LEADERSHIP

JADE O. VALDEHUEZA
PA 206
TOPIC OUTLINE

• What is leadership? • AuthenticLeadership:

• Trait theories Ethics and Trust
• Leadingfor the future:
• Behavioral theories
Mentoring
• Contingency theories • Challengesto the
• Leader-Member Exchange Leadership Construct
(LMX) theory • Finding
and Creating
• Charismatic Leadership and Effective Leaders
Transformational
Leadership
WHAT IS LEADERSHIP?
• Leadership is the ability to influence a group toward the
achievement of a vision or set of goals. Organizations
need strong leadership and strong management for
optimal effectiveness (Robbins & Judge, 2013); and
• Leaders throughout history, especially strong ones have
been described in terms of their traits. Trait theories of
leadership focus on personal qualities and characteristics
of such individuals.
TRAIT THEORIES
• Trait theories of leadership thus focus on personal
qualities and characteristics;
• Early research efforts to isolate leadership traits resulted
in a number of dead ends. After numerous studies, they
thought that leaders “are not like other people”. But a
breakthrough came when researchers began organizing
traits around the Big Five Personality (extraversion,
agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and
openness to experience.
TRAIT THEORIES (CONTINUATION)
• Extraversion is the most important trait of effective
leaders, but it is more strongly related to the way leaders
emerge than to their effectiveness. Sociable and dominant
people are more likely to assert themselves in group
situations, but leaders need to make sure they’re not too
assertive—one study found leaders who scored very high
on assertiveness were less effective than those who were
moderately high.
BEHAVIORAL THEORIES OF LEADERSHIP
• Traitresearch provides a basis for selecting the right
people for leadership. In contrast, behavioral theories of
leadership implied we could train people to be leaders.
• thestudies narrowed the list to two that substantially
accounted for most of the leadership behavior described
by employees: initiating structure and consideration.
CONTINGENCY THEORIES

• The Fiedler Contingency Model: proposes that effective

group performance depends on the proper match between
the leader’s style and the degree to which the situation
gives the leader control.
• Fiedlerbelieves a key factor in leadership success is the
individual’s basic leadership style.
CONTINGENCY THEORIES (CONTINUATION)

• He created the least preferred co-worker (LPC)

questionnaire to identify that style by measuring whether
a person is task or relationship oriented.
• Fiedlerhas identified three contingency or situational
dimensions: Leader–member relations, Task structure,
and Position power.
CONTINGENCY THEORIES (CONTINUATION)

• Although LPC theory is the most widely researched

contingency theory, three others deserve mention. These
are: Situational Leadership Theory, Path–Goal Theory,
and Leader-Participation Model.
LEADER-MEMBER EXCHANGE (LMX) THEORY
• Leader–member exchange (LMX) theory argues that,
because of time pressures, leaders establish a special
relationship with a small group of their followers.
• Early in the history of the interaction between a leader
and a given follower, the leader implicitly categorizes the
follower as an “in” or an “out” and that relationship is
relatively stable over time. Leaders induce LMX by
rewarding those employees with whom they want a
closer linkage and punishing those with whom they do
not.
CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP

• According to Robert House’s charismatic leadership

theory, followers attribute heroic or extraordinary
leadership abilities when they observe certain behaviors.
TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP

• Transformational leaders inspire followers to transcend

their self-interests for the good of the organization and
can have an extraordinary effect on their followers.
• Transformational leaders are more effective because they
are more creative, but also because they encourage those
who follow them to be creative, too.
AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP

• Authentic leaders know who they are, know what they

believe in and value, and act on those values and beliefs
openly and candidly. Their followers consider them
ethical people. The primary quality produced by
authentic leadership, therefore, is trust. Authentic leaders
share information, encourage open communication, and
stick to their ideals. The result: people come to have faith
in them.
AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP (CONTINUATION)
• Ethics and leadership: leaders who treat their followers
with fairness, especially by providing honest, frequent,
and accurate information, are seen as more effective.
• Servant leadership: Servant leaders go beyond their own
self-interest and focus on opportunities to help followers
grow and develop.
• Trust and leadership: Trust is a primary attribute
associated with leadership; breaking it can have serious
adverse effects on a group’s performance.
LEADING FOR THE FUTURE: MENTORING

•A mentor is a senior employee who sponsors and

supports a less-experienced employee, a protégé.
• Traditional
informal mentoring relationships develop
when leaders identify a less experienced, lower-level
employee who appears to have potential for future
development.
CHALLENGES TO THE LEADERSHIP
CONSTRUCT
• Leadership as an attribution: the attribution theory of
leadership says leadership is merely an attribution people
make about other individuals.
• Substitutesfor and Neutralizers of Leadership: suggests
that in many situations leaders’ actions are irrelevant.
• Online leadership: confront unique challenges, the
greatest of which appears to be developing and
maintaining trust.
FINDING AND CREATING EFFECTIVE LEADERS

• Selecting leaders: the entire process organizations go

through to fill management positions is essentially an
exercise in trying to identify effective leaders.
• Trainingleaders: organizations spend billions of dollars
on leadership training and development.
A leader is best when
people barely know he
exists, when his work is
done, his aim fulfilled,
they will say: we did it
ourselves. —Lao Tzu