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Chapter 7
Leadership
Chapter Overview
This chapter provides a discussion of the nature of leadership. The chapter begins with a discussion
of leadership behavior, situational aspects, and the concept of leaders as followers. Contingency
approaches to leadership style are then presented, including the Fiedler model, the Hersey and
Blanchard model, and the path-goal model. The final sections of the chapter include discussions of
the supervisor’s unique leadership role and emerging approaches to leadership.
Chapter Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, students should be able to understand:
1. The nature of leadership and followership
2. The difference between traits and behaviors
3. Different leadership styles
4. Early approaches to leadership
5. Contingency approaches to leadership
6. Substitutes for leadership
7. Coaching as a leadership role
Discussion and Project Ideas
The initial sections of the chapter describe the nature as well as various types of leadership. The
chapter also differentiates between leadership and followership and explains why each one is
important. The chapter is designed to test the leadership abilities of the students and make them
understand the nuances of leadership. In addition, the various models of leadership are described in
detail.
Initiate the following discussions among the students. These discussions will help students
understand some basics about leadership:
• What traits and behaviors characterize many effective leaders? How about the ineffective
leaders?
• Think of a national or international leader such as U.S. President Barack Obama or Germany’s
Chancellor Angela Merkel. What positive leadership characteristics have they exhibited? Did
they exhibit any leadership weaknesses or deficiencies?
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• Negative (or bad, bullying) leadership is still in use today—especially in some countries. Why
do you think this primitive and dysfunctional behavior still persists?
Lecture Outline
The Nature of Leadership
• Leadership is the process of influencing and supporting others (both individually and
collectively) to work enthusiastically toward achieving shared objectives.
o It is the critical factor that helps an individual or groups identify its goals, and then
motivates and assists in achieving the stated goals.
• There are three important elements of leadership:
o Influence/support
o Voluntary effort
o Goal achievement
• Leadership is the catalyst that transforms potential into reality
• The ultimate test of leadership is the degree to which it identifies, develops, channels, and
enriches the potential that is already there in an organization and its people—and then sustains
it across both good and bad times.
• Leadership approaches are descriptive, offering a variety of ways in which the actions of
leaders differ.
o For example, leaders can be positive or negative, autocratic or participative, employee-
oriented or task-oriented.
• Contingency approaches are more analytical, encouraging managers to examine their situation and
select a style that best fits it.
Management and Leadership
• The primary role of a leader is to influence others to voluntarily seek defined objectives.
• Managers are involved in:
o Planning activities
o Organizing appropriate structures
o Controlling resources
• Managers hold formal positions; leaders can be anyone with informal influence.
o Managers achieve results by directing the activities of others, whereas leaders create a
vision and inspire others to achieve this vision and to stretch themselves beyond their
normal capabilities.
o Because there is a substantial difference between management and leadership, strong
leaders may still be weak managers if poor planning causes their group to move in the
wrong directions.
o A Weak leader can still be a reasonably effective manager, especially if she or he
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happens to be managing people who have a clear understanding of their jobs and a
strong internal drive to work.
• Leadership ability can be acquired and improved through:
o The study of leadership research
o Observation of effective role models
o Participation in management training
o Learning from work experiences
• As managers are promoted to higher levels of responsibility, they must learn to change roles.
o Executives must shift from bricklayer to architect, problem solver to agenda setter,
tactician to strategist, and specialist to generalist.
Traits of Effective Leaders
• Traits are physical, intellectual, or personality characteristics.
• The current research on leadership traits suggests that some factors do help differentiate
leaders from nonleaders.
o The most important (primary) traits are:
▪ A high level of personal drive (characterized by energy, determination,
willpower, and tenacity)
▪ The desire to lead (motivation to influence others)
▪ Personal integrity (sense of ethics, honesty, and authenticity)
▪ Self-confidence (optimism and belief in self-efficacy as a leader)
▪ Authenticity (being real and genuine; believable)
o Secondary traits include:
▪ Cognitive (analytical)ability
▪ Business knowledge
▪ Charisma
▪ Creativity
▪ Flexibility (resilience)
▪ Personal warmth (sociability, humility, and modesty)
• Leadership traits do not necessarily guarantee successful leadership.
o They are best viewed as personal competencies or resources that may or may not be
developed and used.
• Some leaders (such as Vladimir Putin, president of Russia), exhibit negative traits (paranoia,
anger, inflexibility) that can be dysfunctional for their unit’s performance and their personal
success.
o One common negative trait is narcissism, in which leaders become filled with their
own importance, exaggerate their own achievements, seek out special favors, and
exploit others for their personal gain.
• Unless it is carefully controlled, narcissism is at best self-deceptive and at worst produces
leaders who are dangerously overconfident—power-seeking persons who desperately want to
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feed their own egos.
o This leads them to disregard the rights of others, dismiss the importance of empathy,
and fail to appreciate the feelings of their subordinates.
• Other leaders may act in a manner similar to alpha dogs, who are intensely aggressive,
egocentric, domineering, and controlling.
o Alpha dogs in the corporate world ruthlessly use their personal characteristics, skills, or
positions to intimidate others and maintain personal control; predictably, this produces
an unhealthy environment for most employees.
• Humble Leaders:
o Exhibit self-awareness
o Are open to new ideas from others
o Are candid about their own limitations
o Acknowledge their mistakes
o Often project an aura of calmness and quietness
• Followers of humble Leaders feel more valued, experience psychological freedom, and
increase their level of engagement with the organization.
Leadership Behavior
• Successful leadership depends more on appropriate behavior, skills, and actions than on
personal traits.
o The difference is similar to that between latent energy and kinetic energy in physics:
▪ One type (traits) provides the basic potential and the other (the behaviors, skills,
and actions) is the successful release and expression of those traits, much like the
kinetic energy.
• The three broad types of leadership skills:
o Technical
o Human
o Conceptual
• Technical Skill
o Technical skill refers to a person’s knowledge of, and ability in, any type of process or
technique.
o Technical skill is the distinguishing feature of job performance at the operating and
professional levels, but as employees are promoted to leadership responsibilities, their
technical skills become proportionately less important. (Figure 7.2)
o In many cases, managers have never practiced the technical skills that they supervise.
• Human Skill
o Human skill is the ability to work effectively with people and to build teamwork.
o It involves a wide range of behaviors such as:
▪ Energizing individuals
▪ Giving feedback
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▪ Coaching
▪ Care-giving
▪ Demonstrating empathy and sensitivity
▪ Showing compassion and support for those who need it
o One Gallop poll showed that most workers rated “having a caring boss” as more
valuable than monetary rewards and fringe benefits.
o No leader, at any level, escapes the requirement for effective human skill.
• Conceptual Skill
o Conceptual skill is the ability to think in terms of models, frameworks, and broad
relationships, such as long-range plans.
o It becomes increasingly important in higher managerial jobs.
o Conceptual skill deals with ideas, whereas human skill concerns people, and technical
skill involves things.
Situational Flexibility
• Successful leadership requires behavior that unites and stimulates followers toward defined
objectives in specific situations.
• Three variables that affect one another in determining appropriate leadership behavior:
o Leader
o Followers
o Situation
• To try to have all an organization’s leaders fit a standard pattern will suppress creative
differences and result in inefficiency as well.
• Although leadership involves a set of behaviors, it is more than mere activity.
o Aggressiveness and constant interaction with others will not guarantee good leadership.
• At times the appropriate leadership action is to:
o Stay in the background, keeping pressures off the group
o Keep quiet so others may talk
o Be calm in times of uproar
o Hesitate purposefully
o Delay decisions
• At other times, leaders may need to be more decisive, directive, and controlling.
• The key task of leaders is to recognize different situations and adapt to them on a conscious
basis.
Followership
• With few exceptions, leaders are also followers.
o They nearly always report to someone else.
o Even the president of a firm reports to a board of directors or trustees
• Leaders must be able to relate effectively, both upward and downward.
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• Just as leaders give something to their superiors and employees, they need validation from
higher authority as much as they need support from followers.
o In formal organizations of several levels, ability to follow (dynamic subordinancy) is
one of the first requirements for good leadership.
o Being an effective follower is a testing ground for future leaders
o Skillful performance in current roles unlocks the door to future leadership
opportunities.
• Many people fail in their jobs not as a result of any skill deficiencies, but because they lack
followership skills.
o These skills help employees support their current leader, be effective subordinates, and
play constructive team roles.
• Positive followership behaviors include:
o Being loyal and supportive, a team player
o Becoming actively engaged by pursuing dialogues and generating suggestions
o Acting as a devil’s advocate by raising penetrating questions
o Constructively confronting the leader’s ideas, ethical values, and actions
o Anticipating potential problems and actively preventing them
• Negative followership behaviors often involve:
o Competition (opposing the leader so as to be in the limelight)
o Uncritical (being a “yes” person who automatically agrees)
o Rebellion (actively opposing a good leader, or supporting a bad one)
Behavioral Approaches to Leadership Style
• The total pattern of explicit and implicit leaders’ actions as seen by employees is called leadership
style.
• Leadership style represents a consistent combination of:
o Philosophy
o Skills
o Traits
o Attitudes
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• Each style reflects, implicitly or explicitly, a manager’s beliefs about subordinates’ capabilities—
theory X or theory Y.
o Employee perceptions of leadership style are all that really matters to them.
o Employees respond to what they perceive leaders are, not just to what leaders think and
do and say and intend.
Positive and Negative Leaders
• Positive leadership emphasizes rewards (economic or otherwise) and a supportive approach.
o Better employee education, greater demands for independence, and other factors have
made satisfactory employee motivation more dependent on positive leadership.
o Positive leaders are also more likely to use a conversational approach to their
communications, characterized by four primary features:
▪ Intimacy (using physical and emotional proximity to “get close” to the
employees; gaining trust, listening well, and soliciting feedback)
▪ Interactivity (promoting open and fluid dialogue between two parties)
▪ Inclusion (increasing emotional engagement by soliciting the knowledge, ideas,
and reactions of others)
▪ Intentionality (having a sense of intended outcomes so that the purpose is clear)
• Negative leadership emphasizes on the use of threats, fear, harshness, intimidation, and
penalties.
o This approach may possibly get acceptable short-term performance in many situations,
but has high human costs.
o This type of leader acts domineering and superior with people.
o To get work done, they hold over their personnel such penalties as:
▪ Loss of job
▪ Reprimand in the presence of others
▪ A few days off without pay
▪ They display authority in the false belief that it frightens everyone into
productivity
o They are bosses who are feared more than leaders who are admired.
• Negative leaders are usually known as workplace bullies, but they have no more place in
work organizations than in the elementary school playground.
o These bullying bosses intimidate, ridicule, insult, blame, bark, harass, and make
unreasonable demands.
o Some effects on employees are subtle but no less real (psychological distress), while
other effects involve undesired behaviors (e.g., absenteeism or turnover) or
performance declines.
o Worst of all, bullying by one manager begets bullying by others, who reflect the same
behaviors that they see in their superiors or peers.
• A continuum of leadership styles exists ranging from strongly positive to strongly negative.
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o Most managers use a mix of positive and negative styles every day, but the dominant
style sets a tone within the group.
• Style is related to one’s model of organizational behavior.
o The autocratic model tends to produce a negative style.
o The custodial model is somewhat positive.
o The supportive, collegial, and system models are clearly positive.
• Positive leadership generally results in higher job satisfaction and performance
Autocratic, Consultative, and Participative Leaders
• The way in which a leader uses power establishes a type of style: autocratic, consultative, or
participative.
o Each style has benefits and limitations.
o A leader often uses all three styles over time, but one style tends to dominate.
• Autocratic leaders centralize power and decision making in themselves.
o They structure the complete work situation for their employees, who are expected to do
what they are told and not think for themselves.
o The leader takes full authority and assumes full responsibility.
o This style is typically negative, based on threats and punishment, but it can appear to be
positive as demonstrated by the benevolent autocrat who chooses to give some rewards
to employees.
o Some advantages of autocratic leadership include:
▪ Satisfying for the leader
▪ Permits quick decisions
▪ Allows the use of less competent subordinates
▪ Provides security and structure for employees
o Disadvantages of autocratic leadership include:
▪ Most employees dislike it, especially if it is extreme enough to create fear and
frustration.
▪ It seldom generates strong organizational commitment that leads to lower
turnover and absenteeism.
• Consultative leaders approach one or more employees and ask them for input before making
a decision.
o The leader may then choose to use or ignore information and advice received.
o If the input is seen as used, employees are likely to feel as though they had a positive
impact.
o If inputs are consistently rejected, it will have a negative impact on employees.
• Participative leaders clearly decentralize authority.
o Participative decisions are not unilateral, as with the autocrat, because they use inputs
from followers and participation by them.
o The leader and group are acting as a social unit.
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o Employees are informed about conditions affecting their jobs and encouraged to
express their ideas, make suggestions, and take action.
o The general trend is toward wider use of participative practices because they are
consistent with the supportive, collegial, and systems models of organizational
behavior and because they are strongly desired by many younger employees.
Leader Use of Consideration and Structure
• Two different leadership styles used with employees are consideration and structure, also
known as employee orientation and task orientation.
• Considerate leaders are concerned about the human needs of their employees.
o They try to build teamwork, provide psychological support, and help employees with
personal problems.
o They invite suggestions, listen with open minds, explain their own reasoning, and
cultivate a network of supporters.
• Task-oriented leaders
o Keep people constantly busy
o Closely monitoring employee actions
o Ignore personal issues and emotions
o Urge employees to produce
• Consideration and structure are somewhat independent of each other, so they should not
necessarily be viewed as opposite ends of a continuum.
o A manager may have to use both orientations in varying degree.
o The most successful managers are those who combine relatively high consideration and
structure, giving somewhat more emphasis to consideration.
• Early research on consideration and structure was done at the University of Michigan and at
the Ohio State University.
o In several types of environments, the strongly considerate leader was shown to have
achieved somewhat higher job satisfaction and productivity.
o Subsequent studies confirm this general tendency and report desirable side benefits,
such as lower grievance rates, lower turnover, and reduced stress within the group.
o Turnover, stress, and other problems seemed more likely to occur if a manager was
unable to demonstrate consideration.
• There has been much debate in recent decades about the glass ceiling in organizations—an
invisible barrier that has prevented many females from reaching important positions.
o Women tend to exhibit consideration-oriented qualities (friendly, compassionate, kind,
sympathetic), whereas men tend to display more aggressive, forceful, and controlling
(structure-oriented) characteristics.
o Frustratingly, men can show both sets of features without penalty, whereas women are
commonly criticized if they accent their “softer” side.
• Models of leadership that incorporate consideration and structure (or similar behaviors) have
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been useful for highlighting multiple dimensions of leadership, getting managers to think and
talk about their styles (and the impact of them), and stimulating debate and further studies
about leadership.
Contingency Approaches to Leadership Style
• The prime need for leaders is to be able to identify when to use a different style.
o A number of models have been developed that explain these exceptions, and they are
called contingency approaches.
▪ These models state that the most appropriate style of leadership depends on an
analysis of the nature of the situation facing the leader.
o Key factors in the situation need to be identified first.
▪ When combined with research evidence, these factors will indicate which style
should be more effective under certain types of conditions.
Fiedler’s Contingency Model
• An early, but controversial, contingency model of leadership was developed by Fred Fiedler
and his associates.
o This model builds upon the previous distinction between task and employee
orientation.
o It suggests that the most appropriate leadership style depends whether overall situation
is favorable, unfavorable, and intermediate stage of favorability.
• Fiedler shows that a leader’s effectiveness is determined by the interaction of employee
orientation with three additional variables that relate to the followers, the task, and the
organization: leader–member relations, task structure, and leader position power.
o Leader–member relations are determined by the manner in which the leader is
accepted by the group.
o Task structure reflects the degree to which one specific way is required to do the job.
o Leader position power describes the organizational power that goes with the position
the leader occupies.
• The relationship among these variables is shown in Figure 7.3.
o High and low employee orientations are shown on the vertical scale.
o The eight distinct combinations of the other three variables are shown on the horizontal
scale (leader favorableness).
o Each dot on the chart represents the data from a specific research project.
o The chart clearly shows that the considerate employee-oriented manager is most
successful.
o At the chart’s extremes, which represent conditions either quite favorable or quite
unfavorable to the leader, the structured task-oriented leader seems to be more
effective.
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o If leader–member relations are positive, the situation is favorable for task-oriented
leaders who can use their strengths.
o A structured leader is more effective in a position of weak power, low task structure,
and poor leader–member relations.
• The conclusions of the Fiedler model may be explained in the following manner:
o In highly unstructured situations, the leader’s structure and control are seen as
removing undesirable ambiguity and anxiety that results from it, so a structured (task-
established, so a more considerate, employee-oriented leader is effective.
• Despite criticism, Fiedler’s contingency model has played a major role in stimulating
discussions on leadership style and in generating useful guidelines.
o For example, managers are encouraged to:
▪ Use their analytical skills to examine their situation—the people, task, and
organization
▪ Draw upon their research-based knowledge to see the causal relationship between
situation and style effectiveness
▪ Be flexible in the contingent use of various skills within an overall style
role
Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership
• The situational leadership (life cycle) model was developed by Paul Hersey and Kenneth
Blanchard.
o This model suggests that the most important factor affecting the selection of a leader’s
style is the development (maturity) level of a subordinate.
• Development level is the task-specific combination of an employee’s task competence and
motivation to perform (commitment).
• Development level is assessed by examining:
o An employee’s level of job knowledge, skill, and ability
o An employee’s willingness and capacity to take responsibility and to act independently
▪ Employees typically (according to Theory Y assumptions) become better
developed on a task as they receive appropriate guidance, gain job experience,
and see the rewards for cooperative behavior.
• Both the competence to perform a given task and the commitment to do so can vary among
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employees; therefore different development levels demand different responses from leaders.
• Hersey and Blanchard combined guidance and supportive (also called task and relationship)
orientations to create four major styles:
o Telling
o Selling (coaching)
o Participative (supporting)
o Delegating
▪ These are matched with the development levels of employees, suggesting that
leadership style should not only vary with the situation, but evolve over time
toward the delegating style.
• Some of the drawbacks of the situational model are as follows:
o It ignores several other critical elements that determine leadership style
o It does not have a widely accepted research base.
• Despite its limitations, the situational model has achieved considerable popularity and also
awakened many managers to the idea of contingency approaches to leadership style.
Path-Goal Model of Leadership
• Path-goal leadership states that the leader’s job is to use structure, support, and rewards to
create a work environment that helps employees reach the organization’s goals.
o The two major goals are to create a goal orientation and to improve the path toward the
goals so they will be attained.
• Figure 7.5 shows the path-goal process.
o Leaders identify employee needs, provide appropriate goals, and then connect goal
accomplishment to rewards by clarifying expectancy and instrumentality relationships.
o The expected results of the process include job satisfaction, acceptance of the leader,
and greater motivation.
• Leaders need to provide a balance of both task and psychological support for their
employees.
o They provide task support when they help assemble the resources, budgets, power,
and other elements necessary to get the job done.
▪ Equally important, they can remove environmental constraints that sometimes
inhibit the performance of the employee.
o Leaders must also provide psychological support to stimulate people to want to do the
job and to attend to their emotional needs.
• Leadership Styles
o According to path-goal theory, the leader’s roles are to help employees understand