What is leadership?
What is leadership?What is a leader?How would you explain the success of a great leader? Was it due to his –
- Inborn, genetic traits
- Style of leadership
- Ability to influence others
- Occupation of positions of authority
- Ability to provide helpful behaviours in diverse situations
In selecting one of these alternatives, you have decided on a theory of leadership
Trait theories
Ideal leadership qualities admired by ancient Greeks:
- Justice and judgment
- Wisdom and counsel
- Shrewdness and cunning
- Bravery and action
Throughout history many people have believed that leaders are born, not made. This is the ‘great man’ or ‘great woman’ theory of leadership:
“From the moment of their birth
Some are marked for subjugation
And others for command”
Aristotle
The typical research studies on trait theories have compared the characteristics of a leader with the characteristics of a follower. The findings of these studies are somewhat contradictory and inconclusive.
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Emphasised characteristics of leaders |
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Trait studies 1904 – 1947 |
Trait studies 1948 – 1970 |
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Intelligence Alertness to the needs of others Insight into situations Responsibility Initiative Persistence |
Persistence in the pursuit of goals Venturesomeness Vigour Responsibility Task completion Persistence A sense of personal identity Willingness to accept the consequences of decisions and actions |
These characteristics seem to differentiate:
- Leaders from non-leaders
- Effective from non-effective leaders
- Higher ranking leaders from lower ranking leaders
When these characteristics however are considered singly, they hold little diagnostic or predictive significance. In combination they seem to be advantageous to the person who seeks the responsibilities of leadership. Whether any one person with these characteristics rises to a leadership position depends considerably on chance: one must not only have the abilities, but be at the right place at the right time.
Perhaps the safest conclusion to draw from the trait and personality studies of leadership is that individuals who have the energy, drive, self-confidence and determination to succeed will become leaders because they work hard to get leadership positions.
The best predictor of leadership success is prior success in leadership roles. Leader characteristics and situational demands seem to interact to determine the extent to which a given leader will prove successful in a group.
Two major traits have been considerably discussed in research:
“Charisma is an ‘extraordinary power’ as of working miracles”
Charismatic leaders are saviours who say in essence:
“I will make you safe”
“I will give you identity”
“I will give your life meaning and significance”
Charisma does not seem to be correlated with any one personality type.
In general, to be a charismatic leader, a leader must have:
- Charismatic leaders
- An extraordinary power of vision and be able to communicate it to others
- Unusual powers of practical leadership that will enable him to achieve the goals that will alleviate followers’ distress
- The ability to appear extremely self-confident in order to inspire others with the faith that the movement he or she leads will, without fail, prevail and ultimately reduce their distress
Named after Niccolo Machiavelli, Florentine statesman.If it is the charismatic leaders that found social movements and bring them to power, it is the Machiavellian leaders who consolidated and exercise the power the charismatic leaders obtain. The essence of Machiavellian leadership is believing:
There are four characteristics of leaders who manipulate their followers in a Machiavellian style:
- Machiavellianism
- That people are basically weak, fallible and naive and not particularly trustworthy
- That others are impersonal objects
- That one should manipulate others whenever it is necessary in order to achieve one’s ends
- They have little emotional involvement in their interpersonal relationships, as it is easier to manipulate others if they are viewed as objects rather than as fellow humans
- Since they take a utilitarian rather than a moral view of their interactions with others, they are not concerned with conventional morality
- Because successful manipulation of followers depends on an accurate perception of their needs and of ‘reality’ in general, they will not be grossly psychopathological
- Since the essence of successful manipulation is a focus on getting things done rather than achieving long term ideological goals, Machiavellian leaders will have a low degree of ideological commitment
Learnership styles
Even casual observation of leaders in action reveals marked differences in their styles of leadership.
- Autocratic: dictate orders and determine all policy without involving group members in decision making
- Democratic: set policies through group discussion and decision, encouraging and helping group members to interact, requesting the cooperation of others and being considerate of members’ feelings and needs
- Laissez-faire: they do not participate in their group’s decision making at all
Member satisfaction is associated with the democratic style of leadership
After reviewing the studies, the following conclusions can be made:
- Person-oriented styles of leadership pare not consistently related to productivity
- Among the work-oriented leadership styles, socially distant, directive and structured leader behaviours that tend to maintain role differentiation and let members know what to expect are consistently related to group productivity
- Among the person-oriented leadership styles, only those providing for member participation in decision making and showing concern for members’ welfare and comfort are consistently related to group cohesiveness
- Among the work-oriented leadership styles, only the structuring of member expectations is uniformly related to group cohesiveness
- All of the person-oriented leadership styles tend to be related to member satisfaction
- Only the structuring of member expectations is related positively to member satisfaction among the work-oriented leadership styles.
The most effective leaders may be those who show concern for the wellbeing and contributions of group members and at the same time structure members’ role responsibilities.
The major shortcoming of the leadership style approach is that different styles are effective under different conditions. Under certain conditions a democratic style would be the best, but if the situation should change, it could ask for an autocratic leadership. Because different leadership styles seem to be required in different situations, even with the same group, the attention of many researchers has moved to situational approaches to leadership.
The influence theory
A leader may be defined as a group member who exerts more influence on other members than they exert on him.The success or failure of a group does not seem to affect a leader’s ability to influence, nor does approval of him by subordinates.
An influence approach to leadership implies that there is a reciprocal role relationship between leaders and followers in which an exchange, or transaction, takes place.Without followers there can be no leader, and without a leader there can be no followers.
The leader and followers both give something and receive something from each other.
The leader receives status, recognition, esteem and other reinforcement for contributing his / her resources to the accomplishment of the group’s goals.
The followers obtain the leader’s resources and ability to structure the group’s activities toward the attainment of a goal.
It has been shown that:
- The amount of participation and influence by a leader affects members’ perceptions of his leadership and
- The amount of encouragement and support by followers affects the amount of a person’s participation and perceived leadership status.
Viewing leadership as a reciprocal influence between a leader and a set of followers does not necessarily mean that leadership is based on domination. Influence is directed toward persuading group members to co-operate in setting and achieving goals. Leadership then, becomes the art of ensuring that group members work together with the least friction and the most cooperation. This often means that leaders have to persuade and inspire members to follow their views of what needs to be done in order to achieve a group’s goals.
The position approach
The approach suggests that a leader is a leader simply because he is appointed to a leadership position. A person who is directly above you (in the authority hierarchy of the organisation) is therefore your leader.
The trouble with this approach is that it is unclear how certain individuals are placed in high-authority positions to begin with.All of their behaviour is certainly not leadership behaviour.
Situation theory
There is currently a consensus among social scientists that leadership skills and competencies are not inherited from one’s ancestors, that they do not magically appear when a person is assigned to a leadership position, and that the same set of competencies will not provide adequate leadership pin every situation.Different situations require different approaches to leadership.
Certain functions need to be filled if a group is to complete a task and to maintain effective collaborative relationships among the members.
Leadership is seen as the performance of acts that help the group to complete its task and to maintain effective working relationships among its members.
This asks for certain task-leadership actions as well as certain maintenance-leadership actions.
The theory includes two basic ideas:
Leadership is therefore specific to a particular group in a particular situation.
From the perspective of this theory, leadership is a learned set of skills that anyone with certain minimal requirements can acquire.
Criticism: There are so many different actions members can take to help in task achievement and group maintenance that specific ones are hard to pin down. What constitutes leadership then depends on the view of the person who is listing the leadership behaviour.
The theory consists of the following points:
When a group has no task to achieve, or no commitment to achieve its assigned task, a task leader is not needed and will not appear. Correspondingly, with no commitment to a goal there is no need to maintain relationships among members and a social-emotional leader will not evolve.
Fiedler divided leaders into those who were task-oriented and those who were maintenance-oriented. He found no consistent relationship between group effectiveness and leadership behaviours, the reason being that maintenance-oriented leaders were more effective in certain situations and task-oriented leaders were more effective in other situations.
Most of the activities of leaders can be classified into two distinct behavioural dimensions:initiation of structure (task actions) and consideration of group members (relationship maintenance actions)
Task behaviour is defined as the extent to which a leader engages in one-way communication by explaining what each follower is to do as well as when, where and how tasks are to be accomplished
Relationship behaviour is defined as the extent to which a leader engages in two-way communication by providing emotional support and facilitating behaviours.
The theory assumes that any of the four combinations of leadership behaviours may be ineffective or effective, depending on the situation:
The four behaviours:
Which combination of behaviour is appropriate depends on the level of maturity of the group.
Maturity is defined as the capacity to set high but attainable goals (attainment motivation), willingness and ability to take responsibility and the education and/or experience of the group members. Maturity is determined only in relation to a specific task to be performed. On one task members may have high maturity, on another task low maturity.
The essence of the theory is that when members have low maturity in terms of accomplishing a specific task, the leader should engage in high task and low relationship behaviours.
When members are moderately mature the leader moves to high task and high relationship behaviours and then to high relationship and low task behaviours.
When group members are highly mature in terms of accomplishing a specific task, then low task and low relationship behaviours are needed.
- The distributed-actions theory of leadership
- Any member of the group may become the leader by taking actions that help the group complete its task and maintain effective collaborative relationships
- Any leadership function may be fulfilled by different members performing a variety of relevant behaviour.
- Interaction process analysis
- When a group has a task to complete, its members engage in task-related behaviours on an unequal basis
- The members who are high on task behaviours tend to create some tension and hostility on the part of members who are less committed to the task
- There is a need for actions that help maintain effective working relationships among members
- Social-emotional actions are engaged in by members other than those high on task actions
- These differentiated roles (task and social-emotional) are stabilised and synchronised as the task and social-emotional leaders reinforce and support each other.
- Fiedler’s situational theory of leadership
- Hersey and Blanchard’s theory of situational leadership
- High task and low relationship TELLING
- High task and high relationship SELLING
- Low task and high relationship PARTICIPATING
- Low task and low relationship DELEGATING
Group structure and learnership
The group structure consists of role definitions and group norms that structure the interaction among group members.
- is a set of expected behaviours associated with a position within a group
- is essentially a rule that specifies acceptable behaviour in the group.
Leadership is one aspect of the group structure of the group.
Leadership Development
The need for leaders
“What has happened to our leaders?
Why aren’t we producing leaders like we used to?”
Seven possible explanations:
- What (the leadership task)
- Goals and values are in conflict
- People don’t perceive any great goals to rally around
- Where (the leadership environment)
- There is currently no great social crisis to rally people around
- Change, bureaucracy and legalistic norms, the current environment, do not lend themselves to leadership
- Whom (the leaders’ followers)
- Followers have become suspicious of leaders because media exposure reveals them to be less than perfect
- Who (the leader)
- Potential leaders are distracted by outer voices and cannot perceive an inner sense of call
- Leaders today are unwilling to stand up and be counted
The agrictural extensionist and leaders
There is a great need in agriculture for quality leaders.
You can be one
You can play a role in the developing of leaders
FIGURE SITUATIONAL LEADERSHIP
How to develop leaders
- Promote and provide the right environment
- Group involvement
- Give responsibility
- Social control
- Stimulate personal initiative
- Personal need satisfaction (demo plots)
- Stimulate and produce a perception of the general need of others
- Portraying (reading of biographies)
- Suggestions
- Need for appreciation and approval
- Training
- Knowledge
- Skills
- Learning how to think
- Experience (provide opportunities and be a good example)
To learn leadership skills, the learner must develop:
- A concept of what leadership is (knowledge)
- An action theory concerning what leadership behaviours will lead to effective group functioning
- Perceptions that the new leadership actions are appropriate
- That he / she is capable of performing them, and
- The skills needed to perform the new leadership actions
Learning group skills
Learning how to lead a group is no different from learning how to throw a football. Skills are learned, according to the following steps:
- Understand why the skill is necessary and how it will be of value to you – to want to learn, you must see the need for it
- Understand what the skill is and what are the components you have to engage into perform the skill
- Find situations in which you can practice the skill
- Get someone to watch you and tell you how well you are performing
- Keep practising
- Load your practice toward success
- Get friends to encourage you to use the skill
- Practise until it feels real.
With most skills there is a period of slow learning, then period of rapid improvement, then a period where performance reaches a plateau, then another period of rapid improvement, then another plateau, and so forth. You have to practise long enough to make it through the first plateau and integrate the skills into your behavioural repertoire. Most skill development goes through the following steps:
- Awareness that the skill is needed
- Understanding of what the skill is
- Self-conscious awkward engagement in the skill
- Feelings of phoniness while engaging in the new skill – it passes after a while and becomes more smooth
- Skilled but mechanical use of the skill
- Automatic, routine use where the skill is fully integrated into member’s behaviour repertoire and seems like a natural action to engage in.