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1-2McGraw-Hill/Irwin copyright © 2009 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, inc. All Rights Reserved

Leadership Involves an Interaction Between the Leader, the

Followers, and the Situation

“The crowd will follow a leader who marches twenty steps in advance; but if he is a thousand steps in front of them, they do not see and do not follow him.”

~ Georg Brandes

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Looking at Leadership Through Several Lenses

• Studying only leaders provides just a partial view of the leadership process.

• Leadership depends on several factors, including the situation and the followers, not just the leader’s qualities.

• Leadership is more than just the kind of person the leader is or the things the leader does.

• The clearest picture of the leadership process occurs only when you use all three lenses to understand it.

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The Interactional Framework for Analyzing Leadership

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The Interactional Framework for Analyzing Leadership (continued)

• Depicts leadership as a function of three elements:– The leader– The followers– The situation

• A particular leadership situation scenario can be examined using each level of analysis separately.– Examining interactions in the area of overlaps can

lead to better understanding.

• Leadership is the result of complex interactions among the leader, the followers, and the situation.

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The Interactional Framework for Analyzing Leadership (continued)

• Leader-Member Exchange Theory describes two kinds of relationships that occur among leaders and followers:– In-group members– Out-group members

• LMX theory has broadened to include entire continuum of relationships that leaders may have with members.

• The theory looks at the nature of the relationship between the leader and the followers.

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The Leader

• Individual aspects of the leadership equation:• Unique personal history

– Interests– Character traits– Motivation

• Effective leaders differ from their followers, and from ineffective leaders on elements such as:– Personality traits, cognitive abilities– Skills, values

• Another way personality can affect leadership is through temperament.

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The Leader (continued)

• Leaders appointed by superiors may have less credibility and may get less loyalty.

• Leaders elected or emerging by consensus from ranks of followers are seen as more effective.

• A leader’s experience or history in a particular organization is usually important to her or his effectiveness.

• The extent of follower participation in leader’s selection may affect a leader’s legitimacy.

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The Followers

• Certain aspects of followers affect the leadership process:– Expectations– Personality traits– Maturity levels– Levels of competence– Motivation

• Workers who share a leader’s goals and values will be more motivated to do their work.

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The Followers (continued)

• The number of followers reporting to a leader can have significant implications.

• Other relevant variables include:– Follower’s trust in the leader.– Follower’s confidence or lack thereof in

leader’s interest in their well-being.

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Changing Roles for Followers

• The leader-follower relationship is in a period of dynamic change.– Increased pressure to function with reduced

resources.

– Trend toward greater power sharing and decentralized authority in organizations.

– Increase in complex problems and rapid changes.

• Followers can become much more proactive in their stance toward organizational problems.

• Followers can become better skilled at “influencing upward,” flexible and open to opportunities.

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The Situation

• Leadership often makes sense only in the context of how the leader and followers interact in a given situation.

• The situation may be the most ambiguous aspect of the leadership framework.

““You’ve got to give You’ve got to give loyalty down, if you loyalty down, if you

want loyalty up.”want loyalty up.”

~ Donald T. Regan,~ Donald T. Regan,Former CEO and Former CEO and

White House chief of White House chief of staffstaff

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Are Good Women Leaders Hard to Find?

• Women are taking on leadership roles in greater numbers than ever before.

• Problems still exist that constrain the opportunity for capable women to rise to the highest leadership roles in organizations.

• Research shows that there are no statistically significant differences between men’s and women’s leadership styles.

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Are Good Women Leaders Hard to Find? (continued)

• Differences that were found:– Women had significantly lower well-being

scores.– Women’s commitment to the organizations

they worked for was more guarded than that of their male counterparts.

– Women were more likely to be willing to take career risks by going to new areas of the company where women had not been before.

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Research on Second-Generation Managerial Women

• Research suggests that many women appear to be succeeding because of characteristics originally considered too feminine for effective leadership.

• Tend to use interactive leadership, based on– Enhancing others’ self-worth.– The belief that the best performance results

out of satisfaction at work and higher sense of self-worth.

– Style developed due to women’s socialization experiences and career paths.

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The Shift Toward More Women Leaders

• Factors that explain the shift toward more women leaders:– Women themselves have changed.– Leadership roles have changed.– Organizational practices have

changed.– Culture has changed.

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Leadership and Management Revisited

Leaders Managers

Innovate Administer

Develop Maintain

Inspire Control

Long-term view Short-term view

Ask what and why Ask how and when

Originate Initiate

Challenge the status quo Accept the status quo

Do the right things Do things right

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Leader-Follower-Situation Interactions

• Leaders create environments where follower’s innovations and creative contributions are welcome.

• Leaders encourage growth and development in their followers beyond the scope of the job.

• Leaders are generally more interested in the big picture of followers’ work than managers.

• Leaders motivate followers through more personal and intangible factors.

• Leaders redefine the parameters of tasks and responsibilities.

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Manager-Follower-Situation Interactions

• Managers are more likely to emphasize routinization and control of follower’s behavior.

• Managers tend to assess followers’ performance in terms of explicit, fairly specific job descriptions.

• Managers motivate followers more with extrinsic, even contractual consequences.

• Managers tend to accept the definitions of situations presented to them.

• Managers are likely to affect change officially, through control tactics.

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Leadership and Management as Solutions to Different Kinds of Problems

• Heifetz offers that we often face challenges for which the problem-solving resources already exist.– Technical problems – Though complex, there

are expert solutions or experts available to solve them.

– Adaptive problems – They can only be solved by changing the system itself.

• Adaptive problems involve people’s values.• Adaptive leadership: Finding solutions requires

the active engagement of people’s hearts and minds, not just the leader’s.

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Leadership and Management as Solutions to Different Kinds of Problems (continued)

• A challenge is wholly or mostly adaptive in nature:– When people’s hearts and minds need to

change.

– By a process of elimination.

– If there is continuing conflict among people struggling with the challenge.

– A crisis may be a reflection of an underlying or unrecognized adaptive problem.

What’s the work? Who does the work?

Technical Applying current know-how

Authorities

Adaptive Discovering new ways The people facing the challenge

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A Final Word

• Fairholm offers that an organization needs two different kinds of people at the helm: good leaders and good managers.

• Kotter suggests the development of leader-managers.– May be particularly important with regard

to developing the talents of younger leader–managers.

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There is no Simple Recipe for Effective Leadership

• Leadership must always be assessed in the context of the leader, the followers, and the situation:– A leader may need to respond to various

followers differently in the same situation.

– A leader may need to respond to the same follower differently in different situations.

– Followers may respond to various leaders quite differently.

– Followers may respond to each other differently with different leaders.

– Two leaders may have different perceptions of the same followers or situations.

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Drawing Lessons From Experience

• The right behavior in one situation is not necessarily the right behavior in another situation.

• Though unable to agree on the one best behavior in a given situation, agreement can exist on some clearly inappropriate behaviors.

• Saying that the right behavior for a leader depends on the situation differs from saying it does not matter what the leader does.

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Summary

• Leadership involves dynamic interaction between leaders and followers in a particular situation.

• Study of leadership must include the followers and the situation.

• The interactive nature of leader-followers-situation can help us better understand– The changing nature of the leader-follower

relationship.– The increasingly greater complexity of situations

leaders and followers face.

• Good leadership can be enhanced by greater awareness of factors influencing the leadership process.