What is Leadership?

• A leader is someone who can influence others and possesses managerial authority.
• Leadership is influencing individuals or groups to achieve goals.

Early Leadership Theories

• Early research on leadership focused on identifying traits that differentiated leaders from non-leaders.
• Later studies identified eight key traits associated with successful leadership.
• Drive: High effort, ambition, energy, persistence, and initiative are key to leadership.
• Desire to lead: A strong desire to influence and lead others is critical for leaders.
• Honesty and Integrity: Building trusting relationships through truthfulness and consistency is key.
• Self-confidence: Demonstrating self-confidence to convince followers of the rightness of goals and decisions.
• Intelligence: Gathering, synthesizing, and interpreting large amounts of information for problem-solving and decision-making is key.
• Job-relevant knowledge: Possessing in-depth knowledge about the company, industry, and technical matters is critical.
• Extraversion: Being energetic, lively, sociable, assertive, and rarely withdrawn is helpful.
• Proneness to guilt: A strong sense of responsibility for others increases leadership effectiveness.
• The University of Iowa studies identified three leadership styles: autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire.
• Autocratic Style: Centralizes authority, dictates work methods, makes unilateral decisions, and limits employee participation.
• Democratic Style: Involves employees in decision-making, delegates authority, encourages participation in deciding work methods and goals, and uses feedback for coaching.
• Laissez-faire Style: Gives the group freedom to make decisions and complete work as it sees fit.
• No specific leadership style was consistently better for producing better performance.
• Employees were more satisfied under a democratic leader compared to an autocratic leader.
• The Ohio State Studies identified two dimensions of leader behavior: initiating structure and consideration.
• Initiating Structure: Defining roles for oneself and group members in attaining goals.
• Consideration: Characterizing work relationships with mutual trust and respect for group members' ideas and feelings.
• High-High: Leaders high in both initiating structure and consideration behaviours had high group task performance and satisfaction.
• Situational factors appeared to significantly influence leadership effectiveness.
• The University of Michigan Studies identified two dimensions of leader behavior: employee-oriented and production-oriented.
• Employee-Oriented: Emphasizing personal relationships.
• Production-Oriented: Emphasizing task accomplishment.
• Leaders who are employee-oriented are strongly associated with high group productivity and high job satisfaction.
• The Managerial Grid plots leadership behaviors on a two-dimensional grid.
• This grid accounts for concern for people and concern for production, influencing in five different leadership styles.

Contingency Theories of Leadership

• The Fiedler Model proposes that effective group performance depends on matching a leader's style with the degree of situational control and influence
• Key factor in leadership is a leader's basic style, which is either task-oriented or relationship-oriented.
• Determining leadership style is done through the least-preferred co-worker (LPC) questionnaire.
• High score: relationship-oriented leadership style.
• Low score: task-oriented leadership style.
• Leader-member relations are the degree of confidence, trust, and respect employees have for their leader, rated as good or poor.
• Task structure is the degree to which job assignments are formalized and structured and is rated as high or low.
• Position power is the degree of influence a leader has over activities such as hiring, firing, discipline, promotions, and salary increases and is rated as strong or weak.
• Hersey and Blanchard's Situational Leadership® Theory focuses on followers' readiness to assess leadership.
• Readiness: The extent to which people have the ability and willingness to accomplish a specific task.
• Four leadership styles based on task and relationship dimensions: telling, selling, participating, and delegating.
• Telling is high task-low relationship leadership.
• Selling is high task-high relationship leadership.
• Participating is low task-high relationship leadership.
• Delegating is low task-low relationship leadership.
• Four stages of follower readiness are Identified: R1 - unable and unwilling, R2 - unable but willing, R3 - able but unwilling, R4 - able and willing.
• The Path-Goal Theory states that a leader's job is to assist followers in attaining their goals and provide direction or support to ensure their goals align with the group or organization.
• The situational leadership approach developed by Robert House, says a leader's style depends on the situation.
• Potential leadership styles are directive, supportive, participative, and achievement-oriented.
• Directive Leadership: Letting subordinates know what’s expected, scheduling work, and giving specific guidance.
• Supportive Leadership: Showing concern for the needs of followers and being friendly.
• Participative Leadership: Consulting with group members and using their suggestions before making decisions.
• Achievement-Oriented Leadership: Setting challenging goals and expecting followers to perform at their highest level.

Contemporary Views of Leadership

• Leader-member exchange (LMX) theory states create leaders create in-groups and out-groups.
• Those in the in-group will have higher performance ratings, less turnover, and greater job satisfaction.
• Transactional Leadership: Leading primarily by using social exchanges (or transactions).
• Transformational Leadership: Stimulates and inspires (transforms) followers to achieve extraordinary outcomes.
• Charismatic Leader: An enthusiastic, self-confident leader whose personality and actions influence people.
• Visionary Leadership: Being able to create and articulate a realistic, credible, and attractive vision of the future.
• Authentic Leadership: Leaders who know who they are, what they believe in, and act on those values candidly.
• Ethical Leadership: Leaders who reinforce ethics through organizational mechanisms like communication and reward systems.
• Team Leadership: Guiding team members is very important because leadership increasingly takes place within teams.
• Team leaders manage the team’s external boundary and facilitate the team process via coaching, handling disciplinary problems, reviewing performance, training, and communicating.

Leadership Issues in the Twenty-First Century

• Legitimate Power: Power from a leader's position in an organization.
• Coercive Power: Power to punish or control.
• Reward Power: Power to give positive rewards.
• Expert Power: Power based on expertise, special skills, or knowledge.
• Referent Power: Power from a person’s desirable resources or personal traits.
• Credibility: The degree to which followers perceive someone as honest, competent, and able to inspire.
• Trust: The belief in the integrity, character, and ability of a leader.
• Dimensions of trust are integrity, competence, consistency, loyalty, and openness.
• Practicing openness and fairness are key to building trust.
• Speak your feelings and tell the truth to build trust.
• Show consistency, and fulfill your promises to build trust in a workplace.
• Maintain confidences and demonstrating competence builds trust.
• Employee Empowerment: Giving more authority to employees to make decisions.
• Employee empowerment leads to quicker responses to problems/faster decisions along with relieving managers to work on other problems.
• National culture is an important situational variable in determining which leadership style will be most effective.
• Korean leaders are expected to be paternalistic towards employees.
• Arab leaders who show kindness or generosity without being asked are seen by other Arabs as weak.
• Japanese leaders are expected to be humble and speak frequently.
• Scandinavian and Dutch leaders who single out individuals with public praise are likely to embarrass individuals, not energize them.
• Malaysian leaders are expected to show compassion while using more of an autocratic than a participative style.
• Effective German leaders are characterized by high autonomy, and high participation.
• Leader training is essential, it recognizes some people don’t have what it takes to be a leader.
• It also recognizes some people are more motivated to lead than others.
• Some people don't need leaders so leaders need to be aware of followers’ needs.