CP3

The Change Process

University of the Cumberlands

Weeks 5 & 7

Leadership and the Change Process The Change Puzzle

Authority and Power

Power

• Weber also discussed social (organizational) power: Power is the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his or her own will.

Power

• Will leaders have the power needed for change?

• What is the relationship between power and leadership?

Regarding Organizational Power

• Exists and exercised as a necessary function in organizations.

• Limited and directed by the formulation and extension of policy within the framework of socially sanctioned authority

• In a given organization, there will be a smaller number of individuals formulating and extending policy than those exercising power.

Organizational Power

Corollaries

• Corollary One: All policy makers are people of power.

• Corollary Two: All people of power are not per se policy makers.

• Corollary Three: Organizational power may be hidden.

• Corollary Four: Organizations may have two or more pockets of power

Power and Organizational Structure

Since a person or group controls a particular resource, he or she can

also control the behavior of others.

The potential ability to utilize the energies of others by the holder or

controller of a resource(s) is increased by a number of factors

Power and Organizational Structure II

• The more vital is the resource to the population or workforce, the more power one may hold.

• The greater is the monopoly of the resource, the greater the power.

• The more central is the position of the person or group in the controlling organization.

• Power maybe limited by a lack of access to resources.

Authority and Power

In organizations, power and authority are often found in the hands of the same person, typically an employed person(s).

Some holders of power may not have institutional authority associated with a staff position.

Institutional holders of power may be competing with other power structures (those who hold power).

Authority

Drawing once again on Weber, authority is the legitimate use of power.

May be organizational and comes in at least one of three forms: Traditional (based on long-standing tradition);

Charisma (personal qualities that gives the leaders a certain “awe,” trust and confidence);

Rational-legal (comes with the job). The rational-legal kind of authority comes with new positions, but is it enough to empower one to act boldly?

Power

• Oftentimes power is hidden from public view. • Those who hold power are called the power

structure. • The manner in which power is exercised is called

the power system. • Those who have the ear of the power structure

are called the attentive public. • Can you identify those folk in your organization? • Does it matter to the manager what kind of

culture these folks practice?

Power and Human Resource Managers

• Do human resource managers have power or authority?

• They can have both, but not always. What is the “life expectancy "of managers in your field?

• In higher education, the positional lifespan of chief academic officers is around four years. Why?

• May be even shorter for leaders in other organizations

Short Life Span of Raging Bulls

• One likely answer is that many new academic vice presidents or any leader, for that matter, assume that their position carries more power than it does in fact.

• The position has rational-legal authority, but the position holder may not have charismatic power, which includes trust and confidence.

• The position or the person may lack traditional power that can come with time, provided the person has not been co-opted and is shown to be trustworthy.

• Another answer might rest with the manager. It could mean that the new manager did not correctly identify the power structure, the power system, or the attentive public. If these folk are not “on board” with the HR manager, he or she is “playing with fire.”

• A raging bull is someone who acts boldly without knowing the power system.

Identify those Who have Power

• There are tried and tested ways to identify the power structure of any social organization:

• Reputational method

• Analysis of decision-making method

• Two excellent ways to delineate the power structure.

Reputational Method

• As the name implies, each of us carries a reputation. While some notions about us are untrue, when it comes to power, take it seriously.

• Power is social and word of mouth is quite revealing.

• Ask or survey as many people (workers or staff) as you can the following :

• “If I needed something done here, who should I ask for help?”

• If you ask 30 people and one name is cited 10 times, what would you conclude?

• Remember to ask as many people as you can. This is called maximum feasible participation.

• Remember also to make the selection of interviewees as random as possible. In other words one person in the workplace has as much chance to participate in the survey as any other person.

• To survey only one area or layer/unit or department makes the results generalizable only to that portion of the organization.

Analysis of Decision-Making Method

• If you can get access to meeting minutes or other venues in which policy adaptations were made (remember the corollaries of power)

• Determine who was instrumental in policy decisions.

• Certain names will stand out, and if they do, they are members of the power structure.

• Many people talk and are noted in meeting minutes, so be careful; you are looking for those that get their way.

What about Democracy?

• As Americans, we are sometimes led to believe that “democracy rules” and autocracy is dead.

• While democracy suggests that staff vote on decisions, in reality it seldom works that way.

• Is taking part in decision making sharing in power?

• Are “democratic proceedings” in organizations really democratic?

Democracy II

• Suppose you are a member of the staff, and you are asked to participate in a “team” activity to have input in making a policy recommendation.

• The team has a hierarchy and power rests somewhere among its members. Remember, power is inherent in all social organizations.

• What would happen if you go against the “team’s” power structure?

• In short order you might find that you have been left off of the membership roster or otherwise reassigned. Clearly this is not a truly democratic situation.

Democracy Concluded

• The notion of “team” on paper suggests that a form of democracy is taking place.

• However, what we often witness is better described as a polyarchy (“rule by three power holders”) or perhaps an oligarchy (“rule by small number of power structures”).

• The employment of “teams” could also be used to mask an autocracy (a lone power broker).

• Teams could be strategically designed to reflect the wishes of the power structure.

Implications

• The implications of this lesson are many.

• Know where you are working.

• Find out who holds power.

• Find out who has the power structure’s ear.

• Find out how power is exercised.

• Adapt your leadership style to the organization’s culture and social structure. If you fail to do these things, you might not enjoy the success you would like.

Leadership Defined

• Leadership is “the capacity to influence others by unleashing their power and potential to impact the greater good” (Blanchard, 2010).

• Knowing this, how is leadership different than power?

Basic Leadership Styles

• Education and business leadership programs often teach transactional, transformational, and laissez-faire leadership styles.

• Transactional leaders engage in “transactions” with subordinates. This style of leadership leads to an awareness of what is expected and of any expected compensations for completing the tasks

Transformational and Laissez- faire Leaders

• Transformational Leaders focus on relationship building that relies on charisma, consideration, and creativity (Friedman, 2004). If one is not creative and has little charisma, this style may not be doable.

• Laissez-faire leadership is evidenced when there is an avoidance of leadership behaviors and no transactions are carried out. It is a French expression for “leave it alone.” In this case it is the organization itself that is left alone.

Instrumental and Expressive leaders

• Sociologist Henry Tischler (1993) identified two types of leaders: instrumental and expressive.

• An instrumental leader actively proposes tasks and plans to guide the group toward achieving goals. His or her focus is on the task, not relationships. This type of leader fits well with the transactional leadership style and a structural- functional perspective of organizations.

• An expressive leader, on the other hand, is like the transformational leader in that he or she works to keep relations among group members harmonious and morale high. They tend to see the organization from an interactionist’s perspective.

Autocrats and

Democrats

• Other social scientists recognize three types of leaders with respect to power. In addition to the laissez-faire style, one may find leaders that demonstrate an autocratic style while others rely on a democratic form of leadership.

• Autocrats make decisions, give orders, and may or may not be harsh. They are often thought of as transactional leaders, who see organizations from a functional perspective. They may even use fear as a tool. However, some autocratic leaders have been described as having an “iron hand in a velvet glove.”

• What does that mean?

• It suggests that we must lose the notion that all autocrats are mean spirited and harsh. They can, in fact, be benevolent dictators, even expressive and transformational in their approach to leading people.

Democratic Leaders

• Democratic leaders typically pursue consensus in the group. This does not mean majority rule. It means that all members can support the resolution.

• This is what we will explore with the Round Robin Technique.

• These kind of leaders are stereotypically thought to be transformational or expressive, but they may not be concerned about relationships and morale at all.

• They could, in fact, be instrumental leaders. • Their goal may simply be to achieve consensus. This occurs

in labor union negotiations. • Who would consider those negotiations to be “expressive”

events?

Advantages and Disadvantages

• Autocrats may rule well, but in his or her absence, there is no one to “steer the ship.”

• On the other hand, a democratic leadership style allows for situational leaders to emerge who can handle things in the absence of the main leader or when other skill sets (situations) are needed.

• A word of note here is the fact that an autocrat may groom successors or lieutenants to do his or her bidding when he or she is unable to perform.

• An autocrat can even delegate authority without giving up control. The only sure way to know if someone is an autocratic leader is to determine who makes the key decisions.

Situational leadership style

• Developed by Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey at Ohio University in 1968

• You should tailor leadership style to the situation

• Leadership should match the development level of the person being led

Leadership Styles and Assumptions

• The practice of a leadership style is often predicated on assumptions about workers, not the leadership style of the power structure or the culture of the workplace or its regional setting.

• Arguably no other theory on those assumptions has reached the level of acceptance as that of Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y.

• In the 1960s, McGregor was a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. He based his model in part on the work of University of Chicago’s Abraham Maslow and his famous Hierarchy of Needs.

Hierarchy of Needs

• To appreciate McGregor’s Theories, let us look first at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

• Maslow argued that people are deficiency motivated, hence they are compelled to satisfy their own unique needs.

• Maslow ranked human needs into five levels: physiological; safety and security; love and belongingness; self- esteem; and self actualization.

• The lower levels (physiology through love and belongingness, according to McGregor, suggest Theory X, while the higher levels (self-esteem and self actualization) suggest Theory Y.

McGregor's Theory X

• Theory X argues three basic points that tie to lower level needs:

• Because the worker is focused on satisfying basic needs, he or she has an inherent dislike of work and will avoid it.

• Because of the dislike of work, the person needs to be directed, controlled, and even threatened (coerced) to get them to work toward the organization’s goals (ideal styles: autocratic and transactional).

• Before you think this is terrible, consider that public schools increasingly operate under similar threats: a principal or teacher could lose his or her job for failing to meet standards.

• The average person who falls into the Theory X category wants to be directed and seeks security above all other things.

McGregor’s Theory Y

• Because the person who falls into this category has his or her basic needs met, he or she sees work as a natural activity.

• The person can look beyond him or herself to appreciate the need to fulfill organizational goals, so he or she will exercise self-control and self-direction in the service of objectives to which he or she is committed.

• Commitment to objectives is tied to the reward of achieving them.

• Under proper conditions, the subordinate will accept and seek responsibilities.

• This population has a natural tendency toward using their ingenuity to find creative solutions.

• The intellectual capacity of this population is only partially utilized.

How do these topics fit in a Change Initiative?

• Power

• Authority

• Leadership styles

• Theory X or Y

Coming Up

✓ Week 5: Post for Discussion Forum 3 by Sunday

✓ Week 6: Residency Session (Friday – Sunday)

✓ Week 7: Respond to peers in Discussion Forum 3 by Sunday