Organisational Behaviour #11 - Effective Leadership

[samvara]

Yay for leadership! This was a very theory oriented class and felt a little substance-free - chatting to one of the other students we thought it might just be because it's all theory and this is a hard topic to pin down. We did our last test too, individual was 80% and team was 95% which is looking good for a decent overall grade (if you think I maybe have a spreadsheet for this then you think correct). I also got complimented by one of the men on the shoes I wore last week which was simultaneously flattering and maddeningly reflective of the culture I live in.

Myths of Leadership: leaders are found at the top of organisations, leaders have titles, there is a 'perfect' leader, leaders know everything. Where do we get our myths? The same place we get everything else, our lives :p

Leadership may be defined as the process of influencing people and providing and environment for them to achieve team or organisational objectives. This is distinct from Management which is about creating order (plan, budget, organise, control, solve) whereas Leadership is more about creating change (direction, vision, alignment, inspiration, motivation). You can do both at the same time :p

Seven Leadership Competencies according to Organisational Behaviour on the Pacific Rim

• Emotional Intelligence: Ability to perceive, assimilate, understand and regulate emotions (yours and others)
• Integrity: honesty, words = deeds
• Drive: inner motivation to pursue goals, need to achieve, quest to learn
• Leadership motivation: need for power to achieve team/organisational goals
• Self-confidence: belief in one's ability to lead others
• Intelligence: ability to analyse problems and opportunities
• Knowledge: familiar with relevant business environment, aids intuitive decision making

Then we had a long talk about whether you could train leaders or whether it was better to identify and recruit them (nature versus nurture). I suspect you can train some things (emotional intelligence, self-confidence, business knowledge) but you need some things to be there (integrity, drive, leadership motivation, intelligence).

Another way to break down analysis of leadership is to look at various Leadership behaviours.

• People-oriented: showing mutual trust and respect, concern for employee needs and welfare
• Task-oriented: assigns specific tasks, ensures rules are followed, pushes employees to peak performance

I'd argue you can, and need to do both but I can see how you'd tend towards your preferred style if you came with a strong preference. The more people oriented leaders are likely to have lower staff turnover and less absenteeism but may not have the same levels of productivity as the task oriented leaders.

Path-goal leadership styles is all about leaders behaving in ways that will trigger appropriate (desired) outcomes and I am going to shamelessly paste this from wikipedia rather than typing up my own notes.

• The directive path-goal clarifying leader behavior refers to situations where the leader lets followers know what is expected of them and tells them how to perform their tasks. The theory argues that this behavior has the most positive effect when the subordinates' role and task demands are ambiguous and intrinsically satisfying.^[5]

• The achievement-oriented leader behavior refers to situations where the leader sets challenging goals for followers, expects them to perform at their highest level, and shows confidence in their ability to meet this expectation.^[5] Occupation in which the achievement motive were most predominant were technical jobs, sales persons, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs.^[2]

• The participative leader behavior involves leaders consulting with followers and asking for their suggestions before making a decision. This behavior is predominant when subordinates are highly personally involved in their work.^[2]

• The supportive leader behavior is directed towards the satisfaction of subordinates needs and preferences. The leader shows concern for the followers’ psychological well being.^[5] This behavior is especially needed in situations in which tasks or relationships are psychologically or physically distressing.^[2]

I can state from personal experience that I don't think about it in these terms when I'm doing it, I jump from style to style depending on what seems to be needed at the time and that it's not that clear-cut for me.

We talked about other leadership models including the Situational Leadership Model which talks about adapting your leadership style to the 'readiness' of the people you're leading and evaluating them in terms of being 'able' and 'willing' - there's a graph if you're interested.

We also talked about Leadership Substitutes: conditions that can limit a leader's influence or make a particular leadership style unnecessary such as trained and experienced staff, a highly cohesive team, and staff who can lead themselves.

Transactional Leadership is about a cost-benefit exchange process where people are rewarded for compliance and the leader clarifies performance criteria and said rewards. This then can be built on for Transformational Leadership in which the leader generates awareness and acceptance of the group purpose and missions, inspires people, and builds confidence and alignment with the organisation. This kind of leadership is associated with higher employee satisfaction, performance, organisational citizenship and creativity. Transformational leaders are often Charismatic Leaders and while they seem closely connected the emerging view is that:

• charisma is distinct from transformational leadership
• charisma is a personal trait that might help transform or might just help the leader
• charismatic leadership might even create dependence, not empowerment

Create a vision! Communicate the vision! Model the vision! Build Commitment!
Interestingly, sometimes we attribute leadership and responsibility as if we just *really* want someone to be responsible. Not because circumstances are actually within their control. Anais Nin said "We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are." and I think she has a point, if we want to have a 'someone in charge' and we have stereotypes of what makes a leader then we're likely to attribute leadership to someone then punish them for not performing.

Then we went off and worked through some pre-exam sample questions and talked technique for a while.