Lec 6__Leadership A_ Feb_12.pdf

8/9/2019 Lec 6__Leadership A_ Feb_12.pdf

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Abraham Lincoln 6 ft 4 in

Lyndon B. Johnson 6 ft 4 in

Thomas Jefferson 6 ft 2 12 in

Franklin D. Roosevelt 6 ft 2 in

George H. W. Bush 6 ft 2 in

Bill Clinton 6 ft 2 in

George Washington 6 ft 1 12 in

Andrew Jackson 6 ft 1 in

Ronald Reagan 6 ft 1 in

Barack Obama 6 ft 1 in

Obama, Bush & Clinton

Emperor Hirohito of Japan and

General MacArthur of the U.S.

After the bombing of Nagasaki andHiroshima Emperor Hirohito orderedthe surrender to the Americans.Hirohito said in the surrender speech(August 15th1945)

"the war situation has developed notnecessarily to Japan's advantage" andordered the Japanese to "endure theunendurable" in surrender

social leadership level 3 lecture 5 11

Alexander

the Great height

5ft 6 ins

William

Wallace

6ft 5 ins


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Great Man theories

It appears that what the previous leadershave in common is an inner quality which

sets them apart.

But is this really true?

Napoleon, Caesar, even Mandela were

shaped by their circumstances.

This is true even of Alexander the Great


Traits of leaders:reat Man

(sic)

Theory

Leaders have a slight tendency to be: above average in height,

better in looks,

Better in health,

More intelligent,

Greater in confidence,

Zacaro, Forti &Podsakoff (1994) have added

flexibility as a quality of leadership


Leader traits

Greater in talkativeness,

need for dominance,

need for power + social responsibility.

However correlations between traits andleadership is low: around 0.3.

Perhaps responsiveness to the situation

is the key feature of a leader.

Big Five and Leadership

Extraversion/surgency

Openness to experience

Conscientiousness

Affect 0.58 of leadership effectiveness However leadership context/situation is

very important


Leaders and situations

Tolstoy in War and Peace, and modernhistorians in general show that leaders areruled by situation pressures.

Napoleon was responding to the aftermathof the French revolution.

Caesar marked the transition from theRoman Republic to the Empire which wasin fact more of a stakeholder society.


Leaders and situations

Leaders arise for the time and situation

Winston Churchill was a war time not a

peace time leader and lost the general

election after the war.

In the Sherif group conflict study at a boys

summer camp the escalating conflict threw

up a new physically prominent leader.


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Least Preferred Co-worker

LPC scale and preferred leader style.

LPC measures the perceived gap (as rated

by the leader) between her most and least

liked co-worker.

A high gap means a task focused leader

A low gap means a socio-emotional

leadership style.


Leadership Grid: consideration vs..

structure


Becoming a Leader

Bass' theory of leadership states that there

are three basic ways to explain how people

become leaders. The first two explain the

leadership development for a small number

of people.

These theories are:

Trait - Great Events -Contingency


Becoming a Leader

Some personality traits may lead people naturally

into leadership roles - Trait Theory

A crisis or important event may cause a person to

rise to the occasion, - Great Events Theory

People can choose to become leaders. People canlearn leadership skills -Contingency theories

The latter is the most widely accepted today.

Contingency Theory of Leadership

There is no one person to lead in all

situations nor is there any one effective

style

The optimal course of leadership action is

contingent (dependent) upon the internal

group variables and the nature of the

external situation


Leadership Environment -

dimensions

Leader member relations:

does the leader get on with the followers,

is she liked, is there a happy

environment.

Task structure

Tasks can be very structured (load a cart)

or very unstructured (write a song)


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Leader Position

Position Power

Does the leader have high

institutional authority e.g. an

Army general or low position

power such as a rowing cox?

Leadership ContextRourkes Drift

Leadership Context ThermopylaeLeadership Context writing

Blackadder


Leadership Environment

A good environment for a leader is

as follows (in order of priority):

Structured tasks

Good member relationships

High Position Power


Fiedlers Contingency Theory

Is democratic or autocratic best. Is task

or emotional focus best?

The best strategy is contingent on the

situational position of the leader.

This is the contingency theory of

leadership.


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Contingency Theory

The combination of the three dimensionsgive eight conditions of leaderfavourableness of environments: from leastto most favourable

Effectiveness can be measured by groupproductivity.

How are favourableness, leadership styleand effectiveness related?

Figure 9.2 Fiedlers eight-category situational control scale as a function

of leadermember relations, task structure and position powerSource: based on Fiedler (1965)

Figure 9.3 Predicted and obtained correlations between LPC scores and

group performance as a function of situational controlSource: based on datafromFiedler (1965)


Contingency Theory

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0

0.2

0.4

0.6

1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th

3-D Column 1

Corr.

Between

LPC &Leader

effective

-ness.Soft style works in intermediate positions

social leadership level 3 lecture 5 47 social leadership level 3 lecture 5 48

Contingency Theory

Streube and Garcia (19810 tested Fiedlers model

across 178 studies of group behaviour and found

reasonable confirmation.

But there are limitations:

(1) Leaders styles are not invariant

The LPC measure has lowish test retest reliability

( r-.67)

In Lippit &Whites study leaders changed style

easily


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Contingency Theory

(2) Why order the favourableness of theleader environment as relationship

quality>task structure> position power?

(3) What happens to leaders in the mid

range of LPC measures? About 20% fall

within this range and they do best of all in

most circumstances.

Models of Leadership Theory

Contingency:Fiedler,

Normative Decision theory (Vroom * Jago)

Path Goal Theory (House 1996)

Transactional Theory (Messick 2005)

Leader Member Exchange, idiosyncrasy

Transformational and charismatic

Social Identity Theory

Documents

Lec 6__Leadership A_ Feb_12.pdf