Direct & Indirect Leadership

Most of the theories mentioned above talk about effective leadership which focus on
behaviours used to directly influence immediate subordinates, but there are ways a leader can also
influence other people inside the organization.
Direct forms of leadership involve the attempt to influence others when interacting with them
or using communication media which include sending memos or reports to employees, sending email, presenting speeches on television, holding meetings with their employee and participating in
activities involving employees to connect with their employees. Most of these forms of influence can
be labelled as direct leadership.
Indirect leadership on the other hand, has been used to describe how a chief executive can
influence people at lower levels in the organization who do not interact directly with the leader (Bass,
Waldman, Avolio, & Bebb, 1987; Waldman & Yammarino, 1999; Yammarion, 1994). One form of
indirect leadership which is used by chief executive officer (CEO) is called cascading. Cascading is
for when the direct influence of the CEO is passed down the authority hierarchy of an organization
from the CEO to middle managers, to lower-level managers and so on.
Apart from that, another form of indirect leadership involves influence over management
systems, formal programs and structural forms (Hunt, 1991; Lord & Maaher, 1991; Yukl & Lepsinger,
2004). Most large organization conducts programs to influence the attitude, behaviour and
performance of employees. Examples of these programs include recruitment, selection and promotion
of employees.
Another form of indirect leadership involves the leaders influence over the organization
culture, which is defined as the shared beliefs and values of members (Schein, 1992; Trice & Beyer,
1991). Leaders can attempt to either change an existing cultural beliefs and values or to strengthen
them. There are a lot of ways a leader can influence an organizations culture.
Indirect leadership is a good example to show scholars that leadership influence is not limited
to the types of observable behaviour emphasized in most of the leadership theories. However, some
forms of influence are not easily classified as either direct or indirect leadership. Moreover, direct and
indirect leadership forms are not mutually exclusive; it is possible to improve its effectiveness when
used together in a consistent way.

Leadership or Management
There is a continuing debate about the difference between leadership and management. It can
be said that a person can be a leader without being a manager, and the same can be said as a person
can be a manager without leading. Nobody has said that managing and leading are equivalent, but
there is a lot of overlapping between those two in which is debatable.
Some may contend that leadership and manager are qualitatively different and mutually
exclusive (e.g., Bennis & Nanus, 1985; Zaleznik, 1977). The most extreme distinction assumes that
management and leadership cannot be in the same person. Managers value stability, order and
efficiency, and they are impersonal, risk-averse, and focused on short-term results. They are
concerned about how things get done, and they try to allow people to perform better. On the other
hand, leaders value flexibility, innovation, and adaptation; they care about people as well as economic
outcomes, and they have a longer-term perspective with regard to objectives and strategies. Leaders
are concerned with what things mean to people, and they try to get people to agree about the most
important things to be done. There are people that proposed that managers are people who do things
right and leaders are people who the right thing. However, it is not safe to assume that people can be
sorted neatly into these two extreme stereotypes, managers or leaders. Based on the stereotype, it
implies that managers are generally ineffective compared to leaders. The term manager is an
occupational title for a large number of people, and it is insensitive to denigrate them with a negative
stereotype.
Some scholars have different views on this matter, they view that leading and managing as
distinct processes or roles, but they do not assume that leaders and managers are different types of
people (Bass, 1990; Hickman, 1990; Kotter, 1988; Mintzberg, 1973; Rost, 1991).Some described that
leadership as one of the 10 managerial roles. Leadership includes motivating subordinates and
creating favourable conditions for doing the work. On the other hand, managing seeks to produce
predictability and order, whereas leading seeks to produce organizational change. Both roles are
important, but problems can happen if an appropriate balance is not maintained between the two. Too
much emphasis on the managing role can discourage risk taking and creating a bureaucracy without a
clear purpose,, but if theres too much emphasis on the leader ship role can disrupt order and create
change that is impractical in a organization.
Another view on those two is that they defined management as an authority relationship that
exists between a manager and subordinates to produce and sells goods and services. They defined
leadership as a multidirectional influence relationship between a leader and followers with the mutual
purpose of accomplishing a similar goal. Leaders and followers influence each other as they interact
in a non-coercive ways to decide what they should do. Managers may be leaders but only if they have
this type of influence relationship.

A Working Definition of Key Terms

The definition of leadership is arbitrary and subjective, some definitions are more useful than
others, but there is no right or wrong definition that captures the essence of leadership. From the book
I read, leadership can be define as broadly in a way that takes into account several things that
determine the success of a collective effort by members of a group or organization to accomplish
meaningful tasks. This is the definition that has been used:
Leadership is the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to
be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to
accomplish shared objectives.
The definition above not only includes efforts to facilitate and influence the current work of
the group or organization, but also to ensure that it is ready to face upcoming challenges. Both direct
and indirect forms of influence are included in the definition; the influence may involve more than
one leader depending on the situation.
Leadership is treated as both a specialized role and a social influence process. More than one
individual can perform he role for example leadership can be shared or distributed, but some role
differentiation is assumed to occur in any group or organization. The essential aspects of leadership
include both rational and emotional processes.