Using the Traits Associated with Leadership?? table in your textbook, please research and assess a current corporate or political leader to see if they have

08 Mar Using the Traits Associated with Leadership?? table in your textbook, please research and assess a current corporate or political leader to see if they have

Posted at 04:13h in Business & Finance / Management by

Using the “Traits Associated with Leadership” table in your textbook, please research and assess a current corporate or political leader to see if they have the traits to be a true leader. Does this person meet the criteria discussed in the textbook for being an effective leader? What type of leaders are they?
Please cite all sources in MLA format; this should be 800 or more words.

Ch-13-PPTaccessible.pptx

Fundamentals of Management

Eleventh Edition

Chapter 13

Leadership and Trust

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Learning Objectives

13.1 Define leader and leadership.

13.2 Compare and contrast early leadership theories.

13.3 Describe the four major contingency leadership theories.

13.4 Describe modern views of leadership and the issues facing today’s leaders.

13.5 Discuss trust as the essence of leadership.

After studying this chapter, you will be able to:

Define leader and leadership.

Compare and contrast early leadership theories.

Describe the four major contingency leadership theories.

Describe modern views of leadership and the issues facing today’s leaders.

Discuss trust as the essence of leadership.

Learning Objective 13.1

Define leader and leadership.

Leaders and Leadership

Leader:

someone who can influence others and who has managerial authority.

Leadership:

the process of leading a group and influencing that group to achieve its goals.

A leader is someone who can influence others and who has managerial authority. Leadership is what leaders do—that is, the process of leading a group and influencing that group to achieve its goals.

Because leading is one of the four management functions, ideally all managers should be leaders. Let’s study leaders and leadership from a managerial perspective, with research aimed at answering the question: “What is an effective leader?”

Learning Objective 13.2

Compare and contrast early leadership theories.

Trait Theories of Leadership

Researchers began studying leadership in the early part of the twentieth century and focused on the:

The person (leader trait theories).

The behaviors–how the leader interacted with his or her group members (behavior theories).

When asked the question, “What do you know about leadership?” most people cite a list of qualities they admire in leaders—intelligence, charisma, decisiveness, enthusiasm, strength, bravery, integrity, and self-confidence, and so forth.

That’s the trait theories of leadership in a nutshell—the search for traits or characteristics that differentiate leaders from nonleaders. If this concept was valid . . . all leaders would have to possess those unique and consistent characteristics, making it easy to find leaders in organizations.

But despite the best efforts of researchers, finding a set of traits that would always differentiate a leader (the person) from a nonleader hasn’t happened.

What Traits Do Leaders Have?

Exhibit 13.1 Traits Associated with Leadership

Source: Based on S. A. Kirkpatrick and E. A. Locke, “Leadership: Do Traits Really Matter?” Academy of Management Executive, May 1991, p p. 48–60; and T. A. Judge, J. E. Bono, R. Ilies, and M. W. Gerhardt, “Personality and Leadership: A Qualitative and Quantitative Review,” Journal of Applied Psychology, August 2002, p p. 765–80.

Attempts to identify traits consistently associated with the process of leadership (the process, not the person) have been more successful. The seven traits associated with leadership are described in Exhibit 13.1.

The seven traits associated with effective leadership are: drive, desire to lead, honesty and integrity, self-confidence, intelligence, job-relevant knowledge, and extraversion.

Next, researchers recognized that the identification of effective leaders needed to include interactions of leaders with their group members, as well as situational factors. Possessing the appropriate traits only made it more likely that an individual would be an effective leader.

Therefore, leadership research from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s turned to finding the preferred behavioral styles that leaders demonstrated. Researchers wondered whether there was something unique in the behavior of effective leaders.

Long Description:

The traits are as follows. 1. Drive: Leaders exhibit a high effort level. They have a relatively high desire for achievement, they are ambitions, the have a lot of energy, they are tirelessly persistent in their activities, and they show initiative. 2. Desire to lead: Leaders have a strong desire to influence and lead others. They demonstrate the willingness to take responsibility. 3. Honesty and integrity: Leaders build trusting relationships with followers by being truthful, or nondeceitful, and by showing high consistency between word and deed. 4. Self-confidence: Followers look to leaders who don’t self-doubt. Leaders, therefore, need to show self-confidence in order to convince followers of the rightness of their goals and decisions. 5. Intelligence: Leaders need to be intelligent enough to gather, synthesize, and interpret large amounts of information, and they need to able to create visions, solve problems, and make correct decisions. 6. Job-relevant knowledge. Effective leaders have a high degree of knowledge about the company, industry, and technical matters. In-depth knowledge allows leaders to make well-informed decisions and to understand the implications of those decisions. 7. Extraversion: Leaders are energetic, lively people. They are sociable, assertive, and rarely silent or withdrawn. 8. Proneness to guilt: Guilt proneness is positively related to leadership effectiveness because is produces a strong sense of responsibility for others.

Behavioral Theories of Leadership

Would behavioral theories of leadership provide more definitive answers about the nature of leadership?

If behavioral theories could identify critical behavioral determinants of leadership, people could actually be trained to be leaders. This is the premise behind management development programs.

Let’s look at some major studies of leadership: University of Iowa, Ohio State, University of Michigan, and the Managerial Grid.

University of lowa and Ohio State Studies

University of

Behavioral Dimension

Democratic style: involving subordinates, delegating authority, and encouraging participation

Autocratic style: dictating work methods, centralizing decision making, and limiting participation

Laissez-faire style: giving group freedom to make decisions and complete work

CONCLUSION

Democratic style of leadership was most effective, although later studies showed mixed results.

Ohio

Behavioral Dimension

Consideration: being considerate of followers’ ideas and feelings

Initiating structure: structuring work and work relationships to meet job goals

CONCLUSION

High–high leader (high in consideration and high in initiating structure) achieved high subordinate performance and satisfaction, but not in all situations

The University of Iowa study identified three leadership styles: democratic, which means involving subordinates, delegating authority, and encouraging participation; autocratic, which means dictating work methods, centralizing decision making, and limiting participation; and laissez-faire, which means giving a group freedom to make decisions and to complete work. This study concluded that the democratic style of leadership was most effective, although later studies showed mixed results.

The Ohio State study identified two factors, consideration, which involves being considerate of followers’ ideas and feelings; and initiating structure, which involves structuring work and work relationships to meet job goals. The study concluded that a high–high leader (high in consideration and high in initiating structure) achieved high subordinate performance and satisfaction, but not in all situations.

University of Michigan Study and Managerial Grid

University of

Behavioral Dimension

Employee oriented: emphasized interpersonal relationships and taking care of employees’ needs

Production oriented: emphasized technical or task aspects of job

CONCLUSION

Employee-oriented leaders were associated with high group productivity and higher job satisfaction.

Managerial

Behavioral Dimension

Concern for people: measured leader’s concern for subordinates on a scale of 1 to 9 (low to high)

Concern for production: measured leader’s concern for getting job done on a scale 1 to 9 (low to high)

CONCLUSION

Leaders performed best with a 9,9 style (high concern for production and high concern for people).

The University of Michigan study identified two styles, employee oriented, which emphasizes interpersonal relationships and taking care of employees’ needs; and production oriented, which emphasizes technical or task aspects of a job. The study concluded that employee-oriented leaders were associated with high group productivity and higher job satisfaction.

The Managerial Grid uses two behavioral dimensions, concern for people, which measures a leader’s concern for subordinates on a scale of 1 to 9 (low to high); and concern for production, which measures a leader’s concern for getting a job done on a scale 1 to 9 (low to high). The conclusion is that leaders performed best with a 9,9 style (high concern for production and high concern for people).

Situational Leadership

Which leadership styles might be suitable in different situations, and what are those different situations?

The dual nature of leader behaviors—that is, focusing on the work to be done and focusing on the employees—is an important characteristic of each of these studies.

Leadership researchers were discovering that predicting leadership success involved something more complex than isolating a few leader traits or preferable behaviors. They began looking at situational influences. Specifically, which leadership styles might be suitable in different situations and what were these different situations?

Learning Objective 13.3

Describe the four major contingency leadership theories.

Least-Preferred Coworker Questionnaire

Now let’s examine four contingency theories—Fiedler, Hersey-Blanchard, leader-participation, and path-goal—that each look at defining leadership style and the situation, and attempt to answer the contingency: If this is the context (or situation), then this is the best leadership style to use.

The first comprehensive contingency model for leadership was developed by Fred Fiedler and was based on the premise that a certain leadership style would be most effective across all different types of situations.

Fiedler proposed that a key factor in leadership success was an individual’s basic leadership style, which could be categorized as either task oriented or relationship oriented. To measure a leader’s style, Fiedler developed the least-preferred coworker (L P C) questionnaire. This questionnaire contained 18 pairs of contrasting adjectives—such as pleasant–unpleasant and boring–interesting. Respondents were asked to think of all the coworkers they had ever had and to describe that one person with whom they least enjoyed working by rating him or her on a scale of 1 to 8 for each of the sets of adjectives.

If the leader described the least preferred coworker in relatively positive terms, then the leader was primarily interested in good personal relations with coworkers and the style would be described as relationship oriented. In contrast, if the leader saw the least preferred coworker in relatively unfavorable terms, then that leader was primarily interested in productivity and his or her style would be labeled as task oriented.

Fiedler did acknowledge that a small number of people might fall between these two extremes, but he also assumed a person’s leadership style was fixed regardless of the situation.

Richard Branson, founder and C E O of Virgin Group, is a relationship oriented leader. Pictured here with an in-flight teammate while showing the interior of a new Virgin airplane, Branson is fun loving, takes a personal interest in the needs of employees, emphasizes interpersonal relations, and accepts individual differences among workers.

Fiedler’s Model

Exhibit 13.2 The Fiedler Model

After an individual’s leadership style had been assessed through the L P C, the leader was matched with the situation. Fiedler’s research uncovered three contingency dimensions that defined the key situational factors in leader effectiveness as:

Leader-member relations: The degree of confidence, trust, and respect employees had for their leader; rated as either good or poor.

Task structure: The degree to which job assignments were formalized and structured; rated as either high or low.

Position power: The degree of influence a leader had over activities such as hiring, firing, discipline, promotions, and salary increases; rated as either strong or weak.

Each leadership situation was evaluated in terms of these three contingency variables, which, when combined, produced eight possible situations that were either favorable or unfavorable for the leader. (See the bottom of the chart in Exhibit 12.2.) Situations I, II, and III were classified as highly favorable for the leader. Situations IV, V, and VI were moderately favorable for the leader. Situations VII and VIII were described as highly unfavorable for the leader.

Once Fiedler had described the leader variables and the situational variables, he could define the specific contingencies for leadership effectiveness. To do so, he studied 1,200 groups to compare relationship-oriented versus task-oriented leadership styles in each of the eight situational categories. He concluded that task-oriented leaders performed better in very favorable and in very unfavorable situations. (See the top of Exhibit 13.2 where performance is shown on the vertical axis and situation favorableness is shown on the horizontal axis.) On the other hand, relationship-oriented leaders performed better in moderately favorable situations.

Research testing the overall validity of Fiedler’s model has shown considerable evidence to support it. However, its major criticisms include:

It’s unrealistic to assume that a person can’t change his or her leadership style to fit the situation.

The L P C wasn’t very practical.

The situation variables were difficult to assess.

Despite its shortcomings, the Fiedler model showed that effective leadership style needed to reflect situational factors.

Long Description:

The data from the graph are as follows. Task-oriented performance is good under favorable and unfavorable conditions, and poor under moderate conditions. Relationship-oriented performance is poor under favorable and unfavorable conditions, and good under moderate conditions. The table shows four row headers: Category, leader-member relations, tasks structure, and position power. The column entries are as follows. Column 1: 1, good, high, strong. Column 2: 2, good, high, weak. Column 3: 3, good, low, strong. Column 4: 4, good, low, weak. Column 5: 5, poor, high, strong. Column 6: 6, poor, high, weak. Column 7: 7, poor, low, strong. Column 8: 8, poor, low, weak. Categories 1 and 2 correspond to highly favorable, categories 4 and 5 correspond to moderate, and categories 7 and 8 correspond to highly unfavorable.

Situational Leadership Theory (1 of 2)

Why does a leadership theory focus on the followers?

What does readiness mean?

The Situational Leadership Theory (S L T) is a contingency theory that focuses on followers’ readiness. It was developed by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard and enjoys a strong following among management development specialists.

Let’s stop here to clarify two points: (1) why a leadership theory focuses on the followers, and (2) what is meant by the term readiness. The emphasis on the followers reflects the reality that it is the followers who accept or reject the leader, regardless of what the leader does, so the group’s effectiveness depends on the actions of the followers. Readiness, as defined by Hersey and Blanchard, refers to the extent to which people have the ability and willingness to accomplish a specific task.

S L T uses the same two leadership dimensions that Fiedler identified—task and relationship behaviors—but takes it a step further by considering each as either high or low and then combining them into four specific leadership styles.

Situational Leadership Theory (2 of 2)

LEADER

FOLLOWERS

Now—let’s put the two together!

Telling (high task–low relationship), in which the leader defines roles and tells people what, how, when, and where to do various tasks.

Selling (high task–high relationship), in which the leader provides both directive and supportive behavior.

Participating (low task–high relationship), in which the leader and followers share in decision making and the main role of the leader is facilitating and communicating.

Delegating (low task–low relationship), in which the leader provides little direction or support.

The final component in the model is the four stages of follower readiness:

R1: People are both unable and unwilling to take responsibility for doing something. Followers aren’t competent or confident.

R2: People are unable but willing to do the necessary job tasks. Followers are motivated but lack the appropriate skills.

R3: People are able but unwilling to do what the leader wants. Followers are competent but don’t want to do something.

R4: People are both able and willing to do what is asked of them.

S L T essentially views the leader-follower relationship like that of a parent and a child, in which a parent needs to relinquish control when a child becomes more mature and responsible. As followers reach higher levels of readiness, the leader responds not only by decreasing control over their activities but also by decreasing relationship behaviors.

Leader-Participation Model

Exhibit 13.3 Contingency Variables in the Revised Leader-Participation Model

Importance of the decision

Importance of obtaining follower commitment to the decision

Whether the leader has sufficient information to make a good decision

How well structured the problem is

Whether an autocratic decision would receive follower commitment

Whether followers “buy into” the organization’s goals

Whether there is likely to be conflict among followers over solution alternatives

Whether followers have the necessary information to make a good decision

Time constraints on the leader that may limit follower involvement

Whether costs to bring geographically dispersed members together are justified

Importance to the leader of minimizing the time it takes to make the decision

Importance of using participation as a tool for developing follower decision skills

In 1973, Victor Vroom and Phillip Yetton developed a leader-participation model that related leadership behavior and participation to decision making. Recognizing that task structures have varying demands for routine and nonroutine activities, these researchers argued that leader behavior must adjust to reflect the task structure.

Vroom and Yetton’s model was normative; that is, it provided a sequential set of rules to be followed in determining the form and amount of participation in decision making in different types of situations. The model was a decision tree incorporating seven contingencies (the relevance of which could be identified by making yes or no choices) and five alternative leadership styles. More recent work by Vroom and Arthur Jago has expanded the contingency variables to twelve, as listed in Exhibit 13.3.

The original leader-participation model provided some solid, empirically supported insights into key contingency variables related to leadership effectiveness. It confirmed that leadership research should be directed at the situation rather than at the person—that is, it should talk about autocratic and participative situations rather than autocratic and participative leaders.

Path-Goal Theory

Four leadership behaviors:

Directive leader

Supportive leader

Participative leader

Achievement-oriented leader

Another approach to understanding leadership is path-goal theory, which states that the leader’s job is to assist followers in attaining their goals and to provide direction or support needed to ensure that their goals are compatible with the goals of the group or organization.

Developed by Robert House, path-goal theory takes key elements from the expectancy theory of motivation. The term path-goal derives from the belief that effective leaders clarify the path to help their followers get from where they are to the achievement of their work goals and to make the journey along the path easier by reducing roadblocks and pitfalls.

House identified four leadership behaviors:

A directive leader lets subordinates know what’s expected of them, schedules work to be done, and gives specific guidance on how to accomplish tasks.

A supportive leader shows concern for the needs of followers and is friendly.

A participative leader consults with group members and uses their suggestions before making a decision.

An achievement-oriented leader sets challenging goals and expects followers to perform at their highest level.

The Path-Goal Model

Exhibit 13.4 Path-Goal Model

In contrast to Fiedler’s view that a leader couldn’t change his or her behavior, House assumed that leaders are flexible and can display any or all of these leadership styles depending on the situation.

As Exhibit 13.4 illustrates, path-goal theory proposes two situational (or contingency) variables that moderate the leadership behavior-outcome relationship:

Those in the environment that are outside the control of the follower (such as task structure, formal authority system, and the work group).

Those that are part of the personal characteristics of the follower (which include locus of control, experience, and perceived ability).

Environmental factors determine the type of leadership behavior required to maximize subordinate outcomes. Personal characteristics of the follower determine how to interpret the environment and leadership behavior. For example, some predictions from path-goal theory are:

Directive leadership leads to greater satisfaction when tasks are ambiguous or stressful and followers aren’t sure what to do.

Supportive leadership results in high employee performance and satisfaction when subordinates are performing structured tasks.

Subordinates with an internal locus of control will be more satisfied with a participative style of leadership.

Research findings on the path-goal model have been mixed due to the number of variables to examine. However, evidence does show that an employee’s performance and satisfaction are likely to be positively influenced when the leader chooses a leadership style that compensates for shortcomings in either the employee or the work setting.

Long Description:

The factors that affect outcomes are environmental contingency factors, leader behavior, and employee contingency factors. Environmental contingency factors include task structure, formal authority system, and work group. Leader behavior includes directive, supportive, participative, and achievement oriented. Employee contingency factors include locus of control, experience, and perceived ability. Outcomes include performance and satisfaction.

Learning Objective 13.4

Describe modern views of leadership and the issues facing today’s leaders.

Leader-Member Exchange Theory

A leadership theory that says leaders create in-groups and out-groups and those in the in-group will have higher performance ratings, less turnov

08 Mar Using the Traits Associated with Leadership?? table in your textbook, please research and assess a current corporate or political leader to see if they have

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