Please answer one of the following two topics

NeckOBPPT11-PART1.pptx

Home >English homework help >Please answer one of the following two topics

Chapter 11:

Leadership Perspectives

Formal and Informal Leadership

Formal Leaders: A formal leader is officially designated by the organization, such as when the board of directors appoints a CEO.

Informal Leaders: An informal leader does not receive a title but is perceived by others as a leader.

Within most organizations there are two types of leaders: formal and informal.3 A formal leader is officially designated by the organization, such as when the board of directors appoints a CEO. For example, Bob Iger has been CEO of the Walt Disney Company since 2005.An informal leader does not receive a title but is perceived by others as a leader. For example, in the nursing profession, nurses are often chosen as informal leaders by the nursing team because of their high clinical competencies.4

Formal leaders must act in the best interests of the organization and have certain rights and privileges that allow them to reward or discipline employees. Informal leaders do not have an official appointment and therefore do not have the same rights as formal leaders, but team members may rely on them to motivate them and help them realize their goals. When both formal and informal leaders exist in an organization, it is important for them to share the same vision and ensure the teams are working towards the same goals in order to avoid conflict.

Formal and Informal Leadership

Management versus Leadership

Leadership: Creating a vision, introducing change and movement, and influencing others to achieve goals.

Managers: Maintain the status quo, promote stability, and ensure the smooth running of operations.

NOT ALL MANAGERS ARE LEADERS!

While management and leadership share some similarities, they do not mean the same thing. Both leaders and managers work with people, set goals, and influence others in order to achieve those goals, but several distinctions separate the two functions.

First, leadership has been around far longer than management. History records the strategies employed by military leaders such as Alexander the Great (336-323 BC) and Attila the Hun (406-453 BC). Managers, in contrast, are mainly a product of industrialization in the 20th century, an era when large-scale production and manufacturing demanded the organizational skills necessary to plan, organize, staff and control the operation. These skills are still highly relevant in the 21st century workplace.

Second, leadership consists of creating a vision, introducing change and movement, and influencing others to achieve goals, while managers maintain the status quo, promote stability, and ensure the smooth running of operations.5

Formal and Informal Leadership

Figure 11.1: Comparison of a Leader and a Manager

While it is useful for leaders to have managerial skills, it is not essential. Certainly, it is advantageous for leaders to understand the discipline of management and have a background in the management functions, but it doesn’t mean they need to be managers as well as leaders. Their primary strength lies in the ability to influence the behaviors and work of others in order to realize their vision and achieve set goals.

Basic Leadership Types

Table 11.1: Four Basic Leadership Types

Four distinct types of leadership behavior, originally proposed by Charles C. Manz and Henry P. Sims, Jr., and later refined by other leadership theorists, are directive leadership, transactional leadership, visionary leadership, and empowering leadership (also known as “superleadership”):

Early Leadership Perspectives

Trait Leadership Perspective.

Behavioral Leadership Perspective.

Ohio State University Studies.

University of Michigan Studies.

The Leadership Grid.

Contingency Leadership.

Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Model.

House’s Path-Goal Theory.

Substitutes for Leadership Model.

There is no set definition or combination of characteristics that describes a good leader. However, in order to support our current understanding of leadership, it is useful to explore the early theories of leadership, each of which focuses on different ways in which a great leader is created. These include trait, behavioral, and contingency theories.

Early Leadership Perspectives

Trait Leadership Perspective

The Trait leadership perspective is a theory that explores the relationship between leaders, personal qualities, and characteristics and the way their traits differentiate leaders from non-leaders

The Trait leadership perspective is a theory that explores the relationship between leaders, personal qualities, and characteristics and the way their traits differentiate leaders from non-leaders. In another words, the theory assumes effective leaders are born, not made. Famous leaders such as Ghandi, Churchill, Lincoln, Joan of Arc, and Alexander the Great were studied by early trait theorists, who explored characteristics such as physical appearance, personality, and ability and sought to link them to individuals’ leadership qualities. However, trait theory has since been widely criticized for its limiting methodology and inaccurate conclusions.9 Researchers believed that traits in isolation could not predict leadership success.

Early Leadership Perspectives

Behavioral Leadership Perspective

Ohio State University Studies

Initiating Structure.

Consideration.

Table 11.2: Behavioral Leadership Perspective Studies

Ohio State University Studies

In the 1940s, researchers at Ohio State University administered a questionnaire to hundreds of people working in the military, business, and educational fields in order to assess leadership styles. The aim was to ascertain how employees perceived the types of leadership behavior exhibited by their superiors. From the results, researchers proposed a two-dimensional view of leadership behavior based on leadership styles they called initiating structure, and consideration.12 Initiating structure is a behavior demonstrated by leaders who define the roles of the employees, set clear guidelines and procedures, and establish distinct patterns of organization and communication. Consideration is a behavior demonstrated by leaders who develop mutual trust and respect and actively build interpersonal relationships with their followers.

Early Leadership Perspectives

Behavioral Leadership Perspective

University Of Michigan Studies

Job-Centered Leadership Style.

Employee-Centered Leadership Style.

University of Michigan Studies

In an effort to identify the patterns of leadership behavior, University of Michigan researchers under the general direction of Rensis Likert in the 1950s interviewed leaders from both private and public companies and asked them to complete a questionnaire. The results helped the researchers establish two styles of leadership behavior: job-centered leadership style, a behavioral leadership style that emphasizes employee tasks and the methods used to accomplish them, and employee-centered leadership style, a behavioral leadership style that emphasizes the personal needs of employees and the development of interpersonal relationships.13

Researchers investigated the impact each leadership style had on rates of productivity, staff turnover, job satisfaction, and absenteeism and concluded that because employee-centered leaders had better results in these areas, they were more effective than job-centered leaders. However, there were some inconsistencies within the studies, mainly due to the fact that researchers were skeptical that leaders could possess characteristics from both styles rather than just one, which other theorists thought cast doubt on the results.

Early Leadership Perspectives

Behavioral Leadership Perspective

Figure 11.2: The Blake Mouton Leadership Grid

SOURCE: Adapted from Blake, R. R., and J. S. Mouton, The Managerial Grid (Houston, TX: Gulf Publishing, 1964).

As an extension of the results published from the Ohio State studies, management researchers Robert R. Blake and Jane S. Mouton designed the Leadership grid, an approach that plots concern for production on the horizontal axis and concern for people on the vertical axis Each axis is a scale, with 1 representing the least concern and 9 the most. The five leadership styles are: country club, produce or perish, impoverished, middle of the road, and team leader.

Leaders who get a low score for production and a high score for people are known as “country club” leaders.

“Produce or Perish” leaders emphasize production over people and lead with an authoritarian rule, using punishment as a motivator. “Impoverished” leaders have very little concern for production or for people, which means they are ineffective for the most part. Leaders who are “middle-of-the road” appear to have achieved the right balance between concern for people and concern for production, but this requires compromise; the problem with compromise is that the needs of both factions are not fully met, resulting in an average performance. Finally, the “team leader” rates production needs and people needs equally highly. According to the Blake-Mouton model, the team leader is the ideal leader, because he or she creates an environment in which teams are motivated and committed to furthering the success of the organization, leading to high production and satisfied employees.

Early Leadership Perspectives

Contingency Leadership Perspective

SOURCE: Adapted from Fiedler, F. E., and M. M. Chemers. Improving Leadership Effectiveness: The Leaders Match Concept (2nd ed.) (New York: Wiley, 1984).

Figure 11.3: Least-Preferred Coworker Scale

The contingency leadership perspective, pioneered by Fred E. Fiedler, claimed that the effectiveness of the leader depended on there being an appropriate match between the leader’s traits or behaviors and the demands and characteristics of the contingency or situation. Fiedler sought to identify the different types of leadership styles in certain situations and devised a scale called Least Preferred Coworker (LPC), an instrument that evaluates whether a person is task-oriented or relationship-oriented.

Early Leadership Perspectives

Contingency Leadership Perspective

SOURCE: Adapted from F. E. Fiedler, A Theory of Leadership Effectiveness (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967).

Figure 11.4: Fiedler’s Contingency Model

Early Leadership Perspectives

Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Model

Telling (S1)

Selling (S2)

Participating (S3)

Delegating (S4)

Developed in 1969 by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard, The Situational Leadership Model proposes that leaders should adapt their leadership style based on the types of people they are leading and the requirements of the task.16 Drawing from the findings of the Ohio State studies, Hersey and Blanchard applied concepts similar to “initiating structure” and “consideration” to the following four main leadership styles:

Telling (S1): Telling is a directive approach in which leaders give clear instructions and guidance to followers, informing them exactly how and when to complete the task. This leadership style works best within environments that have high initiating structure and low consideration, where the completion of the task takes precedence over the relationship with employees.

Selling (S2): Leaders who adopt the selling style provide support to followers through communicating and “selling” the goals of the task in order to gain commitment. This style is appropriate for issues with high initiating structure and high consideration.

Participating (S3): Leaders and followers work together and share in the decision-making responsibilities of the task in the participating style. It works best in situations where there is low initiating structure and high consideration.

Delegating (S4): Leaders give most of the responsibility to followers in the delegating style yet still monitor progress. Delegating occurs in instances of low initiating structure and low consideration.

Early Leadership Perspectives

House’s Path-Goal Theory

Figure 11.5: Path–Goal Theory Model

SOURCES: House, R. “Path-Goal Theory of Leadership: Lessons, Legacy, and a Reformulated Theory.” Leadership Quarterly 7, no. 3 (1996): 323–352; model adapted from Northouse, P. Leadership: Theory and Practice (4th ed.) (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007): 128.

House describes how leadership effectiveness is influenced by the interaction between the four main leadership styles:

Directive leadership- leadership behavior characterized by implementing guidelines, managing expectations, setting definite performance standards, and ensuring that individuals follow rules. This type of leadership is appropriate in the military, where commands are expected to be followed immediately and without question.

Supportive leadership- a type of leadership behavior characterized by friendliness and concern for the welfare of others. For example, a leader might work with followers struggling with a task until they feel empowered enough to carry out the task themselves.

Participative Leadership- leadership behavior that consists of consulting with followers and considering their input in decision making. For example, a marketing leader might gather his or her followers to collect input about the possibility of launching a new product or taking a product off the market.

Achievement-oriented leadership- leadership behavior characterized by setting challenging goals, improving performance, and assisting in employee training. This style of leadership is often used by football quarterbacks, who are expected to direct the team to perform certain plays at the right time in order to win the game.

House’s Path-Goal Theory

Leadership styles:

Directive leadership.

Supportive leadership.

Participative leadership.

Achievement-oriented leadership.