Contemporary Issues In Leadership

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CHAPTER 13 Contemporary Issues in Leadership

CHAPTER 13

Contemporary

Issues in

Leadership

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After studying this chapter, students should be able to:

1. Show how framing influences leadership effectiveness.

2. Define charismatic leadership and show how it influences followers.

3. Contrast transformational leadership and transactional leadership and discuss how

transformational leadership works.

4. Define authentic leadership and show why ethics and trust are vital to effective leadership.

5. Identify the three types of trust.

6. Demonstrate the importance of mentoring, self-leadership, and virtual leadership to our

understanding of leadership.

7. Identify when leadership may not be necessary.

Instructor Resources

Instructors may wish to use the following resources when presenting this chapter:

· Text Exercises

o OB in the News Before and After (p. 434)

o Myth or Science? Men Make Better Leaders Than Women (p. 430)

o International OB Cultural Variation in Charismatic Attributions (p. 433)

o Point/Counterpoint Keep Leaders On A Short Leash (p. 439)

o Experiential Exercise You Be the Judge: Which Vision Statement Is Effective? (p. 440)

o Ethical Dilemma Whole Foods Rahodeb (p. 441)

· Text Cases

o Case Incident 1 The Making Of A Great President (p. 441)

o Case Incident 2 Generation Gap: Mentors and Protégés (p. 442)

· Instructor’s Choice

o A Question of Ethics

Ø This section presents an exercise that is NOT found in the student's textbook. Instructor's Choice reinforces the text's emphasis through various activities. Some Instructor's Choice activities are centered around debates, group

exercises, Internet research, and student experiences. Some can be used in-class in their entirety, while others require some additional work on the student's part. The course instructor may choose to use these at anytime throughout the class—some may be more effective as icebreakers, while some may be used to pull together various concepts covered in the chapter.

WEB
EXERCISES
At the end of each chapter of this instructor’s manual, you will find suggested exercises and ideas for researching the WWW on OB topics. The exercises “Exploring OB Topics on the Web” are set up so that you can simply photocopy the pages, distribute them to your class, and make assignments accordingly. You may want to assign the exercises as an out-of-class activity or as lab activities with your class.

Summary and Implications for Managers

Organizations are increasingly searching for managers who can exhibit transformational leadership qualities. They want leaders with vision and the charisma to carry out their vision. And although true leadership effectiveness may be a result of exhibiting the right behaviors at the right time, the evidence is quite strong that people have a relatively uniform perception of what a leader should look like. They attribute “leadership” to people who are smart, personable, verbally adept, and the like. To the degree that managers project these qualities, others are likely to deem them leaders. There is increasing evidence that the effectiveness of charismatic and transformational leadership crosses cultural boundaries.

Effective managers today must develop trusting relationships with those they seek to lead because as organizations have become less stable and predictable, strong bonds of trust are likely to be replacing bureaucratic rules in defining expectations and relationships. Managers who aren’t trusted aren’t likely to be effective leaders.

For managers concerned with how to fill key positions in their organization with effective leaders, we have shown that tests and interviews help to identify people with leadership qualities. In addition to focusing on leadership selection, managers should also consider investing in leadership training. Many individuals with leadership potential can enhance their skills through formal courses, workshops, rotating job responsibilities, coaching, and mentoring.

The chapter opens with a description of Patagonia’s pessimistic visionary, Yvon Chouinard. Patagonia is famous for its outdoor gear and its eco-friendly ethic. The culture and values are based on environmentalism, informality and a love of the outdoors. Although Chouinard is pessimistic about the future, his socially responsible company has been very successful. He is a visionary who inspires others to transcend their own self-interests, even though he is somewhat unconventional.

Brief Chapter Outline

I. Inspirational Approaches to Leadership (PPTs 13–2 to 13–10)

A. Introduction

· Framing Issues

o Framing is a way to use language to manage meaning. It is a way for leaders to influence how events are seen and understood.

B. Charismatic Leadership

1. What Is Charismatic Leadership?

· Charismatic Leadership Theory

2. Are Charismatic Leaders Born or Made?

Individuals are born with traits that make them charismatic

· Most experts believe individuals can be trained to exhibit charismatic behavior

3. How Charismatic Leaders Influence Followers

· Appealing vision

· Vision statement

· High performance expectations

· A new set of values

4. Does Effective Charismatic Leadership Depend on the Situation?

· A strong correlation between charismatic leadership and high performance and satisfaction among followers

5. The Dark Side of Charismatic Leadership

· Use their charisma to shape company in their own image

· Level 5 leaders.

C. Transformational Leadership

1. Introduction

· Transformational leaders inspire followers to transcend their own self-interests for the good of the organization.

· They change followers’ awareness of issues by helping them to look at old problems in new ways; and they are able to excite, arouse, and inspire followers to put out extra effort to achieve group goals.

· Transformational leadership is built on top of transactional leadership—it produces levels of follower effort and performance that go beyond what would occur with a transactional approach alone.

2. Full Range of Leadership Model

· Laissez-Faire is most passive and least effective.

o Management by exception, slightly better

o Contingent reward leadership can be effective

o Individualized consideration

o Intellectual stimulation

o Inspirational motivation

o Idealized influence

3. How Transformational Leadership Works

· Encourage followers to be more innovative and creative

· Followers are likely to pursue ambitious goals

· Vision is also important

4. Evaluation of Transformational Leadership

· Evidence supports superiority of transformational leadership over transactional leadership

· Transformational leadership theory is not perfect

· Transformational leadership is correlated with lower turnover, higher productivity, and higher satisfaction

5. Transformational Leadership Versus Charismatic Leadership

· Measures of charisma and transformational leadership may be roughly equivalent

II. Authentic Leadership: Ethics and Trust are the Foundation of Leadership (PPTs 13–11 to 13–15)

A. What Is Authentic Leadership?

· Recent concept; not much research

· Focuses on the moral aspect of leadership

B. Ethics and Leadership

· Received little attention

· Means and goals

· Leadership is not value free

C. What Is Trust?

· Trust is “a positive expectation that another will not—through words, actions, or decisions—act opportunistically.”

· Five Key dimensions that underlie the concept of trust

o Integrity

o Competence

o Consistency

o Loyalty

o Openness

D. Trust and Leadership

· Trust is a primary attribute associated with leadership. When trust is broken, it can have serious adverse effects on a group’s performance.

· Honesty consistently ranks at the top of most people’s list of characteristics they admire in their leaders.

E. Three Types of Trust

1. Deterrence-Based Trust

· The most fragile relationships are contained in deterrence-based trust. One violation or inconsistency can destroy the relationship.

2. Knowledge-Based Trust

· Most organizational relationships are rooted in knowledge-based trust. It exists when you have adequate information about someone to understand them well enough to be able to accurately predict their behavior.

3. Identification-Based Trust

· The highest level of trust is achieved when there is an emotional connection between the parties. This is called identification-based trust.

F. Basic Principles of Trust (PPTs 13–15)

· Principles for understanding trust and mistrust

o Mistrust drives out trust.

o Trust begets trust.

o Growth often masks mistrust.

o Decline or downsizing tests the highest levels of trust.

o Trust increases cohesion.

o Mistrusting groups self-destruct.

o Mistrust generally reduces productivity.

G. Is Trust in Our Leaders in Decline?

· Reengineering, downsizing, and the increased use of temporary employees have undermined a lot of employees’ trust in management.

III. Contemporary Leadership Roles (PPTs 13–16 to 13–18)

. A. Mentoring

· A mentor is a senior employee who sponsors and supports a less-experienced employee (a protégé). The mentoring role includes coaching, counseling, and sponsorship.

· Some organizations have formal mentoring programs where mentors are officially assigned to new or high-potential employees, however, most organizations rely on informal mentoring—with senior managers personally selecting an employee and taking that employee on as a protégé.

B. Self-Leadership

· Proponents of self-leadership say that there are a set of processes through which individuals control their own behavior. How do leaders create self-leaders? The following ideas have been suggested:

o Model self-leadership.

o Encourage employees to create self-set goals.

o Encourage the use of self-rewards to strengthen and increase desirable behaviors.

o Create positive thought patterns.

o Create a climate of self-leadership.

o Encourage self-criticism.

C. Online Leadership

· Leadership research has been directed almost exclusively to face-to-face and verbal situations. The reality is that today’s managers and their employees are increasingly being linked by networks rather than geographical proximity.

· Some suggested guidelines for the on-line leader:

o In face-to-face communications, harsh words can be softened by nonverbal action such as a smile and comforting gestures. That nonverbal component does not exist with online interactions.

o The structure of words in a digital communication also has the power to motivate or demotivate the receiver. If the message is made up of full sentences it is perceived as less threatening than just phrases.

· Some managers whose face-to-face leadership skills are less than satisfactory may shine online. Their talents may lie in their writing skills and ability to read the messages behind written communiqués.

IV. Challenges to the Leadership Construct (PPTs 13–19 and 13–20)

A. Introduction

· Much of an organization’s success or failure is due to factors outside the influence of leadership. In many cases, success or failure is just a matter of being in the right or wrong place at a given time.

B. Leadership as an Attribution

· The attribution framework has shown that people characterize leaders as having such traits as intelligence, outgoing personality, strong verbal skills, aggressiveness, understanding, and industriousness.

· The attribution framework accounts for the conditions under which people use leadership to explain organizational outcomes. When an organization has either extremely negative or extremely positive performance, people are prone to make leadership attributions to explain the performance.

C. Substitutes and Neutralizers to Leadership

· Contrary to the arguments, leadership may not always be important. Data from numerous studies collectively demonstrate that, in many situations, whatever actions leaders exhibit are irrelevant.

· Certain individual, job, and organizational variables can act as substitutes for leadership or neutralize the leader’s effect to influence his or her followers.

· Neutralizers make it impossible for leader behavior to make any difference to follower outcomes. They negate the leader’s influence.

· Substitutes make a leader’s influence not only impossible but also unnecessary. They act as a replacement.

V. Finding and Creating Effective Leaders (PPT 13–21)

A. Selection

· The entire process that organizations go through to fill management positions is essentially an exercise in trying to identify individuals who will be effective leaders.

· Items of consideration during selection include:

o Reviewing the specific requirements for the position.

o Analyze the situation to ensure a proper match.

o Testing is useful for identifying and selecting leaders.

o Assess candidates for emotional intelligence.

o Interviews provide an opportunity to evaluate leadership candidates.

B. Training

· Billions are spent on leadership training and development every year.

VI. SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS FOR MANAGERS

A. Transformational leadership qualities are important

B. People attribute leadership to those who are

o Smart

o Personable

o Verbally adept

C. Managers must build trusting relationships with their followers

D. Selecting people with leadership qualities is important

E. Leadership training can enhance managers’ leadership skills

Expanded Chapter Outline

I. INSPIRATATIONAL APPROACHES TO LEADERSHIP

A. Framing is a way to use language to manage meaning. Way for leaders to influence how events are seen and understood.

o Analogous to what a photographer does

o Framing is relevant to leadership today. Framing is a powerful tool by which leaders influence how others see and interpret reality.

. B. Charismatic Leadership

1. What Is Charismatic Leadership?

· Charismatic Leadership Theory

o Followers make attributes of heroic or extraordinary leadership abilities when they observe certain behaviors

2. Are Charismatic Leaders Born or Made? (See Exhibit 13–1)

· Individuals are born with traits that make them charismatic.

· Most experts believe individuals can be trained to exhibit charismatic behavior.

o First, an individual needs to develop the aura of charisma by maintaining an optimistic view; using passion as a catalyst for generating enthusiasm; and communicating with the whole body, not just with words.

o Second, an individual draws others in by creating a bond that inspires others to follow.

o Third, the individual brings out the potential in followers by tapping into their emotions.