LEADERSHIP and GROUP

MODULE V

A group is a collection of individuals who have regular contact and frequent interaction, mutual influence, common feeling of camaderie, and who work together to achieve a common set of goals.

Jarlath F. Benson identifies a list of attributes:

• A set of people engage in frequent interactions

• They identify with one another.

• They are defined by others as a group.

• They share beliefs, values, and norms about areas of common interest.

• They come together to work on common tasks and for agreed purposes.

Groups are intended and organic. They are not some random experience and as a result they have three crucial characteristics:

• There are parts

• There is relationship between the parts

• There is an organizing principle

Forces impacting upon group processes and dynamics.

• Group interaction

• Group interdependence

• Group structure

• Group goals

• Group cohesion (and entitativity)

There are four types of groups

1. Primary and secondary

2. Formal and informal

Primary and secondary groups:

• Primary groups are formed on the basis of social characteristics and individual perceptions.

• Each person is able to communicate with others. A primary group is natural and has a spirit of comradeship, friendship and loyalty.

Secondary groups are formed and developed with a formal structure, wherein one member is the leader and the others are followers.

Committees, trade unions and other such groups come under secondary groups. A secondary group develops on the basis of the exchange theory.

1. A Formal group is created within an organization to complete a specific role or task.

This may be to oversea a launch of a particular product or service.

Formal groups may take the form of command groups, task groups, and functional groups.

COMMAND GROUPS.

Command groups are specified by the organizational chart and often consist of a supervisor and the subordinates that report to that supervisor

TASK GROUPS.

Members are brought together to accomplish a narrow range of goals within a specified time period. The organization appoints members and assigns the goals and tasks to be accomplished.

Other common task groups are ad hoc committees, project groups, and standing committees

Ad hoc committees are temporary groups created to resolve a specific complaint or develop a process.

Project groups are similar to ad hoc committees and normally disband after the group completes the assigned task.

Standing committees are more permanent than ad hoc committees and project groups.

FUNCTIONAL GROUPS.

A functional group is created by the organization to accomplish specific goals within an unspecified time frame.

Functional groups remain in existence after achievement of current goals and objectives.

Informal are small groups that share interests, knowledge, and activities for the purpose of meeting mutual needs.

INTEREST GROUPS.

Theodore Newcomb's Balance Theory:

According to this theory, persons are attracted to one another on the basis of similar attitudes toward commonly relevant objects and goals.

Once the relationship is formed, a balance is maintained between the attraction and the common attitudes.

If an imbalance occurs, there is an attempt to restore the balance, and if the balance cannot be restored, the relationship dissolves.

REFERENCE GROUPS.

A reference group is a type of group that people use to evaluate themselves.

The main purposes of reference groups are social validation and social comparison

Social validation allows individuals to justify their attitudes and values while social comparison helps individuals evaluate their own actions by comparing themselves to others.

By comparing themselves with other members, individuals are able to assess whether their behavior is acceptable and whether their attitudes and values are right or wrong.

GROUP ROLES

In formal groups, roles are usually predetermined and assigned to members. Each role will have specific responsibilities and duties.

Emergent roles that develop naturally to meet the needs of the groups.

These emergent roles will often replace the assigned roles as individuals begin to express themselves and become more assertive.

Group roles can then be classified into work roles, maintenance roles, and blocking roles.

Work roles are task-oriented activities that involve accomplishing the group's goals. They involve a variety of specific roles such as initiator, informer, clarifier, summarizer, and reality tester

1. The initiator defines problems, proposes action, and suggests procedures.

2. The informer role involves finding facts and giving advice or opinions.

Clarifiers will interpret ideas, define terms, and clarify issues for the group. Summarizers restate suggestions,

offer decisions, and come to conclusions for the group. Finally, reality testers analyze ideas and test the ideas in real situations.

Maintenance roles are social-emotional activities that help members maintain their involvement in the group and raise their personal commitment to the group.

The maintenance roles are harmonizer, gatekeeper, consensus tester, encourager, and compromiser.

The harmonizer will reduce tension in the group, reconcile differences, and explore opportunities.

Gatekeepers often keep communication channels open and make suggestions that encourage participation.

The consensus tester will ask if the group is nearing a decision and test possible conclusions.

Encouragers are friendly, warm, and responsive to other group members

The compromiser role involves modifying decisions, offering compromises, and admitting errors.

Blocking roles are activities that disrupt the group.

They make take the form of dominating discussions, verbally attacking other group members, and distracting the group with trivial information or unnecessary humor.

Often times the blocking behavior may not be intended as negative

Sometimes a member may share a joke in order to break the tension, or may question a decision in order to force group members to rethink the issue.

The blocking roles are aggressor, blocker, dominator, comedian, and avoidance behavior.

The aggressor criticizes members' values and makes jokes in a sarcastic or semi-concealed manner.

Blockers will stubbornly resist the group's ideas, disagree with group members for personal reasons, and will have hidden agendas.

The dominator role attempts to control conversations by patronizing others

Comedians often abandon the group even though they may physically still be a part. They are attention-getters in ways that are not relevant to the accomplishment of the group's objectives.

The last blocking role, avoidance behavior, involves pursuing goals not related to the group and changing the subject to avoid commitment to the group.

Role ambiguity concerns the discrepancy between the sent role and the received role.Supervisors, directors, or other group leaders often send (assign) roles to group members in formal groups. This confusion may occur because the members do not have specific job descriptions or because the instructions regarding the task were not clear.Group members who experience ambiguity often have feelings of frustration and dissatisfaction, which ultimately lead to turnover.

Role conflict occurs when there is inconsistency between the perceived role and role behavior.

Interrole conflict occurs when there is conflict between the different roles that people have.

Some examples of types of groups include the following:• Peer group A peer group is a group with members of

approximately the same age, social status, and interests. Generally, people are relatively equal in terms of power when they interact with peers.

• Clique A group of people that have many of the same interests & commonly found in a High School/College setting; most of the time they have a name & rules for themselves.

• Club A club is a group, which usually requires one to apply to become a member. Such clubs may be dedicated to particular activities: sporting clubs, for example.

• Household All individuals who live in the same home. anglophone culture may include various models of household, including the family, blended families, share housing, and group homes.

• Community A community is a group of people with a commonality or sometimes a complex net of overlapping commonalities, often–but not always–in proximity with one another with some degree of continuity over time.

• Franchise An organization which runs several instances of a business in many locations.

• Gang A gang is usually an urban group that gathers in a particular area. It is a group of people that often hang around each other. They can be like some clubs, but much less formal.

• They are usually known in many countries to cause social unrest and also have negative influence on the members and may be a target for the law enforcers in case of any social vices

• Mob A mob is usually a group of people that has taken the law into their own hands. Mobs are usually groups which gather temporarily for a particular reason.

• Posse A posse was originally found in English common law. It is generally obsolete, and survives only in America, where it is the law enforcement equivalent of summoning the militia for military purposes. However, it can also refer to a street group.

• Squad This is usually a small group, of around 3 to 15 people, who work as a team to accomplish their goals.

• Dyad This is a social group with two members. Social interaction in a dyad is typically more intense than in larger groups because neither member shares the other's attention with anyone else.[

• Triad This is a social group with three members, which contains three relationships, each uniting two of the three people. A triad is more stable than a dyad because one member can act as a mediator should the relationship between the other two become strained.[

• Team similar to a squad, though a team may contain many more members. A team works in a similar way to a squad.

• In-group It is a social group toward which a member feels respect and loyalty. It is a group that an individualidentifies in positive direction.

• Out-group It is a social group toward which a person feels a sense of competition or opposition.t is a group that an individual identifies in negative direction

LEADERSHIP

The skills, attitudes, orientations and ideas associated with groups are learnt, predominantly, through experiencing group life. They can also be enhanced by the intervention of skilled leaders and facilitators.

Leadership is "organizing a group of people to achieve a common goal". The leader may or may not have any formal authority

Great Man Theory

Born to lead:

Great leaders are born with the necessary internal characteristics such as charisma, confidence, intelligence, and social skills.

Capacity for leadership is inherent

Portray great leaders as heroic, mythic and destined to rise to leadership when needed.

2. Trait Theory:

People inherit certain qualities and traits that make them better suited to leadership.

Trait theories identify particular personality or behavioral characteristics shared by leaders.

For example, traits like extraversion, self-confidence, and courage are all traits that could potentially be linked to great leaders.

3. Contingency Theories

No leadership style is best in all situations.

Particular variables related to the environment that might determine which particular style of leadership is best suited for the situation.

Success depends upon a number of variables, leadership style, qualities of the followers and aspects of the situation.

4. Situational Theory:

Situational theories propose that leaders choose the best course of action based upon situational variables

5. Behavioral Theories

Behavioral theories of leadership are based upon the belief that great leaders are made, not born.

Focus on the actions of leaders not on mental qualities or internal states.

People can learn to become leaders through teaching and observation.

6. Participative Theories

Participative leadership theories suggest that the ideal leadership style is one that takes the input of others into account.

Encourage participation and contributions from group members

Group members feel more relevant and committed to the decision-making process.

7. Management Theory

Management theories, also known as transactional theories, focus on the role of supervision, organization and group performance.

These theories base leadership on a system of rewards and punishments

8. Relationship Theories

Relationship theories, also known as transformational theories, focus upon the connections formed between leaders and followers.

Focus on the performance of group members, but also want each person to fulfill his or her potential.

Have high ethical and moral standards.

Transactional and transformational theories

According to Eric Berne

The transactional leader is given power to perform certain tasks and reward or punish for the team's performance.

Power is given to the leader to evaluate, correct, and train subordinates when productivity is not up to the desired level, and reward effectiveness when expected outcome is reached

The transformational leader motivates its team to be effective and efficient. Communication is the base for goal achievement focusing the group on the final desired outcome or goal attainment.

The leadership motivated excellence leader develops interpersonal strategic alliances

Narcissistic leadership is a common form of leadership. The narcissism may be healthy or destructive although there is a continuum between the two.

Narcissistic leadership is driven by unyielding arrogance, self-absorption, and a personal egotistic need for power and admiration.

Toxic leadership

A toxic leader is someone who has responsibility over a group of people or an organization, and who abuses the leader-follower relationship by leaving the group or organization in a worse-off condition than when he/she first found them.

The managerial grid model (1964) is a behavioral leadership model developed by Robert R. Blake and Jane Mouton.

This model originally identified five different leadership styles based on the concern for people and the concern for production.

Grid theory breaks behavior down into seven key elements:

• Initiative Taking action, driving and supporting Inquiry Questioning, researching and verifying understanding

• Advocacy Expressing convictions and championing ideas

• Decision making Evaluating resources, choices and consequences

• Conflict resolution Confronting and resolving disagreements

• Resilience Dealing with problems, setbacks and failures

• Critique Delivering objective, candid feedback

The model is represented as a grid with concern for production as the x-axis and concern for people as the y-axis; each axis ranges from 1 (Low) to 9 (High). The resulting leadership styles are as follows:

The indifferent (previously called impoverished) style (1,1): evade and elude.

In this style, managers have low concern for both people and production.

Managers use this style to preserve job and job seniority, protecting themselves by avoiding getting into trouble.

The accommodating (previously, country club) style (1,9): yield and comply. This style has a high concern for people and a low concern for production.

The resulting atmosphere is usually friendly, but not necessarily very productive.

• The dictatorial (previously, produce or perish) style (9,1): control and dominate. With a high concern for production, and a low concern for people, managers using this style find employee needs unimportant; they provide their employees with money and expect performance in return

The status quo (previously, middle-of-the-road) style (5,5): balance and compromise.

By giving some concern to both people and production, managers who use this style hope to achieve suitable performance but doing so gives away a bit of each concern so that neither production nor people needs are met.

The status quo (previously, middle-of-the-road) style (5,5): balance and compromise.

By giving some concern to both people and production, managers who use this style hope to achieve suitable performance but doing so gives away a bit of each concern so that neither production nor people needs are met.

The sound (previously, team style) (9,9): contribute and commit. In this style, high concern is paid both to people and production.

The opportunistic style: exploit and manipulate. Individuals using this style, which was added to the grid theory before 1999, do not have a fixed location on the grid. They adopt whichever behaviour offers the greatest personal benefit.

The paternalistic style: prescribe and guide. This style was added to the grid theory before 1999. Managers using this style praise and support, but discourage challenges to their thinking.