Leadership and Management Quiz

Chapter 4: Leadership Practice

• Students should be able to describe the differences between managing and leading.
• Students should be able to identify and explain leadership skills, characteristics, and attributes.
• Students should be able to describe change leadership roles.
• Students should be able to explain how leaders realize organizational strategy.

4.1 Introduction

• The role of the organization's leader has shifted from authoritarian to participative management styles.
• Interpersonal dimensions of leadership (cooperation, collaboration, communication) are essential.
• Leadership is critical for navigating organizational change and crisis.
• Key to leading change is balancing continuity and change, short-term and long-term actions, accountability and freedom, and planning and flexibility.

4.1.1 Definition

• Leadership influences individual or group behavior.
• Authentic leadership and character are key.
• Key attributes include financial literacy, ability to invest in people, trust, integrity, common sense, and empathy.
• Management is about coping with complexity, while leadership is about coping with change.
• Managers do things right; leaders do the right thing.

4.1.2 Competency of Leader

• Diagnosing: a cognitive skill for understanding current and future situations.
• Adapting: a behavioral skill to adjust behavior and resources for performance gaps.
• Communicating: a process skill for effective communication to achieve organizational goals.

Competency of Leader

• Management of attention: leaders create and communicate clear objectives and direction.
• Management of meaning: leaders clearly communicate to achieve understanding and awareness.
• Management of trust: leaders maintain consistency in complex and challenging circumstances.
• Management of self: leaders understand and utilize their strengths and weaknesses.

Competency of Leader (Steward and Chadwick, 1987)

• Decentralization.
• Head office roles shift to consulting, power breaking, and financing.
• Encourage entrepreneurial spirit and risk-taking.
• Breaking down inter-functional barriers.
• Leadership and people-focused approach.
• Evolving client or customer focus.
• Establishing informal links across levels.
• Move from controlling to enabling approaches for efficiency.

4.2 Leadership Vision & Strategy

• Corporate leaders enable people to contribute, solve problems, and learn from experience.
• Invisible assets include technology, knowledge, brand image, management skills, consumer loyalty, and distribution control.
• Leaders must explicitly state their strategy (vision) to mobilize the organization.

Benefits of Leadership Vision and Strategy

• Allows for coordination of activity.
• Provides direction to people.
• Boosts morale and self-esteem.
• Provides a shield against anxiety in periods of change.
• Fosters proactive planning over reactive planning.
• Allows people to plan, create, and learn from experience.
• Enables the development of invisible assets.

How Leaders Make Vision Achievable:

• Ensure strategy diffusion throughout the organization.
• Communicate strategy repeatedly with words and actions.
• Select people with strong reputations to lead new projects.
• Design reward systems for excellent performance.
• Use powerful symbolism like slogans to display the importance of strategy.
• Leaders' charismatic personality.

How Leaders Mobilize Strategy

• Providing a unifying focus
• Creating momentum through clear communication, selling the concept, and rewarding early success.
• Sustaining creative tension to constantly seek improvements.

4.3 Leaders & Situations

• Effective leaders use skills, knowledge, and charisma to develop invisible assets, enabling competitive advantage.
• Involves followers in the change process by enabling action, learning, development, confidence and clear vision.
• Early childhood experiences, including insecurity and loss, can drive leaders to control their future. 
• Later childhood fosters self-reliance.
• Strong motivation and a clear value system with purpose are important leadership traits.
• Early high-level responsibility often develops executives.
• Charismatic leadership style and communication skills (open, honest) are crucial.
• Leadership is distinguished by tenure, grooming stage for senior roles, varied managerial experiences, promotion rapidity, and exposure to different cultures.

4.3.1 Fiedler (1967) Contingency Approach

• Contingency approach analyses situational variables for effective leadership.
• Leader-member relations, task structure, and position power are considered.
• Different leadership styles (task-oriented versus people-oriented) are effective with differing situational variables.

4.3.2 Hersey and Blanchard (1988) - Situational Approach

• Leadership styles adapted to follower readiness.
• Readiness is follower willingness and ability to take responsibility.
• Leadership styles (Telling, Selling, Participating, Delegating) match varying readiness levels.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Hersey and Blanchard Approach

• Easily understood, with clear recommendations.
• Leaders must continuously monitor employee readiness.
• Leadership style should adapt to changing situations.
• Difficulty addressing different readiness levels within a team.
• Only readiness level as a contingency variable for the style.
• Some leaders may have difficulties adapting their style immediately.
• Lack of scientific support.

4.4 The Context of Leadership

• The context of leadership encompasses complex and changing networks of people, institutions, opportunities, and problems.
• Setting values, problem-solving support, design systems for support action, focusing on the manageable, and developing people's skills are crucial leadership actions.

4.5 Managers and Leadership Differences

• Managers focus on planning, budgeting, organizing, controlling, and problem-solving.
• Leaders emphasize establishing direction, aligning people, motivating, inspiring, and enabling change.
• Managers promote predictability and order; leaders promote change. 

4.5.1 Managers and Leadership Differences (Kotter, 1996)

• Planning and budgeting: detailed steps, timetables, and resource allocation to achieve results.
• Organizing and staffing: structure, duties, responsibilities, and methods for implementing plans.
• Communicating direction: using words and deeds to align people while fostering cooperation to understand the leadership vision and strategy.

4.5.2 The Leadership Function ('Broadband' Intelligence):

• Leaders can draw on several types of intelligence.
• Types of intelligence include linguistic, logical mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily kinaesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal.

4.5.3 Personal Power

• Boulding identifies three sources of personal power (threat/power over, economic power/power to, integrative power/power with). 
• Leader blends power based on the situation.
• Leader's personal attributes are essential, not just position.

4.5.4 Strong Leadership and Know-How

• Leadership at the top needs personal touches through shared values and objectives.
• Leaders should empower lower-level leaders with responsibilities and trusted individuals in suitable positions to build organizational validity.

4.5.5 Succession Planning

• Identify people with potential within the company.
• Create opportunities for them to lead and develop.
• Integrate succession planning into the company's strategic planning.
• Promote and groom potential employees within the company.
• Implement and support training programs for all levels.

4.5.6 Leadership Role:

• Energize and instill readiness for change by gaining employee support and commitment.
• Create vision and set direction with a ‘shared vision’ to ensure a committed workforce.
• Reinforce the message and institutionalize new behaviours through organizational systems alignment (logo, values).

4.6 Leadership and 'Human Scale'

• Effective leaders bring ‘human scale’ to risks, changes, challenges, and crises.
• Leaders translate pressures into acceptable levels.
• Leaders energize people to cope with demands and sustaining and encouraging others to act.

4.6.1 The Roles of Effective Change Leaders

• Challenge status quo to create readiness for change.
• Inspire shared vision through clear communication.
• Enable others to take action.
• Create sponsors at all levels.
• Employ symbolic actions.
• Model leadership and communicate repeatedly.

Summary

• Leaders give followers a vision for the future.
• Leaders need to help followers cope with change.
• Leaders energize people to take action.
• Effective leadership depends on practical skills in encouragement and credibility.
• Clear vision and credible actions are critical.
• Human-scale or interpersonal skills are important for leaders' effectiveness.