• Housekeeping

• News

• Topics

• Great Person/Trait theories: What do you look for in leaders?

• McGregor’s Theory X & Y: What are assumptions underlying people?

• Argyris’ Worker Maturity: What if you mismatch leader style & follower needs?

• Tannenbaum & Schmidt’s Leadership Continuum: What are your choices?

• Lippit & White’s Autocratic, democratic, laissez faire leadership: (dis)advantages of different approaches

• Vroom-Jago Normative Decision Tree: Know when to delegate?

• Team Task: applying a theory to a case & critiquing

Leadership Preferences Orientation

Delegation & power sharing

Crisis Management

Style & situation fit

Mentoring

Worker satisfaction & productivity

Leader replacement

Identify qualities for selection, coaching, performance eval.

Vroom-Jago Normative Model

Cognitive Resources

Theory

McGregor’s X-Y, MBTITannenbaum-Wechsler

Leader-Member ExchangeVertical Dyad Linkage

Fiedler’s Leadership ContingencyHersey-Blanchard situational

Blake-Mouton Managerial GridArgyris Maturity Model

Path-Goal Theory

Succession theorySubstitutes/neutralizers

Org. culture

Trait TheoryLeadership Practices

The Leadership Tool Kit: Different theories for different purposes

“A rose by any other name”-- Similarities among leadership theories

The Great Person Approach to leadership

• Where does the Great Person approach come from and what are its assumptions?

• What are the problems and limitations of the approach?

• What is the trait approach? Why is it often linked to the GP approach?

• Intelligence (but not too much), scholarship initiative, independence, inventiveness (correlated with age, drops after age 40)

• Self assurance, confidence, aspiration, perceived occupational level

• Reflection-- the “helicopter factor" (being able to hover above and reflect on self and team), objectivity

• Demographic characteristics: good health, above or below average height, upper SES

• Enthusiasm, sociability, integrity, courage, imagination, decisiveness, determination, energy

40 years of leadership research finds some traits are necessary but not sufficient:

• Sociability: dependable, responsible, active, socially participate, cooperative, popular

• Motivation: show initiative and persistence

• Cognitive ability: intelligent, scholarly, insightful, verbal, adaptable

• originality • popularity • sociability • judgment • aggressiveness

(assertiveness) • humor • desire to excel • cooperativeness • liveliness • athletic ability

• age • height • weight • physique • energy • appearance • dominance • mood control

Correlate High with Leadership

Correlate Low with Leadership

Leadership Behaviors

What behaviors and personal characteristics (traits) do you think would be most and least correlated with leadership?

The Behavioral Approach to Leadership

• The Behavioral Approach suggests that leaders behave in ways that differentiate themselves from those who are not chosen for leadership.

• What are some of the behaviors in a team or committee setting that would increase chances of being viewed as a leader?

• What are behaviors in that setting that would mitigate against being seen as a leader?

• high participation and talking • comfort and fluency in delivering

information • forceful and energetic in presentation • does not express strong opinions early in

group (can later) • initiates conversation • introduces new themes and topics • seeks comments from others (Gatekeeper

role) • sits at head of table • in a position of receiving, dispensing, or

coordinating information • avoids obviously persuading other to a

point of view • interacts flexibly with others; changes

style as needed but not seen as chameleon

• promotes identity of group ("we, us, our", etc.)

• listens accurately to other's contributions • demonstrates achievement, goal

orientation and task structure

• low level of participation, involvement or contribution

• uninformed contribution • overly directive comments • offensive language (including

sexist and profanity) • stilted, overly formal language • dominates conversation • absent from meetings • volunteers as secretary or

recorder of meetings • takes role of joker • shows contempt for leadership • willing to do as told • presents self too strongly early in

group discussion

Behaviors working for and against leadership selection

For--

Against–

How would you evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the

trait/behavior approach?

• many of these traits are relatively abstract-- how they are defined may refer to different behaviors, and may be too abstract to be adequately measured

• they may overlap in meaning making them difficult to distinguish or apply

• hundreds (if not thousands) of traits have been identified-- it's not possible for a leader to have them all

• there are too many exceptions to the rule-- some people don't have these traits but are successful leaders

• some traits are actually opposites of each other

• the trait approach does not view personality asn an integrated whole, but as a collection of features or behaviors.

• what may be a useful trait in one setting or culture may not be useful in another

• referring to traits implies relatively fixed or stable qualities, and does not consider how well they are developed, adapted and used

• reduced to a minimum, traits may be necessary but not sufficient conditions for leadership

• the trait approach does not consider the role of followers or situational conditions; too much weight is placed on the leader

A few problems with the trait approach

Lewin, Lippitt & White’s Autocratic, Democratic & Laissez

Faire Leadership Styles (1938)

• Why was this study so important at the time– why these variables chosen?

• Where and on whom was the study done?

• What did they conclude and how sound was it?

• Is there anywhere that Theory X is still appropriate?

Kurt Lewin

Autocratic

Democratic

Laissez Faire

Douglas McGregor’s Theory X & Theory Y

1. Most people will try to do as little work as possible.

2. For most people, work is not as natural as play or recreation.

3. Most employees must be closely supervised in order to get them to perform up to expectations

4. Most employees actually prefer to be told exactly what to do rather than having to figure it out for themselves

5. Most employees do not care much about the organization's goals.

6. Most employees would prefer increased job security to increased responsibility.

7. Most people will not use their own initiative or do things that they have not been specifically assigned to do.

8. Employees generally do not have much to contribute when asked to participate in making decisions or solving problems

9. It is just basic human nature--people just naturally dislike work.

10. Most employees will not exercise self-control and self-motivation--managers must do this for them

1 2 3 4 5

SA A U D SD

41 - 50 points = strong Theory Y beliefs 31 - 40 points = moderate Theory Y beliefs 21 - 30 points = mixed Theory Y and Theory X beliefs 11 - 20 points = moderate Theory X beliefs   5 - 10 points = strong Theory X beliefs

M4 M3 M2 M1

Worker Maturity

Argyris’ Worker Maturity Model(1957, 1962)

• What are Argyris’ assumptions about the long term effect of work?

• What are the implications for leadership & followership?

• What happens when the leadership style and maturity are mismatched?

• What could be done to enhance maturity?

Chris Argyris

Tannenbaum & Schmidt’s Leadership Continuum (1973)

Forces in the manager: belief in team member participation and confidence in capabilities of members Forces in the subordinate: subordinates who are independent, tolerant of ambiguity, competent, identify with organizational goals Forces in the situation: team has requisite knowledge, team hold organizational values and traditions, teams work effectively Time pressure: need for immediate decision under pressure mitigates against participation

Robert Tannenbaum

Advantages of Tannenbaum & Schmidt’s theory

• gives managers a range of choices for involvement

• presents criteria for involvement and delegation

• focuses decision maker on relevant criteria (e.g., forces & time)

• emphasizes employee development and empowerment

• is heuristic--encourages research to see how effective delegation may be under the model

Limitations of this theory

• involves only the initial step of assigning a task to someone, not the following processes that may determine the effectiveness of the outcome

• assumes the manager has sufficient information to determine disposition to self or team

• assumes "neutral" environment without social bonds or politics

• simplifies complex decisions to a two-polar dimension; more simple than reality is

Delegation in decision making

• What are the criteria that you would use as a manager to help you decide when to delegate a decision? (consider characteristics of the subordinate, nature of the decision, situation, etc.)

• Can you place these criteria in a logical order that would lead you to a conclusion whether to make an authority decision, shared decision, or full delegation?

1. Quality Requirement (QR): How important is the technical quality of the decision? 2. Commitment Requirement (CR): How important is subordinate commitment to the decision? 3. Leader's Information (LI): Do you (the leader) have sufficient information to make a high quality decision on your own? 4. Problem Structure (ST): Is the problem well structured (e.g., defined, clear, organized, lend itself to solution, time limited? 5. Commitment Probability (CP): If you made the decision by yourself, would your subordinates would be committed?6. Goal Congruence (GC): Do subordinates share the organizational goals to be attained in solving the problem? 7. Subordinate conflict (CO): Is conflict among subordinates over preferred solutions likely? 8. Subordinate information (SI): Do subordinates have sufficient information to make a high quality decision?

Vroom-Yetton-Jago Normative Decision Tree

Victor Vroom

Philip Yetton

Arthur Jago

http://www.synop.com/Weblogs/Nathan/content/binary/Vroom%20&%20Jago%20decision%20process%20flowchart.gif

Team Task

• Form discussion groups

• Quickly describe several situations to which you might apply one or more of the leadership theories discussed tonight. Select one situation to examine in more detail

• Use a theory to

• Describe and explain what happened

• Identify leverage points and recommend an intervention

• Evaluate the utility of the theory used in this case analysis

• Report to the class on utility of the theory