Leadership

Definition

Leadership is a process whereby an individual, or clique, is able to influence others to internalize a collective vision and mobilize them toward attaining that vision. Effective leadership transforms people's goals and ambitions, even their identities, and replaces [Page 524]self-oriented behavior with group-oriented behavior. The exercise of power over people to force them, through rewards and punishments, to comply with commands and bend to one's will is not leadership.

Personality Attributes of Great Leaders

Although leadership is a group process (leaders require followers), leadership research has a long history of focusing on attributes of leaders alone that make them effective—great leaders. The 19th-century belief that leaders are born rather than made is no longer in vogue—research has failed to find “great leader” genes. However, the idea that some people have personalities, however acquired, that predispose them to lead effectively in all situations, whereas others do not, has attracted enormous research attention. A definitive review published in 2002 concluded that three of the Big Five personality dimensions are associated with effective leadership: Extraversion, Openness to Experience, and Conscientiousness. Overall, however, personality does not allow people to differentiate between effective and ineffective leaders very reliably.

What Do Effective Leaders Do?

Maybe some leadership behaviors are more effective. One reliable distinction that has emerged is between a leadership style that pays more attention to the group task and getting things done (task-oriented leadership) and one that pays attention to relationships among group members (socioemotional leadership). Most groups require both types of leadership and people who are capable of being both task-focused and socioemotionally focused tend to be the most effective.

Interactionist Perspectives

However, different situations and different group activities call for different emphases on the task or on relationships—in which case, the relative effectiveness of task-oriented and relationship-oriented leaders may be contingent on properties of the leadership situation. This idea is reflected in Fred Fiedler's contingency theory of leadership, very popular in the 1970s; one strength of this theory was that Fielder had a novel way to measure both leadership styles (the leastpreferred coworker scale) and classify how well structured situations were. Generally, relationship-oriented leadership was most effective unless the group task was very poorly structured or very well structured.

Another interactionist perspective is normative decision theory. Leaders can choose to make decisions autocratically (subordinate input is not sought), consultatively (subordinate input is sought, but the leader retains authority to make the final decision), or as a genuine group decision (leader and subordinates are equal partners in shared decision making). The relative efficacy of these strategies is contingent on the quality of leader-subordinate relationships and on task clarity and structure. Autocratic leadership is fast and effective if leader-subordinate relationships are good and the task is well structured. When the task is less clear, consultative leadership is best, and when leadersubordinate relations are poor, group decision making is best.

...