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Organizational Spr2006 Sess26

Index Card Assignment Due Today

Think about a leadership experience you have had in a group or organization. Describe the experience. What kind of leadership did you exert? Note that there are many ways in which we can exert leadership.

Note

For those who haven't been paying attention. The second short paper is due on Monday, Apr 10.

Reminder

No class on Friday

Returning Midterm

12 point curve. Average grade is a B-. 5 A variants; 10 B variants; 7 C variants; 4 D variants.

Leadership

• Leadership is not a set of traits
  • It is a set of perceptions
    • An organizational leader is often made by the perceptions of other leaders
    • A leader is made by the perceptions of followers
  • It is a set of skills
    • Practice matters, and those who practice early and often have an advantage
• Types of leadership
  • Transformational/evangelical leadership
    • creating a vision
    • motivating and reenforcing belief
      • storytelling
        • why shared context (sports, for instance) matters

• Leadership is one of the most commonly discussed "success" themes in business
  • It emerges from the obvious
  • Some people rise to high positions and big incomes
  • And others don't
  • Those that rise naturally assume there was a reason
    • Normal attribution suggests that it has to be
      • positive
      • laudable
      • and inherent to their character
  • Those that don't rise assume they could have done something differently
    • Normal attribution suggests that it has to be
      • Situational
      • Learnable
    • Once again, leadership
• From these attributions we get two different views of leadership
  1. That leadership is an expression of character
     • the "trait" approach (leaders are better)
       • A theme in hundreds of books that litter bookstores
     • leadership is a heritable (e.g. leaders are "born")
       • An excuse to promote heirs into leadership positions
     • Neither view has proved to have any basis
       • No character or personality variables are associated with leadership
     • Indeed, successful leaders often demonstrate the very worst character traits
       • Lying
       • Cheating
       • Stealing
       • Adultery
       • Abuse of power
     • Its enough to make you wish there were fewer "leaders"
  2. That leadership is a skill
     • The "Stylistic" approach
       • The evidence is better here
       • There are a set of skills that seem to matter
         • task
         • relationship
         • technical
       • But the skills themselves don't decide who leads
         • Many people with excellent task, relational, and leadership skills never take on major leadership roles
• Leadership is a structurational process
  • In which the desire to lead
  • buttressed, to some extent, by leadership skills
    • intersect with
      1. The necessity of leadership
      2. The skills required in a particular situation
      3. And the willingness of a group to be led by someone
    • Leadership doesn't work unless all three issues converge on the same person

1. The necessity for leadership increases as tasks require
   1. coordination of the parallel efforts associated with complex and time sensitive tasks
   2. coordination across time of the serial efforts of specialists
   3. there is contention for scarce resources
   • These conditions emerge from a chart we have viewed twice already:

From Emergent Complexity and the Role Attributes of media. See http://evolutionarymedia.com/papers/RoleAttributesOfMediaAndEmergentStructure.htm

• Contention requires the leadership skills of a director
• Serial coordination requires the leadership skills of a producer
• Parallel complexity requires both.

1. The skills required in a particular situation
   1. Coordination and Control Skills
      • The director role
      • Co-ordinating the activities of many people
        • so that they complete their tasks together
          • or in the required sequence
      • Controlling the floor
        • Deciding who speaks when
      • In effect, an activity coordinator
      • This is a conventional view of leadership
        • for which transformational leadership is an extreme
   2. Enablement Skills
      • The producer role
      • Finding resources
      • Bringing them together
      • In effect, a resource coordinator
      • A less common way of thinking about leadership
        • "Removing obstacles" (following Gouran)
        • "Organizing" (following Barge)
   3. Communication Competence
      1. Task competence
      2. Relational competencies
      3. Technical Competences
2. The willingness of people to be led by someone
   • While Organizational Leadership is often appointed or selected
   • Those appointments are usually rooted in emergent leadership
     • Leadership starts in small structures
       • Projects
       • Teams
       • Groups
     • And emerges in different forms when
       1. people are unable or unwilling to take responsibility for their tasks
          • here a "Director" is useful
          • someone who can provide detailed coordination
       2. people are willing but unable to manage a task
          • here a Producer/Director is useful
          • motivation combined with practical courses of action
       3. people are able but unwilling to manage a task
          • here a producer is useful
          • Removing barriers to participation works best
       4. people are willing and able to manage a task
          • Leadership, here, may involve little more than keeping track of things
     • Five qualities are often associated with emergent leadership
       1. Intelligence
       2. Self-confidence
       3. Determination
       4. Integrity
       5. Sociability
   • A good group leader figures out what a group needs and then acts as its servant

• Transformational Leaders are something else altogether
  • People who have and can express a vision
  • Such that other people will step up and help reach that vision
  • Enablers
    1. Charisma
    2. Vision
    3. Ability to Intellectually Stimulate
    4. Consideration for the well-beig of others
  • Such leadership is not always a good thing
    • Group decisions, on average, are better than individual decisions
• Enhancing your leadership abilities
  • Knowledge
    • Watch people lead and see what works
    • Develop broad task, relational, and technical competences
  • Performance
    • Practice leadership whenever you can
  • Impression
    • Manage your "face" by
      1. Being someone that people will like
      2. Being effective as a group leadership
    • The best leaders do both