22 LEADERSHIP

S. Alamelu Mangai

1.    Introduction

An important part of managerial function is the processing of influencing the group, which is termed as leadership. Koontz and O’Dannel define leadership as the ability of a manager to induce subordinates to work with confidence and zeal. The goals of the organisation to be pursued are determined by a good manager. This module will enable the viewer to understand about the classification of leadership, functions of leader, qualities of leader, styles of leadership and approaches to study the leadership.

2. LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the end of this lesson the learner will be able to

•  Understand the interactive process of leadership.

• Gain knowledge on the qualities required for a good leader, various types of leader ,styles of leadership, the approaches to understand it and the managerial grid.

3. Classification of Leadership

Management authorities classify leadership into different types. The following classification is based on The Personnel Research Board of Ohio University.

(i) The bureaucrat – who sticks to routine, appeases his superiors, avoids subordinates, apathetic.

(ii) The autocrat – who is directive, expects obedience, subordinates tend to antagonistic to him.

(iii)The diplomat – who is opportunistic, exploits people, generally rouses distrust.

(iv) The expert – who is concerned only with his own field of specialization, treats subordinates as fellow –workers.

(v) The quarter back – who identifies himself with his subordinates even at risk of displeasing his superiors. Business organization generally sought this kind.

4. Functions of Leader

D.Krech ,R. Crutchfield and E. Ballachey , classifies the functions of leader as Primary and accessory functions.

These primary functions are considered essential to leadership as it is linked with the leaders position vis-à-vis his followers who are dependent on the leaders on the work –related matters. And the accessory functions may be assumed by the leader or assigned to him by the group by virtue of his position .

• Thus the main functions of a leader is to
• Set an organisation’s goals with reference to its internal needs and external pressures.
• Integrate the needs or the individulas with those or the group and achieve the goals.
• Maintain industrial integrity and the organisations distinctive identity.
• Resolve internal conflicts with voluntary co-operation or all concerned .

Thus an effective leader should be one who can make ordinary men to do extraordinary things , make common people to do uncommon things. And leadership is a lifting of a man’s sights to a higher vision the raising of man’s standard to a higher performance, the buliding or a man’s personality beyond its normal limitations .

5. Qualities of a good leader

Some important qualities that a leader must possess is summarized as follows:

5.1 Physical and mental vigour

In order to work for sufficiently long hours a leader requires tremendous stamina and vigour.

5.2 Emotional stability

Leaders should be rationale and logical to analyse the various problems and should not be moved by emotion or sentiments and should take appropriate decisions .A good sense of judgment is also a requisite of a leader .

5.3 Empathy

A leader should be discern of the followers strength, weaknesses, ambitious as well as his own and should be able to look at things objectively and from the point view of others.

5.4 Motivation

A leader should create enthusiasm within him to motivate his subordinate .If a job is done under fear of punishment then the behaviour of the person might not remain as leader.

5.5 Communicating Skill

A leader should have good communication ability to persuade, inform, stimulate, and direct his sub-ordinates.

5.6 Ability to guide

The leader should have the ability to guide his sub –ordinates how to accomplish a particular task ,to correct errors, prepare them for achievement and offer suggestions .

5.7 Sociability

A leader should be friendly, helpful, sympathetic and easily approachable and should win confidence and loyalty of the sub-ordinates.

5.8 Technical competence

A leader needs to have a thorough knowledge on the theory and practice of his job with regard to principles, procedures and operations of a job.

5.9 Other personal abilities

A leader should be morally sound and essentially possess conceptual skill, moral courage, flexibility of mind and should have the ability to establish proper priorities.

6. Leadership Styles

The analysis of leader behaviour is to classify various types of leadership into styles ,the way by which he influences his followers .Based on the types of leader – behaviour ,leadership styles are classified as

6.1 Autocratic or authoritarian leadership

6.2 Laissez Faire or Free Rein Leadership

6.3 Participate or democratic leadership

6.4 Bureaucratic or rules – centered leadership

6.5 Intellectual or expert or functional leadership

6.6 Institutional leadership

6.7 Mainpulative leadership

6.8 Paternalistic leadership

6.1 Autocratic Leaderships

An Autocratic leader is work centered or centered – Centered. He gives orders and insists to obey. Without consulting the group, he frames future plans, specifies goals, organizes work situation, sets the time –frame within which the task is to be accomplished, gives directions and imply on workers to give the progress of the task.

Thus in this style of leadership, all the power of decision–making is centralized as shown in figure 6.1 where ‘a’ denotes leader. A leader who relies on negative influences and gives orders that subordinates should accept are called strict autocrat.

When the leader uses his power to disperse rewards to his group he tends to be positive and this style is often called as benevolent autocrat .This kind of leadership style gets high productivity and develops effective human relationships. Another type of style is manipulative autocrat, who makes the subordinates feel that they are participating in decision making process even when he had already made decision.

Workers under autocratic leader feel harassed, disturbed and gradually may stop obeying his orders. This kind of leadership has been successful for the management because it provides strong motivator to the manager .In future, it is likely to be effective because of the rising standard of living of people, social awareness among people, new generation is less amendable to rigid direction and control and workers have started to look for social and egoistic satisfaction from their jobs .

6.2 Laissez faire or Free Rein Leader:

These types of leaders don’t take lead and allow their followers to work freely. He motivates the workers and permit the group members to establish goals by working out the problems by their own .There is a near –total abdication of formal leadership according to the needs of each situation and is known as permissive style of leadership.

Laissez faire can be successful when the workers have a high degree of maturity. In case of less maturity level, the leadership will not succeed if he also don’t have suitable task behavior .Sometimes deprivation of socio-emotional support from leaders may make workers feel insecure and vulnerable.

6.3 Participative or democratic leadership

Democratic leadership obtains the acceptance with consultation of his group members before giving orders. He encourages in the process of decision – making and implementation. He decentralizes managerial authority .He promptly checks and controls the member who oppose the interests of the group by means of system of rewards and punishment devised by the group.

This type is based on the assumption that, workers are all able though not willing to perform the assigned task .Some advantages of this type of leadership style are:

• Management ideas are accepted.
• The employee’s attitude towards job and the organization is improved.
• The co-operation between management and employees are increased and employees morale is increased.
• Complaints and grievances are reduced.

Fig 6.3

    6.4 Bureaucratic or rules –centered leadership

The process of administration is reduced to a series of routine actions, as the leader’s behaviour in this style is characterized by a high degree of reliance on rules ,regulations and procedures .There will be no participation from the workers side ,and they remain apathetic. Rules might enable workers work without being emotionally committed to work.

6.5 Intellectual or Expert or functional leadership

The basis for this type of leadership is leader’s individual knowledge and ability regardless of age, sex, physical or other attributes .The workers lookup to him for guidance and control for his special qualification of the job. He is task –oriented and spends his time on doing things faster and better. If his workers are not participatory as he, they feel frustrated and prevent from maximizing their own potential.

In this style of leadership (a) the perception or group members ensures that the leaders talent and expertise and joined with needs of the situations (b) leadership skills are usually transferable. In general, expert leader is by definition quite poor on the human relations front.

6.6 Institutional Leadership

This type of leader may or may not be expert in their field of activity. He wields power over his workers and may even derive power from his personality and behaviour. Due to lack of expertise, he suffers a sense of inadequacy, which leads to inferiority complex and will involve him more in task behaviour. Because his lesser relationship behaviour, the workers may feel frustration and alienation.

6.7 Manipulative leadership

The main characteristic of this style is (a)personal goals are reached by a manipulation of the employees (b)employee needs and desires are viewed as tools to extract performance. The employees would be manipulated by the leader so as to attain the goal. The employees are aware of this and become resentful and bitter.

This type may be effective when co-operation and co-ordination have to be achieved on task which the previous leaders failed to motivate or when highly motivated employees are needed for short duration projects.

6.8 Paternalistic leader

Paternalistic leader is characterized by loyalty of worker in a warm and cohesive setting. The leaders are concerned with well being of his followers and comes for their rescue very often .As concerned with relationship behaviour it becomes successful among workers who posses job maturity. The competent and achievement – oriented workers feel frustrated due to lack of opportunity for showing initiative under this leader. This leader like a banyan tree, gives protection to all, he unwittingly creates conditions under which no follower can grow and able to realize his potential.

7. Approaches to study leadership

To the study leadership there are many approaches and basically it is understood on the following heads .

7.1 Traits or person – oriented approach

7.2 Situations – oriented approach.

7.3 Group –oriented approach .

7.1 Traits or person –oriented approach

Persons who are leaders are presumed to display better judgment and engage in social activities .The main emphasis here is on single leader and his characteristics. Starting from Greek and Roman historians the leaders possessed certain magical qualities due to charisma. They owned their position owing to personal qualities and yielded power ,regardless to the rules , procedures which restrict the exercise of authority by non-charismatic leaders.After deep research, the trait theory or the “Great Man “theory of leadership assumes that leadership qualities are in-born or God-given. Some important traits of an effective leaders are:

 7.1.1 Intelligence: Leaders possess the ability to think scientifically, analyze accurately , interpret precisely and clearly the problems in different perspectives.

7.1.2 Physical feature – The important factor in determining the success of leadership is physical feature and level of maturity.

7.1`.3 Inner motivation drive: Leaders have inner urge to keep on accomplishing something, at proper time and correct initiative.

7.1.4 Maturity –Leaders don’t become victims of the circumstances. They have high frustration tolerance, and balance temperaments.

7.1.5 Vision and foresight: Leaders should imaginatively visualize trends and should have foresight to device programmes and policies.

7.1.6 Acceptance of responsibility: A leader is always beware of the duties and obligations associated with his position and should be to ready to shoulder the responsibilities.

7.1.7 Open mind and adaptability: Flexibility is another name for this trait as he would accommodate others view points and absorb, adopt new ideas and views according to the situation.

7.1.8 Self – confidence: This is essential to motivate and boost the morale of his workers as he has conceptual clarity about the things to be carried out.

7.1.9 Human Relations Attitude: Leader always tries to develop social understanding with other people, in order to achieve the goals as the co –operation of people is highly necessitated.

7.1.10 Fairness and objectively: Leaders should be free from bias and prejudice .Honesty, fairplay, justice and integrity or character,objective in dealing with subordinates is expected from a good leader .The personal traits are only a part of the whole environment. There is no sure connection between traits and leadership acts. A leader may be successful at one point due to some traits, but may fail in another .Thus measurement of a trait occurs after a person becomes a leader and it becomes difficult to advocate the traits which are prerequisites of a successful leaders.

7.2 Situational approach

The situational approach to the study of leadership recognizes that leadership is based on an inter –play between : (a)the amount of direction(task behaviour)provided by a leader (b)the amount of socio-emotional support (relationship behaviour ) provided by a leader : and (c)the readiness(maturity level) shown by the followers in a performing a specific task leadership is widely dependent on many factors ,such as, the leader himself ,the followers, and the situation that include the values and traditions of the organization , the effectiveness of the group ,the nature of the problem at hand are in the co-workers ,job demands , organisation, tempers of the times are other environmental factors in situational approach.

The leaders perform certain behaviour for instance task behaviour on the part of leader includes goal setting, organising, directing and controlling. Relationship behaviour on his part would render proper support and encouragement to people, hold discussions and listens to the workers opinions and grievances.

Depending on the maturity level also the modification on the leadership style could be adopted. For the people with low maturity levels, the leader would engage in a behaviour that is “high on task and low on relationship”(telling). For the people with low to moderate maturity levels he may exhibit “high on task as also high on relationship”(selling). In case of people with moderate maturity levels he would adopt “low on task but high on relationship”(participating). “Low on relationship as also low on task relationship” (delegating) would be adopted by the leader for the people with high maturity levels.

Low      High

• Degree of emphasis on
• Task and productivity
• (Emphasis on work to be done and its facilitation)

Thus the concept of situational approach has gained wide spread acceptance and gives practicing managers helpful ideas with regard to the situations. But it should be beset with understanding the maturity level of the people.

7.3 Group –oriented approach

An extension of situational approach is the group oriented approach where the leadership is viewed as the performance of those acts which help the group to achieve its preferred objectives. K. Benne and P. Sheats sets out 27 leadership roles as follows:

A.    Group task roles

• Initiator –contributor Information seeker Opinion seeker
• Information giver Opinion giver
• Elaborator Coordinator Orienter
• Evaluator- critic Energiser
• Procedural technician Recorder

1. Group building and maintenance roles

• Encourager Harmoniser Compromiser
• Gate keeper and expediter
• Standard setter and ego ideal
• Group observer and commentator Follower

1. Individual roles

• Aggressor Blocker
• Recognition seeker Self-confessor
• Playboy Dominator
• Help seeker
• Special interest pleader

In order to obtain the various objectives the leader plays more than one role and also allows their workers to take right direction.

8. SUMMARY

Without effective leadership, it’s difficult for any organization to function effectively. A person can be a leader only when he is successful in influencing and motivating his subordinates to work enthusiastically to accomplish the set goals of an organization.

REFERENCES

1. Dinkar Pagare, Business Organisation and Management, Published by Sultan chand & Sons, Reprint 2002, ISBN 81-7014-675-5,P 291-305.
2. Dr.T.N.Chhabra, Principles & Practice of Management , Published by Dhanpat Rai & Co.(P)Ltd,Reprint 2006,ISBN: 81-7700-032-2, p 446-472.
3. Mamoria .C/B and Gankar.S.V, Personnel Management,Published by Himalaya Publishing House,23rd Edition, 2003, 689-740.