Leadership

Introduction to Leadership

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 Leadership
 Leadership is a subject that long has excited interest among
people.

 Much of our description of history is the story of military,

political, religious, and social leaders who are credited or
blamed for important historical events.

 The questions about leadership have long been a subject of

speculation, but scientific research on leadership did not
begin until the twentieth century.

 The focus of much of the research has been on the

determinants of leadership effectiveness.

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 Defining Leadership
 Researchers usually define leadership according to their
individual perspectives and the aspects of the phenomenon
of most interest to them.

 After a comprehensive review of the leadership literature,

Stogdill (1974, p.259) concluded that “there are almost as
many definitions of leadership as there are persons who
have attempted to define the concept.”

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 Defining Leadership
 ‘Leadership’ is the process of influencing others to
understand and agree about what needs to be done and
how to do it, and process of facilitating individual and
collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives.

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 Managers vs. Leaders
 Managers and Leaders are not necessarily the same.

 Managers are appointed; they have legitimate power that

allows them to reward and punish. Their ability to influence is
based on the formal authority inherent in their position.

 Leaders may either be appointed or may emerge from within

a group. Leaders can influence others to perform beyond the
actions dictated by formal authority.

 Not all leaders are managers nor all managers are leaders.

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 Leadership Effectiveness
 Like definitions of leadership, conceptions of leader
effectiveness differ from one writer to another.

 The most commonly used measure of leader effectiveness is

the extent to which the leader’s organizational unit performs
it’s task successfully and attains it’s goals.

 Examples of objective measures of performance or goal

attainment include net profits, profit margin, sales increase,
market share, return on investment (ROI), return on assets
(ROA), productivity, cost per unit of output etc.

 The subjective measures include ratings of effectiveness

obtained from the leader’s superiors, peers, or subordinates.

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 Leadership Effectiveness
What Criteria to Use?
 There is no single answer to the question of how to evaluate
the leadership effectiveness. The selection of appropriate
criteria depends on the objectives and values of the person
making the evaluation, and people have different values.

 It is difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of a leader when

there are so many alternative measures of effectiveness, and
it is not clear which measure is the most relevant.

 Some researchers attempt to combine several measures into

a single, composite criterion, but this approach requires
subjective judgments about how to assign a weight to each
measure.

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 Leadership Effectiveness
Immediate and Delayed Outcomes
 Some outcomes are more immediate than others. For
example, the immediate result of an influence attempt may
be that a follower is willing to do what the leader asks. A
more delayed effect of leadership is how well followers
actually perform the assignment.

 In many cases a leader has both immediate and delayed

effects on the same criterion. The two types of effects may
be consistent or inconsistent. When they are inconsistent,
the immediate outcome may be very different from the
delayed outcomes.

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 Overview of Major Research Approaches
 The attraction of leadership as a subject of research and the
many different conceptions of leadership have created a vast
and bewildering literature.

 One of the useful ways to classify leadership theory and

research is according to the type of variable that is
emphasized the most.

 Three types of variables that are relevant for understanding

leadership effectiveness include characteristics of leaders,
characteristics of followers, and characteristics of the
situation.

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 Overview of Major Research Approaches
 It is helpful to classify the theories and empirical research
into the following five approaches.

1. Trait Approach
2. Behavior Approach
3. Power-Influence Approach
4. Situational Approach
5. Integrative Approach

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 Overview of Major Research Approaches
1- Trait Approach
 It is one of the earliest approaches for studying leadership.

 This approach emphasizes leaders’ attributes such as

personality, motives, values, and skills etc.

 Underlying this approach was the assumption that some

people are natural leaders, endowed with certain traits not
possessed by the other people.

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 Overview of Major Research Approaches
2- Behavior Approach
 The ‘Behavior Approach’ began in the early 1950s after many
researchers became discouraged with the trait approach and
began to pay closer attention to what managers actually do
on the job.

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 Overview of Major Research Approaches
3- Power-Influence Approach
 The ‘Power-Influence Approach’ examines influence processes
between leaders and other people.

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 Overview of Major Research Approaches
4- Situational Approach
 The ‘Situational Approach’ emphasizes the importance of
contextual factors that influence leadership processes.

 Major situational variables include the characteristics of

followers, the nature of the work performed by the leader’s
unit, the type of organization, and the nature of the external
environment.

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 Overview of Major Research Approaches
5- Integrative Approach
 An ‘Integrative Approach’ involves more than one type of
leadership variables. In recent years it has become common
for researchers to include two or more types of leadership
variables in the same study, but it is still rare to find a theory
that includes all of them (i.e., traits, behaviors, influence
processes, situational variables and outcomes).

 A good example of the ‘Integrative Approach’ is the

‘Attribution Theory of Charismatic Leadership’. According to
the theory, follower attribution of charismatic qualities to a
leader is jointly determined by the leader’s behavior,
expertise, and aspects of the situation.

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 Overview of Major Research Approaches
Other Bases for Comparing Leadership Theories
i. Leader-Centered vs. Follower-Centered Theory
ii. Descriptive vs. Prescriptive Theory
iii. Universal vs. Contingency Theory

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 Overview of Major Research Approaches
Other Bases for Comparing Leadership Theories
Leader-Centered vs. Follower-Centered Theory

 The extent to which a theory is focused on either the leader

or followers is another useful way to classify leadership
theories.

 Most leadership theories emphasize the characteristics and

actions of the leader without much concern for follower
characteristics.

 Only a small amount of research and theory emphasizes

characteristics of followers, like ‘Empowerment Theory’.

 Theories that focus almost exclusively on either the leader or

the follower are less useful than theories that offer a more
balanced explanation, like ‘Situational Leadership Theory’.

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 Overview of Major Research Approaches
Other Bases for Comparing Leadership Theories
Descriptive vs. Prescriptive Theory
 ‘Descriptive’ theories explain leadership processes, describe
the typical activities of leaders, and explain why certain
behaviors occur in particular situations.

 ‘Prescriptive’ theories specify what leaders must do to

become effective, and they identify any necessary conditions
for using a particular type of behavior effectively.

 The two perspectives are not mutually exclusive, and a

theory can have both types of elements.

 A prescriptive theory is especially useful when a wide

discrepancy exists between what leaders typically do and
what they should do to be optimally effective.

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 Overview of Major Research Approaches
Other Bases for Comparing Leadership Theories
Universal vs. Contingency Theory

 A ‘Universal Theory’ describes some aspect of leadership that

applies to all types of situations.

 A ‘Universal Theory’ can be either descriptive or prescriptive.

 A ‘Descriptive Universal Theory’ may describe typical

functions performed to some extent by all types of leader,
whereas a ‘Prescriptive Universal Theory’ may specify
functions all leaders must perform to be effective.

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 Overview of Major Research Approaches
Other Bases for Comparing Leadership Theories
Universal vs. Contingency Theory
 A ‘Contingency Theory’ describes an aspect of leadership that
applies to some situations but not to others.

 Contingency theories can also be either descriptive or

prescriptive.

 A ‘Descriptive Contingency Theory’ may explain how leader

behavior typically varies from one situation to another,
whereas a ‘Prescriptive Contingency Theory’ may specify the
most effective behavior in each type of situation.

 Some theories fall in between the two extremes. Like

prescriptive theory may specify that a particular type of
leadership (e.g., transformational leadership) is always
effective, but also acknowledge that it is not as effective in
some situations as in others.
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 Leadership as Management Function
Management Functions
 Four Management Functions/Processes
1. Planning (The process of establishing goals and selecting a
future course of action for their accomplishment)
2. Organizing (The process of dividing work among groups and
individuals and coordinating their activities to accomplish
goals)
3. Leading (The process of motivating employees, selecting the
most effective communication channel, and resolving
conflicts)
4. Controlling (The process of monitoring/measuring
performance, comparing it with goals and correcting any
significant deviations)

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 Leadership as Management Function
Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles
 Mintzberg (1973) used observation rather than surveys to
learn more about the content of managerial activities.

 He developed a taxonomy of managerial roles (10 roles) to

use for coding content of the activities observed in his study
of executives.

 The 10 roles account for all manager’s activities, and each

activity can be explained in terms of at least one role,
although many activities involve more than one role.

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 Leadership as Management Function
Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles
 Interpersonal Roles
 Leader
 Liaison
 Figurehead
 \

 Information Processing Roles

 Monitor
 Disseminator
 Spokesperson

 Decision-Making Roles
 Entrepreneur
 Disturbance Handler
 Resource Allocator
 Negotiator

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 Theories of Leadership
A. Trait Theories of Leadership
B. Behavioral Theories of Leadership
C. Contingency (Situational) Theories of Leadership (Fiedler
Model, Path-Goal Theory, Situational Leadership Theory)
D. Emerging Theories of Leadership (Charismatic Leadership,
Transformational Leadership)

E. Participative Leadership

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Self Reflection Activity

Get Real

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 FACILITATOR
Tehrim Iqbal
tehrimiqbal05@gmail.com