UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
Whittemore School of Business & Economics
Dr. C. K. Barnett -- ADMN611
"Leadership & Conformity Part 3"
Copyright 1999, 2002 Carole K. Barnett, All Rights Reserved
What is leadership?
Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel was assassinated on Saturday, November 4, 1995
in Tel Aviv. Rabin had been an exceptional peacemaker among the Arab and
Israeli nations for almost 50 years and had always had a leadership role in the
development of his nation since its founding in 1948. Yitzhak Rabin has
been hailed by business and government experts worldwide as one of (if not) the
greatest force(s) for peace in the Middle East.
What makes for a great leader like
Rabin?
--It is
said that he was a very shy and reticent man, someone who spoke with great
simplicity and was renowned for his humility.
--It is
said that he had tremendous influence over millions of people in dozens of
nations.
--He initiated change.
--He had vision....a vision of peace in a war torn world.
--He had courage as a general and as a prime minister.
--And he was persuasive. He brought his followers along very slowly
and painfully over the course of decades, through awesome struggle, pain,
bloodshed, and death.
These then are some of the most noticeable qualities
of leaders. We see similar qualities in the Dali Lama of Tibet, in
Ghandi, in Churchill, and in Abraham Lincoln.
When we turn to Western theories of leadership, we
find that at their center, they include all of Itzhak Rabin's outstanding
qualities as both a human being and a force for shaping and achieving great
societal goals.
But we ALSO see that the situations in which
we find ourselves matters considerably.
And followers matter, too -- to what extent
are they dependent on the leader for guidance and meeting goals?
What is leadership? Here is a STANDARD DEFINITION of the concept:
Leadership
is a process through which one individual influences other organizational
members toward the attainment of collective goals.
As a process, leadership involves changing of the
actions and/or attitudes of organizational members.
Leadership is a multiplicative function of the
characteristics of the leader(s), the followers, and the situation.
Transformational leaders (like Itzhak Rabin) inspire
followers to transcend their own self-interests for the good of the
organization and these leaders have a profound and extraordinary effect on
their followers. They provide vision and a sense of mission, they instill
pride, and they gain the respect and trust of followers. The communicate
high expectations, use symbols to focus efforts, and express important purposes
in simple ways. They promote intelligence, rationality and careful
problem solving. They give personal attention to followers, treating each
employee individually, and they both coach and advise their followers. In
other words, they pay attention to the concerns and developmental needs of
individual followers. They change followers' awareness of issues by helping
them look at old problems in new ways; and they are able to excite, arouse, and
inspire followers to put out extra effort to achieve group goals.
Many techniques exist through which leaders exert
influence (please refer to your notes from prior lectures on "the five
bases of power" to explain the types of influence that leaders may exert
[e.g., legitimate, reward, coercive, expert, and referent power]).
In general, leadership refers to the use of
relatively noncoercive influence techniques, and it rests at least in part on
positive feelings between leaders and their subordinates. Leadership may
take both formal and informal forms in organizations.
Over the last 30-40 years, behavioral scientists have produced volumes on theories to explain leadership. These many theories fall into one of three categories:
[1] TRAIT THEORIES sought to find universal personality traits that leaders had to some greater degree than nonleaders. Early theories proposed that effectiveness leadership was a function of qualities such as intelligence, charisma, decisiveness, enthusiasm, strength, bravery, integrity, and self-confidence -- but researchers could not find these traits across various effective leaders with any consistency. The problem with traits: they ignore situational factors.
[2] BEHAVIORAL THEORIES tried to explain leadership
in terms of the unique “leaderlike” behavior that a person engaged in.
Behavioral theories were exciting because they implied that leadership could be
learned and taught. As an example, researchers examined whether a group’s
performance could be attributed to the leader’s concern for people (i.e., with
subordinates and relations with them) vs. the leader’s concern for production
(or tasks and goal achievement).
Both of these approaches (trait and behavioral
theories) to understanding leadership proved to be false starts based on their
erroneous and oversimplified conception of leadership.
[3] CONTINGENCY THEORIES try to explain the
inadequacies of previous leadership theories in reconciling and bringing
together the diversity of research findings--and showing the importance of “the
situation” in any leader-follower relationship. The last page of these
lecture notes contains a brief summary of some of the contingency
theorists’ propositions.
Today, the (fourth and) most popular search is one
that focuses on the qualities or traits that are held by charismatic
leaders (also known as transformational leaders).
The readings assigned for this week (especially
Zaleznik) emphasize that there are important differences between these types
of leaders and others whom we might label as noncharismatic or
nontransformational. Another was to say “nontransformational” is to say, “transactional.”
At this point, we are venturing into a discussion of the differences between “leaders”
(transformational and/orcharismatic types) and “managers” (transactional
types)......see the Zaleznik article on this distinction.
Fundamental differences between leadership and managership:
Leadership concerns itself with innovation (initiation) (deciding what direction ought to be taken, what work ought to be done)--this is a focus on change or variation. Whereas managership concerns itself with maintenance (focusing on how as well as making sure that the work is carried out properly)--this is a focus on stability or control. However, both are concerned with organizational effectiveness. Traditionally, managers' jobs required that they devote most of their time to activities such as planning, controlling, and organizing collective actions (processing information, communicating with customers or suppliers, etc.).
Modern approach to leadership theories --
updating trait theories and the search for “leaderly qualities”
TRANSACTIONAL LEADERS guide or motivate their followers in
the direction of established goals by clarifying role and task requirements;
they use rewards and equity to manage followers' delivery of organizational
goals; they calculate what followers need for transaction or exchange to be
effective; they recognize accomplishments; they also watch and search for
deviations from rules and standards and take corrective action; they intervene
only if standards are not met; they are laissez-faire in approach tending to
abdicate responsibilities and avoid making decisions.
CHARISMATIC (i.e., TRANSFORMATIONAL) LEADERS are the
focus of much of the research and writing on leadership as a function in
organizations in the 1980s and 1990s. Most of the leadership theories
mentioned in the three main categories listed above (trait, behavioral and
contingency theories) have involved TRANSACTIONAL LEADERS--people who guide or
motivate followers in the direction of already established goals by clarifying
role and task requirements.
Transformational or charismatic leaders inspire followers to transcend
their own self-interests for the good of the organization and are capable of
having a profound and extraordinary effect on followers.
Examples: Yitzhak Rabin, Ghandi, Churchill,
Lincoln, Mother Teresa, General Douglas MacArthur, Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Sloan, Du Pont, Kennedy.
CHARACTERISTICS
OF TRANSFORMATIONAL OR CHARISMATIC LEADERS compared to noncharismatic leaders
(Cohen, Fink, Gadon, & Willits, 1995):
Transformational/charismatic leaders:
-- find the status quo intolerable and thus propose a vision of another, better
state
-- willingly take high risks and engage in unconventional actions to reach
goals
-- express high levels of self-confidence, expertise, and concern with
followers' needs (i.e., they engage in impression management)
-- exercise influence primarily through their personal qualities such as deep
commitment, high expertise, rather than through their formal position or
attaining consensus among subordinates
-- are quite realistic (understand resources available and environmental
constraints) although they favor radical change and offer idealized visions of
future goals
Said
another way, Robbins (1994: 148) described 5 attributes that seem most
important in distinguishing charismatic leaders from noncharismatic leaders:
1. Self-confidence. They have complete
confident in their judgment and ability.
2. A vision. This is an idealized goal that proposes a future better
than the status quo. The greater the disparity between this idealized
goal and the status quo, the more likely that followers will attribute
extraordinary vision to the leader.
3. Strong convictions in that vision. Charismatic leaders are perceived
as being strongly committed. They are perceived as willing to take on
high personal risk, incur high costs. and engage in self-sacrifice to achieve
their vision.
4. Behave out of the ordinary. Leaders with charisma engage in behavior
that is perceived as novel, unconventional, and counter to norms. When
successful, these behaviors evoke surprise and admiration in followers.
5. Perceived as a change agent. Charismatic leaders are perceived as
agents of radical change rather than as caretakers of the status quo.
Charismatic leaders are most likely to be appealing
and to emerge under conditions of crisis or high dissatisfaction with
current conditions among potential followers.
Zaleznik’s article (assigned for
reading this week) explained the differences between “leaders” (“charismatics”)
and “managers” (“noncharismatics” or “transactional” types):
-- Question for you to
contemplate:
How do leaders and managers differ in their motivation, personal history, and
how they think and act?
Said another way: how are managers and leaders different in regard to
theirgoals, conceptions of work, their human or personal relations, and their
selves?
(see Zaleznik article for some answers)
-- Question to contemplate:
Do leaders and managers have two different courses of “life history?” (i.e.,
what is the difference between development through socialization vs.
development through personal mastery) [see Zaleznik]
-- Question to contemplate:
Is there a basic truth lurking behind the need for leaders (so that no matter
how competent “managers” are, their leadership stagnates because of their
limitations in visualizing purposes and generating value in work)? (see
Zaleznik, p. 171, par. 5)
James MacGregor
Burns’ 1978 seminal volume, Leadership, contains the conceptual seeds of decades of social
science research on the processes and outcomes of leading.Here are key excerpts
from that highly cited work which differentiated transforming and moral
leadership as types of transformational leadership and contrasted them
with transactional leadership as well as with mere power wielding:
Prepared
for Classroom Use - by Dr. Carole K. Barnett, University of New Hampshire,
Whittemore School of Business & Economics
[page 4]. . . The transforming leader recognizes and exploits an
existing need or demand of a potential follower. But, beyond that, the
transforming leader looks for potential motives in followers, seeks to satisfy
higher needs, and engages the full person of the follower. The results of
transforming leadership is a relationship of mutual stimulation and elevation
that converts followers into leaders and may convert leaders into moral agents.
. . .
This last concept, moral leadership, concerns me the most. By this term
I mean, first, that leaders and led have a relationship not only of power but
of mutual needs, aspirations, and values; second, that in responding to
leaders, followers have adequate knowledge of alternative leaders and programs
and the capacity to choose among those alternatives; and third, that leaders
take responsibility for their commitments—if they promise certain kinds of
economic, social, and political change, they assume leadership in the bringing
about of that change. Moral leadership is not mere preaching, or the uttering
of pieties, or the insistence on social conformity. Moral leadership emerges
from, and always returns to, the fundamental wants and needs, aspirations, and
values of the followers. I mean the kind of leadership that can produce social
change that will satisfy followers’ authentic needs.
[page 18-19] . . . Leaders are a
particular kind of power holder.
Like power, leadership is relational, collective, and purposeful.
Leadership shares with power the central function of achieving purpose . . .
Power wielders may treat people as things. Leaders may not.
. . . All leaders are actual or potential power
holders, but not all power holders are leaders.
. . . The crucial variable, again, is purpose.
Some define leadership as leaders making followers do what followers would not
otherwise do, or as leaders making followers do what the leaders want them to
do; I define leadership as leaders inducing followers to act for certain goals
that represent the values and the motivations—the wants and needs, the
aspirations and expectations—of both leaders and followers. And the
genius of leadership lies in the manner in which leaders see and act on their
own and their followers’ values and motivations.
. . . Leadership, unlike naked power-wielding, is
thus inseparable from followers’ needs and goals. The essence of the leader-follower relation is the
interaction of persons with different levels of motivations and of power
potential, including skill, in pursuit of a common or at least joint purpose.
That interaction, however, takes two fundamentally different forms. The first I
will call transactional leadership. . . . Such leadership occurs when one person takes the
initiative in making contact with others for the purpose of an exchange of
valued things.The exchange could be economic or political or psychological in
nature. . . . The bargainers have no enduring purpose that holds them together;
hence they may go their separate ways. A leadership act took place, but it was
not one that binds leader and follower together in a mutual and continuing
pursuit of a higher purpose.
Contrast this with transforming
leadership. Such leadership occurs
when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders
and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality . .
. But transforming leadership ultimately becomes moral in that it raises
the level of human conduct and ethical aspiration of both leader and led, and
thus it has a transforming effect on both. Perhaps the best modern example is
Gandhi, who aroused and elevated the hopes and demands of millions of Indians
and whose life and personality were enhanced in the process. Transcending leadership is
dynamic leadership in the sense that the leaders throw themselves into a
relationship with followers who will feel “elevated” by it and often become
more active themselves, thereby creating new cadres of leaders.
Leaders can also shape and alter and elevate the
motives and values and goals of followers through the vital teaching
role of leadership. This is transforming leadership. The premise of this
leadership is that, whatever the separate interests persons might hold, they
are presently or potentially united in the pursuit of “higher” goals, the
realization of which is tested by the achievement of significant change that
represents the collective or pooled interests of leaders and followers.
Both forms of leadership can contribute to human
purpose. If the transactions between leaders and followers result in
realizing the individual goals of each, followers may satisfy certain wants,
such as food or drink, in order to realize goals higher in the hierarchy of
values, such as aesthetic needs. The chief monitors of transactional leadership
are modal values, that is, values of means—honesty, responsibility,
fairness, the honoring of commitments—without which transactional leadership
could not work. Transformational leadership is more concerned with end-values,
such as liberty, justice, equality. Transforming leaders “raise” their
followers up through levels of morality, though insufficient attention to means
can corrupt the ends.
Thus both kinds of
leadership have moral implications. How can we define that morality?Summoned
before the “bar of history,” Adolf Hitler would argue that he spoke the true
values of the German people, summoned them to a higher destiny, evoked the
noblest sacrifice from them. The most crass, favor-swapping politician can
point to the followers he helps or satisfies. Three criteria must be used to
evaluate these claims. Both Hitler and the politician would have to be tested
by modal values ofhonor and integrity—by the extent to which they advanced or
thwarted fundamental standards of good conduct in humankind. They would have to
be judged by the end-values of equality and justice. Finally, in a context of
free communication and open criticism and evaluation, they would be judged in
the balance sheet of history by their impact on the well-being of the persons
whose lives they touched.
. . . The test of their leadership function is their
contribution to change, measured by purpose drawn from collective motives and
values.
-- Question: Do we define a “manager” as someone who is responsible for
the work of subordinates only?
or all of the people on whom his or her own performance depends? (The first
person on whom a manager depends is his or her boss!)
-- Question: What are some of the questions you would have to think
through in order to effectively manage your boss?
-- Question: What are two “Don’ts” you need to know about managing your
boss?
Can Leadership be Developed in Organizations? (see Zaleznik article; end)
--
what are: the importance, costs, and benefits of personal influence and
the one-to-one relationship (e.g., between junior and senior executives)
-- and more important, what are the pros and cons of fostering a culture
of individualism and possibly elitism?
Is
it realistic to say that some leadership style will always be effective
regardless of the situation?
Leadership may not always be important. In
many situations, whatever behaviors leaders exhibit are irrelevant.
Certain individual, job, and organizational variables can act as SUBSTITUTES
for leadership, negating the formal leader’s ability to exert either positive
or negative influence over subordinate attitudes and effectiveness.
For instance, characteristics of followers such as
their experience, training, professional orientation, or need for independence
can neutralize the effect of leadership. These characteristics can
replace the need for a leader’s support or ability to create structure and
reduce task ambiguity. Similarly, jobs that are inherently unambiguous
and routine or that are intrinsically satisfying may place fewer demands on the
leadership variable. Finally, organizational characteristics like explicit
formalized goals, rigid rules and procedures, or cohesive work groups can act
in the place of formal leadership.
These ideas about “substitutes for leadership”
should not be surprising to us, given the roles, processes, and values we have
built together as a learning community in this course. Yet supporters of
the leadership concept have tended to place an undue burden on the leadership
function for explaining and predicting behavior in organizations.
Is it too simplistic to consider subordinates as guided
to goal accomplishments based solely on the behavior of their leader?
Is it important to recognize explicitly that
leadership is merely another of many factors that explain organizational
behavior? Can we assert that leadership sometimes accounts for employee
productivity, absence, turnover, and satisfaction; but in other situations,
leadership may contribute little toward that end?
Can we confidently state that: while charismatic
leaders may be ideal for pulling a group or organization through a crisis, they
often perform poorly after the crisis subsides and ordinary conditions
return. The forceful, confident behavior that was needed during the
crisis now becomes a liability. Charismatic managers are often
self-possessed, autocratic, and given to thinking that their opinions have a
greater degree of certainty than they merit. These behaviors then tend to
drive good people away and can lead their organizations down dangerous paths.
BUT LEADERSHIP IS A FUNCTION OF
THE COMBINED CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LEADER(S), THE FOLLOWERS, AND THE SITUATION.
Last time: focus was on “followers” and
“situation” factors -- (videos and audio recording: Stanford prison
experiments, Jonestown massacre and Jim Jones).
To see what constitutes someone’s effectiveness as a
leader, you look at “style” or techniques or methods or approaches in shaping
the leadership process and you look at outcomes, i.e., what if any significant
social, economic, or political changes that are of mutual value and benefit did
the leader generate.
To see what constitutes someone’s effectiveness
as a follower, you consider the dynamics of:
Barriers to independent behavior: conformity
to norms is essential to group functioning. However, innovation requires
member independence to some degree. Groups discourage independent
behavior by a variety of means which include the following six barriers to
independent behavior.
1
-- risk of disapproval from other group members
2 -- lack of perceived alternatives
3 -- fear of disrupting group operations
4 -- absence of communication among group members
5 -- no feeling of responsibility for group outcomes
6 -- a sense of powerlessness
The
readings assigned for our last class session show the dynamics of conformity --
how and why people become entangled in those six barriers. Be sure to
review the lecture notes and readings assigned last week.
CONCLUSION: The
leadership equation
Leadership =
(f) leader * followers * situation
(Leadership is a function of the characteristics of
the leader "times" the
characteristics of the followers "times" the
characteristics of the situation.)
“Leadership” is a verb not a noun.
“Leadership” is a process.
“Leadership” is not the same thing as “managership.”
“Leadership” is not always necessary.
Copyright 1999, 2002 -Carole K. Barnett, All Rights
Reserved