Chapter 14 Leadership in Organizational Settings
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leadership in Organizational settings
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, students should be able to:
Define leadership.
List seven competencies of effective leaders.
Describe the people-oriented and task-oriented leadership styles.
Outline the path-goal theory of leadership.
Discuss the importance of Fiedler’s contingency model of leadership.
Contrast transactional with transformational leadership.
Describe the four elements of transformational leadership.
Identify three reasons why people inflate the importance of leadership.
Explain how societal culture influences our perceptions of effective leaders.
Discuss similarities and differences in the leadership styles of women and men.
Chapter Glossary
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Chapter 14 Leadership in Organizational Settings
Fiedler’s contingency model Developed by Fred Fiedler, suggests that leader effectiveness depends on whether the person’s natural leadership style is appropriately matched to the situation.
implicit leadership theory The idea that it is perceptual processes that cause people to inflate the importance of leadership in explaining organizational events.
Leadership Grid® A leadership model that assesses leadership effectiveness in terms of the person’s level of task-oriented and people-oriented style.
leadership Influencing, motivating, and enabling others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members.
leadership substitutes A theory that identifies contingencies that either limit the leader’s ability to influence subordinates or make that particular leadership style unnecessary.
path–goal leadership theory A contingency theory of leadership based on expectancy theory of motivation that relates several leadership styles to specific employee and situational contingencies.
servant leadership The belief that leaders serve followers by understanding their needs and facilitating their work performance.
situational leadership model Developed by Hersey and Blanchard, suggests that effective leaders vary their style with the “readiness” of followers.
transactional leadership Leadership that helps organizations achieve their current objectives more efficiently, such as linking job performance to valued rewards and ensuring that employees have the resources needed to get the job done.
transformational leadership A leadership perspective that explains how leaders change teams or organizations by creating, communicating, and mod- elling a vision for the organization or work unit, and inspiring employees to strive for that vision.
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Chapter 14 Leadership in Organizational Settings
Chapter Synopsis
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Chapter 14 Leadership in Organizational Settings
Leadership is a complex concept that is defined as the ability to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members. Leaders use influence to motivate followers, and arrange the work environment so that they do the job more effectively. Leaders exist throughout the organization, not just in the executive suite.
The competency perspective tries to identify the characteristics of effective leaders. Recent writing suggests that leaders have emotional intelligence, integrity, drive, leadership motivation, , self-confidence, above-average intelligence, and knowledge of the business. The behavioural perspective of leadership identified two clusters of leader behaviour, people-oriented and task-oriented. People-oriented behaviours include showing mutual trust and respect for subordinates, demonstrating a genuine concern for their needs, and having a desire to look out for their welfare. Task-oriented behaviours include assigning employees to specific tasks, clarify their work duties and procedures, ensure that they follow company rules, and push them to reach their performance capacity.
The contingency perspective of leadership takes the view that effective leaders diagnose the situation and adapt their style to fit that situation. The path-goal model is the prominent contingency theory that identifies four leadership styles – directive, supportive, participative, and achievement-oriented -- and several contingencies relating to the characteristics of the employee and of the situation.
Two other contingency leadership theories include the situational leadership model and Fiedler’s contingency theory. Research support is quite weak for both theories. However, a lasting element of Fiedler’s theory is the idea that leaders have natural styles and ,consequently, companies need to change the leader’s environment to suit their style. Leadership substitutes identifies contingencies that either limit the leader’s ability to influence subordinates or make that particular leadership style unnecessary. This idea will become more important as organizations remove supervisors and shift toward team-based structures.
Transformational leaders create a strategic vision, communicate that vision through framing and use of metaphors, model the vision by ‘walking the talk’ and acting consistently, and build commitment toward the vision. This contrasts with transactional leadership, which involves linking job performance to valued rewards and ensuring that employees have the resources needed to get the job done. The contingency and behavioural perspectives adopt the transactional view of leadership.
According to the implicit leadership perspective, people inflate the importance of leadership through attribution, stereotyping, and fundamental needs for human control. Implicit leadership theory is evident across cultures because cultural values shape the behaviours that followers expect of their leaders. Cultural values also influence the leader’s personal values which, in turn, influence his or her leadership practices. The GLOBE Project data reveal that there are similarities and differences in the concept and preferred practice of leadership across cultures.
Women generally do not differ from men in the degree of people-oriented or task-oriented leadership. However, female leaders more often adopt a participative style. Research also suggests that people evaluate female leaders based on gender stereotypes, which may result in higher or lower ratings.
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Chapter 14 Leadership in Organizational Settings
PowerPoint® Slides
Canadian Organizational Behaviour includes a complete set of Microsoft PowerPoint® files for each chapter. (Please contact your McGraw-Hill Ryerson representative to find out how instructors can receive these files.) In the lecture outline that follows, a thumbnail illustration of each PowerPoint slide for this chapter is placed beside the corresponding lecture material. The slide number helps you to see your location in the slide show sequence and to skip slides that you don’t want to show to the class. (To jump ahead or back to a particular slide, just type the slide number and hit the Enter or Return key.) The transparency masters for this chapter are very similar to the PowerPoint files.
Lecture Outline (with PowerPoint® slides)
Leadership in Organizational settingsSlide 1
Emerging View of Leadership
Slide 2 /
leadership in Organizational settings
Emerging view of leadership
• Cynthia Trudell, the Canadian executive who previously led the Saturn division of General Motors and is now President of Brunswick Corp.’s Sea Ray Group, recognizes the emerging view of leadership – “a great leader is one who has vision, perseverance, and the capacity to inspire others.”
What is Leadership?Slide 3 /
What is Leadership?
• The ability to influence. Motivate, and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members
• Apply various forms of influence – from subtle persuasion to direct application of power – to ensure that followers have the motivation and role clarity to achieve specific goals
• Arrange the work environment (e.g. allocate resources)
• Effective leaders teach and empower their employees to take leadership roles
Anyone in the organization can be a leader at appropriate time and place:
• Share leadership responsibilities in self-directed work teams
• Technology champions
Perspectives of LeadershipSlide 4 /
Perspectives of Leadership
• Competency (Trait) perspective -- effective leaders have identified competencies associated with effectiveness
• Behavioural perspective -- effective leaders engage in certain behaviours
• Contingency perspective -- effective leadership behaviours depend on the situation
• Transformational perspective -- effective leaders transform organizations through their vision, communication and ability to build commitment
• Implicit leadership perspective -- followers want to believe their leader is competent
Competency (Trait) Perspective of Leadership
Competencies
• The characteristics that lead to superior performance in a leadership role
• Includes a broad range of characteristics such as knowledge, skills, abilities and values
Early research focused on personality and physical traits
• Concluded that traits are relatively weak influences on leadership
Emerging view
• Increasing popularity of competency-based practices in organizations e.g. competency-based rewards
• Identification of competencies characteristic of effective leaders
Seven Leadership CompetenciesSlide 5 /
Seven competencies identified in contemporary research:
1. Emotional Intelligence
• Monitor emotions, discriminate among them, guide their thoughts and actions
l Requires self-monitoring personality
-- sensitive to situational cues
l Ability to empathize and build rapport
2. Integrity
• Truthfulness, turn words into deeds
• Possibly most important leadership trait because it maintains trust
3. Drive
l Inner motivation, high need for achievement
4. Leadership motivation
• Need for socialized power -- use power to help achieve organizational goals
Seven Leadership Competencies (con’T0Slide 6 /
5. Self-confidence
• Belief in one’s leadership ability (self-efficacy)
6. Intelligence
• Above average cognitive ability
• Able to analyze alternatives, identify opportunities
7. Knowledge of the business
• need to understand environment -- helps their intuition to recognize and act on opportunities
Competency Perspective LimitationsSlide 7 /
Limitations of Competency (Trait) Perspective
• Traits indicate leadership potential, not actual performance
• Implies a universal approach to leadership
- probably false -- leaders might not need all traits in all situations
• Some traits are subjective, so followers might have biased opinions of leaders on these traits based on stereotypes
Implications for practice
• Need to extend to all levels of hiring – not just senior executives
Leader Behaviour PerspectiveSlide 8 /
Behavioural Perspective of Leadership
Effective leaders demonstrate two behavioural clusters:
1. People-oriented leadership behaviours
• Showing mutual trust and respect
• Concern for employee needs
• Desire to look out for employee welfare
2. Task-oriented leadership behaviours
• Assign specific tasks
• Clarify work duties and procedures
• Ensure that employees follow company rules
l Establish stretch goals and push employees to achieve their performance capacity
Choosing Task versus People-Oriented Leadership
• People-oriented leadership
-- higher employee job satisfaction
-- lower absenteeism, grievances, and turnover
-- but also lower job performance
• Task-oriented leadership
-- lower employee job satisfaction
-- higher absenteeism and turnover
-- but also higher productivity and team unity
• Behavioral leadership scholars say that:
-- the two styles are independent of each other
-- best leaders are high on both
• Leadership Grid –applies notion that leaders should be high on both -- work with trainers to achieve maximum levels of concern for both production and people
Evaluating the Behavioral Leadership Perspective
• Universal perspective
-- overlooks importance of situation on best style i.e. high levels of both styles may not be best in all situations
• Laid the foundation for two main leadership styles in contingency theories – people-oriented and task-oriented
Contingency Perspective of Leadership
Most appropriate leadership behaviours or styles depend on the situation
Effective leaders adapt to the situation
Path-Goal Theory of Leadership
Based on expectancy theory
• Leaders strengthen P-to-O expectancy and valences
-- ensure best performers have needs fulfilled
• Leaders strengthen the E-to-P expectancy
-- provide information, support, and other resources to help employees complete their tasks
Path-Goal Leadership StylesSlide 9 /
Advocates servant leadership
• Servant leaders do not view their role as a position of power – they are coaches, stewards, and facilitators
Path-Goal leadership styles
• Can use more than one at a time
1. Directive – provide psychological structure
• Clarifies job duties, clarifies performance standards, ensures that procedures are followed
• Same as task-oriented leadership
2. Supportive – provide psychological support
• Friendly, approachable, shows concern, respect
• Same as people-oriented leadership
3. Participative – encourage and facilitate involvement
• Consults with employees, solicits suggestions
• Related to employee involvement practices
4. Achievement-oriented –encourage peak performance
• Sets challenging goals, high confidence in employees, expects improvement
• Applies goal setting, positive self-fulfilling prophecy
Path-Goal Leadership ModelSlide 10
Path-Goal Contingencies
Slide 11 (build) /
Path-Goal Leadership Model
• Effectiveness of the four styles depends on situation
• Consider employee and environmental contingencies
l Most elements of theory are supported in research
Contingencies of Path-Goal Theory
1. Skills and experience
• Unskilled and lack experience:
-- use directive style for information
-- use supportive style to help cope with stress
l Skilled and experienced employees
-- provide participative and achievement-oriented leadership
2. Locus of control
• External locus of control
-- use directive -- clarifies direction, less stress
l Internal locus of control
-- use participative and achievement leader styles
3. Task structure
• Routine
-- supportive style to cope with tedious or boring work
l Non-routine
-- complex tasks: less role ambiguity with directive
-- more discretion with participative
4. Team dynamics
• Low team cohesiveness
-- use supportive leadership to counter lack of peer support
l Positive norms
-- cohesive teams with performance-oriented norms act as a substitute for leadership interventions
l Negative norms
-- use directive style to redirect team norms/goals
Disadvantages of Path-Goal Theory
• Some parts of theory (e.g. achievement-oriented style) have little research
• May become too complex for practical use as more contingencies are added
Other Contingency Theories of LeadershipSlide 12 /
Other Contingency Theories of Leadership
Situational Leadership Model
(Note: model is fully described in supplemental lecture in this instructor’s guide)
• Developed by Hersey and Blanchard
• Effective leaders vary their style with the “readiness” of followers.
• Readiness -- employee’s or work team’s ability and willingness to accomplish a specific task
• Four leadership styles – telling, selling, participating, and delegating -- relate to level of task and people oriented behaviours
• Popular model, but lacks empirical support, according to three separate reviews; recent review concludes the theory has logical and internal inconsistencies
Fiedler’s Contingency Model
• Earliest contingency theory