MGMT 5320 Ch 12 Summary
12-7 Discuss cultural and gender similarities and differences in leadership.
Cultural values influence the leader's personal values, which in turn influence his or her leadership practices. Women generally do not differ from men in the degree of people-oriented or task-oriented leadership. However, female leaders more often adopt a participative style. Research also suggests that people evaluate female leaders on the basis of gender stereotypes, which may result in higher or lower ratings.
12-1 Define leadership and shared leadership.
Leadership is defined as the ability to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute to the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members. Leaders use influence to motivate followers and arrange the work environment so they do the job more effectively. Shared leadership views leadership as a role rather than a formal position, so employees throughout the organization act informally as leaders as the occasion arises. These situations include serving as champions for specific ideas or changes, as well as filling leadership roles where it is needed.
12-3 Compare managerial leadership with transformational leadership, and describe the features of task-oriented, people-oriented, and servant leadership.
Managerial leadership includes the daily activities that support and guide the performance and well-being of individual employees and the work unit to achieve current objectives and practices. Transformational and managerial leadership are dependent on each other, but they differ in their assumptions of stability versus change and their micro versus macro focus. Task-oriented behaviors include assigning employees to specific tasks, clarifying their work duties and procedures, ensuring they follow company rules, and pushing them to reach their performance capacity. People-oriented behaviors include showing mutual trust and respect for subordinates, demonstrating a genuine concern for their needs, and having a desire to look out for their welfare. Servant leadership defines leadership as serving others to support their need fulfillment and personal development and growth. Servant leaders have a natural desire or "calling" to serve others. They maintain a relationship with others that is humble, egalitarian, and accepting. Servant leaders also anchor their decisions and actions in ethical principles and practices.
12-4 Discuss the elements of path-goal theory, Fiedler's contingency model, and leadership substitutes.
The path-goal theory of leadership takes the view that effective managerial leadership involves diagnosing the situation and using the most appropriate style for it. The core model identifies four leadership styles—directive, supportive, participative, and achievement-oriented—and several contingencies related to the characteristics of the employee and of the situation. Two other contingency leadership theories include the situational leadership theory and Fiedler's contingency theory. Research support is quite weak for both theories. However, a lasting element of Fiedler's theory is the idea that leaders have natural styles and, consequently, they should be assigned to work units that fit their managerial style. Leadership substitutes theory identifies contingencies that either limit the leader's ability to influence subordinates or make a particular leadership style unnecessary.
12-6 Identify eight personal attributes associated with effective leaders and describe authentic leadership.
The personal attributes perspective identifies the characteristics of effective leaders. Recent writing suggests that leaders have specific personality characteristics, positive self-concept, drive, integrity, leadership motivation, knowledge of the business, cognitive and practical intelligence, and emotional intelligence. Authentic leadership refers to how well leaders are aware of, feel comfortable with, and act consistently with their self-concept. This concept consists mainly of two parts: self-awareness and engaging in behavior that is consistent with one's self-concept.
12-2 Describe the four elements of transformational leadership and explain why they are important for organizational change.
Transformational leadership begins with a strategic vision, which is a positive representation of a future state that energizes and unifies employees. A vision is values-based, a distant goal, abstract, and meaningful to employees. Transformational leaders effectively communicate the vision by framing it around values, showing sincerity and passion toward the vision, and using symbols, metaphors, and other vehicles that create richer meaning for the vision. Transformational leaders model the vision (walk the talk) and encourage employees to experiment with new behaviors and practices that are potentially more consistent with the visionary future state. They also build employee commitment to the vision through the preceding activities, as well as by celebrating milestones to the vision. Some transformational leadership theories view charismatic leadership as an essential ingredient of transformational leadership. However, this view is inconsistent with the meaning of charisma and at odds with research on the dynamics and outcomes of charisma in leader-follower relationships.
12-5 Describe the two components of the implicit leadership perspective.
According to the implicit leadership perspective, people have leadership prototypes, which they use to evaluate the leader's effectiveness. Furthermore, people form a romance of leadership; they want to believe that leaders make a difference, so they engage in fundamental attribution error and other perceptual distortions to support this belief in the leader's impact.
