Leadership and its contribution to our understanding of Managing Organisations.

Planning and Budgeting                                        Establishing direction

  Making detailed steps and timetables                          Developing a vision for the future

  for achieving results                                          and plans for achieving the vision

Organising and staffing                                        Aligning people

  The allocation of tasks and staffing                          Communicating the vision so that

  to carry them out; also delegating                           others understand it and agree with it

  responsibility

Controlling and Problem-solving                        Motivating and inspiring

  Monitoring the results of a plan,                          Energising people towards the vision

  identifying problems and solving them                          so that they overcome barrier

Outcomes: order and predictability                        Outcomes: Change

  Produces predictability so that others                          Produces definite changes such as

  can rely on consistent results                                  new products, or new directions

(Fig.1)

This is an important distinction to make as it helps us understand what sort of person is required to be an effective leader and following on from that, what then are the different traits of leader and what impact do different leaders with different styles have on different situations?

One of the most widely used methods of analysing leadership is the Traits approach.  This suggests that leadership consists of certain inherited characteristics, or personality traits, which distinguish leaders from their followers – the so-called ‘Great Person’ theory of leadership. This approach focuses attention on the man or woman in the job and not on the job itself.  Empirical work has shown that certain characteristics are more prevalent in some leaders more than others – Lord et. al (1986) conclude that leaders tend to be more dominant, extrovert, intelligent, masculine and conservative than non-leaders.  Kirkpatrick and Locke (1991) suggest that leaders can be distinguished by the traits of self-confidence, drive, honesty, motivation and knowledge.  Although the trait approach had seen significant revival in recent years, there is still no clear distinction between effective and non-effective leaders. Furthermore, Mullins (1996) argues that subjective judgement comes into play with this and that the list of possible traits is so long that there isn’t always agreement on the most important, but if one looks at Norman’s (1963) ‘Big-Five’ factor model of traits, one can suggest a more comprehensive framework for this type of analysis.

The work of Likert at Michigan and the Ohio state studies (Mullins, 1996) meant that rather than identifying people by their leadership traits, one could look at their behaviour and their styles in terms of effect on group performance.  The Ohio studies indicated two dimensions of leadership behaviour – ‘Consideration’ and ‘Initiating Structure’.  Consideration refers to the extent to which the leader establishes trust, mutual respect and rapport with the group, associated with two-way communication and the human relations approach to leadership.  Structure refers more to how much the leader defines and structures group interactions towards the attainment of formal goals.  This aspect is organisationally focused to achieve organisational goals.  The best known application of style approaches to leadership, is Blake and Mouton (1964) Managerial Grid (republished as the Leadership Grid in 1991), which focuses on concern for production and concern for people. The four corners and the centre of the grid provide five basic combinations of degree of concern for production coupled with degree of concern for people:

• The impoverished manager (1,1 rating): low concern for production and low concern for people
• The authority-compliance manager (9,1 rating): high concern for production and low concern for people
• The country club manager (1,9 rating): low concern for production and high concern for people
• The middle of the road manager (5,5, rating): moderate concern for production and moderate concern for people
• The team manager (9,9 rating) high concern for production and high concern for people

Blake and Mouton found that from their experience of using the grid, that the ‘team-manager’, while perhaps not an achievable style, is nevertheless worth aiming for.  It is important to look at leadership style, because this can often affect production through people.  The ‘9,9’ style of leadership correlates positively with bottom line productivity, ‘9,9’ orientated leaders enjoy maximum career success and there is now greater knowledge about the correlation between extreme grid styles of leaders, and mental and physical health.

The situational approach offers us a combination of the trait and the style approaches.  Dawson (1996:223) wrote of this approach that

This argues for a fit between leaders’ characteristics, followers’ attitudes and behaviour and situations in terms of task and organisational characteristics including history.  Just as the search for one best way to organise was overtaken…by an understanding that organisational arrangements should fit the context, so there were parallel developments in the study of leadership.

This sort of approach to leadership was adopted by Fiedler, who poses the question as to what it is about leadership behaviour per se which leads to effective group working.  Effectiveness is defined, in a very hard nosed way, as how well the group performs the primary task for which it exists.  Focusing on the behaviour of the leader, Fiedler identifies two major leadership styles – Relationship motivated leaders and Task motivated leaders.  Relationship motivated leaders get their satisfaction from good relationships with others.  Their self esteem depends on how others regard them and they encourage subordinates to participate.  Task motivated leaders on the other hand, are strongly concerned to complete successfully any task they have undertaken.  They lead by giving clear orders and having standardised procedures for subordinates.  They feel most comfortable working from clear guidelines.  The implications for Fiedler’s research, along with others such as Hershey and Blanchard (1988), shows that different leadership styles can be appropriate in different situations.  Fiedler’s work in particular shows that the performance of the leader depends as much on situational favourableness as it does on the style of the person in the leadership position.  The crucial factor is that the style of the leader and the work group situation should be matched.

In today’s economy, most of the thinking behind leaders fitting into situations has led to the development of the idea of transformational leadership and with this, we can then look at the implications leadership has as a whole, on other organisational processes. It was Burns (1978:227) who first coined the phrase transformational leadership and Bass (1990) notes that

Superior leadership performance – transformational leadership – occurs when leaders broaden and elevate the interests of their employees, where they generate awareness and acceptance of the purposes and mission of the group and where they stir their employees to look beyond their own self interest for the good of the group

Essentially, transformational leaders may do this in one or more ways – they can be charismatic to their followers and inspire them; they may meet the emotional needs of each employee; they may intellectually stimulate employees.  Attaining charisma in the eyes of one’s employees is central to succeeding as a transformational leader.  Charismatic leaders have great power and influence and therefore employees want to identify with them therefore having a high level of trust in them.  Transformational leaders are individually considerate, paying close attention to differences among their and acting as mentors to those who need help and development.  Thirdly, intellectually stimulating leaders are willing to show their employees new ways of looking at old problems, to teach them to see difficulties in problems and to identify rational solutions.  One of the most dramatic examples of transformational leadership in terms of organisational revitalisation in the 1980’s, was Lee Iacocca, the chairman of the Chrysler Corporation (Morgan 1989:163).  He provided the leadership to transform a company form the brink of bankruptcy to profitability.  He created visions of success and mobilised large factions of key employees towards enacting that vision while also downsizing the workforce considerably. As a result of his leadership, by the mid 1980’s, Chrysler had earned record profits, had attained high levels of employee morale and had helped employees generate a sense of meaning in their work.  Leadership then, makes its presence felt throughout organisations and their activities and it seems that employees not only do a better job when they believe their manager is a transformational leader, but they are also much more satisfied with the company. Transformational leadership does not however provide a universal remedy for all problems, nor is it necessarily best practice in all situations

When considering issues surrounding leadership, it is important to note that the leader, the subordinates and the leadership task, do not occur in a vacuum – The Environment plays an important factor as to the degree of freedom etc, that the leader has to work in.  Handy (1993:112) identifies six key aspects of the environment:

• The power position of the leader in the total organisation
• The relationship of the leader to the group
• The organisational norms
• The structure and technology of the organisation
• The variety of tasks
• The variety of subordinates

This is a very internal view of the environment and Handy needs to consider the external environment when considering leader impact as that can be just as crucial a constraint on a leader as the internal environment.  Within the umbrella of External Environment are customers, shareholders, competitors, financial markets, human resource markets, government agencies, supply of resources and cultural influences.  The list could go on, but these are all important things to consider as, for example, a leader who focuses his or her organisation on internal operations at the expense of registering environmental shifts, such as customer tastes, stands to lose out on opportunities.  This is not to say, however, that the environment is a total constraint on leaders – Handy notes that “…any leader has to shape the environment as well as being shaped by it”.  Leaders need to seek to set the stage and then act on it.

As we have seen, leadership isn’t an isolated process within organisations, and is very much linked with other factors, which affect organisations.  Buchanan and Huczynski (1991:509) point out that “one of the key management and leadership issues for the 1990’s and beyond will concern the ability to manage in different countries and cultures”.  While this is referring more to geographical culture, it also includes the types of culture organisations posses.  Taking this a stage further, Finney and von Ginlow identify 5 values that a leader who is adaptable to various cultures needs: cognitive complexity, self-monitoring, boundary spanning, global orientation and geocentric values.  Taking Self-monitoring, for example, they say that

The high self monitoring individual is one who, out of concern for the situational and interpersonal correctness of his or her social behaviour, is sensitive to the expression and self-presentation of those with whom social interaction is occurring and uses these cues as behavioural guidelines for his or her own self-presentation.

In terms of development of corporate cultures, the example of Harold Geneen at ITT, shows us how important leadership is in impacting this area (Morgan 1997:113).  Under Geneen’s twenty year reign, the company established a reputation as one of the fastest growing and most profitable American companies, albeit also one of the most corrupt and controversial.  Geneen’s approach motivated people through fear – this was obviously not a transformational leader, yet his leadership style had a huge impact on the company’s culture.  His intimidating style was set up by Geneen from the very beginning of his tenure and ITT executives were expected to be company men and women on top of their job at all times.  The idea that loyalty to the goals of the organisation should take precedence over loyalty to colleagues or other things was established as a key principle.  This therefore developed something of a ‘cut and thrust’, which worked for them, but was different from other successful companies.  It is important to recognise, however, that leaders do not always have a total monopoly on the ability to create shared meaning or interests.  The leader’s position of power may mean that they have an advantage in developing values and systems of behaviour, but others are also able to influence the process by acting as informal leaders or simply by acting as the people they are.  Culture ultimately though, like the environment, can be influenced by leaders.

        In conclusion then, we have seen what a leader is, identified the various ways of looking at leadership and seeing how leadership impacts on a few of the different areas of organisational life.  Warren Bennis (1999:76) put forward an interesting point when he said the following

What should be clear by now is that post-bureaucratic organisation requires a new kind of alliance between the leaders and the led.  Today’s organisations are evolving into federations, networks, clusters, cross-functional teams, temporary systems, matrices….-almost anything but pyramids with their obsolete TOPdown leadership.  The new leader will encourage healthy dissent and values those followers courageous enough to say no.  It will go to the leader who exults in cultural differences and knows that diversity is the best hope for long-term survival and success.

While this may be slightly idealistic and may not suit every organisational situation, it does emphasise the point as to leader flexibility and consensus.  We can see how the nature of leadership is ever evolving and styles of leadership must and will evolve with global changes.  The true leaders of today provide an important, if not crucial, function in organisations and must surely increasingly do so in the future.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY:

• Dawson, S (1996) Analysing Organisations (NY, Palgrave)
• Handy, C (1993) Understanding Organisations (London, Penguin)
• Fiedler, F.E. (1967) A Theory of Leadership Effectiveness (NY, McGraw-Hill)
• Mullins, L.J. (1996) Management and Organisational Behaviour 4th edn. (London, Pitman)
• Kotter, J.P. (1990) A Force for Change: How Leadership differs from Management (NY, Free Press)
• Burns, J. (1978) Leadership (NY, Harper & Row)
• Morgan, G (1989) Creative Organisation Theory (London. Sage)
• Huczynski, A.A. & Buchanan, D.A. (1991) Organisational Behaviour (NY, Prentice Hall)

Articles/Journals:

• Lord, R.G., DeVader, C.L. & Alliger G.M. (1986) ‘A meta-analysis of the relationship between personality traits and leadership perceptions: an application of validity generation procedures’ Journal of Applied Psychology (71, 402-10)
• Kirkpatrick S.A. and Locke E.A. (1991) ‘Leadership: do traits matter?’ The Executive (5(2), 48-60)
• Blake R.R. and Mouton, J.S. (1985) The Managerial Grid III (Gulf)
• Bass, B.M. ‘From Transactional to Transformational Leadership’XXXXXXX
• Bennis, W (1999) ‘The End of Leadership’ Organisational Dynamics

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