Leadership

Leadership is a process where Leader/Person who influences individuals and groups in an

Organization, helps them establish goals, guides them toward achievement of those goals,
and allows them to be effective as a result.

Leaders fill many roles simultaneously. Leaders not only influence others to achieve
desired goals, they interact with and motivate subordinates, and deal with conflict and
any other issues that may arise.

How Leaders Provide a Vision:

To be effective, leaders must provide a vision that is a general statement of the

organization’s intended direction that evokes positive emotional feelings in organization
members.

Becoming a Leader:

a. Start to think Like a Leader:

Thinking like a leader requires applying the three-step model: identify what is happening;
account for it; and decide on the necessary leadership actions. And remember that leading
requires knowledge of matters other than leadership theories (e.g., culture, motivation,
groups, conflict, and change) to influence followers to move toward goals.

b. Develop Your Judgment:

Leaders can improve their judgment or decision-making ability by increasing their
knowledge, debasing their judgment, being creative, using intuition, not overstressing the
finality of decisions, and making sure the timing of a decision is right.

c. Develop Your Other Leadership Traits:

Leaders can use good judgment, exhibit self-confidence, and improve their knowledge of
the business to improve their effectiveness.

d. Start to Build Your Power Base:

Leaders can strengthen the foundation of their leadership by making sure followers share
their vision, adapting their leadership style and actions to situation, substituting other
management skills to help them lead by choosing the right followers, and organizing the
task properly to reduce the need for leadership.

e. Help Others Share Your Vision:

Ensuring that your subordinates know and understand your vision, mission, and
objectives can help the leader influence the subordinates to work enthusiastically toward
achieving an objective.
 f. Adapt Your Style and Actions to the Situation:
No one leadership style is appropriate for every situation.

g. Use Your Other Management Skills to Lead:

Leaderships should choose the right followers and organize the task properly.

Theories and Model

A. Trait Theories
Trait theories focus mainly on the leader traits i.e. characteristics that might be used to
differentiate leaders from non leaders.
Six traits associates with leadership were consistently common. These are explained as
follows:

1- Drive:
Leaders exhibit a high effort level. They’ve a relatively high desire for achievement, they
are ambitious, they’ve a lot of energy and they are tirelessly persistent in their activities.

2- Desire to Lead:
Leaders have a strong desire to influence others. They demonstrate the willingness to take
responsibility.

3- Honesty and Integrity:

Leaders build trusting relationships between themselves and followers by being truthful
and non deceitful. They show high consistency between word and deed.

4- Self confidence:
Leaders show self confidence in order to convince followers of their rightness of goals
and decisions.

5- Intelligence:
Leaders need to be intelligent enough to gather, synthesize and interpret large amounts of
information, and they need to be able to create vision, solve problem and make correct
decisions.

6- Job relevant Knowledge:

Effective leaders have a high degree of knowledge about their industry and technical
matters.
 B. House's Path Goal Model

Path goal is a contingency model since it proposes the steps managers should take to
motivate their workers.
Model suggests that effective leaders motivate workers to achieve by:
 Clearly determine the outcomes workers are trying to achieve
 Reward worker for high performance and attainment
 Clarifying the path to the attainment of the goals.

Motivating with Path Goal:

Path Goal identifies four Leadership Behaviors:

 Directive Leader:
Lets subordinates know what's expected of them, schedules work to be done and gives
specific guidance on how to accomplish tasks.

 Supportive Leader:
Supportive leader is friendly and shows concern for the needs of followers.

 Participative Leader:
They consult with group members and use their suggestions before making a decision.

 Achievement oriented leader:

They set Challenging goals and expect followers to perform at their highest level.

C. Leadership Participation Model

A leadership contingency model that related leadership behavior and participation in
decision making.
This model gave five leadership styles which were dependent on the contingency factors.
Leadership Styles:

1- Decide:
Leader makes the decision alone and either announces or sells it to the group.

2- Consult Individually:
Leader presents the problem to group members individually, gets their suggestions and
then makes the decision.

3- Consult Group:
Leader presents the problem to group members in a meeting, gets their suggestions and
then makes a decision.
4- Facilitate:
Leader presents the problem to the group in a meeting and, acting as a facilitator, defines
the problem and the boundaries within which a decision should be made.

5- Delegate:
Leader permits the group to make the decision within prescribed limits.

D. Cutting-Edge Approaches to Leadership

In this section the focus is on three contemporary approaches:

 Charismatic-Visionary Leadership
 Transformational-Transactional Leadership
 Team Leadership

1- Charismatic-Visionary Leadership
Charismatic Leader:
An enthusiastic, self confident leader whose personality and actions influence people to
behave in certain ways.

Characteristics:
Charismatic leaders

 Have a vision
 Are able to circulate that vision
 Are sensitive to both environmental constraints and followers needs
 Exhibit behaviors that are out of the ordinary.

Visionary Leader:
The ability to create and articulate a realistic, credible and attractive vision of the future
that improves upon the present situation.

2- Transformational-Transactional Leadership
Transformational Leaders:
Leaders who inspire followers to transcend their own self interest for the good of the
organization and is capable of having a profound and extraordinary effect on his or her
followers.

Transactional Leaders:
Leaders who guide or motivate their followers in the directional of established goals by
clarifying role and task requirements.
3- Team Leadership
Skills being required by team leaders are:

 Having the patience to share information

 Being able to trust others
 To give up authority
 Understanding of when to intervene

Team leader role:

The team leader has to perform following roles:

 Liaison with external constituencies:

The leader represents the team to other constituencies, secures needed resources, clarifies
other's expectations of the team, gathers information from the outside and shares that
information with the team members.

 Troubleshooter:
When the team has problems and asks for assistance, team leader sits in on meeting and
try to help resolve the problems. Troubleshooting rarely involves technical or operational
issues because the team members typically know more about the tasks being done than
does the team leader.

 Conflict Manager:
When disagreements arise, they help process the conflict. They help identify issues such
as the sources of conflict, who's involved, the issues and the resolution options.

 Coaches:
They clarify expectations and roles, teach, offer support, cheerlead and do whatever else
is necessary to help team members keep their work performance levels high.

E. Leader-Member Exchange Theory

Leader-member exchange theory (LMX) says that leaders may use different styles with
different members of the same work group. Followers tend to fall in either the in-group or
the out-group in relating to the leader. The quality of leader-member exchanges was
positively related to a leader’s perception of the follower’s similar attitudes and
extroversion. The findings suggest that leaders should try to make the in-group more
inclusive, and followers should try to be in the leader’s in-group by emphasizing
similarity in attitudes.

F. The Situational Leadership Model

The situational leadership model of leadership suggests that a leader should adapt his/her
leadership style (delegating, participating, selling, or telling) to the task.

Power and Leadership

Leaders without power are really not leaders because they have no chance of influencing
anyone to do anything. Leaders in organizations normally derive much of their power
from their formal position and the ability to allocate rewards. In some cases, leaders may
have expert or referent power depending upon their individual characteristics.