate’s satisfaction and work performance, boost motivation & performance

• attempts to integrate motivational principles of expectancy theory into a theory of leadership

• provides a model that in certain ways is very practical, highlights the important ways leaders help subordinates to remove obstacles

Con’s:

• focus on one way communication (Leader to subordinates, not the other way round and no mix) 

• Centered on interactions between leader and followers

• Dyadic relationship = central concept

• Challenges the assumption that leaders treat followers in a collective way

• Directed attention to the differences that might exist between leader and each of his/her followers 

Describes Leadership:

• In Groups and Out Groups within an organization

• Differences in how goals are accomplished using in Groups vs. out Groups

• Relevant differences in In Group vs. Out Group behavior

Prescribes Leadership:

• emphasizes that a leader should develop high quality exchanges with all of his / her subordinates rather than just a few
• Leader forms special relationships with all of his/her subordinate 

In-Group

• Expanded and negotiated role responsibilities

• Receive more information, confidence and concern from their leaders

• More dependable, highly involved and more communicative

• reciprocal influence

Out-Group

• Based on the formal employment contract

• Less compatible with their leaders

• Low relationship quality 

• More positive performance evaluations

• Less employee turnover

• Higher frequency of promotions

• Greater organizational commitment

• More support from the leader

Phase 1: Stranger: scripted roles, one way communication, low quality exchanges, self interests, formal written contract

Phase 2: Acquaintance: tested roles, mixed communication, medium quality exchanges, self & other interests, offer by leader or subordinate for improved career oriented social exchanges 

Phase 3: Partnership: negotiated roles, reciprocal communication, high quality exchanges, group interest, high degree of mutual trust, respect and obligation 

Strengths

• Dyadic relationship as central concept

• Directs attention to the importance of communication in leadership

Weaknesses

• Runs counter to the basic human value of fairness

• Basic ideas not fully developed 

• part of the “New leadership paradigm”

• emphasis on intrinsic motivation and follower development

• process that changes and transforms people with boosting their performance

• concerned with emotions, values, ethical standards, long-term goals

• leading change

• includes followers motives, needs (treating them as full human beings) 

1. Idealized Influence (charisma): emotional component of leadership, leader acts as a strong role model, provide followers with a high vision and a sense of mission

2. Inspirational Motivation: leader communicates high expectations, inspiring subordinates, challenge them, team spirit enhanced

3. Intellectual Stimulation: leader stimulates subordinates to be creative and innovative, encourage followers to solve problems carefully

4. Individualized Consideration: provide supportive climate, leaders act as coaches / advisors, use delegation to help followers growing 

5)  Contingent Reward: exchange process between leaders / followers in which effort by followers is exchanged for specified rewards, formal, task-oriented

6)  Management-by-Exception: leadership that involves corrective criticism, negative feedback, 2 forms: active and passive
Active: watch followers closely (to identify mistakes)
passive: intervenes only after standards have not been met or problems have arisen 

7) Laissez-Faire: represents the absence of leadership, leader abdicates responsibility, delays decisions, gives no feedback, and makes little effort to help followers satisfy their needs 

• describes how leaders can initiate, develop, and carry out significant changes in organizations

• leaders create a vision that emerges from the collective interests of various individuals 

• Requirement: leaders become social architects (make norms and values clear)

• Leaders are effective at working with people (build trust and collaboration with others)

• Encourage others and celebrate their accomplishments

• Empowering people by delegating, etc.

Pros:

• Widely researched from many different perspectives

• Intuitive appeal

• Process that occurs between followers and leaders

• Broader view than other models

• Strong focus on followers’ needs, values, morals (leader attempts to move people to higher standards of moral responsibility)

• Effective (substantial evidence)

Cons:

• Lacks conceptual clarity (because of wide range of activities and characteristics)

• Not really measurable (highly correlated factors)

• Treats leadership as a personality trait rather than a behavior that people can learn

• No evidence if transformational leaders can change followers or organizations

• Antidemocratic (impression that the leader is putting himself over the followers needs)

• Potential to be abused (changes implemented by leaders) 

1. Intra-Personal perspective: focuses closely on the leader, incorporates leader’s self-knowledge, self-regulation and self-concept, leads from own conviction, values and ethical standards, original, emphasizes leader’s life experiences

2. Inter-personal process: relational, perspective created by leader and followers together, interactions, reciprocal process, communication leader <-> follower, negotiation process leads to change

3. Development perspective: related to Walumbwa Model, views authentic leadership as something that can be nurtured in a leader, rather than as a fixed trait, develops in people over a lifetime, can be triggered by major life & carreer events 

1. Self-awareness: personal insights of a leader, process in which individuals understand themselves including their strengths and weaknesses & impact on others, reflecting on your core values, identity, emotions, motives, goals, see yourself from 3rd-person perspective

2. Internalized Moral perspective: lead only with own personal/ethical convictions, no guiding from outside, self-regulatory process whereby individuals use their internal moral standards and values to guide their behavior, be consistent to your own environment & decisions

3. Balanced Processing: self-regulatory behavior, refers to an individual’s ability to analyze information objectively and seek other people’s opinions before making a decision to evaluate decisions, avoiding favoritism, remaining unbiased

4. Relational transparency: being open and honest in presenting ones’ true self to others, self-regulatory because individuals can control their transparency with others, share core feelings, motives and inclinations, show positive and negative aspects of themselves, communicating openly and being real => building trust 

1. Positive psychological capacities: confidence, hope, optimism & resilience

2. Moral reasoning: capacity to make ethical decisions about issues of right or wrong and good or bad

3. Critical Life events: major events that shaped people’s life, positive events (receiving an unexpected promotions, having a child, reading an important book), or negative events (cancer, negative year-end-evaluation, dead), catalyst for change, life experience, gain greater self-knowledge 

Strengths:

• Fulfils expressed need for trustworthy leadership in society

• Provides broad guidelines

• Explicit moral dimension (ethical)

• Emphasizes that authentic values and behavior can be developed in leaders over time

• Can be measured

Weaknesses:

• Still in the formative stages of development and questions that still need to be addressed

• Moral component is not fully explained

• More clarification about the role of positive psychological capacities needed

• No explanation how authentic leadership results in positive organizational outcomes 

1. Purposeful (have a vision)

2. Value centered

3. Relational

4. Self-disciplined

5. Compassionate 

1)  Emotional self-awareness: ability to recognize and understand your moods, emotions, behavior and drivers, sense of humor, realistic self-assessment, degree of confidence
Skill indicator: knowing, when you’re thinking negatively / becoming angry, train optimize behavior, knowing, when you’re becoming defensive

2)  Managing emotions (self-regulation): ability to control / recognize impulses and moods, relaxed in a stressed situation, being productive no matter which emotions you have, trainable, integrity, comforting with ambiguity, emotional self-control, flexibility
Skill indicator: being able to handle pressure

3)  Motivation: passion to pursue goals with energy, being able to recover after a failure (motivated people are drivers), desire to raise the bar, quick regrouping
Skill indicator: avoid ineffective habits

4)  Interpersonal expertise (empathy): social awareness of other’s feelings, being able to exchange information, manage conflicts, negotiate solutions, building trust, good atmosphere,  team spirit, global business
Skill indicator: cross-cultural management

5)  Relationship management (social skill): keep cool in stressful situations, ability to persuasion, receiving influence, conflict management, enhance inspiration
Skill indicator: facilitate trust 

• The best leaders are stepping out of their comfort zone

• Involve increased personal and business discomfort, more complex due to uncertainty

• Egocentric leadership is going out of business

• Altrocentric leadership is becoming more important

  o They receive their personal power from motivating people

  o Intrinsic motivated by socialized power

• Value based leadership

  o Values can only be effective if these values are personally transmitted

  • ▪ Cool head (analytic skills)
    ▪ Warm heart (need to be sympathetic)
    ▪ Working hands (hard work, accepting risks, be a role model) 

The concept of power is related to leadership because it is part of the influence process. Power is the capacity or potential to influence. People have power when they have the ability to affect others’ beliefs, attitudes, and courses of action 

Referent, Expert, Legitimate, Reward, Coercive, Information

Management = Produces order and consistency 

Planning & Budgeting; Organizing & Staffing; Controlling & Problem solving

Leadership = Produces Change and Movement 

Establishing Direction, Aligning People, Motivating & Inspiring

Trait: characteristic that is stable over time and influences behavior 

Skill: learned ability 

1. Intelligence

2. Self-Confidence

3. Determination

4. Integrity

5. Sociability

Neuroticism: The tendency to be depressed, anxious, insecure, vulnerable, and hostile
Extraversion: The tendency to be sociable and assertive and to have positive energy, Strongest link to efficiency
Openness: The tendency to be informed, creative, insightful, and curious
Agreeableness: The tendency to be accepting, conforming, trusting, and nurturing
Conscientiousness:  The tendency to be thorough, organized, controlled, dependable, and decisive 

Strengths:

• Intuitively appealing

• Century of research to back it up

• Way of highlighting the leader component in the leadership process

• Has given us benchmarks which are needed to be a leader

Weaknesses:

• Delimits Leadership traits to a definite list

• Not useful for training / developing because traits cannot easily be changed

• Only focuses the leader (not situations and followers)

• Subjectivity -> room for interpretation

• Uncertain findings / times 

Technical skills:

• knowledge about and proficiency in a specific type of work

• includes competencies in a specialized area

• analytical ability

• ability to use appropriate tools and technique

• e.g.: software knowledge

Human Skills:

• Knowledge about and ability to work with people (social skills)

• Abilities that help the leader to work effectively with subordinates, peers

  and superiors to achieve the company’s goals

• Being aware: one’s own perspective and perspective of others

• Being sensitive to the needs and motivation of others

Conceptual Skills:

• Ability to work with ideas and concepts

• Ability to put company’s goal in words

• Understanding and expressing the economic principles (abstractions and hypothetical notions) that affect the company
• Creating a vision

It is important for leaders to have all three skills; depending on where they are in the management structure, however, some skills are more important than others are. 

General Cognitive Ability:

• thought of as an person’s intelligence

• perceptual processing, information processing

• general reasoning skills

• creative and divergent thinking capacities, memory skills •
• linked to biology and not to experience

Crystallized Cognitive Ability:

• intellectual ability that is learned or acquired over time

• store of knowledge we acquire through experience

• being able to comprehend complex information and learn new skills and information

• communicate to others in oral and written form

• acquired intelligence

Motivation

1. willing to tackle complex organizational problems

2. willing to express dominance

3. be committed to the social good of the company

Personality:

• has an impact on the development of our leadership skills

• traits help leader to solve organizational problems (conflict situations) 

Problem Solving Skills:

• creative ability to solve new and unusual, ill-defined organizational problems

• define significant problems and plan problem solutions

• need to attend to the time frame for constructing and implementing solutions

Social Judgement Skills:

• capacity to understand people and social systems

• necessary to solve unique organizational problems

• delineated into: perspective taking, social perceptiveness, behavioral flexibility, and social performance

Knowledge:

• accumulation of information and the mental structures used to organize the organization

• knowledge results from having developed an assortment of complex schemata for learning and organizing data 

Effective Problem Solving:

• Good problem-solving skills involve creating solutions that are logical, effective and unique and go beyond given information

Performance:

• The degree to which a leader has successfully performed the assigned duties

2 further components: environmental influences and career experiences
Career Experiences: the experiences acquired in the course of leaders’ careers influence their knowledge and skills to solve complex problems.

Environmental Influences: represent factors that lie outside the leader’s competencies, characteristics, and experiences. These environmental influences can be internal and external:

• Internal environmental influences affecting leadership performance can include such factors as technology, facilities, expertise of subordinates, and communication.

• External environmental influences, including economic, political, and social issues, as well as natural disasters, can provide unique challenges to leaders. 

Strengths of the Skill Approach:

• Stresses the importance of developing specific skills

• First approach to conceptualize and create a structure of the process of leadership around skills

• Provides an expansive view of leadership

Weakness (Contra) of the Skill Approach:

• Addresses more than just leadership, thus less precise in explaining leadership performance

• Weak in predictive value, as it does not explain how skills lead to effective leadership performance (it’s just a description rather than a prescription)

• Because of the individual attributes it is trait-like

• The model is funded in general by using a large sample of military personnel and their performance in the army 

1)  Coordinator: designs projects/work, manages across functions

2)  Monitor: monitoring personal and managing collective/organizational performance

3)  Facilitator: builds teams / team spirit, use participative decision making, managing conflicts

4)  Mentor: understanding himself and others, communicating effectively, developing subordinates (see their talents)

5)  Innovator: living the change, thinking creatively, creating change

6)  Broker: building and maintaining a powerbase, negotiating agreement and commitment, presenting ideas

7)  Producer: working productively, fostering productive work environment, managing time and stress

8)  Director: visioning, planning, goalsetting, designing and organizing, delegating effectively 

behavior of the leader and focus on what the leaders do and how they act

• task behaviors (help group members to achieve their objectives)
• relationship behaviors (help to feel comfortable)

Country Club Management (1,9): attention to the needs of people leads to a comfortable, friendly organizational atmosphere and work tempo, de-emphasizes production, leaders stress the attitude and feelings of people

Team Management (9,9): leader stimulates participation, acts determent, makes priorities clear, follows through, behaves open-mindedly and enjoys working
Work accomplished through committed people, - relationships of trust and respect

Middle-of-the-Road Management (5,5): Adequate organizational performance, possible through balancing the necessity of getting work done while maintaining satisfactory morale to achieve equilibrium (compromising), leader avoids conflict while emphasizing
moderate levels of production and interpersonal relationships

Impoverished Management (1,1): Leaders have little contact with followers and are described as indifferent, noncommittal, resigned and apathetic
Minimal effort exerted to get work done is appropriate to sustain organizational membership

Authority-Compliance Management (9,1): Leaders seen as controlling, demanding, hard- driving and over-powering, People are tools for achieving the goals and doing the tasks, Result-driven

Strengths of the Style Approach (Blake and Mouton,1964):

• Expands focus from personal characteristics of the leader to actions of the leader

• Backed up by lot of studies -> credible

• Core of the leadership process: task and relationship

Weakness of the Style Approach (Blake and Mouton,1964):

• Leader style not connectable to leadership outcome performance

• Failed to find a universal style of leadership that could be effective in almost every

  situation

• Implies that the most effective leadership style is the high-high-style 

• Focuses on leadership in situations

• Different situations demand different kinds of leadership

• A person to adapt his style to the demands of different situations

• Effective leaders are those who recognize what employees need and then adapt their own style to meet those needs 

Directing Style (S1)

• Focus on communication on goal achievement

• Spends less time using supportive behavior

• Giving instructions about what and how goals are to be achieved

• High degree of supervision

Coaching Style (S2)

• Focus on communication on both goal achievement and supporting subordinates’ socioemotional need

• Requires leader involvement through encouragement in soliciting subordinates’ inputs

• Making final decisions on the what and how of goal accomplishment

Supporting Style (S3)

• Leader does not focus solely on goals

• Using supportive behaviors to bring out employees’ skills in accomplishing the tasks
• Delegating day-to-day decision-making control but being available to facilitate problem solving

Delegating Style (S4)

• Offer less task input and social support

• Facilitate subordinates’ confidence and motivation in relation to the task

• Leader lessens involvement in planning, control of plans and goal clarification

• Gives subordinates control 

• Degree to which subordinates have the competence and commitment necessary to accomplish a given task 

• D1 employees are low in competence and high in commitment. They are new to a task and do not know exactly how to do it, but they are excited about the challenge of it.

• D2 employees are described as having some competence but low commitment. They have started to learn a job, but they also have lost some of their initial motivation about the job.

• D3 represents employees who have moderate to high competence but may lack commitment. They have essentially developed the skills for the job, but they are uncertain as to whether they can accomplish the task by themselves.

• D4 employees are the highest in development, high degree of competence and commitment to getting the job done. They have the skills to do the job and the motivation to get it done.