Leadership and Management Basics

Leadership

• Leadership is the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and facilitating individual and collective efforts to achieve shared objectives (Yukl, 2010, p.8).
• Leadership produces change and movement, while management produces order and consistency.

Leadership vs. Management

• Leadership:

  • Establishes direction: Creates a vision, clarifies the big picture, sets strategies.
  • Aligns people: Communicates goals, seeks commitment, builds teams & alliances.
  • Motivates & inspires: Energizes, empowers subordinates.

• Management:

  • Planning & budgeting: Establishes agendas, sets timetables, allocates resources.
  • Organizing and staffing: Provides structure, makes job placements, establishes rules.
  • Controlling and problem solving: Develops incentives, generates solutions, takes corrective action.

Trait "Great Man" Theory

• Early leadership research posited that great leaders are born, not made, possessing innate traits.
• Suggested traits include intelligence, ambition, passion, physical appearance, desire to lead, and self-confidence.
• Limitations: Researchers have not developed a universally agreed-upon list and the traits are often vague and unclear. The theory doesn't account for situational factors.

Behavioral Theories of Leadership

• Leaders exhibit specific behavior patterns that can be identified.
• Effective leadership can be learned and practiced.
• Leaders could be trained to exhibit desired behaviors and build positive relationships with their followers.

1) Ohio State University Studies

• Initiating Structure: Defining roles, explaining expectations, structuring work, implementing rules.
• Consideration: Focus on people's welfare, developing relationships, trust, respect.

2) University of Michigan Studies

• Production-oriented: Emphasizes task aspects of the job, focusing on accomplishing group tasks.
• Employee-oriented: Emphasizes interpersonal relations, taking a personal interest in employees, accepting individual differences.

3) University of Iowa Studies (Kurt Lewin)

• Autocratic: Authoritarian, controlling, limits employee participation.
• Democratic: Involves employees in decision-making, delegates authority, and provides feedback.
• Laissez-faire: Leaves all decisions and control to the group.

Contingency Theories of Leadership

• Effective leadership style depends on the specific situation and circumstances.
• Leaders should adapt their style to match follower characteristics, organizational context, and environmental factors.

Leadership Styles

• Coercive: Demands immediate compliance (Do what I say). Effective in emergencies, but often harmful to morale if overused.
• Authoritative: Mobilizes people toward a vision; good leadership, fosters clarity, motivation, and flexibility.
• Affiliative: Focuses on emotional bonds and harmony; used to heal rifts or boost morale. Works best when used with other styles.
• Democratic: Builds consensus and participation; good for seeking input, but slow.
• Pacesetting: Sets high standards for performance (Do as I do); best for competent teams, and good for quick results.
• Coaching: Develops people for the future (Try this); best for improving skills.

Emotional Intelligence

• Contagious Emotions: Emotions spread from person to person. Leaders' emotions have a powerful impact on others.
• Negative Bias: Negative experiences and emotions have a stronger impact than positive ones.
• Emotional Intelligence: The capacity to recognize emotions in oneself and others to manage them effectively, and use emotional information to motivate and guide oneself and others.

Foundations of Emotional Intelligence

• Emotional Self-Awareness: Knowing one's emotions, strengths, weaknesses, drives, values and goals, along with their impact on others. Crucial for effective leadership.
• Emotional Self-Control: Controlling disruptive emotions and impulses to maintain effectiveness, especially in difficult situations.
• Overconfidence Bias: The subjective confidence in one's decision being higher than its objective accuracy. Can lead to poor decision making.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

• The set of moral principles and values that defines right and wrong.
• Ethical behavior conforms to societal moral principles - unethical acts are not necessarily illegal.
• Organizations have economic, legal, ethical, discretionary and environmental obligations to society and stakeholders (Carroll, 1979).

Diversity and Inclusion

• Diversity represents the multitude of individual differences and similarities among people.
• Homogeneity: Homogenous (similar); advantages are similarity breeds liking, high cohesion, low start-up costs, easier to reach agreement. Disadvantages include narrow perspectives, low motivation to change, or learn.
• Heterogeneity: Heterogeneous (dissimilar); advantages include richer pool of information, more learning, more complex representations, creativity, innovation, more specialization. Disadvantages include higher start-up costs, conflict, disagreement, too much complexity, and risk of marginalization.

Obstacles to Effective Diversity Management

• Social Identity Groups: Based on physical, social, mental characteristics.
• Social Identity Theory: Sense of self-esteem is tied to the groups we belong to. Groups provide a sense of belonging.
• Intergroup Bias: The tendency to perceive in-group members positively, and out-group members negatively.
• Attributional Biases: Systematic errors in perceiving characteristics of individuals.
• Hierarchy: An ordered ranking of people, groups or things. Higher status comes with more resources and power. It can lead to inequalities, and unequally distributing privileges and opportunities.

Explore the key concepts of leadership and management in this quiz. Learn how leadership differs from management, including traits and functions that define effective leadership. Test your knowledge on the theoretical underpinnings of these essential skills.