Session-6
Session-6
Behaviour, 2e
Dipak Kumar Bhattacharyya
• Leadership, can be defined as an activity, which influences people to strive willingly for group
objectives. It exists only in relationships and only in the imagination and perceptions of ‘followers’.
Thus leadership is what something that goes with the people and not what is within a individual.
• Reviewing various definitions, we can define leadership, as a process of influencing people for
achieving intended goals in a given situation.
Characteristics :
It is a personal quality
It is a process of influencing others
It regulates individual behaviour
Existence of relationship between leaders and followers
It is a continuous process
Leadership is situational
• It is a process of influencing others. Through the process of influence only a leader makes
others work for achieving goals. People may lack the initiative and the urge to do some
work and may feel de-motivated. Such behavioural characteristics may seriously impede
the achievement of organizational objectives. But a good leader through his influence can
turn the situation in his favour and motivate people to work willingly for achieving goals.
Provide a vision.
MANAGERS LEADERS
1. A manager is more than a leader. Hence 1. A leader need not be a manager. Leadership is a
management is a more wide term. narrow term.
2. A manager fits well in an organized structure. 2. A leader may also be in an informal group
4. The authority of a manager stems from his 4. A leader earns his authority by virtue of his skills,
positional role, that is, it is delegated from knowledge, and abilities.
the top management.
5. To be successful as a manager, one has to be 5. Leaders need not be managers.
a good leader.
• It is an aid to authority
• It inculcates values
• Successful organizations have good leaders who set high standards and goals
such as strategies, market leadership, plans, presentations, productivity, quality,
and reliability. Values reflect the concern an organization has for its employees,
customers, investors, vendors, and the local community. These values define the
manner in which business is to be conducted and the type of business the
organization will engage in. Concepts define the products or services that the
organization will offer and the methods and processes that will be opted for
conducting business. These goals, values, and concepts make up the
organization's ‘personality.
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Culture and Climate of Leadership
• Each organization has its own distinctive culture. It is a combination of the
founders, past leadership, current leadership, crises, events, history, and size.
This results in rites: the routines, rituals, and the ‘way we do things’. These rites
impact individual behaviour on what it takes to be in good standing (the norm)
and direct the appropriate behaviour for each event.
• The climate is the feel of the organization, the individual, and shared
perceptions and attitudes of the organization's members. While the culture is
the deeply rooted nature of the organization that is a result of long-held formal
and informal systems, rules, traditions, and customs; climate is a short-term
phenomenon created by the current leadership. Climate represents the beliefs
about the ‘feel of the organization’ by its members. This individual perception of
the ‘feel of the organization’ comes from what people believe about the
activities that occur in the organization.
• Most leaders make use of a combination of these six types of power, depending
on the leadership style used.
• Laissez-faire style of leadership : under this style, the leader depends largely upon
the group and its members to establish their own goals and make their own decisions.
The leader is passive and assumes the role of just another member of the group.
• Paternalistic leadership : this type of leader assumes the role of a father. He treats
his followers as member of family and guides them as the head of the family. He likes
to help his followers to do the work, guides, protects, and keeps them happy to work
as family members.
Conceptual skill : this skill requires sensing the organization from an overall
perspective.
Personal skill : to get the best from the followers, a leader should also have the
personal skills such as intelligence, emotional maturity, personal
motivation, integrity, and flexibility of mind.
• Path-goal theory of Robert House (1991) the path-goal theory looks at what leaders
must do to motivate people to perform well and to get satisfaction from work. It draws on
the expectancy theory of motivation and it has four leadership styles: supportive,
directive, participative, and achievement oriented
• Fielder (1972) one of the pioneers of the contingency school offered a continuum
ranging from task-focused to people-focused leadership. He argued that the most
effective style depended on the quality of relationships, relative power position between
the leader and the led, and the nature of the task.
• Ohio state leadership studies (1945) – business research group of Ohio state university
with an inter-disciplinary team (psychologists, sociologists, and economists) of researchers
analysed leadership influences on different groups with researchers using a structured
leader behaviour description questionnaire (LBDO). ‘Consideration’ and ‘initiating’
structure of leadership
• Michigan studies on leadership styles (1961 ) – in this study, Rensis Likert and his group
identified two major styles of leadership—employee participation and production
orientation. The employee-centred style resulted in higher performance compared to the
production-centred style.
(5,5)
CONCERN FOR PEOPLE
(1,1) (9,1)
IMPOVERISHED TASK ORIENTED
Impoverished (low-low, 1, 1) – leader exerts minimum effort, avoids controversy, and confrontation
and takes the position of an observer to just meet the situation.
Country club (low-high, 1, 9) – leader pays the highest attention to the needs of the people for
developing a satisfying relationship which leads to a comfortable and friendly organizational and work
atmosphere.
Task-oriented (high-low, 9, 1) – this is the authoritarian, task oriented, low human-relation model.
Efficiency in operations results from arranging conditions of work in such a way that there is minimum
amount of human interference.
Middle on the road (middle, 5, 5) – this type of leader strikes an optimum balance between high
production and employee satisfaction to achieve effective performance by his/her group.
Team (high-high, 9,9) – this is the style of a team leader. This leader is extremely concerned about
the task as well as people. He is concerned for work accomplishment from committed people, inter-
dependence through a ‘common stake’ in organization and also strives for a relationship of trust and
respect.
© Oxford University Press 2015. All rights reserved.
Reddin’s Three-Dimensional Grid (1971)
• The three-dimensional axes represent task-orientation, relationship-orientation, and effectiveness.
Task-orientation (to) is defined as the leader’s direction given to followers in connection with
achievement of goals. It is concerned with planning, organizing, and controlling. Relationship-
orientation (RO) is defined as the extent of personal relationships of leaders with followers. It is
achieved through mutual trust and respect to followers’ ideas. If the style of a leader is appropriate
to a given situation, we call it effective and vice versa. Effectiveness and ineffectiveness is measured
in terms of appropriateness of behaviour in a given situation.
RELATED INTEGRATED
SEPARATED DEDICATED
TASK ORIENTATION
Symbolic framework - leaders of this type inspires their followers, and captivates their attention, by effectively
communicating the vision. They help the followers to dream and to make efforts to transform the dreams into
reality
Structural framework – leaders who adopt structural framework, play the role of a social architect and become
analytic in every situation and behave accordingly. They behave like a system- and structure bound bureaucrat, ,but
at the same time, become adaptable to the environmental needs, while drawing their strategy.
Human resource framework – in this case the leaders act as catalyst, support and empower their followers, repose
trust in them. And believe in transparency in decision making. This type of leader enjoys greater participation from
followers who respect such leaders, and comply with their directives for achieving the organizational goals and
objectives
Political framework – a political leader with a positive outlook become an advocate and helps in team building. A
political leader with a negative outlook is a manipulator. These leaders balance the distribution of power and
interest by establishing linkages with various stakeholders
Good personality
Physical characteristics and level of maturity determine the personality of an individual.
Intellectual ability
the level of intelligence of a leader should be higher than that of his followers.
Initiative
a leader should take the initiative to start activities on time.
Imagination
this is also an essential trait for a successful leader.
Maturity
A leader should have emotional maturity and balanced temperament.
Self-confidence
A leader should be self-confident. His self-confidence will motivate his followers and boost their
morale.
Fiedler’s contingency approach rests on the premise that people become leaders not only on the strength of their
personality attributes, but also on the strength of different situational factors and the interactions between the
leaders and the followers..
• Vroom-Yetton model :
This model, pioneered by Victor Vroom and Philip Yetton, suggests the extent to which a manager
should involve employees in solving specific problems and that he/she should accordingly decide the
appropriate style of leadership.
Autocratic ii (aii) – in this case, leaders or managers obtain information from subordinates and then
make their own decisions.
Consultative i (ci) – in this case, leaders or managers discuss the problems with the relevant
subordinates individually, obtain their ideas and suggestions, and then decide the courses of action,
which may or may not have the inputs obtained from the subordinates.
Consultative ii (cii) – in this case, leaders or managers discuss the problems with the subordinates as
a group, obtain their ideas and suggestions, and then take decisions, which again may or may not be
influenced by subordinates’ views.
Group ii (g ii) – in this approach, managers discuss the problems with the subordinates as a group,
generate and analyse alternatives together, reach a consensus, and then take a decision. Here
leaders or managers do not try to impose their decisions, but rather help them to come out with
their own solution models, based on the inputs shared.
• Language of leaders :
The language used by leaders is their powerful tool to motivate people, to win people and turn
things their way. A few important examples of the language used by leaders is given below: