Leadership

What is leadership? Common to most definitions of leadership is the ability to influence others. Leadership can be described as the way a person guides, shows the way or holds a group together. Leadership Definition There is no commonly agreed definition for leadership, but a suggested one is: the capacity to establish direction, to influence and align others towards a common aim to motivate and commit others to action, and to encourage them to feel responsible for their performance.

Features of a leader
Characteristics of transactional and transformational leader Transactional leader
Contingent reward contracts exchange of rewards for efforts, promises rewards for good performance, recognises accomplishments. Management by exception (active) watches and searches for deviation from rules and standards, takes corrective action. Management by exception (passive) Intervenes only if standards are not met. Laissez-faire responsibility, decisions. avoid abdicates making

Transformational leader
Charisma provides vision and sense of mission, instills pride, gains respect and trust Inspiration communicates high expectations, uses symbols to focus efforts, expresses important purposes in simple ways. Intellectual stimulation promotes intelligence, rationality and careful problem solving. Individualised consideration- gives personal attention, treats each employee individually, coaches and advises.

Competencies of transformational leaders

Management of attention One of the competencies most apparent in transformational leaders is their ability to draw others to them, not because they have a vision, a dream, a set of intentions, an agenda, or a frame of reference, but because they communicate an extra ordinary focus of commitment which attracts people on them. Management meaning To make dream apparent to others, and to align people with them, leaders must communicate their vision . Communication and alignment work together. Transformational leaders make ideas tangible and real to others, so they can support them. No matter how marvelous the vision, an effective leader must use metaphors, words, or models, to make that vision clear to others.

Management of trust Trust is essential to all organisations. The main determinants of trust are reliability and consistency. People prefer to follow individuals they can count on, even when they disagree with their view point, rather than people they agree with but who shift positions frequently. Management of self The fourth transformational leadership competency is management of self: knowing ones skills, and deploring them effectively. Management of self is critical; without it, leaders and managers can do more harm than good. Like incompetent doctors, incompetent managers can make life worse, make people sicker and less vital
(Source: bases on Bennis, 1998)

Leadership is ..
the process of directing and influencing the task-related activities of group members. Leadership involves other people and an unequal distribution of power between leaders and group members, and it is the ability to use different forms of power to influence followers behaviour I a numbers of ways.

Action Centred Leadership

Task the need to accomplish something Team the need to develop relationships within the group Individual the needs which individuals bring with them to the group
Individual

Task Team

The Management Task

The management task of organisation relates to the level of authority over an organisations activities, which determines the degrees of efficiency and inefficiency. Structure or form thus provide for the achievement of organisational objectives

Management Roles
Managers are usually classified by: the range of organisational activities for which they are responsible (socalled functional and general managers); and their level in organisation (so-called first-line, middle and top managers).

Leadership Styles
The leadership styles are: Autocratic leadership Bureaucratic leadership Democratic or Participative leadership People-oriented or Relations-oriented leadership Servant leadership Task-oriented leadership Transactional leadership Transformational leadership

Autocratic leadership
It is an extreme form of transactional leadership, where leaders has absolute power over his or her employees or team. Employees and team member have little opportunity for making suggestions, even if these would be in the team or organisations interest. Most people tend to resent being treated like this. Because of this, it usually leads to high levels of absenteeism and staff turnover. For some routine and unskilled jobs, the style can remain effective where the advantages of control outweigh the disadvantages.

Bureaucratic leadership
Bureaucratic leaders work by the book, ensuring that their staff follow procedures exactly. This is a very appropriate style for work involving serious safety risks (such as working with machinery, with toxic substances or at heights) or where large sums of money are involved (such as cash handling)

Charismatic Leadership
A charismatic leadership style can appear similar to a transformational leadership style, in that the leader inject huge doses of enthusiasm into his or her team, and is very energetic in driving other forward. However, a charismatic leader tends to believe more in him-or-herself than in their team. This can create a risk project, or even an entire organisation, might collapse if the leader were to leave: In the eyes of their followers, success is tied up with the presence of the charismatic leader. As such, charismatic leadership carries great responsibility, and needs long-term commitment from the leader.

Democratic or Participate Leadership

Although a democratic leader will make the final decision, he or she invites other members of the team to contribute to the decision-making process. This not only increases job satisfaction by involving employees or team members in whats going on, but it also helps to develop peoples skills. Employees and team members feel in control of their own destiny, such as the promotion they desire, and so are motivated to work hard by more than just a financial reward. As participation takes time, this approach can lead to things happening more slowly, but often the end result is better. The approach can be most suitable where team working is essential, and quality is more important than speed to market or productivity.

Laissez-faire Leadership
This French phrase means leave it be and is used to describe a leader who leaves his or her colleagues to get on with their work. It can be effective if the leader monitors what is being achieved and communicates this back to his or her team regularly. Most often, laissez-faire leadership works for teams in which individuals are very experienced and skilled selfstarters. Unfortunately, it can also refer to situations where managers are not exerting sufficient control.

People-Oriented or RelationsOriented Leadership

The style of leadership is the opposite of task-oriented leadership: the leader is totally focused on organising, supporting and developing the people in the leaders team. A participate style, it tends to lead to good teamwork and creative collaboration. In practice, most leaders use both task-oriented and people-oriented style of leadership.

Servant Leadership
This term, coined by Robert Greenleaf in the 1970, describes a leader who is often not formally recognised as such. When someone, at any level within an organisation, leads simply by virtue of meeting the needs of his or her team, he or she is describe as a servant leader In many ways, servant leadership is a form of democratic leadership, as the whole team tends to be involved in decision-making.

Supporters of the servant leadership model suggest it is an important way ahead in a world where values are increasingly important, in which servant leaders achieve power on the basis of their values and ideals. Others believe that in competitive leadership situations, people practicing servant leadership will often find themselves left behind by leaders using other leadership styles.

Task-Oriented Leadership
A highly task-oriented leader focuses only on getting the job done, and can be quite autocratic. He or she will actively define the work and the roles required, put structures in place, plan, organise and monitor. However, as task-oriented leaders spare little thought for the well-being of their teams, this approach can suffer many of the flaws of autocratic leadership, with difficulties in motivating and retaining staff. Taskoriented leaders can use the Blake-Mouton Managerial Grid to help them identify specific areas for development that will help them involve people more.

Transactional Leadership
This style of leadership starts with the idea that team members agree to obey their leaders totally when they take on a job: the transaction is (usually) that the organisation pays the team member in return for their effort and compliance. You have a right to punish the team members if their work doesnt meet the predetermined standard.

Team members can do little to improve their job satisfaction under transactional leadership. The leader could give team members some control of their income/reward by using incentives that encourage even higher standards or greater productivity. Alternatively a transactional leader could practice management by exception, where, rather than rewarding better work, he or she would take corrective action if the required standards were not met. Transactional leadership is really just a way of managing rather a true leadership style as the focus is on short-term tasks. It has serious limitations for knowledge-based or creative work, but remains a common style in many organisations.

Transformational Leadership
A person with this leadership style is a true leader who inspires his or her team constantly with a shared vision of the future. Transformational leaders are highly visible, and spend a lot of time communicating. They dont necessarily lead from the front, as they tend to delegate responsibility amongst their team. While enthusiasm is often infectious, they generally need to be supported by details people.

In many organisations, both transactional and transformational leadership are needed. The transactional leaders (or managers) ensure that routine work is done reliably, while the transformational leaders look after initiative that add value. The transformational leadership style is the dominant leadership style taught in the How to Lead: Discover the Leader Within You leadership program, although we do recommend that other styles are brought as the situation demands:

Using The Right Style Situational Leadership

While the Transformational Leadership approach is often highly effective, there is no one right way to lead or manage that suits all situations. To choose the most effective approach for you must consider:

The skill levels and experience of your team The work involved (routine or new and creative) The organisational environment (stable or radically changing, conservative or adventurous) You own preferred or natural style.

A good leader will find him- or herself switching instinctively between styles according to the people and work they are dealing with. This is often referred to as situational leadership. For example, the manager of a small factory trains new machine operatives using bureaucratic style to ensure operatives know the procedures that achieve the right standards of product quality and workplace safety. The same manager may adopt a more participative style of leadership when working on production line improvement with his or her team of supervisors.

Action-Centred Leadership
(John Adair) This simple and practical model is figuratively based on three overlapping circles. These represent the task, the team and the individual. The model seems to endure well, probably because it is the fundamental model for describing what leaders have to do, the actions must take whatever their working environment, in order to be effective: 1. Achieve the task 2. Build and maintain the team 3. Develop the individual

Task, team and individual: Adairs concept asserts that

the three needs of task, team and individual are the watchwords of leadership, as people expect their leaders to help them achieve the common task, build the synergy of teamwork, and respond to individuals needs. The task needs work groups or organisations to come into effect because one person alone cannot accomplish it. The team needs constant promotion and retention or group cohesiveness to ensure that it functions efficiently. The team function on the united we stand, divided we fall principle. The individuals needs are the physical ones (salary) and the psychological ones of recognition; sense of purpose and achievement; status; and the need to give and receive from others in a work environment.

For Adair, the task, team and individual needs overlap as follows: Achieving the task builds the team and satisfies the individual If the team needs are not met if the team lacks cohesiveness then performance of the task is impaired and individual satisfaction is reduced. If individual needs are not met the team will lack cohesiveness and performance of the task will be impaired.

Adairs view is that leadership exists at three different levels Team leadership of teams of 5 to 20 people Operational leadership, where a number of team leaders report to one leader. Strategic leadership of a whole business or organisation, with overall accountability for all levels of leadership. At whatever level leadership is being exercised, Adairs model takes the view that task, team and individual needs must be constantly considered.

The strengths of the concept are that it is timeless and is independent of situation or organisational culture. A further strength of the concept is that it can help a leader to identify where he or she may be losing touch with the real needs of the group or situation.

Leadership Functions
In order to fulfil the three aspect of leadership (task, team and individual) and achieve success, Adair believes that there are eight functions that must be performed and developed by the leader.
1. Defining the task: Individuals and team need to have the task distilled into a clear objective that is SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Constrained. 2. Planning: Planning requires a search for alternatives and this is best done with others in an open-minded, positive and creative way. Contingencies should be planned for and plans should be tested.

3. Briefing: Team briefing is viewed as a basic leadership function that is essential in order to create the right atmosphere, promote teamwork, and motivate each individual 4. Controlling: Adair wrote in The skill of Leadership that excellent leaders get maximum results with the minimum of resources. To achieve this leaders need self[control, good control systems in place and effective delegation and monitoring skills. 5. Evaluating: Leaders need to be good at assessing consequences, evaluating team performance, appraising and training individuals, and judging people.

6. Motivating: Adair distinguishes six principles of motivating others in his book Effective Motivation: be motivated yourself; select people who are highly motivated; set realistic and challenging targets; remember that progress motivates; provide fair rewards; and give recognition. 7. Organising: Good leaders have to be able to organise themselves, their team and the organisation (including structures and processes). Leading change requires a clear purpose and effective organisation to achieve results. 8. Setting an example: Leaders need to set an example both to individuals and to the team as a whole. Since a bad example is noticed more than a good one, setting a good example is something that must be worked at constantly.

Motivating People
In many ways, Adairs ideas in the area of motivating people are in line with those of the classic motivational theorists, such as Maslow, McGregor and Herzberg.

The 50:50 Rule: just as the Pareto principle (or 80:20 rule) is the ratio of the vital few and the trivial many, the Adair 50:50 rule (from his book Effective Motivation) states: 50% of motivation comes from within a person, and 50% from his or her environment, especially from the leadership encountered therein.

Adairs view is that people are motivated by a complex and varied number of different factors. So, for example, the carrot and stick approach is not dismissed by Adair, but is seen, rather, as one of the stimulus-response approaches that can be one factor among many other in motivating or influencing peoples actions. For Adair, an individuals strength of motivation is affected by the expectations of outcomes from certain actions, but it is also strengthened by other factors such as the individuals preferred outcome (as demonstrated by Victor Vroom in the 1960s); conditions in the working environment; and the individuals own perceptions and fears.

Adairs Eight Rules of Motivating People

Adair proposes that understanding what motivates individuals to act is fundamental to engaging their interest and focusing their efforts. The will that leads to action is governed by motives, and motives are inner needs or desires that ca be conscious, semi-conscious or unconscious. In The John Adair Handbook of Management and Leadership the point is made that motives can also be mixed, with several clustered around a primary motive. Adair emphasises the importance of a motivating environment and a motivated individual. The third, crucial factor is the role of the leader who must, he believes, be completely self-motivated.

In Effective Motivation, eight basic rules are outlined to guide leaders in motivating people to act: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Be motivated yourself. Select people who are highly motivated. Treat each person as an individual. Set realistic and challenging targets. Remember that progress motivates. Create a motivating environment. Provide fair rewards. Give recognition.

Developing a personal sense of time

Adairs view of time management accords closely with Peter Drukers, in that he argues for the prior need to manage time in order to manage anything else. Adair was one of the first management thinkers to emphasise the critical importance of time management and its central role in focusing action and helping leaders to achieve goals. For Adair, time management is not simply about being organised or efficient, or completing certain tasks: it is about managing time with a focus on achievement. Time management should be goal-driven and results-oriented. Success in time management should be measured by the quantity of productive work achieved, and the quality of both the work and the persons private life.

Ten principles of time management given in How to Manage Your Time are:
1. Develop a personal sense of time 2. Identify long-term goal 3. Make medium-time plans 4. Plan the day 5. Make the best use of your best time 6. Organise office work 7. Manage meeting effectively 8. Delegate effectively 9. Make use of committed time 10. Manage your health. Of these ten principles, developing a personal sense of time, and increasing personal effectiveness, are central to Adair, again highlighting his emphasis on individual characteristics.

In perspective
It is perhaps unsurprising that there has been something of a backlash against Adairs thinking, given the pace and scale of changes in the work environment during the last twenty years. Adairs ideas were very new when they first appeared, and for many people their main value lay in the successful challenge they offered to the then-dominant Great Man theories. These theories, because they insisted that leaders were born and not made, completely undermined the possibility of training or developing people in leadership skills. Since Adairs views have been successfully established, however, he has become more of a target, with critics claiming that his approach (Developed in the 1960s) has now itself become outdated.

One major criticism of Action-Centered Leadership is that it takes little account of the flat structures that are now generally advocated as the best organisational form. Action-Centered Leadership is also criticised for being too authoritarian, applicable in a rigid, formal, military-type environment, but less relevant to the modern workplace, where the leadership emphasis is on leading change, empowering, enabling, managing knowledge and fostering innovation. Other criticism leveled at Adairs approach in recent years include the view that his approaches are too simple, are not academically rigorous and lack real substance in that he is merely stating the obvious, common sense view. For many others, however, it is exactly this practical simplicity and clarity about what a leader should do that is so valuable and timeless. For this reason many organisations and business schools worldwide continue teaching the Adair approach to developing leadership.