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Chapter 12
Leadership in Group Communication
CHAPTER OUTCOMES
• Understand the diverse perspectives on leadership
• Explain ways to encourage productive communication in a group
• Identify strategies for leading group problem solving
• Learn how to support effective group decision making
• Explore ideas for planning, running, and evaluating meetings
CHAPTER OUTLINE
PERSPECTIVES ON LEADERSHIP
Who are leaders? Are leaders “naturally born”? Or, are they created in crisis? Are they tough?
compassionate? laid-back? powerful speakers? all of the above? By understanding how
researchers study and view leadership, one thing becomes clear: leaders are not one thing but a
mix of different communication skills and styles.
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• Research has identified four primary perspectives on leadership that can help clarify what it
means to be a leader in a variety of group situations.
TRAITS VIEW
• The traits view of leadership assumes that all talented leaders share certain personal and
physical characteristics, such as being honest, passionate, confident, caring, engaging,
humble, fearless, genuine, and supportive.
• Although this view helps us think about a leader’s desirable qualities, a person with the
“right” leadership traits still may not perform well as a leader.
STYLE VIEW
• The style view of leadership focuses on the behaviors leaders use to influence others and
identifies three basic behavioral styles. Although it gives us a way to talk about leadership,
it doesn’t address the question of which style will be most useful in a given situation.
○ The autocratic leadership style directs others, telling them what to do, and is often
willing to accept limited input from others in the group.
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SITUATIONAL VIEW
• The situational view of leadership maintains that effective leadership is determined by the
group’s readiness to take on a task, including its motivation and group members’ experience
and knowledge.
○ A group that has been together for a long time and has a lot of experience would need
different leadership than one with little experience or motivation.
• The Model of Situational Leadership demonstrates how a group’s readiness determines the
appropriate leadership style. For example
○ A telling or autocratic style would fit a team that has just been assembled and that has
little experience, requiring a leader who established structure, provided specific direction,
and gave frequent feedback to the group about performance.
○ A selling style would fit a team that has a moderate degree of experience and motivation,
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FUNCTIONAL VIEW
• The functional view of leadership considers the types of communication behaviors that
help a group work toward its goal.
○ In any group, some communication behaviors help get the job done (task roles), whereas
others help build interpersonal bonds within the group (maintenance roles).
○ In the functional view, all of these behaviors and communication count as a form of
leadership because they are all helping the group function.
LEADING WITH COMMUNICATION
Competent communication within a group doesn’t just naturally happen. It takes work. This is
not the responsibility of a single, designated leader, however. Instead, if all group members
communicate openly and competently respond to conflicts, the group can create and maintain
a supportive environment.
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SUPPORTING GENDER AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY
• Gender and cultural differences within a team can make it challenging to work as a
cohesive unit. But ignoring these differences—or worse, allowing stereotypes to guide your
perception—will lead to poor communication, uneasiness, and a general lack of trust within
a group.
• Additional challenges surface when team members have cultural differences. Self-
awareness can help you adapt your communication to differences related to individualism-
collectivism, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance in small groups.
CREATING A COMMUNICATION CLIMATE
• The communication climate, or emotional tone, within the group can influence all aspects
of the group; it arises from the verbal and nonverbal messages group members exchange.
○ Defensive communication climates are created when members insult one another’s ideas,
promise to handle a task and then don’t follow up, or gossip behind each other’s backs.
Team members see the group as threatening and this can damage group cohesion.
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PREVENTING GROUPTHINK
• Groupthink is a phenomenon that occurs when an overly cohesive group wants to maintain
harmony more than anything else, so they avoid challenging one another’s ideas.
○ Highly cohesive groups become particularly vulnerable to groupthink when they have a
long history of success, are under time pressure, or have a high-status or particularly
persuasive individual on the team.
○ Teams that seem to be slipping into groupthink need a leader to take action fast by taking
these steps:
▪ Encouraging input from everyone. Ask all members to contribute ideas and
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DEALING WITH CONFLICT
• Substantive conflict revolves around disagreements about the group’s tasks, procedures, or
decision options.
○ A moderate amount of substantive conflict can help prevent groupthink.
○ When groups experience too much substantive conflict or get embroiled in affective
conflict, it’s time for a group member to assume leadership and manage the situation.
○ A collaborative approach may be appropriate in instances with too much substantive
conflict or affective conflict because it gives everyone a say in the resolution and is thus
viewed as fair. Taking a collaborative approach to managing a conflict involves applying
these five practices:
▪ Focus on common ground rather than proving who’s right.
LEADING PROBLEM SOLVING
A common reason you might be part of a small group is to solve a problem. But even with such
a direct task, groups still need leaders to provide structure to the process. To lead a group in
problem solving, you need to fully understand the problem and thoughtfully consider all
possible solutions.
• A problem is a gap between a current situation and a desired condition.
○ Some problems can be solved by an individual with the right expertise working alone.
STRUCTURED PROBLEM SOLVING
• The structured problem-solving approach examines and solves a problem and helps
groups maintain a focused and orderly discussion about the problem. To apply it, teams
collect information on the nature and scope of the problem facing them. Then they
systematically search for a solution. The approach generally follows these five steps:
1. Define and analyze the problem. Gather information to understand the nature, scope,
2. Establish criteria for a solution. Define the criteria that an acceptable solution must
meet. For example, what is the deadline? What results must the solution produce?
3. Generate possible solutions. Suggest different potential solutions. If necessary, conduct
additional research to understand how similar problems have been solved. More research
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4. Choose the best solution. Using the solution criteria and the discussion about possible
5. Implement the solution, and evaluate the results. Try out the solution, and assess the
results to determine whether it is effectively solving the problem. Don’t assume that just
because a solution is in place, the work is done.
GROUP BRAINSTORMING
• Group brainstorming is when a team focuses on generating as many ideas as possible to
solve a defined problem and is often integrated with step three of the structured problem-
solving process. Brainstorming can help groups think creatively or “outside of the box”
when coming up with solutions.
• Alex Osborn, the author of Applied Imagination, provides four guidelines for effective
brainstorming:
○ Encourage wild ideas. Even far-fetched ideas can spark creative, workable solutions.
○ Avoid judging ideas. Strive to generate as many ideas as possible without judging them.
○ Quantity is important. The more ideas a group can generate, the greater “raw material”
it has to use as the basis for designing a good solution.
○ Combine and elaborate on ideas. Blend together ideas offered by group members, and
build on them to generate new ideas.
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• Recent studies have also shown that group members can get better ideas from a
• Limitations of group brainstorming include the following:
○ Team members may feel overwhelmed by the volume of ideas being offered, so they may
stop expressing their own ideas.
○ Team members may be afraid others will judge them or their ideas, so they may avoid
making contributions.
○ Team members may just be lazy and let others do all the thinking.
• An effective leader can help combat these potential downfalls by doing the following:
○ Sharing Osborn’s four guidelines with the entire group before starting a brainstorming
session.
LEADING DECISION MAKING
Small groups make tons of decisions—everything from who should be in the group to how to
achieve their goals. How do members make such decisions? Should the leader decide for
everyone? Should there be a vote? Or should the group discuss choices until everyone agrees?
Depending on the group’s goals, the leadership style, and the decision being made, it could be
any of these options.
• Decision making is the process of making choices among alternatives. Groups commonly
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DECISION BY AUTHORITY
• An expert or designated leader makes decisions on behalf of the group. Relying on an
authority or expert is appropriate when a group must make a decision quickly or when an
individual member has expertise that’s especially critical for solving the problem at hand.
• Drawbacks include having some team members disagree with a decision but feeling pressured
DECISION BY MAJORITY
• Leaders identify two or more options, and all members of the group vote. Because leaders
pick only a few choices for members to vote on, decision by majority can be efficient—
particularly in larger groups where discussion of various options can take up a lot of time.
• This is not a good approach when a quick decision is needed.
DECISION BY CONSENSUS
• Consensus is what the leader achieves when all members support a given course of action.
This works well when a group is responsible for not only making a decision but also putting
that decision into action.
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○ The discussion encourages input from all group members and helps build cohesiveness in
a team.
○ Even group members who have concerns about the decision will still support the solution.
• To promote decision by consensus, leaders must do the following:
○ Encourage open discussion.
LEADING MEETINGS
Small groups do much of their work in face-to-face and virtual meetings. But when meetings
are poorly planned or managed, people get frustrated and time is wasted. When leading a
group, you can ensure that meetings run smoothly by developing an agenda, encouraging
participation during the meeting, and following up afterward.
• Although meetings are critical for conducting group work, many are hugely unproductive. In
one study, business professionals identified what they saw as the top five meeting problems:
○ Participants get off subject.
PLANNING MEETINGS