Lecture 7: Leadership

Lecture 7: Leadership  

Process of social influence though which an individual enlists and mobilizes the aid of other in the attainment of a collective goal Leadership effectiveness does not mean good leadership

PERSONALITY TRAITS, INDIVIDSUAL DIFFERENCES  Good person theory  Stogdill (1948)  leadership more than the position of the right traits  Modern leadership  role of charisma  transformational leadership  Big Five personality dimensions o Extraversion, openness to experience, consciousness WHAT LEADER DO  Lippitt and White (1943) o Autocratic leaders o Democratic leaders  liked most o Laissez-faire leaders  Bales (1950) o Task specialist  central involvement o Socio- emotional specialist  individual attention LEADER BEHAVIOUR DESCRIPTION QUESTIONNARE (LBDQ): SHARTLE (1951)  Measure leadership behaviour and distinguish between initiating structure and consideration dimensions  Initiating structure o Focus on groups objective & organising work towards group attainment  Consideration o Focus on welfare & promoting harmonious relationships  Dimensions believed to be independent (like Bales) CONTINGENCY THEORY  Leadership theories that consider effectiveness as contingent on the situation FIDLER (1964)  Distinguishes between task oriented, authoritarian, relationship orientated leaders  LPC SCALE  measures leadership style in terms of attitude favourability towards preferred co-worker  High LPC score  high positive feeling towards member regardless of performance (emphasising relationship orientation)  Low PLC score  low positive evaluation towards member (task orientation)

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Situations classified in order of importance:  Quality of leader-member relationship  Clarity of task structure  Intrinsic power and authority of leader by virtue of position poor leader-member relationship, unclear task structure and low position power leads to minimal situational control (leadership task difficult) SITUATIONAL CONTROL  extent to which characteristics of the task itself determines the level of control required for effectiveness  Low LPC leaders  most effective when situational control was LOW or HIGH  High LPC leaders most effective when situational control in between these extremes

NORMATIVE THEORY  Effectiveness of leadership in group decision making situations  Autocratic, Consultative, Group  Efficacy depends on leader-member relations and on task clarity and structure PATH-GOAL THEORY  How structuring and consideration behaviours motivate followers (House, 1996) (also a transactional theory)  Leader’s main function  motivate followers by clarifying the appropriate actions/behaviours that will allow achievement of their goals TRANSACTIONAL LEADERSHIP  Transaction of resources between leaders and followers  Mutual benefits are exchanged o trust established, goals and expectations are set, rewards and punishments are applied  IDIOSYNCRASY CREDIT (Hollander, 1958) o followers reward leaders for achieving group goals by allowing them to experiment with new ideas and directions o Leaders build up idiosyncratic credit and they can ‘cash in’ when needed o Good credit allows leader to exert influence and deviate from norms TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP  Based on inspiring others, vision and charisma o Individualised consideration o Intellectual stimulation o Charismatic/inspiring leadership  Bass and Avolio (1990): Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire o to measure transactional and transformational leadership styles  Charisma – leader’s personal charisma and follower’s reaction to it in certain situations  SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY (Hogg) o role of shared identity; social processes in groups reinforce leader’s influence, attractiveness and trustworthiness

LEADER PERCEPTIONS AND SCHEMAS  LEADER CTAEGORISATION THEORY o Our perceptions & schemas about leaders plays an important role in our decisions about selecting & endorsing them  PROTOTYPES  people have implicit theories about leaders and leadership o we match these against leaders in evaluating them o we are more likely to endorse leaders that match our schemas  SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY o leadership is an identity process whereby salient groups prototypical leaders are more effective than less prototypical leaders

GROUP DECISION MAKING  SOCIAL DECISION SCHEMES: DAVIS o explicit or implicit decision making rules that relate individual inputs to the final group decision  unanimity, majority wins, truth wins, two thirds majority, first shift  SOCIAL TRANSITION SCHEME : KARR o charts incremental changes in group members’ opinions throughout the decision making process BRAINSTORMING  OSBORN (1957)  the uninhibited generation of as many ideas as possible to enhance group creativity  NOMINAL GROUPS  brainstorming without interaction o has been found to be twice as creative  No evidence that individuals are more creative when brainstorming than when on their own  Evaluation Apprehension  Social loafing and free riding  Production matching (leads to regression to the mean)  Production blocking (from interruptions, taking turns etc.) o most powerful according to Stroebe and Diehl (1994)

GROUP MEMORY/ ORG. LEARNING  Groups remember more information than individuals  Communication of unshared information  Groups recognise true information when they hear it o effect is stronger on more simple tasks  Transactive memory  who remembers what  Group mind  people adopt a qualitatively different mode of thinking when in a group  Group culture  Groupthink (Janis) GROUP POLARISATION  Tendency for group discussion to produce more extreme decisions than the mean of members’ pre-discussion opinions  RISKY SHIFT o tendency for group discussion to produce more risky decisions than the mean of members’ pre-discussion opinions (assuming those opinions already favoured risk)  Persuasive arguments theory  Social comparison theory SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY  Mental processes involved in evaluating others as “us” (ingroup) or “them” (outgroup) 1. SOCIAL CATEGORISATION  we categorise in order to understand and identify objects and people in our environment 2. SOCIAL IDENTIFICATION  we adopt the identity of the group we have categorised ourselves as belonging to 3. SOCIAL COMPARISON  we compare our group with other groups. Competition, rivalry and in-group competition