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had more confidence in their ability to be creative at work and higher
levels of creative performance.
3) A review of 117 studies testing transformational leadership found it was
related to the motivation and satisfaction of followers and the higher
performance and perceived effectiveness of leaders.
b. Transformational leadership isn’t equally effective in all situations, however.
1) It has a greater impact on the bottom line in smaller, privately held firms
than in more complicated organizations.
2) The personal nature of transformational leadership may be most
3) Another study showed transformational leaders were more effective in
4) Where group members are highly individualistic and don’t readily cede
decision-making authority, transformational leadership might not have
much impact.
c. Transformational leadership theory is not perfect.
1) There are concerns about whether contingent reward leadership is
strictly a characteristic of transactional leaders only.
2) And contrary to the full range of leadership model, the 4 I’s in
transformational leadership are not always superior in effectiveness to
transactional leadership (contingent reward leadership sometimes
works as well as transformational leadership).
d. In summary, transformational leadership is more strongly correlated than
transactional leadership with lower turnover rates, higher productivity,
lower employee stress and burnout, and higher employee satisfaction.
1) Like charisma, it can be learned.
2) One study of Canadian bank managers found branches managed by
4) The GLOBE study links a number of elements of transformational
5. What elements of transformational leadership appear
universal? Vision, foresight, providing encouragement,
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6. A vision is important in any culture, then, but the way it is formed and
communicated may need to vary by culture.
VII. AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP: ETHICS AND TRUST ARE THE FOUNDATION OF
LEADERSHIP
One area left out of charismatic and transformational leadership
theories is the role of ethics and trust in leadership effectiveness.
Authentic leadership theorists argue that leadership is not value-
free: when assessing a leader’s effectiveness, consideration must be given to the means
and ends taken to achieve the leader’s goals.
A. What Is Authentic Leadership? Authentic leaders know who they are, what they
believe in and value, and act on those values and beliefs openly and candidly.
1. Their followers consider them ethical people. The primary quality produced by
authentic leadership, therefore, is trust.
3. Because the concept is new, there has been little research on authentic
leadership.
a. However, it’s a promising way to think about ethics and trust in leadership
because it focuses on the moral aspects of being a leader.
b. Transformational or charismatic leaders can have a vision, and communicate
it persuasively, but sometimes the vision is wrong (as in the case of Hitler),
or the leader is more concerned with his or her own needs or pleasures, as
were Dennis Kozlowski (ex-CEO of Tyco) and Jeff Skilling (ex-CEO of Enron).
B. Ethics and Leadership. Only recently have researchers begun to consider the ethical
implications in leadership. Why now?
2. Another may be the discovery that many past leaders—such as Martin Luther
King Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Thomas Jefferson—suffered ethical shortcomings.
3. Ethics and leadership intersect at a number of junctures.
a. Transformational leaders have been described as fostering moral virtue
when they try to change the attitudes and behaviors of followers.
b. Charisma, too, has an ethical component. Unethical leaders use their
charisma to enhance power over followers, directed toward self-serving
ends.
4. Ethical leaders use it in a socially constructive way to serve others.
a. Leaders who treat their followers with fairness, especially by providing
honest, frequent, and accurate information, are seen as more effective.
b. Because top executives set the moral tone for an organization, they need to
set high ethical standards, demonstrate those standards through their own
behavior, and encourage and reward integrity in others while avoiding
abuses of power such as giving themselves large raises and bonuses while
seeking to cut costs by laying off longtime employees.
5. Leadership is not value free.
a. In assessing its effectiveness we need to address the means a leader uses in
trying to achieve goals, as well as the content of those goals.
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conveys other centered (not self centered) values by leaders who model
ethical conduct. Socialized charismatic leaders are able to bring employee
values in line with their own values through their words and actions.
C. Servant Leadership. Scholars have recently considered ethical leadership from a
new angle by examining servant leadership.
1. Servant leaders go beyond their own self-interest and focus
on opportunities to help followers grow and develop. They
don’t use power to achieve ends; they emphasize persuasion.
2. Characteristic behaviors include listening, empathizing, persuading, practicing
stewardship, and actively developing followers’ potential.
3. What are the effects of servant leadership? One study of 123 supervisors found
4. Servant leadership increases tempotency (a belief that one’s team has above–
5. A study with a nationally representative sample of 250 workers found higher
6. Servant leadership may be more prevalent and more effective in certain
cultures. In particular, the East Asian prototype is more like a servant leader,
which might mean servant leadership is more effective in these cultures.
D. Trust and Leadership
1. Trust is a psychological state that exists when you agree to
make yourself vulnerable to another because you have
2. Trust is a primary attribute associated with leadership; breaking it can have
serious adverse effects on a group’s performance.
3. Followers who trust a leader are willing to be vulnerable to the leader’s actions,
confident their rights and interests will not be abused.
4. In a simple contractual exchange of goods and services, your employer is legally
bound to pay you for fulfilling your job description. But today’s rapid
reorganizations, diffusion of responsibility, and collaborative team-based work
style mean employment relationships are not stable long-term contracts with
explicit terms. Rather, they are more fundamentally based on trusting
relationships than ever before.
a. You have to trust that if you show your supervisor a creative project you’ve
been working on, she won’t steal the credit behind your back.
b. You have to trust that extra work you’ve been doing will be recognized in
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your performance appraisal.
c. In contemporary organizations, where less work is closely documented and
specified, voluntary employee contribution based on trust is absolutely
necessary.
d. And only a trusted leader will be able to encourage employees to reach
beyond themselves to a transformational goal.
E. What Are the Consequences of Trust?
2. Here are just a few of the most important that research has shown:
a. Trust encourages taking risks.
1) Whenever employees decide to deviate from the usual way of doing
2) In both cases, a trusting relationship can facilitate that leap.
b. Trust facilitates information sharing.
1) One big reason employees fail to express concerns at work is that they
don’t feel psychologically safe revealing their views.
2) When managers demonstrate they will give employees’ ideas a fair
hearing and show they are concerned enough to actively make changes,
employees are more willing to speak out.
c. Trusting groups are more effective.
1) When a leader sets a trusting tone in a group, members are more willing
2) Conversely, members of mistrusting groups tend to be suspicious of each
3) These actions tend to undermine and eventually destroy the group.
d. Trust enhances productivity.
1) The bottom-line interest of companies also appears positively influenced
by trust.
3) Mistrust focuses attention on the differences in member interests,
making it difficult for people to visualize common goals.
4) People respond by concealing information and secretly pursuing their
own interests.
VIII. CHALLENGES TO THE LEADERSHIP CONSTRUCT
While leadership is important, leaders cannot do everything. What
follows are two perspectives that challenge the widely accepted
belief in the importance of leadership.
A. Leadership as an Attribution. As you may remember from
Chapter 6, attribution theory examines how people try to make sense of cause-and-
effect relationships. The attribution theory of leadership says leadership is merely
an attribution people make about other individuals.
1. Thus we attribute to leaders intelligence, outgoing personality, strong verbal
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2. At the organizational level, we tend to see leaders, rightly or wrongly, as
responsible for extremely negative or extremely positive performance.
3. We also make demographic assumptions about leaders.
a. Respondents in a study assumed a leader described with no identifying
racial information was white at a rate beyond the base rate of white
1) Teams prefer male leaders when aggressively competing against other
teams,
4. Attribution theory suggests what’s important is projecting the appearance of
being a leader rather than focusing on actual accomplishments.
a. Leader-wannabes who can shape the perception that they’re smart,
personable, verbally adept, aggressive, hardworking, and consistent in their
style can increase the probability their bosses, colleagues, and employees
will view them as effective leaders.
B. Substitutes and Neutralizers to Leadership. This theory holds that leadership
actions are often irrelevant when trying to explain organizational outcomes.
1. Experience and training are among the substitutes that can replace the need for
a leader’s support or ability to create structure.
2. Neutralizers make it impossible for leader behavior to make
3. We’ve introduced a number of variables—such as attitudes,
personality, ability, and group norms—that affect employee performance and
satisfaction.
a. It’s simplistic to think employees are guided to goal accomplishments solely
by the actions of their leader.
b. Leadership is simply another independent variable in our overall OB model.
4. There are many possible substitutes for and neutralizers of many different types
of leader behaviors across many different situations.
a. Moreover, sometimes the difference between substitutes and neutralizers is
fuzzy.
b. If I’m working on a task that’s intrinsically enjoyable, theory predicts
leadership will be less important because the task itself provides enough
motivation. But does that mean intrinsically enjoyable tasks neutralize
leadership effects, or substitute for them, or both?
Exhibit 12.6
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C. Online Leadership
1. Today’s managers and their employees are increasingly
linked by networks rather than geographic proximity.
a. We propose that online leaders have to think carefully about what actions
they want their digital messages to initiate.
2. Online leaders also confront unique challenges, the greatest of which appears to
be developing and maintaining trust.
a. Identification-based trust, based on a mutual understanding of each other’s
3. This discussion leads us to the tentative conclusion that, for an increasing
number of managers, good leadership skills may include the abilities to
communicate support, trust, and inspiration through keyboarded words and
accurately read emotions in others’ messages.
a. In electronic communication, writing skills are likely to become an extension
of interpersonal skills.
IX. IMPLICATIONS FOR MANAGERS
A. Leadership plays a central part in understanding group
1. Knowing what makes a good leader should thus be valuable in improving group
performance.
B. The early search for a set of universal leadership traits failed. However, recent
efforts using the Big Five personality framework have generated much more
encouraging results.
1. Extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness to experience show strong and
consistent relationships to leadership.
C. The behavioral approach’s major contribution was narrowing leadership into task–
oriented (initiating structure) and people-oriented (consideration) styles.
1. By considering the situation in which the leader operates, contingency theories
promised to improve on the behavioral approach, but with the exception of LPC
theory they have not fared well in leadership research.
D. Research on charismatic and transformational leadership has made major
contributions to our understanding of leadership effectiveness.
2. They want leaders with vision and the charisma to carry out their vision.
E. Effective managers today must also be authentic and develop trusting relationships
1. Managers who aren’t trusted aren’t likely to be effective leaders.
X. KEEP IN MIND
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7. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
9. Give me liberty or give me death.
11. If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
12. Walk softly and carry a big stick.
Who Said That?
Name That Leader: Answer Key
2. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. –Franklin D. Roosevelt
4. The buck stops here. –Harry S. Truman
6. [In response to a female heckler who claimed he was drunk.] And you, madam, are
ugly. But I shall be sober in the morning. –Winston Churchill
8. Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.
–John F. Kennedy
10. In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
–Thomas Jefferson
12. Walk softly and carry a big stick. –Teddy Roosevelt