25 Leadership

Dr. Sulakshna Dwivedi

1.      Learning Outcome

2.      Introduction

3.      Meaning and Definition of Leadership

4.      Characteristics of Leadership

5.      Leadership and Management

6.      Elements of  Leadership

7.      Leadership Traits

8.      Leadership Managerial Roles

9.      Summary

1. Learning Outcome

After completing this module the students will be able to:

• Understand the concepts of leadership
• Understand the difference between leadership and management Understand the process of the leadership
• Describe the leadership managerial roles
• Get acquainted with leadership philosophies

“Leadership is the lifting of a man’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a man’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a man’s personality beyond its normal limitations”- Drucker, P. F. (1955)

“The superior leader gets things done with very little motion. He imparts instruction not through many words but through a few deeds. He keeps informed about everything but interferes hardly at all. He is a catalyst, and though things would not get done well if he weren’t there, when they succeed he takes no credit. And because he takes no credit, credit never leaves him”- Lao Tse, Tao Te Ching

“I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a loin than an army of 100 loins led by a sheep” – Talleyrand

2.  Introduction

Leading is very important function of management. Whenever we talk about functions of management, instantly we think about planning, organizing, directing and controlling. Directing function includes leading, communicating, motivating, supporting, coaching, mentoring etc. Therefore, leading is one of the important function of every manager because each functional area manager deals with people first. But do all managers are good leaders? Or do all leaders are good managers? There may be many managers who are not good leaders. But there may be persons who are not managers but they are effective leaders. So anybody can be a leader or can possess leadership traits or skills. Therefore, it is apt to say that leadership in general has nothing to do with managerial title.

It is the case of religious leaders, political leaders, union leaders, student leaders. But here our concern is to discuss about corporate leaders.

As in the corporate arena, managers need to lead people. Therefore, it is very essential for managers to have leadership skills or to learn or train themselves to become effective leader too.

John Kotter, a very famous author who has extensively researched and written about change management is of the view that, “Both strong management and strong leadership are necessary for optimum organizational effectiveness but unfortunately most organizations are underled and over managed”.

Kotter’s statement emphasised the irony of the present time and strongly focussed on dire need of good leaders in all spheres especially in the corporate world.

3.  Meaning and definition of Leadership

“There are almost as many definitions of leadership as there are persons who have attempted to define the concept” – Stogdill (1974)

According to Tannenbaum et al. (1961), “Leadership is interpersonal influence exercised in a situation and directed through communication process, towards the attainment of a specified goal or goals”.

According to George R. Terry, “Leadership is essentially a continuous process of influencing behavior. A leader breathes life into the group and motivates it towards goals. The lukewarm desires for achievement are transformed into a burning passion for accomplishment”.

According to Barnard Keys and Thomas case, “Leadership is the process of influencing and supporting others to work enthusiastically toward achieving objectives”.

4.  Characteristics of Leadership

Leadership is an influencing process.

Leadership is a process whereby leader influence the followers (Blanchard, 1939; Stogdill, 1950; Tannenbaum et al., 1961; Hollander, 1978; Cribbin, 1981; Rauch and Behling, 1984; Donelly et al., 1985; Vecchio, 1988; Hersey and Blanchard, 1988; Cohen, 1990; Zalenik, 1992; Rost, 1993; Maxwell, 1998; Northouse, 2004)

Leadership is about best use of resources

“Leadership is a development of a clear and complete system of expectations in order to identify, evoke and use the strengths of all resources in the organization the most important of which is people”.

– Batten, 1989

Leadership is about strong character

“Leadership is a combination of strategy and character. If you must be without one, be without the strategy”- Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf

Leadership is about decision making

“Be willing to make decisions. That’s the most important quality in a good leader” – General George S. Patton Jr.

Leadership is about empowering followers.

“As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others” – Bill Gates, Co-Founder, Microsoft

Leadership instils hope and possibilities among people.

“A leader is a dealer in hope” – Napoleon Bonaparte, French soldier, statesman, revolutionary (1769-1821)

“The job of the leader is to speak to the possibility”- Benjamin Zander (1939)

Leadership exists with followers

“The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers”- The Drucker Foundation, 1996

“Managers have subordinates—leaders have followers” – Murray Johannsen

Leadership is about following and fulfilling the vision. “A leader shapes and shares a vision which gives point to the work of others” – Charles Handy (1992)

“Leadership (according to John Sculley) revolves around vision, ideas, direction, and has more to do with inspiring people as to direction and goals than with day-to-day implementation. A leader must be able to leverage more than his own capabilities. He must be capable of inspiring other people to do things without actually sitting on top of them with a checklist”- Bennis, (1989)

“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality”– Warren G. Bennis

“Leadership is about articulating visions, embodying values, and creating the environment within which things can be accomplished”- Richards and Engle (1986)

“Leadership is the creation of a vision about a desired future state which seeks to enmesh all members of an organisation in its net”- Bryman (1986)

“The first job of a leader is to define a vision for the organization. Leadership of the capacity to translate vision into reality” – Warren Bennis, President, University of Cincinnati, University of Maryland symposium, January 21, 1988

The purpose of leadership is to produce more leaders

“The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.”–Ralph Nadar

Leadership is about change

“Leadership is the ability to step outside the culture to start evolutionary change processes that are more adaptive” – Schein (1992)

“Leadership is a purposeful relationship, which occurs episodically among participants, who use their individual skills in influence, to advocate transforming change.”- Michael S. Kearns, 2005

Leadership is an intangible quality

“Leadership is an intangible quality with no clear definition. That’s probably a good thing, because if the people who were being led knew the definition, they would hunt down their leaders and kill them” – Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle (1996)

Leaders are servants first

“The servant-leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead”-(Greenleaf, 1970)

Leadership is about inspiration

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader” – John Quincy Adams quotes (American 6th US President (1825-29), eldest son of John Adams, 2nd US president. 1767-1848)

Leadership and learning are inseparable.

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other” – John F. Kennedy

“The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.”– Harvey S. Firestone

5. Leadership and Management

6. Elements of Leadership

Source: Adapted from Lussier and Achua (2010)

Elements of Leadership

In elements of leadership, the most important key elements are leader- followers, influencing process, change, people organizational objectives.

Leader – followers: Leader is a visionary person who inspires people and followers to accomplish a common, shared organizational objective. Followers are those who get influenced by the leader and make leader’s vision their mission and put their best foot forward to achieve the goals set by leader. Leaders and followers both influence each other and should influence each other. Effective followers butt in whenever they are not in approval with their leader.

Influencing process: The process whereby leader communicate his ideas to followers and they accept it and subsequently leader motivates, inspires, supports and mentors the followers to implement those ideas.

Change: As they say, “Change is the only constant in this world “Every moment, every second changes are happening in this world, be it in people, be it in social systems, political systems, economic systems or technological systems”. Internal and external environment of any organization keep on changing at dizzying rate. Today’s products may become passé tomorrow due to changes in the environment. Therefore being visionaries, leaders keep their followers on toes and influence them in accomplishing organizational objectives which is only possible through change. Otherwise also, leaders resist status quo and keep on bringing planned changes in the organizations.

People: As discussed above, leader and followers influence each other and work towards a common organizational goal through change. But this change is always possible with the help of people. Leaders and followers work untiringly to get the work done from people in the organization so that they achieve organizational objectives effectively and efficiently.

Organizational objectives: Leaders set a shared vision for the organization for which they work. They put the interests of the organization at the top and put their personal interest at the backseat. Leaders instill shared vision for the organization and influence followers and people to achieve in a disciplined manner by following moral and ethical principles.

7.  Leadership Traits:

Before discussing traits of effective leaders, lets make a distinction between traits and skills:

• Traits are inherent personality characteristics of an individual Traits last long
• Traits are part of an individual Traits are natural abilities
• Traits define an individual
• Traits are personal inclination or interests

There is controversy whether traits are innate or learned? There is a mix opinion regarding this. But after doing rigorous review of literature, we can conclude that traits are attributed to one’s genes and also the early upbringing or habituation. That is both genetic factors, early learning contribute towards the leadership traits which are important characteristics of an individual personality.

Whereas skills are need based which an individual learns over the period of time to perform his/her job well. Skill acquisition or development can be done with training, experience and development sessions that means it is far more manageable than traits. Skills can be learned and can be forgotten. Traits are difficult to change but not impossible. Many believe traits development and change is possible only in extreme life changing situations which brings a change his personality traits.

According to Robert Katz, three important skills which every manager must possess are human skills, technical skills and conceptual skills.

Connection between traits and skills

Traits make skill development faster e.g. If somebody generally loves people, like to chat with them, understand them then it is very easy for him to learn human skills rather individual who is introvert by nature.

According to various authors there are different classifications of leadership traits but some of the common traits of effective leaders are:

• Confidence Visionary Sensitive Emphatic
• Hardworking Discipline
• Ethical Integrity
• Adjustable
• Emotionally stable Optimistic
• Conscientiousness
• Openness to experience Dominant
• Spiritual
• Philanthropist Serving attitude Innovative
• Progressive thinking
• Social able or gregarious etc.

8.   Leadership managerial roles

Before explaining different leadership roles, expectations of key customers. Customers services.

let’s define the term role first. Role is set of mean to whom role holder is providing the Similarly leaders provide services to their followers, people and to the entire organization. In that regard he has expected set of behaviours from different customers. Various authors have given different set of roles which leaders play. A very famous classification of 10 important roles which are classified under three heads is given by Henry Mintzberg (Refer Table: 1). These are basically leadership managerial role, as these are played by leaders when he is in managerial capacity.

Table 1:Leadership Managerial roles (Henry Mintzberg)

8.1 Interpersonal Roles: Interpersonal roles which consist of figurehead, leader and liaison role are discussed as follows:

8.1.1  Figurehead Role:

In figurehead role, top level manager’s acts as representative or symbolic head on various platforms viz. legal, social and ceremonial. The various examples in this context are figured as following:

Being an official representative outside the organization. Signing authority on behalf of organization.

Presiding over ceremonial and social events e.g. retirement party, fests, official events e.g. foundation day, AGMs Annual General Meetings; legal events e.g. representing the organization in the court of law and other regulatory bodies

8.1.2     Leader Role:

According to Mintzberg, leaders’ role includes carrying all management functions e.g.

• Hiring Training
• Performance evaluation Coaching/mentoring
• Delegating

8.1.3     Liaison Role:

Liaison roles are related to link or relationship building activities within and outside the organization as:

• Meeting with people
• Attending trade associations meeting e.g. FICCI, CII, ASSOCHAM, NASSCOM and other industry specific association at local, national and international level.

8.2 Informational Role: Informational roles consist of monitoring, disseminator and spokesperson which are discussed as:

8.2.1 Monitoring Role:

It includes those activities which help a manager to collect information in order to make strong basis for taking various decisions. It is related to gathering of information from inside and outside the organization. A manager can use various methods to collect information e.g. through observations, magazines, journals, trade bulletins, newspapers, annual reports, balance sheets, profit and loss account, safety reports, production reports etc.

8.2.2    Disseminator:

Second role under informational role is of disseminator’s role. After collecting information from various sources next step is to pass on relevant information to employees or stakeholders inside the organization. Various methods can be used to disseminate the information to employees e.g. through circulars, notices, mails, lotus notes, and meetings etc.

8.2.3    Spokesperson:

In spokesperson role, leaders pass on the information to people outside the organization e.g. Manager is working in one SBU (Strategic Business Unit) passes the information to other SBUs or the corporate officials such as Directors, CEO, CFO, promoters etc. of the same group. Further, providing information to govt. officials or reporting to government authorities’ e.g. compliance issues with Income Tax department, Sales Tax, Provident Fund Organization, ESIC, Electricity department, Town and country planning, Labour department, Bankers etc. also comes under the umbrella of spokesperson’s role of a manager.

8.3 Decisional Role:

Decisional role is the most critical role that managers play as it tests his intuitive, rational, creative and sound analytical and judgemental abilities. It is further classified into four different roles, discussed as follows:

8.3.1     Entrepreneurial role

In entrepreneurial role, a manager takes decisions regarding creating new products, services or think of new processes or creating or searching new markets for their products and services

8.3.2 Disturbance Handler:

A manger has to react to unexpected events e.g. strikes, breakdowns, shortage of raw material, non selling of products, controversies related to products and services in market e.g. recent case of Maggi Noodles manufactured by Nestle Inc. in which a lab in the district of Gorakhpur (U.P.) tested for monosodium glutamate (MSG) in the Maggi samples. In addition, the Kolkata lab found “very high quantities” of lead — 17.2 parts per million. The manner in which the management of Nestle Inc. responded to the above said crisis depends a lot on the disturbance handling abilities of their respective managers in the organizational structure.

8.3.3    Negotiator Role:

Some time managers have to do negotiation or bargaining with stakeholders e.g. salary negotiation with new recruitees or renewal of labour contract or negotiation on salary hikes and bonuses etc.

8.3.4    Resource allocator:

In an organization, managers play a vital role in allocating various resources viz. financial, material, human, technical etc. to specific persons in a definite predetermined proportion

9. Summary

Leadership is the art of influencing others to accomplish common organizational goals. Leadership is defined by different authors in different ways. Leaders influence followers and followers influence leaders. That is why influencing is two way process. Key elements of leadership are leader – followers, influencing process, change, people and organizational objectives. The purpose of leadership is not to create more followers but to create more leaders. Leadership is characterized by sense of vision; decision making; effective utilization of resources; strong characters of leaders; empowering of followers; instilling of positive hope among followers etc. All leaders may or may not be managers and similarly all managers may or may not be leaders. But leading is an important function of management. Therefore, all managers should possess or otherwise learn and develop these leadership skills or imbibe leadership traits. Leaders as managers play different roles in the organizations which help them accomplish organizational objectives efficiently and effectively.

Learn More:

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• http://adeoyemayowaleadership.blogspot.in/
• http://definitionsofleadership.blogspot.in/2015_09_01_archive.html