What makes a good leader? - Chapter 6

In most studies, it is assumed that leadership is something that is learned. Leaders' behaviors can be divided into two broad categories: initiating structure and consideration. A takeaway of this chapter is that leaders need to be flexible and adapt to both followers and the situation they are in. In order to addapt to the situation, leaders should follow the next steps:

1. Assess the individual differences of your followers in terms of abilities and motivation.
2. Assess the situation. 
3. Pay attention to follower behaviors and take corrective actions and apply rewards as suggested by the full-range model of leadership.
4. Assess the moral component of every leadership decision you make. 

What is leadership?

Leadership refers to the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared goals. Leadership is an influence process. It involves directing others (individuals and groups) toward organizational goals. 

Leadership is different from management. A manager administers, a leader innovates. A manager maintains, a leader develops. A manager is a copy, a leader is an original. A manager does things right, a leader does the right thing. A manager has his or her eyes on the bottom line, a leader's eye is on the horizon. In other words, leadership involves inspiring a vision. Management involves controlling the operations. There is, however, some overlap between leadership and management: managerial leadership refers to adapting to situational demands.

Is leadership innate or acquired?

In the trait approach, it is assumed that leaders are born with the talent and ambitions for leadership. In contrast, many other leadership theories propose that leadership can be learned. When the trait approach was largely dismissed in the 1940s and 1950s, researchers turned their attention to what leaders do using behavioral approaches. Following a research program in the 1950s, it was found that the things leaders do, can be divided into two categories. First, initiating structure refers to defining tasks for employees and focusing on goals. Second, consideration refers to the degree to which the leader shows trust, respect, and sensitivity to employees' feelings.

What is the path-goal theory?

A leader should be flexible and adapt their leadership behavior to followers and the situation. Leaders motivate their followers to accomplish objectives by establishing the paths to the goals. The path-goal theory (PGT) describes four different motivating leadership behaviors:

1. Directive leadership: giving followers specific instructions about their tasks, providing deadlines, setting standards for performance, and explaining rules.
2. Supportive leadership: showing consideration, being friendly and approachable, and paying attention the well-being of followers.
3. Participative leadership: allowing followers to have a voice in decisions that affect them, sharing information, inviting followers' ideas and opinions.
4. Achievement-oriented leadership: challenging followers to perform at high levels, setting standards for excellence, showing confidence in followers' ability to reach goals.

These four different types of leadership behavior influence follower's path perceptions, depending on the characteristics of the follower (ability level, personality, preference for structure, need for control) and of the situation (job design, formal authority system, workgroup norms). First, the E --> P expectancy is the follower's effort path to performance. In other words, if people try, they will achieve their goal. Second, the P --> O (performance-to outcome expectancy) is the belief that the leader will provide a reward that is wanted, and these rewards are of value to the follower or valences (Vs). In other words, the leader's behavior affects follower motivations to assure the leader will provide the rewards that are valued. The removal of barriers and strengthening of expectancies and instrumentalities results in follower satisfaction, effort, and performance.

Should a boss treat everyone alike?

Leaders treat their followers differently based upon their unique abilities and contributions to the work group and organization. The leader-member exchange (LMX) model is defined as the quality of the working relationship developed with each follower and is characterized by more delegation of authority to those with high quality. Leader decide, briefly, on their in-group members and their out-group members. Out-group members perform to the specifications in their job description, but they do not go above and beyond and do not take extra work. In-group members do. 

Inclusive leadership underscores the LMX approach that each follower is unique. Inclusive leadership suggests that leaders help all team members feel part of the group (belongingness) while retaining their sense of individuality (uniqueness). 

LMX relationships develop through three steps: role taking, role making, and role routinization. 

1. Role taking: the leader tests the commitment of the follower by offering extra work.
2. Role making: mutual expectations of the working relationship are established, and the follower's role is clearer.
3. Role routinization: once roles are made, they become stable, because both the leader and the follower know what to expect.

Followership is also important for leadership. Followership is a voluntary deference process. However, it is different from submissiveness to authority. It is about the behavior of a person that engages in while interacting with leaders to meet organizational objectives. 

What is the cause of behavior?

Attributions represent a person's attempt to assign a cause to a behavior or event they observe. In line with this, attribution theory proposes that the attribution people make about events and behavior can be either internal or external. In the event of internal attribution, people infer that an event of a person's behavior is due to his or her own traits and abilities. In the event of external attribution, people believe that a person's behavior is due to situational factors.

Attributions can bias how we process information and make decisions. One way in which this occurs is called the fundamental attribution error, referring to the tendency to attribute other people's behavior to internal factors such as character traits of abilities, but when explaining one's own behavior, people tend to attribute the cause to the situation. A second way of bias is called self-serving bias, that occurs when a person attributes successes to internal factors and failures to situational factors. The further an event is in the past, the more likely the cause of a failure will be attributed to the situation. 

How can a leader avoid attribution bias? One should gather additional information when ascribing a cause to certain behavior. By paying attention to overall patterns of behavior, one can make more accurate conclusions by considering the following:

• Consensus information: information about how other people would behave if they were in the same situation. High consensus means other people would behave similar. Low consensus means other people would behave differently.
• Distinctiveness of information: information about how the individual behaves the same way in different situations. Low indistinctiveness means that one behaves the same way in different situations. High indistinctiveness means that someone behaves in a particular way toward a particular situation only.
• Consistency information: information about how the individual behaves toward a certain stimuli across time and circumstances. High consistency means that someone behaves the same way almost every time he or she is in a particular situation.

Following these patterns we can conclude the following. If a leader wants to improve judgments and avoid the attribution error, he or she should consider how well other people would do in the same situation. For example, do all employees make the same mistake when filling out forms for customers? If so, maybe the form needs to be revised. When the right attributions are made, the working relationship between a leader and a follower will develop into a high-quality one.

What is meant by mentoring?

One of the best things that can happen is when the leader becomes a mentor. Mentoring refers to an intense developmental relationship whereby advice, counseling, and developmental opportunities are provided to a protégé by a mentor, which, in turn, shapes the protégé's career experiences. Mentors provide both career support and social support.

Is trust important?

Trust refers to the willingness to be vulnerable. Trust is related to many importance outcomes, including risk taking, job satisfaction and job performance. Trust is therefore very important for an effective and efficient organization. A three-part helpful framework to organize your thinking about how trust operates in organizations is discussed:

• Calculus-Based Trust (CBT) is a form of trust based upon keeping records of what another person does for you and what you do for them. It is an "arm's-length" kind of trust in which neither party really becomes vulnerable to the behavior of someone else.
• Knowledge-Based Trust (KBT) is the second level of trust. This level of trust is grounded in how predictable the other person is. Through interactions benefits are exchanged between two parties. People come to expect the other person to come through for them. It is based upon information that is gathered about the other person in a variety of circumstances.
• Identification-Based Trust (IBT) is characterized by the leader and follower sharing the same goals and objectives. The follower identifies with the vision of the leader. There is no need for record keeping, and the predictability of the behavior of the follower is assumed. 

The development of trust is considered as tactical climbing, in which there are increasing levels of risk and vulnerability over time. 

What to do when trust is broken? There are three important questions to ask in that situation:

• Is the trustee (the person who is the target of the trustor's trust) innocent or guilty of committing the transgression?
• If the trustee is guilty of the transgression, should this be attributed to the situation or to the person?
• If the transgression is attributed at least partly to the person, is the personal shortcoming fixable or is it an enduring characteristic of the trustee?

What are the characteristics of the full-range leader development model?

The full-range leader development model is based on research on transformational leadership. In this model, leadership is considered a continuum. People start at the lower end of the ladder, which is called transactional leadership (behaviors that motivate followers through rewards and corrective actions). At the highest end of the model, people are more engaged with their leaders when their leaders behave in certain ways. This is called transformational leadership.

Transactional leadership is characterized by (from worst to best):

• Nonleadership/ laissez-faire leadership: near avoidance of leadership.
• Management by exception (active or passive): in the active form (MBE-A), the leader looks for the follower to make errors and then corrects them. In the passive form (MBE-B), the leader does not actively look for errors, but when noticed, takes a corrective action.
• Contingent rewards.

Transformational leadership is characterized by the four I's behaviors:

• Idealized influence: being admired and respected by the followers.
• Inspirational motivation: leaders inspire others to work hard toward organizational objectives by providing challenge. They are positive and make others feel optimistic.
• Intellectual stimulation: leaders encourage innovation and new ideas.
• Individualized consideration: leaders treat each follower as a unique individual. 

How is ethics involved in leadership?

Leadership and ethics are intertwined; ethical decision making is important to the practice of leadership and contemporary theories of leadership address morality. Four components have been found on ethical leadership:

• Moral sensitivity involves recognizing that our behavior impacts others.
• Moral judgment involves determining the right decision.
• Moral motivation is having the need to do the right thing.
• Moral action. 

Two other theories on leadership have emerges: servant leadership and authentic leadership.

• The servant leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. That conscious decision brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from who is leader first (instead of servant), perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions. Servant leadership is also called humble leadership. 
• Authentic leadership involves knowing oneself and behaving in a way that is consistent with what is intuitively right. Characteristics of an authentic leader are: self-awareness, relational transparency (one says exactly what one means), internalized moral perspective (ones beliefs that are consistent with ones actions) and balanced processing. 

To sum up:

• Authentic leadership: leader self-awareness, relational transparency, internalized moral perspective, balanced processing, moral person, relationships.
• (Minor components: moral manager, idealized influence and conceptual skills)
• Ethical leadership: internalized moral perspective, moral person, moral manager, idealized influence, behaving ethically.
• (Minor component: individualized consideration)
• Transformational leadership: internalized moral perspective, moral person, idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration, conceptual skills, helping subordinates grow and succeed, putting subordinates first, relationships.
• (Minor components: relationship transparency, balanced processing, moral manager, empowering)
• Servant leadership: leader self-awareness, moral person, moral manager, emotional healing, value for community, conceptual skills, empowering, helping subordinates grow and succeed, putting subordinates first, behaving ethically, relationships, servanthood.

How to apply critical thinking to leadership?

One important aspect of this book is to apply critical thinking. Despite many proponents of leadership, some researchers have criticized the emphasis on the leader and their behavior. An alternative view is to consider leadership in the eyes of the follower. Leadership, according to this view, is an attribution that a follower makes about another person. 

The implicit leadership theory (ILT) studies how attributions about leadership affect follower perceptions of who you are in the role of the leader. People have implicit leadership schemas (models) in their minds of what constitutes an effective leader. In addition, people make significant attributions about the power of leaders. This is also called the romance of leadership. Leaders are not powerful because of their expertise or behaviors, instead their power is derived from follower attributions of their influence over events.