Introduction to Management Chapter 14: Leadership

Introduction to Management, Chapter 14: Leadership

• Learning Objectives: Explain leadership, effective leadership, ineffective leadership, and power sources. Identify leadership traits, behaviors, and limitations. Explain how contingency models of leadership enhance our understanding of effective leadership and management. Describe transformational leadership. Characterize the relationship between gender and leadership, and emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness.

The Nature of Leadership

• Leadership: The process by which a person influences others to achieve group or organizational goals.
• Leader: An individual who exerts influence over others to achieve group or organizational goals.

Personal Leadership Style and Managerial Tasks

• Personal leadership style: Specific ways a manager influences others, shaping how they approach management tasks. Developing a style can be challenging.
• Distinction between managers and leaders: Managers establish and implement procedures for smooth functioning. Leaders look to the future and chart the organization's course.

Servant Leader

• Servant leader: A leader who has a strong desire to work for the benefit of others and shares power with followers.

Leadership Across Cultures

• European managers: Often more people-oriented than American or Japanese managers.
• Japanese managers: Group-oriented, focusing less on profitability compared to U.S. managers. Time horizons are affected by culture in international firms. (Examples: Europe's large international firms' philosophy lies between the long-term Japanese approach and short-term U.S. approach).

Sources of Managerial Power

• Diagram shows sources of power (Reward, Expert, Coercive, Referent, Legitimate) radiating from a central "Power" point.

Power: The Key to Leadership

• Legitimate power: Authority derived from position in the organizational hierarchy.
• Reward power: Ability to give or withhold tangible and intangible rewards.
• Coercive power: Ability to punish others. Overuse can lead to dangerous work conditions. Examples include verbal warnings, pay cuts, and dismissal.
• Expert power: Power based on special knowledge, skills, and expertise. Used in a guiding or coaching manner.
• Referent power: Power stemming from respect, admiration, and loyalty from employees and coworkers. Managers who are likable and whom employees wish to emulate possess this power.

Empowerment: An Ingredient in Modern Management

• Empowerment: The process of giving employees authority to make decisions, be responsible for their outcomes, improve quality, and cut costs. Empowerment increases a manager's ability to get things done, workers' involvement, motivation, and commitment. It frees up managers to focus on pressing concerns.

Trait and Behavior Models of Leadership

• Trait model: Focused on identifying personal characteristics that produce effective leadership. Leader's skills, abilities, knowledge, and expertise. (Further detail includes specific traits e.g. intelligence, knowledge/expertise, dominance, self-confidence, high energy, tolerance for stress, integrity/honesty, and maturity)
• Behavioral model: Identifies two basic leadership behaviors. Consideration and Initiating Structure (Specific examples mentioned Costco).

Contingency Models of Leadership

• Contingency models: Traits or behaviors that contribute to effective leadership in one situation might lead to ineffectiveness in another. These models consider the situation (context). (Example: Fielder's model)
• Fiedler's model: Effective leadership contingent on both leader characteristics and the situation.
  • Two leadership styles
    • Relationship-oriented (leaders concerned with relationships and being liked)
    • Task-oriented (leaders focused on ensuring high employee performance to get the job done)

House's Path-Goal Theory

• Contingency model proposing that effective leaders motivate employees to achieve goals by:
  • Clearly identifying outcomes employees desire from their jobs.
  • Rewarding employees for high performance and work goal attainment.
  • Clarifying the paths leading to work goal attainment.

Path-Goal Leadership Behaviors

• Directive behaviors: Setting goals, assigning tasks, showing employees how to complete them, taking steps to improve performance.
• Supportive behaviors: Expressing concern, looking out for employees' interests.
• Participative behaviors: Giving employees a voice in decisions affecting them.
• Achievement-oriented behaviors: Setting challenging goals and believing in employees' capabilities.

Transformational Leadership

• Transformational leadership: Leaders aware of the importance of employee jobs to organizational goals. They are mindful of employee needs for personal growth. Leaders motivate employees to work for the good of the organization. Charisma, intellectually stimulating employees, and developmental consideration are key components.

Being a Charismatic Leader

• Charismatic leader: Enthusiastic, self-confident, clearly communicates vision, excites employees, and shares information (communication strategy) to address needed change.

The Distinction between Transformational and Transactional Leadership

• Transactional leaders: Motivate employees by rewarding high performance and reprimanding low performance.
• Transformational leaders: Use transactional leadership as a tool to see the bigger picture. Employees have more job satisfaction, performance levels are higher, and employees trust leaders and feel fairly treated.

Gender and Leadership

• More women in management roles than a decade ago. Still relatively few women in top/middle management in some organizations. Despite stereotypes, research suggests no gender-based difference in leadership effectiveness.

Emotional Intelligence and Leadership

• Positive moods in leaders lead to better coordination in groups. Negative moods in leaders cause increased effort. Emotional intelligence helps leaders develop a vision, motivate employees toward the vision, and energize them to achieve the vision.
  • Behaviors for leading with emotional intelligence: Empathy, communication skills, managing emotions.

Communication and Management

• Communication: Sharing information among individuals or groups to build common understanding; a human endeavor.
• The importance of good communication impacts efficiency in new technologies and in improving the quality and responsiveness of products, services, and customer initiatives, and innovation.

The Communication Process

• Diagram detailing stages of communication including
  • Sender, Encoding, Message, Medium, Noise, Decoding, Receiver, Feedback
• Verbal and non-verbal communication.
• Communication networks in groups and teams and their connection to technology advancements.

Information Richness

• The amount of information a communication medium can convey that enables sender and receiver to reach a shared understanding. Information richness of communication media ranges from high (e.g., face-to-face) to low (e.g., impersonal written). Detailing various communication media (e.g., face-to-face, video-conferencing, spoken communication, personally addressed written, impersonal written communication, blogs, and social networking sites).

Dangers of Ineffective Communication

• Ineffective communication can be dangerous and harm competitive advantage. Harvard University studies illustrate how improvements in communication can drastically reduce risks of adverse events in patients in hospitals (e.g., medical errors) by 30% or more.

The Role of Perception in Communication

• Perception:  The process where people select, organize, and interpret sensory input to understand the world around them. It's influenced by personalities, values, attitudes, and moods, and also by past experiences and knowledge. The presence of biases (such as stereotypes) can alter perceptions in communication.