LEADERSHIP PROCESS:Managers versus Leaders, Defining Leadership

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Organizational Psychology (PSY510)

LESSON 42

LEADERSHIP PROCESS

Managers versus Leaders

As one expert puts it, "There are almost as many definitions of leadership as there are persons who have

attempted to define the concept." While almost everyone seems to agree that leadership involves an

influence process, differences tend to be centred around whether leadership but be non-coercive and

whether it is distinct from management. The later issue has been a particularly heated topic of debate in

recent years, with most experts arguing that leadership and management are different.

For instance, Abraham Zaleznik of the Harvard Business School argues that leaders and managers are very

different kinds of people. They differ in motivation, personal history, and how they think and act. Zaleznik

says that managers tend to adopt impersonal, if not passive attitudes towards goals, whereas leaders take a

personal and active attitude toward goal. Managers tend to view work as an enabling process involving some

combination of people and ideas interacting to establish strategies and make decision. Leaders work from

high-risk positions--indeed, they are often temperamentally disposed to seek out risk and danger, especially

when opportunity and reward appear high. Managers prefer to work with people; they avoid solitary activity

because it makes them anxious. They related to people according to the role they play in a sequence of

events or in a decision-making process. Leaders, who are concerned with ideas, related to people in more

intuitive and empathic ways.

John Kotter, a colleague of Zalznik at Harvard, also argues that leadership is different from management,

but for different reasons. Management, he proposes, is about coping with complexity. Good management

brings about order and consistency by drawing up formal plans, designing rigid organization structures, and

monitoring results against the plans. Leadership, in contrast, is about coping with change. Leaders establish

direction by developing a vision of the future; they then align people by communicating this vision and

inspiring them to overcome hurdles. Kotter sees both strong leadership and strong management as

necessary for optimum organizational effectiveness. But he believes that most organizations are under-lead

and over-managed. He claims we need to focus more on developing leadership in organization because the

people in charge today are too concerned with keeping things on time and on budget and with doing what

was done yesterday, only doing it five percent better.

Defining Leadership

So where do we stand? We use a broad definition of leadership, one that con encompass all the current

approaches to the subject. Thus we define leadership as the ability to influence a group toward the

achievement of goals. The source of this influence may be formal, such as that provided by the possession

of managerial rank in an organization. Since management positions come with some degree of formally

designated authority, a person may assume a leadership role simply because of the position he or she holds

in the organization. But not all leaders are managers; nor, for that matter, are all managers leaders. Just

because an organization provides its managers with certain formal rights is no assurance they will be able to

lead effectively. WE find that non-sanctioned leadership--that is, the ability to influence that arises outside

the formal structure of the organization--is as important as or more important than formal influence. In

other words, leader can emerge form within a group as well as by formal appointment to lead a group.

Leadership can be defined in terms of:

· Personality

· Group processes

· Particular behaviours

· Persuasion

· Power

· Goal achievement

· Interaction

· And combination of two or more of the above

Leadership Theories

Two sets of leadership theories can be identified: traditional and modern.

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Traditional Leadership Theories

Kurt Lewin's Theory of Leadership

Kurt Lewin identified three types of leaders:

1. Authoritarian: These are leaders who tend to delegate least authority and become the sole decision

makers. They do not involve people in decision making.

2. Democratic: These are leaders who tend to involve people in decision making and give people the

right to express their opinion. However, they do not give full authority in decision making to their

subordinates.

3. Laissez Faire: These leaders tend to delegate maximum authority and allow their subordinates to

operate as they deem good for the organization.

Trait Theories

The trait approach to leadership attempted to identify stable and enduring character traits that differentiated

effective leaders from non-leaders. Hundreds of studies guided by this research agenda were conducted

during the first several decades of the 20th century. The earliest writers believed that important leadership

traits included:

· Brighter: Leaders tend to be brighter and more intelligent than other people. They are visionaries who

can direct people to follow them.

· Empathetic, sensitive: Leaders have an empathic attitude towards their followers. They tend to think

in terms of their people rather than only work.

· Self confidence: Leaders are people who are high at self-confidence and tend to believe in themselves.

· Confidence in followers: Leaders are people who tend to have confidence in their followers and

expect their followers to do the right things.

· High EQ: Relating to the empathic element, leaders are high at Emotional Quotient, i.e. they have the

ability to understand the emotions of others and use them for the benefit of everyone involved.

· Integrity: Leaders are people who have sound integrity and govern respect.

· Drive: Leaders are high at motivation levels.

Group and Exchange

The group and exchange theories of leadership are derived from social psychology. These have their roots

in the exchange theory. According to this theory, leaders provide more benefits and rewards than

burdens/costs to followers and in exchange followers carry out leaders' orders. It is an exchange process

where followers also impact leaders.

Chester Barnard applied such an analysis to managers and subordinates in an organizational setting more

than half a century ago. More recently, this social exchange view of leadership has been summarized by

Yammarino and Dansereau as follows:

In work organizations, the key partners involved in exchange relationships of investments and returns are

superiors and subordinates. Superiors make investments in and receive returns from subordinates;

subordinates make investment in and receive returns fro superiors; and the investments and returns occur

on a one-to-one basis in each superior-subordinate dyad.

Contingency Theory

It soon became clear to those who were studying the leadership phenomenon that the predicting of

leadership success was more complex than isolating a few traits or preferable behaviours. The failure to

obtain consistent results, lead to a focus on situational influences. The relationship between leadership style

and effectiveness suggested that under condition `a', style `x' would be appropriate whereas style `y' would

be more suitable for condition `b,' and style `z' for condition `c.' But what were the conditions a,b,c and so

forth? It was one thing to say that leadership effectiveness was dependent on the situation and another to

be able to isolate those situational conditions.

Several approaches to isolating key situational variables have proven more successful than others and, as a

result, have gained wider recognition. We shall focus on the Fred Fiedler model of contingency theory:

Fred Fiedler: contingency model of leadership effectiveness

The first comprehensive contingency model for leadership was developed by Fred Fiedler. The Fiedler

contingency model proposes that effective group performance depends on the proper match between the

leader's style of interacting with his or her subordinates and the degree to which the situation gives control

and influences to the leader. He isolated three situational criteria as below:

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Organizational Psychology (PSY510)

1. Relationship of leader-follower: It is the degree of confidence, trust, and respect subordinates have in

their leaders.

2. Nature of task: It is the degree to which the job assignments are procedurized (that is structured or

unstructured)

3. Leader's power: The degree of influence a leader has over power variables such as hiring, firing,

discipline, promotions, and salary increases.

There is some experimental support of this theory.

Path-Goal Leadership Theory

Currently, one of the most respected approaches to leadership is the path-goal theory. Developed by Robert

House, path-goal theory is a contingency model of leadership that extracts key elements from the Ohio

State leadership research on initiating structure and consideration and the expectancy theory of motivation.

The essence of the theory is that the leaders' job to assist his or her followers in attaining their goals and to

provide the necessary direction and/or support to ensure their goals are compatible with the overall

objectives of the group or organization. The term path-goal is derived from the belief that effective leaders

clarify the path to help their followers get from where they are to the achievement of their work goals and

make the journey along the path easier by reducing roadblocks and pitfalls.

Leaders make the path for goal achievement as smooth as possible in the following manner:

Four processes

· Directive leadership: Directive leadership is close to Kurt Lewin's authoritarian leadership where

leaders direct the followers rather than involving them in the decision making. Directive leadership

leads to greater satisfaction when tasks are ambiguous or stressful than when are highly structured and

well laid out.

· Supportive leadership: Such a leader is friendly and shows concern for the subordinates. It is similar

to democratic leadership style given by Kurt Lewin but differs in a way that it supports rather than

allowing the subordinates to express themselves. Supportive leadership results in high employee

performance and satisfaction when subordinates are performing structured tasks.

· Participative leadership: The participative leader consults with subordinates and uses their suggestion

before making a decision.

· Achievement oriented leadership: The achievement oriented leader sets challenging goals and

expects subordinates to perform at their highest level.

REFERENCES

· Luthans, Fred. (2005). Organizational Behaviour (Tenth Edition). United States: McGraw Hill Irwin.

· Mejia, Gomez. Balkin, David & Cardy, Rober. (2006). Managing Human Resources (Fourth Edition).

India: Dorling Kidersley Pvt. Ltd., licensee of Pearson Education in South Asia.

· Robbins, P., Stephen. (1996). Organizational Behaviour (Seventh Edition). India: Prentice Hall, Delhi.

· Huczynski, Andrzej & Buchanan, David. (1991). Organizational Behaviour: An Introductory Text

(Second Edition). Prentice Hall. New York.

· Moorhead, Gregory & Griffin, Ricky. (2001). Organizational Behaviour (First Edition). A.I.T.B.S.

Publishers & Distributors. Delhi.

FURTHER READING

· Viewpoint: Managers vs. Leaders: http://www. govexec.com/features/0703/0703view2.htm

· Managers Vs Leaders: http://www.freeessays.cc/db/11/bmu270.shtml

· LEADER Vs. MANAGER:

http://convention.asha.org/2005/handouts/293_Bellile_Corky_072906_111705021515.ppt

· Eight Major Leadership Theories:

http://www.psychology.about.com/od/leadership/p/leadtheories.htm

· Leadership: Behavioral Theories:

http://www.choo.fis.utoronto.ca/FIS/Courses/LIS1230/LIS1230sharma/leader1.htm

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