Leadership

Definition Leader:

• Is someone who has followers, needs the courage to stand up, importance of nurturing the first followers
• Leaders mobilize people for change for the best of their organization and their stakeholders
• Leadership is the ability to help a group achieve a vision or certain goals
• Leadership is energy management. First, one’s own energy – then other people’s energy

• Conflicting goals between L and M but at the same time they need to work together
• In the past: Leader = at the top of the organization, below are the managers that need to implement
• Now: we need leadership at all levels, but that’s more challenging
  • if you’re not a good manager you won’t get people to follow you hence you can’t be a good leader;
  • being a leader takes time, the transition is hard, you actually need to take time to change your goals 
• It’s desirable and necessary to be a M and a L
   

Distribution of Time: Leading (20%), Managing (80%) or Leading (5%), Managing (95%), during challenging times, z.b Covid, the managing tends to be even higher, even though you’d need more leadership then (emotional support, inspiration usw.)

--> Both are important in the long run

Leader (L)

• Shape
• Create and Develop
• Inspire others
• Thing long-term
• Ask "what" / "why"
• Question the status quo
• Create Vision and Meaning, Change Culture
• Do the right things

Manager (M)

• Implement
• Administrative
• Persevere
• Think short-term
• Ask "how" / "when"
• Accept the status quo
• Act with established culture
• Do things right

Distinguish between leadership traits (innate, stable) and competencies (developable)

• Arvey et al. (2007): 30% of the ability to lead is innate, the other 70% are based on socialization, environment, experience, active development via training
• Keating et al. (2014): leadership interventions have a significant positive effect on the ability to lead
• The 70-20-10 rule of leadership development: 70% Experience and reflection (on-the-job development), 20% People (Coaching, Mentoring, Networking), 10% Knowledge (courses, books) à the 3 levels are connected, you need them all.

• Great Man Theories: 1950, Looking at historical figures or people in our environment that have certain qualities that made them great leaders, z.B attributing better leadership qualities to taller people, from a today point of view: only 30% are inert, so the theory doesn’t really make sense
• Behavioral theories: 1960, What behavior makes a successful leader, found the following two structures: initiating structure (task focused) and consideration (people focused)
• Situational theories: 1970, there is not one right way to lead, you need to consider WHO you’re leading, depending on the situation the leading needs to be different
• New leadership school: 1980, previews theories were rather rational, the new school it’s important to be transactional (rewards and punishment of people) and emotional (z.B painting a nice picture of the future, appeal to people’s emotions, needs charisma)

• Virtual Leadership: How to lead people that work remotely
• Shared Leadership: More than one person that leads
• Leader-Member-Exchange: Leadership based on relations (with followers) and how to manage these relations, not only the relationship you, important z.b for organizational ambidexterity (refers to the ability of an organization to both explore and exploit—to compete in mature technologies and markets where efficiency, control, and incremental improvement are prized and to also compete in new technologies and markets where flexibility, autonomy, and experimentation are needed.)

--> The theories are somehow also connected, z.B New leadership school & Leader-Member-Exchange

Leadership research has gone through varying phases of development, each of which has focused on a different factor as the key reason for leadership success