Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A leader is someone who can influence others and who has managerial authority.
Leadership is what leaders do – that is, the process of influencing a group to achieve
goals.
Ideally all managers should be leaders because leading is one of the four
management functions.
Trait theories of leadership looked for characteristics (traits) that could be used to
differentiate leaders from non-leaders. It proved impossible to identify one set of traits
that would always do this. However, there are seven traits associated with leadership (the
process) including drive, the desire to lead, honesty and integrity, self-confidence,
democratic, and laissez-faire. The Ohio State studies identified two leadership behaviors:
consideration and initiating structure. The University of Michigan studies also identified
Grid assessed leaders on their concern for people and their concern for production. (See
performance depended on properly matching the leader’s style of interacting with his or
her followers (relationship oriented or task oriented) and the degree to which the situation
allowed the leader to control and influence (leader-member relations, task structure, and
position power). (See Exhibit 17-4.) Fiedler believed, however, that a leader’s style was
fixed.
readiness. Successful leadership is achieved by selecting the right leadership style which
is contingent on the followers’ readiness level. (See Exhibit 17-5.) The leader
uses a decision-tree approach to determine the best style of leadership. (See Exhibits 17-6
and 17-7.)
Path-goal theory states that it’s the leader’s job to assist his or her followers in
attaining their goals and to provide the direction or support needed to ensure that their
goals are compatible with the overall group’s goals. To do this, leaders choose from four
Exhibit 17-8.)
Contemporary Views of Leadership
and actions (charisma) influence people to behave in certain ways. Visionary leadership
is the ability to create and articulate a realistic, credible, and attractive vision of the future
Team leadership is leading teams. There are four specific team leadership roles:
coach, liaison with external constituencies, troubleshooter, and conflict manager. (See
Exhibit 17-9.)
The five sources of a leader’s power are legitimate (power because of position of
authority), coercive (power to punish or control), reward (power to give positive benefits
or rewards), expert (power based on expertise, special skills, or knowledge), and referent
The main issues that leaders face today are developing trust (see Exhibit 17-10),