INTRODUCTION TO

LEADERSHIP

PR. SALMA CHAD

LEADERSHIP

“Some are born great,some achieve greatness,and some have greatness

thrust upon them”

Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

LEADERSHIP

Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal.

Although leaders and followers are closely linked, it is the leader who often initiates the relationship, creates the communication linkages, and carries the burden for maintaining the relationship.

THE NATURE OF LEADERSHIP:

Trait VS Process leadership: The Trait perspective suggests that certain

individuals have special innate or inborn characteristics or qualities that make them leaders (Height, intelligence, Extroversion, fluency, etc)

The trait suggests it is a phenomenon that resides in

the context and makes leadership available to everyone. Leadership thus can be observed in leader behaviors. Leadership is about the interaction between a leader and his/her followers.

THE NATURE OF LEADERSHIP:

Assigned VS Emergent leadership:

Leadership that is based on occupying a position within an organization is assigned leadership (eg: Team leaders, plant managers, department heads, directors, and administrators)

Emergent leadership results from what one does and how one acquires support from followers.

LEADERSHIP & POWER:

2 kinds to power: Position and personal Related to leadership is the concept of

power, the potential to influence. Position power (like assigned leadership)

refers to the power an individual derives from having an office in a formal organizational system.

Personal Power comes from followers. It is given to leaders because followers believe leaders have something of value.

LEADERSHIP & COERCION:

Coercion involves the use of threats, punishment to induce change in followers for the sake of the leader.

Coercion does not treat leadership as a process that includes followers, and it does not emphasize working with followers to achieve common goals.

LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT:

Management traditionally focuses on the activities of planning, organizing, staffing, and controlling.

Leadership emphasizes the general influence process.

Management is concerned with creating order and stability.

Leadership is about the adaptation and constructive change.

Managers are more reactive and less emotionally involved.

Leaders are more proactive and more emotionally involved.

The overlap between leadership and management is centered on how they both influence a group of individuals in goal attainment.

MAJOR LEADERSHIP TRAITS

Intelligence - Intellectual ability including verbal, perceptual, and reasoning capabilities

Self-Confidence - Ability to be certain about one’s competencies and skills

Determination - The desire to get the job done (i.e., initiative, persistence, dominance, drive)

Integrity - The quality of honesty and trustworthiness

Sociability - Leader’s inclination to seek out pleasant social relationships

HOW DOES THE TRAIT APPROACH WORK

The way the Trait approach works is very different from the other approaches because the trait approach focuses exclusively on the leader. It is concerned with which traits leaders exhibit and who has these traits.

Organizations use personality assessment instruments to identify how individuals will fit within their organizations.

It is also used for personal awareness and development, as it allows managers to analyze their strengths and weaknesses and to gain a clearer understanding of how they should try to change to enhance their leadership.

SKILLS APPROACH: The skills approach takes a leader-centered

perspective on leadership (like Trait approach). However, in the skills approach there is a shift from a focus on personality characteristics, which are usually viewed as innate and relatively fixed, to an emphasis on skills and abilities that can be learned and developed.

While personality certainly plays an integral role in leadership, the skills approach suggests that knowledge and abilities are needed for effective leadership.

SKILLS APPROACH REQUIRES:

1) Three-skill approach: Technical skill  Technical skill is having knowledge about and being proficient in a specific type

of work or activity. It requires: Competencies in a specialized area Analytical ability The ability to use appropriate tools and techniques

 2) Three-skill approach: Human skill  Human skill is having knowledge about and being able to work with people. It

is quite different from technical skill, which has to do with working with things (Katz, 1955). Human skills are “people skills.”

They are the abilities that help a leader to work effectively with subordinates, peers and superiors to successfully accomplish the organization’s goals.  

Human skills allow a leader to assist group members in working cooperatively as a group to achieve common goals. 

3) Three-skill approach: Conceptual skill Broadly speaking, conceptual skills are abilities to work with ideas and

concepts. Whereas technical skills deal with things and human skills deal with people, conceptual skills involve the ability to work with ideas.

A leader with conceptual skills is comfortable talking about the ideas that shape an organization and the intricacies involved.

He or she is good at putting the company’s goals into words and can understand and express the economic principles that affect the company.

A leader with conceptual skills works easily with abstractions and hypothetical notions.

THREE COMPONENTS OF THE SKILL MODEL:

CASE STUDY – X HOTEL

HOW DOES THE SKILLS APPROACH WORK?

Focus: Focus is primarily descriptive -

Describes leadership from a skills perspective

Provides a structure for understanding the nature of effective leadership

SUMMARY OF THE SKILLS APPROACH: The skills approach works by providing a map

for how to reach effective leadership in an organization. Leaders need to have:Problem-solving skillsSocial judgment skillsKnowledge

 Workers can improve their capabilities in these areas through training and experience.

Although each leader’s personal attributes affect his or her skills, it is the leader’s skills themselves that are most important in addressing organizational problems.

COMPETENCY SKILLSCompetencies

Problem-solving Social judgment Knowledge

Creative ability to solvenovel, ill-defined organizational problems

Capacity to understand people and social systems - Perspective taking - Social perceptiveness - Social performance

The accumulation ofinformation & the mentalstructures to organize the information

COMPETENCY SKILLS & LEADERSHIP OUTCOMES

Problem-solving Performance Originality & quality of solutions to problem

situations: - Logical - Effective - Unique - Go beyond give information

Degree to which a leader has successfully performed his/her assigned duties

CAREER EXPERIENCESCareer Experiences

ChallengingAssignments

Mentoring Appropriate Training

Hands-onExperience

Withnewness

Career Experiences : Experience gained during career influences leader’s knowledge & skills to solve complex problems

Leaders learn and develop higher levels of conceptual capacity if they progressively confront more complex and long-term problems as they ascend the organizational hierarchy

ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES

Environmental influences

FactorsOutside of Leader’s

Control

Factors in a leader’s situation that lie outside of the leader’s competencies, characteristics, and experiences

Outdated technology Subordinates’ skill inadequacies

CULTURE & LEADERS’ TIME

Time is a fundamental symbolic category that we use for talking about the orderliness of social life.

Basic Time OrientationOnly present counts for immediacyPast exists to show past glories, successesFuture always with vision, ideas

Monochronic and Polychronic TimeMonochronic one thing at a timePolychronic several things done

simultaneously. Kill two birds with one stone.

HOW LEADERS CREATE ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURES

Three sources to be considered:

beliefs, values, and assumptions of founders

learning experiences of group members

new beliefs, values, and assumptions brought by new members

LEADER REACTIONS TO CRITICAL INCIDENTS AND ORGANIZATIONAL CRISES

In crisis: how do they deal with it? Leaders creates new norms, values,

working procedures, reveals important underlying assumptions.

Crises are especially important in culture creation.

Crisis creates anxiety, which motivates new learning.

A crisis is what is perceived to be a crisis, and what is defined by leader

crisis about leader, insubordination, tests leader.

DELIBERATE ROLE MODELING, TEACHING, AND COACHING

Leader’s own visible behavior has great value for communicating assumptions and values to others.

Video tape is good Informal messages are very

powerful.

OBSERVED CRITERIA FOR ALLOCATION OF REWARDS AND STATUS

Members learn from their own experience with promotions, performance appraisals, and discussions with the boss.

What is rewarded or punished is a message.

Actual practice, what happens as opposed to what is written or said.

If something is to be learned their must be a reward system setup to insure it.

QUESTIONS?