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Slide 1: Organizational Leadership Organizational Leadership and Change Mgt BUS 7340, MPA 6365, and MSL 6310 Apollos University Approved by: AU Curriculum Committee McGraw-Hill/Irwin abc McGraw−Hill Primis ISBN: 0−390−63100−0 Text: Leadership, Fifth Edition Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy
Slide 2: This book was printed on recycled paper. Organizational Leadership http://www.mhhe.com/primis/online/ Copyright ©2006 by The McGraw−Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher. This McGraw−Hill Primis text may include materials submitted to McGraw−Hill for publication by the instructor of this course. The instructor is solely responsible for the editorial content of such materials. 111 ORGLGEN ISBN: 0−390−63100−0
Slide 3: Organizational Leadership Contents Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy • Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 1 1 2 21 45 45 47 73 114 154 154 156 188 216 Introduction 1. Leadership is Everyone’s Business 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation II. Focus on the Leader Introduction 6. Leadership and Values 7. Leadership Traits 8. Leadership Behavior IV. Focus on the Situation Introduction 11. Characteristics of the Situation 12. Contingency Theories of Leadership 13. Leadership and Change iii
Slide 5: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position Introduction © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 1 Part Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position Leader 1 Followers Leadership Situation If any single idea is central to this book, it is that leadership is a process, not a position. The entire first part of the book explores that idea. One is not a leader—except perhaps in name only—merely because one holds a title or position. Leadership involves something happening as a result of the interaction between a leader and followers. In Chapter 1 we define leadership and explore its relationship to concepts such as management and followership. We also suggest that better leadership is something for which everyone shares responsibility. In Chapter 2 we discuss how leadership involves complex interactions between the leader, the followers, and the situation they are in. We also present an interactional framework for conceptualizing leadership which becomes an integrating theme throughout the rest of the book. Chapter 3 looks at how we can become better leaders by profiting more fully from our experiences, which is not to say that either the study or the practice of leadership is simple. Part I concludes with a chapter examining basic concepts and methods used in the scientific study of leaders and leadership.
Slide 6: 2 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 1. Leadership is Everyone’s Business © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 1 Leadership Is Everyone’s Business In the spring of 1972, an airplane flew across the Andes mountains carrying its crew and 40 passengers. Most of the passengers were members of an amateur Uruguayan rugby team en route to a game in Chile. The plane never arrived. It crashed in snow-covered mountains, breaking into several pieces on impact. The main part of the fuselage slid like a toboggan down a steep valley, finally coming to rest in waist-deep snow. Although a number of people died immediately or within a day of the impact, the picture for the 28 survivors was not much better. The fuselage initially offered little protection from the extreme cold, food supplies were scant, and a number of passengers had serious injuries from the crash. Over the next few days, several of the passengers became psychotic and several others died from their injuries. Those passengers who were relatively uninjured set out to do what they could to improve their chances of survival. Several worked on “weatherproofing” the wreckage, others found ways to get water, and those with medical training took care of the injured. Although shaken from the crash, the survivors initially were confident they would be found. These feelings gradually gave way to despair, as search and rescue teams failed to find the wreckage. With the passing of several weeks and no sign of rescue in sight, the remaining passengers decided to mount several expeditions to determine the best way to escape. The most physically fit were chosen to go on the expeditions, as the thin mountain air and the deep snow made the trips extremely taxing. The results of the trips were both frustrating and demoralizing; the expeditionaries determined they were in the middle of the Andes mountains, and walking out to find help was believed to be impossible. Just when the survivors thought nothing worse could possibly happen, an avalanche hit the wreckage and killed several more of them. The remaining survivors concluded they would not be rescued and their only hope was for someone to leave the wreckage and find help. Three of the fittest passengers were chosen for the final expedition, and everyone else’s work was 3 Introduction
Slide 7: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 1. Leadership is Everyone’s Business © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 3 4 Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position directed toward improving the expedition’s chances of success. The three expeditionaries were given more food and were exempted from routine survival activities; the rest spent most of their energies securing supplies for the trip. Two months after the plane crash, the expeditionaries set out on their final attempt to find help. After hiking for 10 days through some of the most rugged terrain in the world, the expeditionaries stumbled across a group of Chilean peasants tending cattle. One of the expeditionaries stated, “I come from a plane that fell in the mountains. I am Uruguayan . . .” Eventually, 14 other survivors were rescued. When the full account of their survival became known, it was not without controversy. It had required extreme and unsettling measures; the survivors had lived only by eating the flesh of their deceased comrades. Nonetheless, their story is one of the most moving survival dramas of all time, magnificently told by Piers Paul Read in Alive (1974). It is a story of tragedy and courage, and it is a story of leadership. Perhaps a story of survival in the Andes is so far removed from everyday experience that it does not seem to hold any relevant lessons about leadership for you personally. But consider for a moment some of the basic issues the Andes survivors faced: tension between individual and group goals, dealing with the different needs and personalities of group members, and keeping hope alive in the face of adversity. These issues are not so very different from those facing many groups we’re a part of. We can also look at the Andes experience for examples of the emergence of informal leaders in groups. Before the flight, a boy named Parrado was awkward and shy, a “second-stringer” both athletically and socially. Nonetheless, this unlikely hero became the best loved and most respected among the survivors for his courage, optimism, fairness, and emotional support. Persuasiveness in group decision making also was an important part of leadership among the Andes survivors. During the difficult discussions preceding the agonizing decision to survive on the flesh of their deceased comrades, one of the rugby players made his reasoning clear: “I know that if my dead body could help you stay alive, then I would want you to use it. In fact, if I do die and you don’t eat me, then I’ll come back from wherever I am and give you a good kick in the ass” (Read, 1974, p. 77). The Purpose of This Book Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Few of us will ever be confronted with a leadership challenge as dramatic as that faced by the Andes survivors. We may frequently face, however, opportunities for leadership that involve group dynamics which are just as complex. The purpose of this book is to help you be more effective in leadership situations by helping you better understand the complex challenges of leadership. More specifically, we hope this book will serve as a sort of guide for interpreting leadership theory and research. The book describes and critically evaluates a number of leadership theories and research articles, and also offers practical advice on how to be a better leader. This book is designed to fill the gap between books that provide excellent summaries of leadership research but little practical advice on how to be a better leader and those that are not based on theory or research but primarily offer just one person’s views on how to be a better leader (e.g., “how to” books, memoirs).
Slide 8: 4 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 1. Leadership is Everyone’s Business © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 1 Leadership Is Everyone’s Business 5 Three Leaders One way we will bridge that gap between leadership research and more personalized accounts of leadership will be through personal glimpses of individual leaders. Dozens of different leaders are mentioned illustratively throughout the text, but three particular individuals will be a continuing focus across many chapters. They are Colin Powell, Peter Jackson, and Aung San Suu Kyi. Let us introduce you to them now. Colin Powell Until 2005, Colin Powell has been the United States secretary of state. No African American has ever held a higher position in the U.S. government. He is also a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. armed forces. He has commanded soldiers, advised presidents, and led a national volunteer movement to improve the future for disadvantaged youth. He is one of the most respected individuals inside or outside of government. We might wonder whether his leadership of a national volunteer movement or the State Department differs in any way from his leadership of his country’s military forces. We might also wonder what there is about him that inspired so many to hope he would run for elective office himself. And we might wonder, was he always a great leader, or did even Colin Powell need to learn a few things along the way? These are some of the questions we will consider ahead. One thing, however, is virtually certain: Colin Powell will continue to exert strong leadership whatever his role. Peter Jackson When Peter Jackson read The Lord of the Rings trilogy at the age of 18, he couldn’t wait until it was made into a movie; 20 years later he made it himself. In 2004 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King took home 11 Academy Awards, winning the Oscar in every category for which it was nominated. This tied the record for the most Oscars ever earned by one motion picture. Such an achievement might seem unlikely for a producer/director whose film debut was titled Bad Taste, which it and subsequent works exemplified in spades. Peter Jackson made horror movies so grisly and revolting that his fans nicknamed him the “Sultan of Splatter.” Nonetheless, his talent was evident to discerning eyes—at least among horror film aficionados. Bad Taste was hailed as a cult classic at the Cannes Film Festival, and horror fans tabbed Jackson as a talent to follow. When screenwriter Costa Botes heard that The Lord of the Rings would be made into a live action film, he thought those responsible were crazy. Prevailing wisdom was that the fantastic and complex trilogy simply could not be The halls of fame are open wide and believably translated onto the screen. But he also they are always full. Some go in by believed that “there was no other director on the door called “push” and some by the door called “pull.” earth who could do it justice” (Botes, 2004). And Stanley Baldwin, do it justice he obviously did. What was it about British prime minister in 1930s the “Sultan of Splatter’s” leadership that gave others such confidence in his ability to make one
Slide 9: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 1. Leadership is Everyone’s Business © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 5 6 Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position of the biggest and best movies of all time? What gave him the confidence to even try it? And what made others want to share in his vision? We’ll see. Aung San Suu Kyi In 1991 Suu Kyi already had spent two years under house arrest in Burma for “endangering the state.” That same year she won the Nobel Prize for Peace. Like Nelson Mandela, Suu Kyi stands as an international symbol of heroic and peaceful resistance to government oppression. Until the age of 43, Suu Kyi led a relatively quiet existence in England as a professional working mother. Her life changed dramatically in 1988 when she returned to her native country of Burma to visit her sick mother. That visit occurred during a time of considerable political unrest in Burma. Riot police had recently shot to death hundreds of demonstrators in the capital city of Rangoon (the demonstrators had been protesting government repression!). Over the next several months, police killed nearly 3,000 people who had been protesting government policies. When hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators staged a protest rally at a prominent pagoda in Rangoon, Suu Kyi spoke to the crowd. Overnight she became the leading voice for freedom and democracy in Burma. Today she is the most popular and influential leader in her country even though she’s never held political office. What prepared this woman whose life was once relatively simple and contented to risk her life by challenging an oppressive government? What made her such a magnet for popular support? We’ll examine those and other questions in the chapters ahead. What Is Leadership? The Andes story and the lives of the three leaders we just introduced provide numerous examples of leadership. But just what is leadership? People who do research on leadership actually disagree more than you might think about what leadership really is. Most of this disagreement stems from the fact that leadership is a complex phenomenon involving the leader, the followers, and the situation. Some leadership researchers have focused on the personality, physical traits, or behaviors of the leader; others have studied the relationships between leaders and followers; still others have studied how aspects of the situation affect the ways leaders act. Some have extended the latter viewpoint so far as to suggest there is no such thing as leadership; they argue that organizational successes and failures often get falsely attributed to the leader, but the situation may have a much greater impact on how the organization functions than does any individual, including the leader (Meindl & Remember the difference between a Ehrlich, 1987). boss and a leader: a boss says, Perhaps the best way for you to begin to understand the com“Go!”—a leader says, “Let’s go!” plexities of leadership is to see some of the ways leadership has E. M. Kelly been defined. Leadership researchers have defined leadership in many different ways:
Slide 10: 6 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 1. Leadership is Everyone’s Business © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 1 Leadership Is Everyone’s Business 7 • The process by which an agent induces a subordinate to behave in a desired manner (Bennis, 1959). • Directing and coordinating the work of group members (Fiedler, 1967). • An interpersonal relation in which others comply because they want to, not because they have to (Merton, 1969). • Transforming followers, creating visions of the goals that may be attained, and articulating for the followers the ways to attain those goals (Bass, 1985; Tichy & Devanna, 1986). • The process of influencing an organized group toward accomplishing its goals (Roach & Behling, 1984). • Actions that focus resources to create desirable opportunities (Campbell, 1991). • The leader’s job is to create conditions for the team to be effective (Ginnett, 1996). • The ends of leadership involve getting results through others, and the means of leadership involve the ability to build cohesive, goal-oriented teams. Good leaders are those who build teams to get results across a variety of situations (Hogan, Curphy, & Hogan, 1994). As you can see, these definitions differ in many ways, and these differences have resulted in various researchers exploring very different aspects of leadership. For example, if we were to apply these definitions to the Andes survival scenario described earlier, researchers adopting Munson’s definition would focus on the behaviors Parrado used to keep up the morale of the survivors. Researchers using Roach and Behling’s definition would examine how Parrado managed to convince the group to stage and support the final expedition. One’s definition of leadership might also influence just who is considered an appropriate leader for study. For example, researchers who adopted Merton’s definition might not be interested in studying Colin Powell’s leadership as an army general. They might reason that the enormous hierarchical power and authority of an army general makes every order or decision a “have to” response from subordinates. Thus, each group of researchers might focus on a different aspect of leadership, and each would tell a different story regarding the leader, the followers, and the situation. Although such a large number of leadership definitions may seem confusing, it is important to understand that there is no single correct definition. The various definitions can help us appreciate the multitude of factors that affect leadership, as well as different perspectives from which to view it. For example, in Bennis’s definition, the word subordinate seems to confine leadership to downward influence in hierarchical relationships; it seems to exclude informal leadership. Fiedler’s definition emphasizes the directing and controlling aspects of leadership, and thereby may deemphasize emotional aspects of leadership. The emphasis Merton placed on subordinates’ “wanting to” comply with a leader’s wishes seems to exclude coercion of any kind as a leadership tool. Further, it becomes problematic to identify ways in which a leader’s actions are really leadership if subordinates voluntarily comply when a leader with considerable potential coercive power merely asks others to do something without explicitly threatening
Slide 11: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 1. Leadership is Everyone’s Business © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 7 8 Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position them. Similarly, Campbell used the phrase desirable opportunities precisely to distinguish between leadership and tyranny. All considered, we believe the definition provided by Roach and Behling (1984) to be a fairly comprehensive and helpful one. Therefore, this book also defines leadership as “the process of influencing an organized group toward accomplishing its goals.” There are several implications of this definition which are worth further examination. Leadership Is Both a Science and an Art Saying leadership is both a science and an art emphasizes the subject of leadership as a field of scholarly inquiry, as well as certain aspects of the practice of leadership. The scope of the science of leadership is reflected in the number of studies—approximately 8,000—cited in an authoritative Any fool can keep a rule. God gave reference work, Bass & Stogdill’s Handbook of Leadership: Theory, Rehim a brain to know when to break search, & Managerial Applications (Bass, 1990). However, being an the rule. expert on leadership research is neither a necessary nor a sufficient General Willard W. Scott condition for being a good leader. Some managers may be effective leaders without ever having taken a course or training program in leadership, and some scholars in the field of leadership may be relatively poor leaders themselves. This is not to say that knowing something about leadership research is irrelevant to leadership effectiveness. Scholarship may not be a prerequisite for leadership effectiveness, but understanding some of the major research findings can help individuals better analyze situations using a variety of perspectives. That, in turn, can give leaders insight about how to be more effective. Even so, because the skill in analyzing and responding to situations varies greatly across leaders, leadership will always remain partly an art as well as a science. Leadership Is Both Rational and Emotional Leadership involves both the rational and emotional sides of human experience. Leadership includes actions and influences based on reason and logic as well as those based on inspiration and passion. We do not want to cultivate leaders like Commander Data of Star Trek: The Next Generation, who always responds with logical predictability. Because people differ in their thoughts and feelings, hopes and dreams, needs and fears, goals and ambitions, and strengths and weaknesses, leadership situations can be very complex. Because A democracy cannot follow a leader people are both rational and emotional, leaders can use rational techniques and/or emotional appeals in order to influence followunless he is dramatized. A man to be a hero must not content himself ers, but they must also weigh the rational and emotional consewith heroic virtues and anonymous quences of their actions. action. He must talk and explain as A full appreciation of leadership involves looking at both these he acts—drama. sides of human nature. Good leadership is more than just calculaWilliam Allen White, tion and planning, or following a “checklist,” even though raAmerican writer and editor, tional analysis can enhance good leadership. Good leadership Emporia Gazette also involves touching others’ feelings; emotions play an important role in leadership too. Just one example of this is the civil
Slide 12: 8 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 1. Leadership is Everyone’s Business © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 1 Leadership Is Everyone’s Business 9 rights movement of the 1960s. It was a movement based on emotions as well as on principles. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., inspired many people to action; he touched people’s hearts as well as their heads. Aroused feelings, however, can be used either positively or negatively, constructively or destructively. Some leaders have been able to inspire others to deeds of great purpose and courage. On the other hand, as images of Adolf Hitler’s mass rallies or present-day angry mobs attest, group frenzy can readily become group mindlessness. As another example, emotional appeals by the Reverend Jim Jones resulted in approximately 800 of his followers volitionally committing suicide. The mere presence of a group (even without heightened emotional levels) can also cause people to act differently than when they are alone. For example, in airline cockpit crews, there are clear lines of authority from the captain down to the first officer (second in command) and so on. So strong are the norms surrounding the authority of the captain that some first officers will not take control of the airplane from the captain even in the event of impending disaster. Foushee (1984) reported a study wherein airline captains in simulator training intentionally feigned incapacitation so that the response of the rest of the crew could be observed. The feigned incapacitations occurred at a predetermined point during the plane’s final approach in landing, and the simulation involved conditions of poor weather and visibility. Approximately 25 percent of the first officers in these simulated flights allowed the plane to crash. For some reason, the first officers did not take control even when it was clear the captain was allowing the aircraft to deviate from the parameters of a safe approach. This example demonstrates how group dynamics can influence the behavior of group members even when emotional levels are not high. (Believe it or not, airline crews are so well trained, this is not an emotional situation.) In sum, it If you want some ham, you gotta go should be apparent that leadership involves fol- into the smokehouse. lowers’ feelings and nonrational behavior as well Huey Long, as rational behavior. Leaders need to consider both Governor of Louisiana the rational and the emotional consequences of their actions. Leadership and Management In trying to answer “What is leadership?” it is natural to look at the relationship between leadership and management. To many, the word management suggests words like efficiency, planning, paperwork, procedures, regulations, control, and consistency. Leadership is often more associated with words like risk taking, dynamic, creativity, change, and vision. Some say leadership is fundamentally a value-choosing, and thus a value-laden, activity, whereas management is not. Leaders are thought to do the right things, whereas managers are thought to do things right (Bennis, 1985; Zaleznik, 1983). Here are some other distinctions between managers and leaders (Bennis, 1989): • Managers administer; leaders innovate. • Managers maintain; leaders develop. • Managers control; leaders inspire.
Slide 13: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 1. Leadership is Everyone’s Business © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 9 10 Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position • • • • Managers have a short-term view; leaders, a long-term view. Managers ask how and when; leaders ask what and why. Managers imitate; leaders originate. Managers accept the status quo; leaders challenge it. Zaleznik (1974, 1983) goes so far as to say these differences reflect fundamentally different personality types, that leaders and managers are basically different kinds of people. He says some people Long John Silver, are managers by nature; other people are leaders by nature. This is not in Robert Louis Stevenson’s at all to say one is better than the other, only that they are different. Treasure Island Their differences, in fact, can be quite useful, since organizations typically need both functions performed well in order to be successful. For example, consider again the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave life and direction to the civil rights movement in America. He gave dignity and hope of freer participation in our national life to people who before had little reason to expect it. He inspired the world with his vision and eloquence, and changed the way we live together. America is a different nation today because of him. Was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a leader? Of course. Was he a manager? Somehow that does not seem to fit, and the civil rights movement might have failed if it had not been for the managerial talents of his supporting staff. Leadership and management complement each other, and both are vital to organizational success. With regard to the issue of leadership versus management, we Never try to teach a pig to sing; take a middle-of-the-road position. We think of leadership and it wastes your time and it annoys management as closely related but distinguishable functions. Our the pig. view of the relationship is depicted in Figure 1.1. It shows leaderPaul Dickson, ship and management as two over-lapping functions. Although Baseball writer some of the functions performed by leaders and managers may be unique, there is also an area of overlap. Stow this talk. Care killed a cat. Fetch ahead for the doubloons. Leadership and Followership One aspect of our text’s definition of leadership is particularly worth noting: Leadership is a social influence process shared among all members of a group. Leadership is not restricted to the influence exerted by someone in a particular FIGURE 1.1 Leadership and management overlap. Leadership Management
Slide 14: 10 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 1. Leadership is Everyone’s Business © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 1 Leadership Is Everyone’s Business 11 Source: © Tribune Media Services. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
Slide 15: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 1. Leadership is Everyone’s Business © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 11 12 Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position FIGURE 1.2 The leadership/ followership Möbius strip. Le ip ersh ad F ollo w e rs position or role; followers are part of the leadership process, too. In recent years, both practitioners and scholars have emphasized the relatedness of leadership and followership. As Burns (1978) observed, the idea of “one-man leadership” is a contradiction in terms. Thus, the question What is leadership? cannot be separated from the question What is followership? There is no simple line dividing them; they merge. The relationship between leadership and followership can be represented by borrowing a concept from topographical mathematics: the He who would eat the fruit must Möbius strip. You are probably familiar with the curious properclimb the tree. ties of the Möbius strip: When a strip of paper is twisted and conScottish proverb nected in the manner depicted in Figure 1.2, it proves to have only one side. You can prove this to yourself by putting a pencil to any point on the strip and tracing continuously. Your pencil will cover the entire strip (i.e., both “sides”), eventually returning to the point at which you started. In order to demonstrate the relevance of this curiosity to leadership, cut a strip of paper. On one side write leadership, and on the other side write followership. Then twist the strip and connect the two ends in the manner of the figure. You will have created a leadership/followership Möbius strip wherein the two concepts merge one into the other, just as leadership and followership can become indistinguishable in organizations (adapted from Macrorie, 1984). This does not mean leadership and followership are the same thing. When toplevel executives were asked to list qualities they most look for and admire in leaders and followers, the lists were similar but not identical (Kouzes & Posner, 1987). Ideal leaders were characterized as honest, competent, forward looking, and inspiring; ideal followers were described as honest, competent, independent, and cooperative. The differences could become critical in certain situations, as when a forward-looking and inspiring subordinate perceives a significant conflict between his own goals or ethics and those of his superiors. Such a situation could become a crisis for the individual and the organization, demanding choice between leading and following. Leadership on Stages Large and Small Great leaders sometimes seem larger than life. Charles de Gaulle, a leader of France during and after World War II, was such a figure (see Highlight 1.1). Not all good leaders are famous or powerful, however, and we believe leadership can be best understood if we study a broad range of leaders, some famous and some not so famous. Most leaders, after all, are not known outside their own particular sphere or activity, nor should they be. Here are a few examples of leadership on hi p
Slide 16: 12 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 1. Leadership is Everyone’s Business © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 1 Leadership Is Everyone’s Business 13 The Stateliness of Charles de Gaulle Highlight 1.1 Certain men have, one might almost say from birth, the quality of exuding authority, as though it were a liquid, though it is impossible to say precisely of what it consists. In his fascinating book Leaders, former president Richard Nixon described the French president Charles de Gaulle as one of the great leaders he had met. Following are several aspects of de Gaulle’s leadership based on Nixon’s observations. • He conveyed stately dignity. De Gaulle had a resolute bearing that conveyed distance and superiority to others. He was at ease with other heads of state but never informal with anyone, even close friends. His tall stature and imperious manner conveyed the message he was not a common man. • He was a masterful public speaker. He had a deep, serene voice and a calm, self-assured manner. He used the French language grandly and eloquently. According to Nixon, “He spoke so articulately and with such precision that his message seemed to resonate apart from his words” (p. 59). • He played the part. De Gaulle understood the role of theater in politics, and his meetings with the press (a thousand at a time!) were like audiences with royalty. He staged them in great and ornate halls, and he deftly crafted public statements that would be understood differently by different groups. In one sense, perhaps, this could be seen as a sort of falseness, but that may be too narrow a view. Nixon reflected on this aspect of de Gaulle’s leadership: “General de Gaulle was a facade, but not a false one. Behind it was a man of incandescent intellect and a phenomenal discipline. The facade was like the ornamentation on a great cathedral, rather than the flimsy pretense of a Hollywood prop with nothing behind it” (p. 60). Source: R. Nixon, Leaders (New York: Warner Books, 1982). the small stage, where individuals influenced and helped their respective groups attain their goals. • An elderly woman led an entire community’s effort to organize an advocacy and support group for parents of mentally ill adult children and provide sheltered living arrangements for these people. She helped these families while also serving an invaluable role in educating state legislators and social agencies about the needs of this neglected constituency. There had been numerous parents with mentally ill children in this community before, but none had had the idea or took the initiative to organize among themselves. As a result of this woman’s leadership, many adults live and work in more humane conditions than they did before. • A seasoned air force sergeant took two young, “green” enlistees under her wing after they both coincidentally reported for duty on the same day. She taught them the ropes at work and took pride as they matured. One of them performed so well that he went on to be commissioned as an officer. Unfortunately, the sergeant discovered the other pilfering cash from the unit gift fund. Though it pained her to do so, the sergeant took action for the enlistee to be discharged from the service. Leadership involves significant intrinsic rewards such as seeing others blossom under your tutelage, but with its rewards also goes the responsibility to enforce standards of conduct.
Slide 17: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 1. Leadership is Everyone’s Business © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 13 14 Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position • The office manager for a large advertising agency directed its entire administrative staff, most of whom worked in the reception area. His engaging personality and concern for others made everyone feel important. Morale in the office was high, and many important customers credit their positive “first impression” of the whole agency to the congeniality and positive climate among the office staff. Leaders set the tone for the organization, and followers often model the behaviors displayed by the leader. This leader helped create an office mood of optimism and supportiveness that reached outward to everyone who visited. These examples are representative of the opportunities every one of us has to be a leader. To paraphrase John Fitzgerald Kennedy, we all can make a difference and each of us should try. However, this book is more than an exhortation for each of us to play a more active leadership role on the various stages of our lives. It is a review of what is known about leadership from available research, a review we hope is presented in a way that will foster leadership development. We are all more likely to make the kind of difference we want if we understand what leadership is and what it is not, how you get it, and what improves it (see Highlight 1.2 for a contrasting view of how much of a difference leaders really make). Toward that end, we will look at leaders on both the large and the small stages of life throughout the book. We will look at leaders on the world stage like Powell, Jackson, and Suu Kyi; and we will look at leaders on those smaller stages closer to home like principals, coaches, and managers at the local store. You also might want to see Highlight 1.3 for a listing of women leaders throughout history from many different stages. The Romance of Leadership Highlight 1.2 This text is predicated on the idea that leaders can make a difference. Interestingly, though, while people in the business world generally agree, not all scholars do. People in the business world attribute much of a company’s success or failure to its leadership. One study counted the number of articles appearing in The Wall Street Journal that dealt with leadership and found nearly 10 percent of the articles about representative target companies addressed that company’s leadership. Furthermore, there was a significant positive relationship between company performance and the number of articles about its leadership; the more a company’s leadership was emphasized in The Wall Street Journal, the better the company was doing. This might mean the more a company takes leadership seriously (as reflected by the emphasis in The Wall Street Journal), the better it does. However, the authors were skeptical about the real utility of leadership as a concept. They suggested leadership is merely a romanticized notion, an obsession people want and need to believe in. Belief in the potency of leadership may be a sort of cultural myth, which has utility primarily insofar as it affects how people create meaning about causal events in complex social systems. The behavior of leaders, the authors contend, does not account for very much of the variance in an organization’s performance. Nonetheless, people seem strongly committed to a sort of basic faith that individual leaders shape organizational destiny for good or ill. Source: J. R. Meindl, S. B. Ehrlich, and J. M. Dukerich, “The Romance of Leadership.” Administrative Science Quarterly 30 (1985), pp. 78–102.
Slide 18: 14 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 1. Leadership is Everyone’s Business © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 1 Leadership Is Everyone’s Business 15 Women and Leadership: A Few Women Leaders throughout History Highlight 1.3 1429 Joan of Arc is finally granted an audience with Charles the Dauphin of France and subsequently captains the army at the siege of Orleans. 1492 Queen Isabella of Spain finances Columbus’s voyage to the New World. 1638 Religious dissident Anne Hutchinson leads schismatic group from Massachusetts Bay Colony into wilderness and establishes Rhode Island. 1803–1806 Sacajawea leads the Lewis and Clark expedition. 1837 Educator Mary Lyons founds Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (later Mount Holyoke College), the first American college exclusively for women. 1843 Dorothea Dix reports to Massachusetts legislature on treatment of criminally insane, resulting in a significant reform of American mental institutions. 1849 Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery and becomes one of the most successful “conductors” on the Underground Railroad. She helps more than 300 slaves to freedom. 1854 Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, organizes a unit of women nurses to serve in the Crimean War. 1869 Susan B. Anthony is elected president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. 1900 Carry Nation gains fame destroying saloons as head of the American Temperance Movement. 1919 Mary Pickford becomes the first top-level female executive of a major film studio. 1940 Margaret Chase Smith is the first woman elected to Congress. 1966 National Organization of Women (NOW) is founded by Betty Friedan. 1969 Golda Meir is elected prime minister of Israel. 1979 Mother Teresa receives Nobel Prize for her three decades of work leading the Congregation of Missions of Charity in Calcutta, India. 1979 Margaret Thatcher becomes the United Kingdom’s first female prime minister. 1981 Sandra Day O’Connor is first woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. 1988 Benazir Bhutto is elected first female prime minister of Pakistan. 1991 Aung San Suu Kyi wins Nobel Prize for Peace. 1994 Christine Todd Whitman becomes governor of New Jersey, later appointed to cabinet by President Bush in 2001. 1996 Madeleine Albright is appointed U.S. secretary of state. Source: Originally adapted from the Colorado Education Association Journal, February–March 1991. Based on original work by the Arts and Entertainment Network. Myths That Hinder Leadership Development Few things pose a greater obstacle to leadership development than certain unsubstantiated and self-limiting beliefs about leadership. Therefore, before we begin examining what leadership and leadership development are in more detail, we will consider what they are not. We will examine several beliefs (we call them myths) that stand in the way of fully understanding and developing leadership. Myth: Good Leadership Is All Common Sense At face value, this myth says one needs only common sense to be a good leader. It also implies, however, that most if not all of the studies of leadership reported in
Slide 19: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 1. Leadership is Everyone’s Business © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 15 16 Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position scholarly journals and books only confirm what anyone with common sense already knows. The problem, of course, is with the ambiguous term common sense. It implies a common body of practical knowledge about life that virtually any reasonable person with moderate experience has acquired. A simple experiment, however, may convince you that common sense may be less common than you think. Ask a few friends or acquaintances whether the old folk wisdom “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” is true or false. Most will say it is true. After that ask a different group whether the old folk wisdom “Out of sight, out of mind” is true or false. Most of that group will answer true as well, even though the two proverbs are contradictory. A similar thing sometimes happens when people hear about the results of studies concerning human behavior. On hearing the results, people may say, “Who needed a study to learn that? I knew it all the time.” However, several experiments by Slovic and Fischoff (1977) and Never reveal all of yourself to other Wood (1979) showed that events were much more surprising people; hold back something in when subjects had to guess the outcome of an experiment than reserve so that people are never when subjects were told the outcome. What seems obvious after quite sure if they really know you. you know the results and what you (or anyone else) would have Michael Korda, predicted beforehand are not the same thing. Hindsight is alAuthor, editor ways 20/20. The point might become clearer with a specific example you may now try. Read the following paragraph: After World War II, the U.S. Army spent enormous sums of money on studies only to reach conclusions that, many believed, should have been apparent at the outset. One, for example, was that southern soldiers were better able to stand the climate in the hot South Sea islands than northern soldiers were. This sounds reasonable, but there is just one problem; the statement above is exactly contrary to the actual findings. Southerners were no better than northerners in adapting to tropical climates (Lazarsfeld, 1949). Common sense can often play tricks on us. Put a little differently, one of the challenges of understanding leadership may well be to know when common sense applies and when it does not. Do leaders need to act confidently? Of course. But they also need to be humble enough to recognize that others’ views are useful, too. Do leaders need to persevere when times get tough? Yes. But they also need to recognize when times change and a new direction is called for. If leadership were nothing more than common sense, then there should be few, if any, problems in the workplace. However, we venture to guess you have noticed more than a few problems between leaders and followers. Effective leadership must be something more than just common sense. Myth: Leaders Are Born, Not Made Some people believe being a leader is either in one’s genes or not; others believe that life experiences mold the individual, that no one is born a leader. Which view is right? In a sense, both and neither. Both views are right in the sense that innate factors as well as formative experiences influence many sorts of behavior, including leadership. Yet both views are wrong to the extent they imply leadership is ei-
Slide 20: 16 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 1. Leadership is Everyone’s Business © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 1 Leadership Is Everyone’s Business 17 ther innate or acquired; what matters more is how these factors interact. It does not seem useful, we If you miss seven balls out of ten, believe, to think of the world as composed of two you’re batting three hundred and mutually exclusive types of people, leaders and that’s good enough for the Hall of nonleaders. It is more useful to address the ways Fame. You can’t score if you keep in which each person can make the most of lead- the bat on your shoulder. Walter B. Wriston, ership opportunities he or she faces. Chairman of Citicorp, It may be easier to see the pointlessness of ask1970–1984 ing whether leaders are born or made by looking at an alternative question of far less popular interest: Are college professors born or made? Conceptually, the issues are the same, and here, too, the answer is that every college professor is both born and made. It seems clear enough that college professors are partly “born” since (among other factors) there is a genetic component to intelligence, and intelligence surely plays some part in becoming a college professor (well, at least a minor part!). But every college professor is also partly “made.” One obvious way is that college professors must have advanced education in specialized fields; even with the right genes one could not become a college professor without certain requisite experiences. Becoming a college professor depends partly on what one is “born with” and partly on how that inheritance is shaped through experience. The same is true of leadership. More specifically, research indicates that many cognitive abilities and personality traits are at least partly innate (McGue & Bouchard, 1990; Tellegen, Lykken, Bouchard, Wilcox, Segal, & Rich, 1988; McCrae & Foster, 1995). Thus, natural talents or characteristics may offer certain advantages or disadvantages to a leader. Take physical characteristics: A man’s above-average height may increase others’ tendency to think of him as a leader; it may also boost his own self-confidence. But it doesn’t “make” him a leader. The same holds true for psychological characteristics which seem related to leadership. The very stability of certain characteristics over long periods of time (e.g., at school reunions people seem to have kept the same personalities we remember them as having years earlier) may reinforce the impression that our basic natures are fixed, but different environments nonetheless may nurture or suppress different leadership qualities. Myth: The Only School You Learn Leadership from Is the School of Hard Knocks Some people skeptically question whether leadership can develop through formal study, believing instead it can only be acquired through actual experience. It is a mistake, however, to think of formal study and learning from experience as mutually exclusive or antagonistic. In fact, they complement each other. Rather than ask whether leadership develops from formal study or from Progress always involves risks. You can’t steal second base and keep real-life experience, it is better to ask what kind your foot on first. of study will help students learn to discern critiFrederick B. Wilcox cal lessons about leadership from their own experience. Approaching the issue in such a way
Slide 21: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 1. Leadership is Everyone’s Business © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 17 18 Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position recognizes the critical role of experience in leadership development, but it also admits that certain kinds of study and training can improve a person’s ability to discern critical lessons about leadership from experience. It can, in other words, help accelerate the process of learning from experience. We would argue that one of the advantages of formally studying leadership is that formal study provides students with a variety of ways of examining a particular leadership situation. By studying the different ways researchers have defined and examined leadership, students can use these definitions and theories to better understand what is going on in any leadership situation. For example, earlier in this chapter we used three different leadership definitions as a framework for describing or analyzing the situation facing Parrado and the remaining survivors of the plane crash, and each definition focused on a different aspect of leadership. These frameworks can similarly be applied to better understand the experiences one has as both a leader and a follower. We think it is very difficult for leaders, particularly novice leaders, to examine leadership situations from multiple perspectives, but we also believe developing this skill can help you become a better leader. Being able to analyze your experiences from multiple perspectives may be the greatest single contribution a formal course in leadership can give you. An Overview of This Book In order to fill the gaps between leadership research and practice, this book will critically review the major theories of leadership as well as provide practical advice about improving leadership. As our first steps in that journey, the next three chapters of the book describe how: (a) leaderNurture your mind with great ship is an interaction between the leader, the followers, and the thoughts. To believe in the heroic situation; (b) leadership develops through experience; and makes heroes. (c) leadership can be assessed and studied. The remainder of the Benjamin Distaeli, book uses the leader–follower-situation interaction model deBritish prime minister, 1874–1880 scribed in Chapter 2 as a framework for organizing and discussing various theories and research findings related to leadership. The chapters in Part II focus on the leader, beginning with an examination of the issues of power and influence, then of ethics, values, and attitudes. Other chapters look at theories and research concerning the leader: how good and bad leaders differ in personality, intelligence, creativity, and behavior. Part II concludes by looking at charismatic leadership. Part III primarily focuses on the followers; it summarizes the research and provides practical advice on such topics as motivating subordinates and using delegation. Part IV examines how the situation affects the leadership process. Part V looks at several dozen specific leadership skills, including practical advice about handling specific leadership challenges. While Part V represents in one sense the “end” of the book, you may want to start reading about and practicing some of the skills right now.
Slide 22: 18 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 1. Leadership is Everyone’s Business © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 1 Leadership Is Everyone’s Business 19 Summary Although many definitions of leadership exist, we define leadership as the process of influencing others toward achieving group goals. The chapter also looks at the idea that leadership is both a science and an art. Because leadership is an immature science, researchers are still struggling to find out what the important questions in leadership are; we are far from finding conclusive answers to them. Even those individuals with extensive knowledge of the leadership research may be poor leaders. Knowing what to do is not the same as knowing when, where, and how to do it. The art of leadership concerns the skill of understanding leadership situations and influencing others to accomplish group goals. Formal leadership education may give individuals the skills to better understand leadership situations, and mentorships and experience may give individuals the skills to better influence others. Leaders must also weigh both rational and emotional considerations when attempting to influence others. Leadership sometimes can be accomplished through relatively rational, explicit, rule-based methods of assessing situations and determining actions. Nevertheless, there is also an emotional side of human nature that must be acknowledged. Leaders are often most effective when they affect people at both the emotional level and the rational level. The idea of leadership as a whole-person process can also be applied to the distinction often made between leaders and managers. Although leadership and management can be distinguished as separate functions, a more comprehensive picture of supervisory positions could be made by examining the overlapping functions of leaders and managers. Leadership does not occur without followers, and followership is an easily neglected component of the leadership process. Leadership is everyone’s business and everyone’s responsibility. Finally, learning certain conceptual frameworks for thinking about leadership can be helpful in making your own on-the-job experiences a particularly valuable part of your leadership development. Thinking about leadership can help you become a better leader than you are right now. Key Terms Questions leadership, 6 management, 9 followership, 12 1. We say leadership involves influencing organized groups toward goals. Do you see any disadvantages to restricting the definition to organized groups? 2. How would you define leadership? 3. Are some people the “leader type” and others not the “leader type”? If so, what in your judgment distinguishes them? 4. Identify several “commonsense” notions about leadership that, to you, are patently self-evident. 5. Does every successful leader have a valid theory of leadership?
Slide 23: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 1. Leadership is Everyone’s Business © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 19 20 Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position 6. Would you consider it a greater compliment for someone to call you a good manager or a good leader? Why? Do you believe you can be both? 7. Do you believe leadership can be studied scientifically? Why or why not? 8. To the extent leadership is an art, what methods come to mind for improving one’s “art of leadership”? Activity Describe the best leader you have personally known, or a favorite leader from history, a novel, or a movie. Minicase “Richard Branson Shoots for the Moon” The Virgin Group is the umbrella for a variety of business ventures ranging from air travel to entertainment. With close to 200 companies in over 30 countries, it is one of the largest companies in the world. At the head of this huge organization is Richard Branson. Branson founded Virgin over 30 years ago and has built the organization from a small student magazine to the multibillion-dollar enterprise it is today. Branson is not your typical CEO. Branson’s dyslexia made school a struggle and sabotaged his performance on standard IQ tests. His teachers and tests had no way of measuring his greatest strengths—his uncanny knack for uncovering lucrative business ideas and his ability to energize the ambitions of others so that they, like he, could rise to the level of their dreams. Richard Branson’s true talents began to show themselves in his late teens. While a student at Stowe School in England in 1968, Branson decided to start his own magazine, Student. Branson was inspired by the student activism on his campus in the sixties and decided to try something different. Student differed from most college newspapers or magazines; it focused on the students and their interests. Branson sold advertising to major corporations to support his magazine. He included articles by Ministers of Parliament, rock stars, intellectuals, and celebrities. Student grew to become a commercial success. In 1970 Branson saw an opportunity for Student to offer records cheaply by running ads for mail-order delivery. The subscribers to Student flooded the magazine with so many orders that his spin-off discount music venture proved more lucrative than the magazine subscriptions. Branson recruited the staff of Student for his discount music business. He built a small recording studio and signed his first artist. Mike Oldfield recorded “Tubular Bells” at Virgin in 1973—the album sold 5 million copies. Virgin records and the Virgin brand name were born. Branson has gone on to start his own airline (Virgin Atlantic Airlines was launched in 1984), build hotels (Virgin Hotels started in 1988), get into the personal finance business (Virgin Direct Personal Finance Services was launched in 1995), and even enter the cola wars (Virgin Cola was introduced in 1994). And those are just a few of the
Slide 24: 20 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 1. Leadership is Everyone’s Business © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 1 Leadership Is Everyone’s Business 21 highlights of the Virgin Group—all this while Branson has attempted to break world speed records for crossing the Atlantic Ocean by boat and by hot air balloon. As you might guess, Branson’s approach is nontraditional—he has no giant corporate office or staff and few if any board meetings. Instead, he keeps each enterprise small and relies on his skills of empowering people’s ideas to fuel success. When a flight attendant from Virgin Airlines approached him with her vision of a wedding business, Richard told her to go do it. He even put on a wedding dress himself to help launch the publicity. Virgin Brides was born. Branson relies heavily on the creativity of his staff—he is more a supporter of new ideas than a creator of them. He encourages searches for new business ideas everywhere he goes and even has a spot on the Virgin Website called “Got a Big Idea?” In December 1999, Richard Branson was awarded a knighthood in the Queen’s Millennium New Year’s Honours List for “services to entrepreneurship.” What’s next on Branson’s list? He recently announced that Virgin was investing money in “trying to make sure that, in the not too distant future, people from around the world will be able to go into space.” Not everyone is convinced that space tourism can become a fully fledged part of the travel industry, but with Branson behind the idea it just may fly. 1. Would you classify Richard Branson as a manager or a leader? What qualities distinguish him as one over the other? 2. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, followers are part of the leadership process. Describe the relationship between Branson and his followers. 3. Identify the myths of leadership development that Richard Branson’s success helps to disprove. Sources: http://www.johnshepler.com/articles/branson.html; http://www.wma.com/ richard_branson/summary/; http://www.virgin.com/aboutvirgin/allaboutvirgin/thewholestory/; http://www.virgin.com/aboutvirgin/allaboutvirgin/whosrichardbranson/; http://www.qksrv.net/ click-310374-35140; http://www.guardian.co.uk/space/article/0,14493,1235926,00.html
Slide 25: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 21 Chapter 2 Leadership Involves an Interaction between the Leader, the Followers, and the Situation In Chapter 1, we defined leadership as the process of influencing an organized group toward accomplishing its goals. In this chapter, we will expand on this definition by introducing and describing a three-factor framework of the leadership process. We find this framework to be a useful heuristic both for analyzing various leadership situations and for organizing various leadership theories and supporting research. Therefore, the remainder of this chapter is devoted to providing an overview of the framework, and many of the remaining chapters of this book are devoted to describing the components of the framework in more detail. Introduction Looking at Leadership through Several Lenses In attempting to understand leadership, scholars understandably have spent much of their energy studying successful and unsuccessful leaders in government, business, athletics, and the military. Sometimes scholars have done this systematically by studying good leaders as a group (see Bennis & Nanus, 1985; Astin & Leland, 1991), and sometimes they have done this more subjectively, drawing lessons about leadership from the behavior or character of an individual leader such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Bill Gates, or Hillary Clinton. The latter approach is similar to drawing conclusions about leadership from observing individuals in one’s 22
Slide 26: 22 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 2 Leadership Involves an Interaction between the Leader, the Followers, and the Situation 23 own life, whether it be a high school coach, a mother or father, or one’s boss. It may seem that A leader is best studying the characteristics of effective leaders is When people barely know that he the best way to learn about leadership, but such exists Not so good when people obey and an approach tells only part of the story. Consider an example. Suppose a senior minis- acclaim him, Worst of all when they despise him. ter was told by one of his church’s wealthiest and “Fail to honor people, consistently most generous members that he They fail to honor you;” should not preach any more prochoice sermons But of a good leader, who talks little, on abortion. The wealthy man’s contributions When his work is done, his aim were a big reason a special mission project for the fulfilled, city’s disadvantaged youth had been funded, and They will all say, “We did this we might wonder whether the minister would be ourselves.” influenced by this outside pressure. Would he be Lao-tzu a bad leader if he succumbed to this pressure and did not advocate what his conscience dictated? Would the minister be a bad leader if his continued public stand on abortion caused the wealthy man to leave the church and withdraw support for the youth program? Although we can learn much about leadership by looking at leaders themselves, the preceding example suggests that studying only leaders provides just a partial view of the leadership process. Would we really know all we wanted to about the preceding example if we knew everything possible about the minister himself? His personality, his intelligence, his interpersonal skills, his theological training, his motivation? Is it not also relevant to understand a bit more, for example, about the community, his parishioners, the businessman, and so on? This points out how leadership depends on several factors, including the situation and the followers, not just the leader’s qualities or characteristics. Leadership is more than just the kind of person the leader is or the things the leader does. Leadership is the process of influencing others toward the achievement of group goals; it is not just a person or a position. If we use only leaders as the lens for understanding leadership, then we get a very limited view of the leadership process. We can expand our view of the leadership process by adding two other complementary lenses: the followers and the situation. However, using only the followers or the situation as a lens also would give us an equally limited view of the leadership process. In other words, the clearest picture of the leadership process occurs only when we use all three lenses to understand it. The Interactional Framework for Analyzing Leadership Perhaps the first researcher formally to recognize the importance of the leader, follower, and situation in the leadership process was Fred Fiedler (1967). Fiedler used these three components to develop his contingency model of leadership, a theory of leadership that will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 12. Although we recognize Fiedler’s contributions, we owe perhaps even more to Hollander’s (1978) transactional approach to leadership. We call our approach the interactional framework.
Slide 27: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 23 24 Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position Leader Personality Position Expertise, Etc. FIGURE 2.1 An interactional framework for analyzing leadership. Source: Adapted from E. P. Hollander, Leadership Dynamics (New York: Free Press, 1978). Followers Values Norms Cohesiveness, Etc. Task Stress Environment, Etc. Situation The crowd will follow a leader who marches twenty steps in advance; but if he is a thousand steps in front of them, they do not see and do not follow him. Georg Brandes There are several aspects of this derivative of Hollander’s (1978) approach that are worthy of additional comment. First, as seen in Figure 2.1, the framework depicts leadership as a function of three elements—the leader, the followers, and the situation. Second, a particular leadership scenario can be examined using each level of analysis separately. Although this is a useful way to understand the leadership process, we can have an even better understanding of the process if we also examine the interactions among the three elements, or lenses, represented by the overlapping areas in the figure. For example, we can better understand the leadership process if we not only look at the leaders and the followers but also examine how leaders and followers affect each other in the leadership process. Similarly, we can examine the leader and the situation separately, but we can gain even further understanding of the leadership process by looking at how the situation can constrain or facilitate a leader’s actions and how the leader can change different aspects of the situation in order to be more effective. Thus, a final important aspect of the framework is that leadership is the result of a complex set of interactions among the leader, the followers, and the situation. These complex interactions may be why broad generalizations about leadership are problematic; there are many factors that influence the leadership process (see Highlight 2.1). An example of one such complex interaction between leaders and followers is evident in what has been called in-groups and out-groups. Sometimes there is a high degree of mutual influence and attraction between the leader and a few subordinates. These subordinates belong to the in-group and can be distinguished by their high degree of loyalty, commitment, and trust felt toward the leader. Other subordinates belong to the out-group. Leaders have considerably more influence with in-group followers than with out-group followers. However, this greater degree of influence also has a price. If leaders rely primarily on their formal authority to influence their followers (especially if they punish them), then leaders risk losing the high levels of loyalty and commitment followers feel toward them.
Slide 28: 24 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 2 Leadership Involves an Interaction between the Leader, the Followers, and the Situation 25 Followership Styles Highlight 2.1 The concept of different styles of leadership is reasonably familiar, but the idea of different styles of followership is relatively new. The very word follower has a negative connotation to many, evoking ideas of people who behave like sheep and need to be told what to do. Robert Kelley (1992), however, believes that followers, rather than representing the antithesis of leadership, are best viewed as collaborators with leaders in the work of organizations. Kelley believes that different types of followers can be described in terms of two broad dimensions. One of them ranges from independent, critical thinking at one end to dependent, uncritical thinking on the other end. According to Kelley, the best followers think for themselves and offer constructive advice or even creative solutions. The worst followers need to be told what to do. Kelley’s other dimension ranges from whether people are active followers or passive followers in the extent to which they are engaged in work. According to Kelley, the best followers are self-starters who take initiative for themselves, whereas the worst followers are passive, may even dodge responsibility, and need constant supervision. Using these two dimensions, Kelley has suggested five basic styles of followership: 1. Alienated followers habitually point out all the negative aspects of the organization to others. While alienated followers may see themselves as mavericks who have a healthy skepticism of the organization, leaders often see them as cynical, negative, and adversarial. 2. Conformist followers are the “yes people” of organizations. While very active at doing the organization’s work, they can be dangerous if their orders contradict societal standards of behavior or organizational policy. Often this style is the result of either the demanding and authoritarian style of the leader or the overly rigid structure of the organization. 3. Pragmatist followers are rarely committed to their group’s work goals, but they have learned not to make waves. Because they do not like to stick out, pragmatists tend to be mediocre performers who can clog the arteries of many organizations. Because it can be difficult to discern just where they stand on issues, they present an ambiguous image with both positive and negative characteristics. In organizational settings, pragmatists may become experts in mastering the bureaucratic rules which can be used to protect them. 4. Passive followers display none of the characteristics of the exemplary follower (discussed next). They rely on the leader to do all the thinking. Furthermore, their work lacks enthusiasm. Lacking initiative and a sense of responsibility, passive followers require constant direction. Leaders may see them as lazy, incompetent, or even stupid. Sometimes, however, passive followers adopt this style to help them cope with a leader who expects followers to behave that way. 5. Exemplary followers present a consistent picture to both leaders and coworkers of being indepen dent, innovative, and willing to stand up to superiors. They apply their talents for the benefit of the organization even when confronted with bureaucratic stumbling blocks or passive or pragmatist coworkers. Effective leaders appreciate the value of exemplary followers. When one of the authors was serving in a follower role in a staff position, he was introduced by his leader to a conference as “my favorite subordinate because he’s a loyal ‘No-Man.’ ” Exemplary followers—high on both critical dimensions of followership—are essential to organizational success. Leaders, therefore, would be well advised to select people who have these characteristics and, perhaps even more importantly, create the conditions that encourage these behaviors.
Slide 29: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 25 26 Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position There is even a theory of leadership called Leader-Member Exchange Theory that describes these two kinds of relationships and how they affect the types of power and influence tactics leaders use (Graen & Cashman, 1975). We will now examine each of the three main elements of the interactional framework in turn. The Leader This element primarily examines what the leader brings as an individual to the leadership equation. This can include unique personal history, interests, character traits, and motivation. Peter Jackson’s effectiveness as a leader has been due in large part to a unique combination of personal qualities and talents. One associate, for example, called him “one of the smartest people I know,” as well as a maverick willing to buck the establishment. Jackson is also a tireless worker whose early successes were due in no small part to the combination of his ambition and dogged perseverance (Botes, 2004). Source: The “Bizarro” cartoon by Dan Piraro is reprinted courtesy Chronicle Features, San Francisco, California. All rights reserved.
Slide 30: 26 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 2 Leadership Involves an Interaction between the Leader, the Followers, and the Situation 27 I’ll be blunt, coach. I’m having a problem with this ‘take a lap’ thing of yours . . .” Source: © Tribune Media Services. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. Leaders are not all alike, but they do tend to share many common characteristics. Research has shown that leaders differ from their followers, and effective leaders differ from ineffective leaders, on various personality traits, cognitive abilities, skills, and values (Stogdill, 1948, 1974; Hogan, Curphy, & Hogan, 1994; Lord, DeVader, & Allinger, 1986; Kanter, 1983; Baltzell, 1980). Another way personality can affect leadership is through temperament, by which we mean whether the leader
Slide 31: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 27 28 Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position is generally calm or is instead prone to emotional outbursts. Leaders who have calm dispositions and do not attack or belittle others for bringing bad news are more likely to get complete and timely information from subordinates than are bosses who have explosive tempers and a reputation for killing the messenger. Another important aspect of the leader is how he or she achieved leader status. Leaders who are appointed by superiors may have less credibility with subordinates and get less loyalty from them than leaders who are elected or emerge by consensus from the ranks of followers. Often, emergent or elected officials are better able to influence a group toward goal achievement because of the power conferred on them by their followers. However, both elected and emergent leaders need to be sensitive to their constituencies if they wish to remain in power. More generally, a leader’s experience or history in a particular organization is usually important to her or his effectiveness. For example, leaders promoted from within an organization, by virtue of being familiar with its culture and policies, may be ready to “hit the job running.” In addition, leaders selected from within an organization are typically better known by others in the organization than are leaders selected from the outside. That is likely to affect, for better or worse, the latitude others in the organization are willing to give the leader; if the leader is widely respected for a history of accomplishment, then she may be given more latitude than a newcomer whose track record is less well known. On the other hand, many people tend to give new leaders a fair chance to succeed, and newcomers to an organization often take time to learn the organization’s informal rules, norms, and “ropes” before they make any radical or potentially controversial decisions. A leader’s legitimacy also may be affected by the extent to which followers participated in the leader’s selection. When followers have had a say in the selection or election of a leader they tend to have a heightened sense of psychological identification with her, but they also may have higher expectations and make more demands on her (Hollander & Offermann, 1990). We also might wonder what kind of support a leader has from his own boss. If followers sense their boss has a lot of influence with the higher-ups, then subordinates may be reluctant to take their complaints to higher levels. On the other hand, if the boss has little influence with higher-ups, subordinates may be more likely to make complaints to these levels. The foregoing examples highlight the sorts of insights one can gain about leadership by focusing on the individual leader as a level of analysis. Even if we were to examine the individual leader completely, however, our understanding of the leadership process would be incomplete. The Followers Followers are a critical part of the leadership equation, but their role has not always been appreciated. For example, one can look at history and be struck by the contributions of extraordinary individual leaders. Does the relative inattention to their followers mean the latter made no contributions themselves to the leadership process? Wasn’t Mr. Spock’s logic an important counterbalance to Captain Kirk’s intuition on Star Trek? Wasn’t the Lone Ranger daring partly because he knew he could count on Tonto to rescue him from impossible situations (Jones, 2003).
Slide 32: 28 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 2 Leadership Involves an Interaction between the Leader, the Followers, and the Situation 29 Even the major reviews of the leadership literature show that researchers have paid relatively little attention to the roles followers play in the leadership process (see Bass, 1981, 1990; Stogdill, 1974). However, we know that the followers’ expectations, personality traits, maturity levels, levels of competence, and motivation affect the leadership process too (Sutton & Woodman, 1989; Burke, 1965; Moore, 1976; Scandura, Graen, & Novak, 1986; Sales, Levanoni, & Saleh, 1984). Impressive as Aung San Suu Kyi is as a populist leader, it is impossible to understand her effectiveness purely in terms of her own personal characteristics. It is impossible to understand it independent of her followers—the people of Burma. Her rapid rise to prominence as the leading voice for democracy and freedom in Burma must be understood in terms of the living link she represented to the country’s greatest modern hero—her father. He was something of a George Washington figure in that he founded the Burmese Army in 1941 and later made a successful transition from military leadership to political leadership. At the height of his influence, when he was the universal choice to be Burma’s first president, he was assassinated. Suu Kyi was two years old. Stories about his life and principles indelibly shaped Suu Kyi’s own life, but his life and memory also created a readiness among Suu Kyi’s countrymen for her to take up his mantle of leadership. The nature of followers’ motivation to do their work is also important. Workers who share a leader’s goals and values, and who feel intrinsically rewarded for performing a job well, might be more likely to work extra hours on a time-critical project than those whose motivation is solely monetary. Even the number of followers reporting to a leader can have significant implications. For example, a store manager having three clerks working for him can spend more time with each of them (or on other things) than can a manager responsible for eight clerks and a separate delivery service; chairing a task force with five members is a different leadership activity than chairing a task force with eighteen members. Still other relevant variables include followers’ trust in the leader and their confidence (or not) that he or she is interested in their well-being. Changing Roles for Followers The preceding examples illustrate just a few ways in which followers compose an important and complementary level of analysis for understanding leadership. Such examples should point out how leadership must be understood in the context of a particular group of followers as well as in terms of an individual If you act like an ass, don’t get leader. Now, more than ever before, understanding insulted if people ride you. Yiddish proverb followers is central to understanding leadership. That is because the leader–follower relationship is in a period of dynamic change (Lippitt, 1982; Block, 1992; Hollander, 1994). One reason for this changing relationship is an increasing pressure on all kinds of organizations to function with reduced resources. Reduced resources and company downsizing have reduced the number of managers and increased their span of control, which in turn leaves followers to pick up many of the functions traditionally performed by leaders. Another reason is a trend toward greater power sharing and decentralized authority in organizations, which in turn creates greater interdependence among organizational subunits and increased need
Slide 33: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 29 30 Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position for collaboration among them. Furthermore, the nature of problems faced by many organizations is becoming so complex and the changes are becoming so rapid that more and more people are required to solve them. These trends suggest several different ways in which followers can take on new leadership roles and responsibilities in the future. For one thing, followers can become much more proactive in their stance toward organizational problems. When facing the discrepancy between the way things are in an organization and the way they could or should be, followers can play an active and constructive role collaborating with leaders in solving problems. In general, making organizations better is a task that needs to be “owned” by followers as well as by leaders. With these changing roles for followers, it should not be surprising to find that qualities of good followership are statistically correlated with qualities typically associated with good leadership. One recent study found positive correlations between the followership qualities of active engagement and independent thinking and the leadership qualities of dominance, sociability, achievement orientation, and steadiness (Tanoff & Barlow, 2002). In addition to helping solve organizational problems, followers can better contribute to the leadership process by becoming better skilled at “influencing upward.” Because followers are often at the level where many organizational problems occur, they can provide leaders with relevant information so that good solutions are implemented. Although it is true that some leaders need to become better listeners, it is also true that many followers need training in expressing ideas to superiors more clearly and positively. Still another way followers can assume a greater share of the leadership challenge in the future is by staying flexible and open to opportunities. The future portends more change, not less, and followers who face change with positive anticipation and an openness to self-development will be particularly valued and rewarded (Senge, 1990). Thus, to an ever increasing degree, leadership must be understood in terms of both leader variables and follower variables, as well as the interactions among them. But even that is not enough. In addition to understanding the leader and the followers, we must also understand the particular situations in which leaders and followers find themselves. The Situation The situation is the third critical part of the leadership equation. Even if we knew all we could know about a given leader and a given set of followers, leadership makes sense only in the context of how the leader and followers interact in a given situation (see Highlight 2.2). The situation may be the most ambiguous aspect of the leadership framework since it can refer to anything from the specific task a group is engaged in all the way to broad situational contexts such as the remote predicament of the Andes survivors.
Slide 34: 30 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 2 Leadership Involves an Interaction between the Leader, the Followers, and the Situation 31 Berkeley in the 1960s Highlight 2.2 The 1960s were a period of dissent and conflict, and perhaps even today no place epitomizes the decade more than Berkeley, California. But Berkeley did not always have a radical reputation. The Berkeley campus of the huge University of California system had not always been a center of student protest and large-scale demonstrations. For a long time, it had been relatively sedate and conservative, even if also quite large; more than 20,000 students attended Berkeley in 1960. Campus leaders were clean-cut students who belonged to fraternities and sororities. Berkeley changed, however, in the fall of 1964 when a relatively small number of students launched what became known as the Free Speech Movement. Subsequent protests at other campuses across the country, and later globally, are traceable to the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley. One of its leaders was Mario Savio. The sources of conflict and radicalism at Berkeley were many, including civil rights and the Vietnam War. But protest in Berkeley first erupted over the issue of whether students could solicit donations and distribute political materials near campus. Whether students could solicit donations or distribute materials on campus had been settled earlier; they could not. In response to having been ordered off campus, however, some student groups set up card tables just off campus, between the university’s impressive Sproul Plaza and Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue, with its exciting and bohemian milieu of bookstores and coffeehouses. Perhaps because their appearance so near the campus offended university officials—the student workers were rarely dressed or groomed in the cleancut image favored by conservative administrators— even this activity eventually was prohibited. Outraged, a few students defiantly set up tables back in Sproul Plaza, right in the heart of the campus. Disturbed at this open rebuke to its authority, the university directed police to arrest one of the disobedient students. It was October 1, 1964, the birth of the Free Speech Movement. Presumably, university officials believed this show of force on their part would dishearten the band of student protesters and break them up. As the arrested student got into the waiting police car, however, someone shouted, “Sit down!” and hundreds of other students immediately did just that. They sat down on the plaza right where they were, effectively blocking the car’s movement. The police and administration had never before confronted such massive defiance, and for 32 hours the car stayed put (with the “prisoner,” Jack Weinberg, inside) while demonstrators used its roof as a podium from which to speak to the crowd. One who climbed up to speak several times, and who clearly had a gift for energizing the crowd, was Mario Savio. In many ways, the Free Speech Movement, which pitted a rigid university bureaucracy against increasing numbers of alienated students, became a confrontation between just two people: Mario Savio and the university’s brilliant but aloof president, Clark Kerr. It was not, however, a fair fight. As W. J. Rorabaugh has observed, Kerr didn’t stand a chance. The student activists were prepared for war, and Kerr wasn’t. He was out of touch with the sentiments of increasing numbers of students, sentiments that in part were a direct result of the university’s continuing neglect of undergraduate education at the expense of graduate study and government-sponsored research. The students, on the other hand, had a clear objective—the freedom to be politically active on campus (i.e., free speech). Furthermore, many were politically experienced, seasoned by their participation in civil rights marches in the South. They understood the politics of protest, crowd psychology, the importance of the media, and how to maintain spirit and discipline in their own ranks. Thus, many ingredients for a successful social movement were present. All that was needed was a spark to ignite them and a leader to channel them. Mario Savio was not a typical undergraduate. His commitment to social reform already was deep, and his experiences were broad. Raised in a devout Catholic family, he had worked in rural Mexico for a church relief organization and had taught in a school for black children in Mississippi. He was proud, cocky, and defiant. It was his ability to articulate his rage, (continued)
Slide 35: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 31 32 Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position Berkeley in the 1960s (continued) however, that set Savio apart. He could give words and reason to the frustration and anger others were only feeling. Interestingly, Savio was a very different person in private than in public. In private, he seemed cold, hesitant, and self-doubting, but in front of a crowd he could be inspiring. He may have been at his best at a protest rally in December 1964. Here is what it was like to be in Berkeley in the 60s, listening to a new kind of student leader, one giving voice to the sense of powerlessness and frustration with modern life, which would be a common theme in student revolts throughout the rest of the decade: There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people that own it, that unless you’re free, the machines will be prevented from working at all (Rorabaugh, p. 31). Earlier that year, Savio had written, “I’m tired of reading history. Now I want to make it.” He did. Try to analyze the emergence of Mario Savio in terms of the interactional framework. Source: W. J. Rorabaugh, Berkeley at War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). Colin Powell We can also understand the interactional framework better by looking more closely at Colin Powell’s situation (Powell, 1995). In November of 1992, Bill Clinton had been elected president but had not yet assumed office. He asked to see Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Powell’s political affiliation and preferences at that time were unknown, but he had served faithfully under Presidents Reagan and Bush and had successfully orchestrated a wartime victory for President Bush in Operation Desert Storm. The president-elect began by complimenting Powell about a speech he had made, and inquired about a few matters of national defense. Clinton particularly asked for Powell’s thoughts about a possible nominee to secretary of defense; in other words, about the general’s potential next boss. You’ve got to give loyalty down, if Clinton was inclined to name Congressman Les Aspin, pointedly you want loyalty up. complimenting Aspin’s intelligence. Despite Clinton’s evident inDonald T. Regan, tent to name Aspin, however, Powell said he had reservations Former CEO and White House about the nomination. He, too, complimented Aspin’s intelligence chief of staff but expressed concern that Aspin’s disorganized management style would be inappropriate for a person having responsibility for such a large bureaucracy. The two went on to discuss other issues for over an hour, but when Powell rose to leave there was one more thing he needed to say. He felt he needed to address a political promise Clinton had made during the presidential campaign: a promise to end the ban on gays in the military. He said the senior military leadership didn’t want it lifted, military people in general didn’t want it lifted, and most in Congress didn’t want it lifted. The concern, Powell stressed, was privacy. He wondered how the ban could be made to work in the close circumstances of living in army barracks or on naval ships. He asked the presidentelect not to make this issue the first priority of the new administration.
Slide 36: 32 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 2 Leadership Involves an Interaction between the Leader, the Followers, and the Situation 33 Despite Powell’s counsel, however, it did become so, and a highly controversial one at that. Through both private negotiation and public media questioning, both Powell and Clinton remained committed to their respective positions. Eventually, a compromise policy, popularly known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” was instituted that is still considered hopelessly flawed by many on both sides. But now let us look at this situation from the perspective of the interactional framework. First of all, note how much more complex the situation of their meeting was than a mere first meeting between two successful men. One of them was the top military leader in the world at that time, the other would soon be his commander in chief by virtue of free election in a constitutional government which subordinates the military to civilian authority (just to be clear, this is not the case for most countries throughout history). In their first face-to-face meeting, which would set the tone for their future working relationship, Powell disagreed with several proposals favored by Clinton (frank and open disagreement, of course, is often the sign of a constructive relationship, and that is most likely the way the counsel was both given and received). Perhaps more significantly, both felt obligated to different courses of action and to different groups of stakeholders. Clinton, as a politician and new world leader, must also have been concerned about how the controversy would affect national and international perceptions of his leadership and credibility. So just what was the situation here? It was the constitutionally mandated nature of their authority relationship. It was the interpersonal context of one person giving unpopular feedback or advice to someone else. It was the very real pressure being exerted on each man independently by different constituencies having different agendas. It was all these things, and more. Leadership, here as everywhere, involves the leader, the followers, and the complex situation they’re a part of. Are Good Women Leaders Hard to Find? One important case in point of the complex interactions among leaders, followers, and the situation involves women in leadership roles. In this section we’ll examine the extent to which women are taking on greater leadership responsibility than ever before, whether there are differences in the effectiveness of men and women in leadership roles, and what explanations have been offered to explain differences between men and women in being selected for and succeeding in positions of leadership. This is an area of considerable academic research and popular polemics, as evident in many recent articles in the popular press that claim a distinct advantage for women in leadership roles (e.g., Conlin, 2003). Aung San Suu Kyi also has quite strong opinions herself on this subject. She said, “It is the woman who has to manage the household and I cannot accept the fact that a woman leader can’t be given the leadership position in a country. That’s why I am of the opinion that if a woman rules Burma, there will be progress in all sectors of the country.” It is clear that women are taking on leadership roles in greater numbers than ever before. That’s certainly true in government. In the U.S. Senate, for example, 42 percent of the women who have ever served there were holding office in 2003 (White House Project, 2002). Around the world, 43 of the 59 women ever to serve
Slide 37: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 33 34 Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position as presidents or prime ministers came into office since 1990 (Adler, 1999; de Zarate, 2003). The increasing proportion of women in leadership is evident outside of government as well. In 1972 women held 18 percent of managerial and administrative positions in the United States, but by 2002 the figure had risen to 46 percent (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1982, 2002). While these statistics are important and promising, however, the fact is that problems still exist which constrain the opportunity for capable women to rise to the highest leadership roles in organizations (see Highlight 2.3). Many studies have been done considering this problem, a few of which we’ll examine here. In a classic study of sex roles, Schein (1973, 1975) demonstrated how bias in sex role stereotypes created problems for women moving up through these managerial roles. Schein asked male (n 300) and female (n 167) middle managers to complete a survey on which they rated various items on a five-point scale in terms of how characteristic they were of (a) men in general, (b) women in general, or (c) successful managers. Schein found a high correlation between the ways both male and female respondents perceived “males” and “managers,” but no correlation between the ways the respondents perceived “females” and “managers.” It was as though being a manager was defined by attributes thought of as masculine. Furthermore, it does not appear that the situation has changed much over the past two decades. In 1990, management students in the United States, Germany, and Great Britain, for example, still perceived successful middle managers in terms of characteristics more commonly ascribed to men than to women (Schein & Mueller, 1990). One area where Insights of a Woman Who Broke the Glass Ceiling Highlight 2.3 Kim Campbell distinguished herself in many ways. She was Canada’s first female prime minister, and she now chairs the Council of Women World Leaders. In 2002 she was interviewed about the challenges and opportunities for women rising into senior leadership positions in organizations, and here are two brief excerpts of what she said: You’ve held many positions that are traditionally filled by men. What’s the greatest obstacle you’ve encountered? There is a deeply rooted belief that women are not competent and can’t lead. That’s because there’s an overlap in people’s minds between the qualities that we associate with leadership and the qualities that we associate with masculinity— decisiveness, aggressiveness, competence. There is much less overlap between leadership qualities and those we associate with being feminine—an inclination toward consensus-building, to be communal, expressive, nurturing. That’s why for many people it was rather disturbing that I was prime minister. A woman wasn’t supposed to be prime minister. I wasn’t entitled to be there. You’ve said that having women in leadership is more important now than ever. Why now? We’re living in a time when we see the frightening limitations of masculine cultures. Cultures that are totally masculine can give rise to fundamentalisms—they can be intolerant, narrow, violent, corrupt, antidemocratic. That’s at a state level. At a corporate level, a macho culture made Enron possible. Source: Excerpted from Harvard Business Review, 2002, pp. 20–21.
Slide 38: 34 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 2 Leadership Involves an Interaction between the Leader, the Followers, and the Situation 35 views do seem to have changed over time involves women’s perceptions of their own roles. In contrast to the earlier studies, women today see as much similarity between “female” and “manager” as between “male” and “manager” (Brenner, Tomkiewicz, & Schein, 1989). To women, at least, being a woman and being a manager are not a contradiction in terms. There also have been many other studies of the role of women in management. In one of these, Breaking the Glass Ceiling (Morrison, White, & Van Velsor, 1987), researchers documented the lives and careers of 78 of the highest-level women in corporate America. A few years later the researchers followed up with a small sample of those women to discuss any changes that had taken place in their leadership paths. The researchers were struck by the fact that the women were much like the senior men they had worked with in other studies. Qualitatively, they had the same fears: They wanted the best for themselves and for their families. They wanted their company to succeed. And, not surprisingly, they still had a drive to succeed. In some cases (also true for the men) they were beginning to ask questions about life balance—was all the sacrifice and hard work worth it? Were 60-hour workweeks worth the cost to family and self? Looking more quantitatively, however, the researchers expected to find significant differences between the women who had broken the glass ceiling and the men who were already there. After all, the popular literature and some social scientific literature had conditioned them to expect that there is a feminine versus a masculine style of leadership, the feminine style being an outgrowth of a consensus/team-oriented leadership approach. Women, in this view, are depicted as leaders who, when compared to men, are better listeners, more empathic, less analytical, more people oriented, and less aggressive in pursuit of goals. In examining women in leadership positions, the researchers collected behavioral data, including ratings by both self and others, assessment center data (gathered from leadership development programs at the Center for Creative Leadership), and their scores on the California Psychological Inventory. Contrary to the stereotypes and popular views, however, there were no statistically significant differences between men’s and women’s leadership styles. Women and men were equally analytical, people oriented, forceful, goal oriented, empathic, and skilled at listening. There were other differences between the men and women, however, beyond the question of leadership styles. The researchers did find (and these results must be interpreted cautiously because of the relatively small numbers involved) that women had significantly lower well-being scores, their commitment to the organizations they worked for was more guarded than that of their male counterparts, and the women were much more likely to be willing to take career risks associated with going to new or unfamiliar areas of the company where women had not been before. Continued work with women in corporate leadership positions has both reinforced and somewhat clarified these findings. For example, the lower scores for women with regard to their ratings of general well-being may reflect the inadequacy of their support system for dealing with day-to-day issues of living. This is tied to the reality for many women that in addition to having roles in their companies they remain chief caretakers for their families. Further, there may be additional pressures of being visibly identified as proof that the organization has women at the top.
Slide 39: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 35 36 Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position Other types of differences—particularly those around “people issues”—are still not evident. In fact, the hypothesis is that such supposed differences may hinder the opportunities for leadership development of women in the future. For example, turning around a business that is in trouble or starting a new business are two of the most exciting opportunities a developing leader has to test her leadership abilities. If we apply the “women are different” hypothesis, then the type of leadership skills needed for successful completion of either of these assignments may well leave women off the list of candidates. However, if we accept the hypothesis that women and men are more alike as leaders than they are different, then women will be found in equal numbers on the candidate list. Research on second-generation managerial women suggest many of them appear to be succeeding because of characteristics Neither shall you allege the example heretofore considered too feminine for effective leadership of the many as an excuse for doing (Rosener, 1990). Rosener’s survey research identified several difwrong. ferences in how men and women described their leadership exExodus 23.2 periences. Men tended to describe themselves in somewhat transactional terms, viewing leadership as an exchange with subordinates for services rendered. They influenced others primarily through their organizational position and authority. The women, on the other hand, tended to describe themselves in transformational terms. They helped subordinates develop commitment for broader goals than their own self-interest, and described their influence more in terms of personal characteristics like charisma and interpersonal skill than mere organizational position. According to Rosener such women leaders encouraged participation and shared power and information, but went far beyond what is commonly thought of as participative management. She called it interactive leadership. Their leadership self-descriptions reflected an approach based on enhancing others’ self-worth and believing that the best performance results when people are excited about their work and feel good about themselves. How did this interactive leadership style develop? Rosener concluded it was due to these women’s socialization experiences and career paths. As we indicated above, the social role expected of women has emphasized they be cooperative, supportive, understanding, gentle, and service-oriented. As they entered the business world, they still found themselves in roles emphasizing these same behaviors. They found themselves in staff, rather than line, positions, and in roles lacking formal authority over others such that they had to accomplish their work without reliance on formal power. What they had to do, in other words, was employ their socially acceptable behavioral repertoire in order to survive organizationally. What came easily to women turned out to be a survival tactic. Although leaders often begin their careers doing what comes naturally and what fits within the constraints of the job, they also develop their skills and styles over time. The women’s use of interactive leadership has its roots in socialization, and the women interviewees firmly believe that it benefits their organizations. Through the course of their careers, they have gained conviction that their style is effective. In fact, for some it was their own success that caused them to formulate their philosophies about what motivates people, how to make good decisions, and what it takes to maximize business performance. (p. 124)
Slide 40: 36 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 2 Leadership Involves an Interaction between the Leader, the Followers, and the Situation 37 Source: Tom Cheney © 1996 from The New Yorker Collection. All Rights Reserved. Rosener called for organizations to expand their definitions of effective leadership— to create a wider band of acceptable behavior so that both men and women will be freer to lead in ways which take advantage of their true talents. The extent of the problem is suggested by data from a study looking at how CEOs, almost all male, and senior female executives explained the paucity of women in corporate leadership roles. Figure 2.2 compares the percentages of CEOs versus female executives who endorsed various possible explanations of the situation. It is clear that the CEOs attributed it primarily to inadequacies in the quantity and quality of experience of potential women candidates for the top spots, while the females themselves attributed it to various forms of stereotyping and bias. A recent study sheds additional light on factors that impact the rise of women in leadership positions (Eagly & Carli, 2003). It identifies four general factors that explain the shift toward more women leaders. The first of these is that women themselves have changed. That’s evident in the ways women’s aspirations and attitudes have become more similar to those of men over time. That’s illustrated in findings about the career aspirations of female university students (Astin, Parrott, Korn & Sax, 1997), women’s self-reports of traits
Slide 41: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 37 38 Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position FIGURE 2.2 What prevents women from advancing to corporate leadership? Lack of significant general management or line experience Women not in pipeline long enough Male stereotyping and preconceptions Exclusion from informal networks Inhospitable corporate culture 0 10 29% 47% 82% 64% 52% 25% 49% 15% 35% 18% 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 Female Executives CEOs 90 such as assertiveness, dominance and masculinity (Twenge, 1997, 2001), and the value that women place on characteristics of work such as freedom, challenge, leadership, prestige, and power (Konrad, Ritchie, Lieb, & Corrigal, 2000). The second factor is that leadership roles have changed, particularly with regard to a trend toward less stereotypically masculine characterizations of leadership. Third, organizational practices have changed. A large part of this can be attributed to legislation prohibiting gender-based discrimination at work, as well as changes in organizational norms that put a higher priority on results than an “old boy” network. Finally, the culture has changed. This is evident, for example, in the symbolic message often intended by appointment of women to important leadership positions, one representing a departure from past practices and signaling commitment to progressive change. Leadership and Management Revisited In Chapter 1 we looked at the relationship between leadership and management, and between leaders and managers. While these terms are not mutually exclusive, they do refer to a person’s distinctive style and approach. Even in a particular role, two people may approach it differently; one more like a leader, the other more like a manager. The governor of one state, for example, may function more as a leader, whereas the governor of another state may function more as a manager (and not because there’s anything different about the two states). It will be helpful to revisit those concepts in the context of the interactional framework. Let’s begin by reviewing some of the distinctions Bennis makes between leaders and managers.
Slide 42: 38 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 2 Leadership Involves an Interaction between the Leader, the Followers, and the Situation 39 Leaders Innovate Develop Inspire Long-term view Ask what and why Originate Challenge the status quo Do the right things Managers Administer Maintain Control Short-term view Ask how and when Initiate Accept the status quo Do things right Bennis is hardly alone in contrasting leaders and managers. Numerous other scholars echo the idea of a basic distinction between leadership and management. Kotter (1990), for example, described management in terms of coping with complexity, and leadership in terms of coping with change. Kotter noted how managerial practices and procedures can be traced to the 20th-century phenomenon of large organizations and the need to bring order and consistency to their functioning. Renewed interest in leadership, on the other hand, springs from the challenge of maintaining organizational success in an increasingly dynamic world. He said most U.S. corporations today, for example, are overmanaged and underled; but that “strong leadership with weak management is no better” (p. 103). Fairholm (1991) emphasized still other differences between leadership and management when he wrote that leadership and management are different in purpose, knowledge base, required skills, and goals. We distinguish leaders as more personal in their orientation to group members than managers. They are more global in their thinking. Leaders, we suggest, focus on values, expectations, and context. Managers, on the other hand, focus on control and results. Leaders impact followers and constituent groups in a way that allows volitional activity of followers, not through formal authority mechanisms . . . Managers give clear direction, make solitary assignments, and work hard for cooperation. The leader communicates indirectly, gives overlapping and ambiguous assignments, and sometimes sets employees up for internecine strife—to test loyalty and the leader’s personal strength. Leaders value cooperation, not just coordination. They foster ideas of unity, equality, justice, and fairness in addition to efficiency and effectiveness, the bastions of management value. (p. 40) Such differences are just what our framework is all about—interactions. In other words, the differences between leaders and managers, or between leadership and management, involve more than just differences between types of individuals. The differences extend to how such individuals interact with their followers and the situations they confront. Let’s explore how these distinctions affect the other two elements of the framework. Leader-Follower-Situation Interactions Leaders create environments within which followers’ innovations and creative contributions are welcome. Followers feel a stake in shaping something new, not just maintaining a status quo. Leaders also encourage growth and development in their
Slide 43: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 39 40 Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position followers in ways broader than what we might call mere job training (e.g., encouraging a follower to take on something really new, something that would stretch the follower but may involve failure on the task; or taking on a developmental experience not directly tied to the follower’s present job requirements). Leaders generally are more interested in the big picture of followers’ work, and tend to assess their followers’ performance less formally and less in terms of specific criteria than managers, and more in terms of holistic, personal, idiosyncratic, or intuitive criteria. Leaders motivate followers more personally and through more personal and intangible factors (e.g., through inspiration, or the reward of just being able to work with the leader, or on a particular project). Leaders redefine the parameters of tasks and responsibilities, both for individual followers and for the entire group. In that sense, leaders actively change the situations they’re in rather than just optimize their group’s adaptation to it. They are forever “moving outside the constraints of structure” (Fairholm, p. 39). Such redefinitions also may occur through taking a long-term rather than a short-term perspective, through accentuating critical values or ends, or by marshaling energy to cope with some new threat. Manager-Follower-Situation Interactions Managers are more likely to emphasize routinization and control of followers’ behavior. This might be expressed in terms of greater emphasis on making sure followers conform to policies or procedures (“doing it the way we’ve always done it”) or in a tendency to assign narrower rather than All men have some weak points and broader tasks for followers to perform. It might be expressed in lesser the more vigorous and brilliant a degrees of decision-making discretion or autonomy given to followperson may be, the more strongly ers, as in a manager’s tendency to review details of work for them. these weak points stand out. It is Managers tend to assess their followers’ performance in terms of exhighly desirable, even essential, plicit, fairly specific job descriptions. Managers motivate followers therefore, for the more influential more with extrinsic, even contractual consequences, both positive members of a general’s staff not to and negative. Managers tend to accept the definitions of situations be too much like the general. presented to them. They might be unlikely, for example, to reorient a Major General Hugo Baron group’s task or mission in a whole new direction; or to change the von Freytag-Loringhoven, whole culture of an organization. When managers do change things, Anti-Hitler conspirator they would be more likely to effect change officially, through control tactics such as developing new policies or procedures. In reading the preceding paragraphs, it may seem to you that it’s better to be a leader than a manager (or, perhaps, vice versa). But such a conclusion would ignore important characteristics of the followers. In some situations leaders are successful and managers are not, but in other situations the opposite is true. Consider, for example, one of Bennis’s prototypical leaders: an inspiring individual having a vision of major institutional change that can be achieved only through the energy and creativity of committed followers. Such an inspiring individual may be thwarted, nonetheless, unless her followers share her value-based vision. If they are motivated primarily by economic incentives and are satisfied with their present lot, then the leader may fail to achieve her vision. The whole idea of interaction is that the effectiveness of any particular leader approach can be understood only in the context of certain follower and situational conditions. To return to Bennis’s distinctions, managers emphasize stability whereas leaders emphasize change. Managers
Slide 44: 40 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 2 Leadership Involves an Interaction between the Leader, the Followers, and the Situation 41 emphasize consistency and predictability in follower behavior (doing what’s expected, doing things right), whereas leaders emphasize changing followers. That may mean transforming them or getting them to do more than they thought they could or thought they would. We’ll see a similar distinction in Chapter 13 when we contrast transactional and transformational leadership (Bass, 1985). Leadership, Management, and the Disney Brothers Walt Disney is surely one of the most familiar names in the world. Roy Disney is not. Roy was Walt’s brother, and he played a vital but different role in the success of the Disney enterprises. In many ways you can think of the differences between them in terms of the distinctions we’ve been making between leadership and management. In many ways Walt was the creative leader, Roy the manager or “financial guy.” The success of the Disney enterprises was due to their complementary contributions, and their story provides an interesting illustration of how leaders interact with their followers and situations differently than managers do (Snyder, Dowd, & Houghton, 1994). One of Walt’s distinctive qualities was his drive to experiment and find new ways to improve motion picture quality. He was an innovator himself, but even more importantly he encouraged his staff to be innovative. His studio was always “on the move.” He wanted it to be on the technological cutting edge of animation art and never fall prey to a cut-and-dried way of doing things. From the early days, Walt handled the creative side of Disney productions whereas Roy handled the job of securing financing for their cartoons. Walt was never interested in making money as an end in itself, but rather as a means to producing ever-better films. He would not compromise his sense of film quality to increase profit. In fact, he was a gambler willing to risk all for an idea he believed in. Walt’s enthusiasm for the creative process was infectious and spread to his staff, who themselves were more dedicated to their art than to the bottom line. Walt’s staff believed they were pioneers who were changing the very nature of mass media. He created an energetic and informal environment; he resisted rigid procedures and bureaucracy, yet his staff believed he ran the best studio in the world. One way Walt inspired such commitment among his followers was through his own commitment to their development and creative involvement in the studio’s work. He brought out the best in them, a quality of work beyond what they believed themselves capable of. He wanted all the people working for him to feel they were making indispensable contributions to the overall project. He encouraged his staff to use their own skills to devise original solutions to challenges rather than merely find out what he wanted them to do. An interesting case in point of the difference between a leader’s and manager’s orientation may be in the disagreement Walt and Roy Disney had over Walt’s idea of a new amusement park. What we now know as Disneyland, and may incorrectly assume looked like a surefire success as soon as Walt proposed it, was initially opposed by Roy. Roy thought it was just another one of Walt’s crazy ideas, and was only willing to risk $10,000 of studio money on what he thought was a harebrained project. Trusting his own vision more than his brother’s risk-averse conservatism, Walt scraped together the money needed to finance Disneyland—in part by borrowing on his own life insurance. Even after Walt’s death the differences between him and his brother illustrate what’s different between leadership and management. Without Walt’s creative leadership, the studio fell under the management of
Slide 45: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 41 42 Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position “Roy men” who produced moderately successful but uninspired formula pieces for two decades. Only under Michael Eisner, a “Walt man” who understands popular culture, did the studio regain a leading place in American business. A Final Word Fairholm (1991) argued that organizations may need two different kinds of people at the helm: good leaders and good managers. He wrote, “We need competent, dedicated managers to provide continuity of process, to insure program productivity, and to control and schedule the materials needed for production or service delivery. We also need people who can infuse the organization with common values that define the organization, determine its character, link it to the larger society, and ensure its long-term survival” (p. 41). This view is certainly consistent with the success the two Disney brothers had bringing distinctive but complementary sets of competencies and values to their studio. But do examples like this prove that leaders and managers represent inherently different sorts of talents and interests? We think Kotter (1990) is on solid ground when he advises organizations preparing people for executive jobs to “ignore the recent literature that says people cannot manage and lead” (p. 104). He said they should try to develop leadermanagers. In other words, it may be useful to distinguish between the functions of leadership and management but still develop those complementary functions in the same individuals. This point may be particularly important with regard to developing the talents of younger leader-managers. It would seem inappropriately narrow and limiting for a young person to define himself or herself as “the manager type” or “the leader type.” Premature self-definitions of being a leader or manager present such reductio ad absurdum eventualities as foreclosing real developmental opportunities (e.g., “I guess I shouldn’t seek that student body position since it’s a leadership role, and I’m really more the management type”) or as inappropriate reactions to the sorts of job responsibilities typical for a person early in her career (e.g., “Boss, you’ve been giving me too many management-type tasks, and I see myself more as a leader around here”). It seems prudent to note the commonalities—as shown in Figure 1.1— between leadership and management and not focus exclusively on the differences between them, especially in the early stages of a person’s professional development. There Is No Simple Recipe for Effective Leadership As noted previously, it is important to understand how the three domains of leadership interact—how the leader, the followers, and the situation are all part of the leadership process. Understanding their interaction is necessary before you can draw valid conclusions from the leadership you observe around you. When you see a leader’s behavior (even when it may appear obviously effective or ineffective to you), you should not automatically conclude something good or bad about the leader, or what is the right way or wrong way leaders should act. You need to think about the effectiveness of that behavior in that context with those followers.
Slide 46: 42 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 2 Leadership Involves an Interaction between the Leader, the Followers, and the Situation 43 As obvious as the above sounds, we often ignore it. Too frequently, we just look at the leader’s Little things affect little minds. behavior and conclude that he or she is a good Benjamin Disraeli leader or a bad leader apart from the context. For example, suppose you observe a leader soliciting advice from subordinates. Obviously, it seems unreasonable to conclude that good leaders always ask for advice or that leaders who do not frequently ask for advice are not such good leaders. The appropriateness of seeking input from subordinates depends on many factors, such as the nature of the problem or the subordinates’ familiarity with the problem. It may be that the subordinates have a lot more experience with this particular problem, and soliciting their input is the correct action to take in this situation. Consider another example. Suppose you hear that a leader disapproved a subordinate’s request to take time off to attend to family matters. Was this bad leadership because the leader did not appear to be “taking care of her people”? Was it good leadership because she did not let personal matters interfere with the mission? Again, you cannot make an intelligent decision about the leader’s actions by just looking at the behavior itself. You must always assess leadership in the context of the leader, the followers, and the situation. The following statements about leaders, followers, and the situation make the above points a bit more systematically. • A leader may need to respond to various followers differently in the same situation. • A leader may need to respond to the same follower differently in different situations. • Followers may respond to various leaders quite differently. • Followers may respond to each other differently with different leaders. • Two leaders may have different perceptions of the same followers or situations. Conclusion: Drawing Lessons from Experience All of the above leads to one conclusion: The right behavior in one situation is not necessarily the right behavior in another situation. It does not follow, however, that any behavior is appropriate in any situation. Although we may not be able to agree on the one best behavior in a given situation, we often can agree on some clearly inappropriate behaviors. Saying that the right behavior for a leader depends on the situation is not the same thing as saying it does not matter what the leader does. It merely recognizes the complexity among leaders, followers, and situations. This recognition is a helpful first step in drawing meaningful lessons about leadership from experience. Summary Leadership is a process in which leaders and followers interact dynamically in a particular situation or environment. Leadership is a broader concept than that of leaders, and the study of leadership must involve more than just the study of leaders as individuals. The study of leadership must also include two other areas: the
Slide 47: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 43 44 Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position followers and the situation. In addition, the interactive nature of these three domains has become increasingly important in recent years and can help us to better understand the changing nature of leader–follower relationships and the increasingly greater complexity of situations leaders and followers face. Because of this complexity, now, more than ever before, effective leadership cannot be boiled down to a simple and constant recipe. It is still true, however, that good leadership makes a difference, and it can be enhanced through greater awareness of the important factors influencing the leadership process. Key Terms interactional framework, 23 leader, 24 followers, 24 situation, 24 in-group, 24 out-group, 24 independent, critical thinking, 25 dependent, uncritical thinking, 25 active followers, 25 passive followers, 25 Leader-Member Exchange Theory, 26 interactive leadership, 36 interactions, 39 Questions 1. According to the interactional framework, effective leader behavior depends on many variables. It follows there is no simple prescription for effective leader behavior. Does this mean effective leadership is merely a matter of opinion or subjective preference? 2. Generally, leaders get most of the credit for a group’s or an organization’s success. Do you believe this is warranted or fair? 3. What are some of the other characteristics of leaders, followers, and situations you could add to those listed in Figure 2.1? Leadership skills relevant to this chapter include: • • Building effective relationships with superiors. Building effective relationships with peers. Skills Activity In this activity you will explore connotations to the words leadership and management. Divide yourselves into small groups and have each group brainstorm different word associations to the terms leader and leadership or manager and management. In addition, each group should discuss whether they would prefer to work for a manager or for a leader, and why. Then the whole group should discuss similarities and differences among the respective perceptions and feelings about the two concepts. Minicase “Can Disney Save Disney?” The Disney name identifies an institution whose $22 billion in annual sales make it the world’s largest media company. It was Walt Disney’s creative leadership that established the Disney company as one of the leaders in American business. Walt
Slide 48: 44 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition I. Leadership is a Process, Not a Position 2. Interaction between the Leader, the Followers & the Situation © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 2 Leadership Involves an Interaction between the Leader, the Followers, and the Situation 45 Disney and his brother Roy started Disney Brothers Studio in Hollywood in 1923. Artistically, the 1930s were Disney’s best years. Walt Disney embraced new advances in color and sound, and pushed his team of enthusiastic young artists to pursue the most sophisticated techniques of the day. Disney risked everything on his first feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, released in 1937. Audiences loved it. His focus on the positive and the life-affirming themes he incorporated into all his work provided much-needed smiles and laughter for audiences during the depths of the Great Depression. Roy Disney became chairman after Walt died of lung cancer in 1966. In 1971 Roy died and his son, Roy E. Disney, became the company’s principal individual shareholder. In 1984 new CEO Michael Eisner and president Frank Wells ushered in an era of innovation and prosperity. They instituted marathon meetings for generating creative ideas, forcing everyone to work grueling hours. The approach worked and for the first 10 years of his tenure, Eisner was considered a genius. He revived Disney’s historic animation unit, invested in the theme parks, led the expansion into Europe, and breathed new life into the company by partnering with cutting-edge companies like Pixar and Miramax. Eisner built Disney into a formidable media powerhouse, boosting its profits sixfold and sending its share price soaring almost 6,000 percent. But more recent years have been challenging for Eisner and the Disney company. Eisner’s initial magical effect has lost its shine and his more recent actions and decisions have had less-than-desirable effects on the company. Roy Disney, the last of the founding family to work at the company, quit the board in 2003 and began a campaign to try and oust Eisner. In his letter of resignation Disney asserted that Eisner has become an ineffective leader, claiming that Eisner consistently “micro-manages” everyone resulting in loss of morale. He saw Eisner’s cost-conscience decisions to shut down an Orlando animation studio and cut costs at theme parks as resulting in “creative brain drain” and creating the perception that the company is looking for “quick buck” solutions rather than long-term value. Disney also cited Eisner’s inability to maintain successful relationships with creative partners like Pixar and Miramax (both contracts with these studios were not renewed) and his lack of a succession plan as dangerous to the future of the company. Disney has found a lot of support in his plan to “SAVE DISNEY.” In the spring of 2004 stockholders supported Disney by voting against Eisner’s re-election as president. Eisner still maintains his position as CEO and has expressed his intention to hold on to that position until his contract expires in 2006. 1. Consider Walt Disney’s effectiveness in terms of the three domains of leadership— the leader, the followers, and the situation. For each domain name factors that contributed to Disney’s success. 2. Now think about Michael Eisner’s leadership effectiveness. Name factors within the three domains of leadership that might be responsible for controversy now surrounding Disney. Sources: R. Grover, The Disney Touch (Burr Ridge: Irwin, 1997); BBC News Online business reporter Friday, 13 February, 2004, 08:03 GMT; http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2004-01-19disneyoutlook_x.htm; http://www.savedisney.com; http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/200401-19-disneyoutlook_x.htm
Slide 49: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader Introduction © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 45 Part Focus on the Leader Leader 2 Situation Followers Part II focuses on the leader. The effectiveness of leadership, good or bad, is typically attributed to the leader much more than to the other elements of the framework. Sometimes the leader is the only element of leadership we even think of. One great leader’s views were clear enough about the relative importance of leaders and followers:
Slide 50: 46 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader Introduction © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 106 Part Two Focus on the Leader Men are nothing; it is the man who is everything . . . It was not the Roman army that conquered Gaul, but Caesar; it was not the Carthaginian army that made Rome tremble in her gates, but Hannibal; it was not the Macedonian army that reached the Indus, but Alexander. Napoleon Because the leader plays such an important role in the leadership process, the next four chapters of this book review research related to the characteristics of leaders, and what makes leaders effective. Part II begins with a chapter on power and influence since those concepts provide the most fundamental way to understand the process of leadership. Chapter 6 then looks at the closely related issues of leadership and values. In Chapter 7 we consider what aspects of personality are related to leadership, and in Chapter 8 we examine how all these preceding variables are manifested in effective or ineffective leader behavior.
Slide 51: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 47 Chapter 6 Leadership and Values In the previous chapter, we examined many different facets of power and its use in leadership. The topics in this chapter go hand in hand with understanding the role of power in leadership. That is because leaders can use power for good or ill, and the leader’s personal values may be one of the most important determinants of how power is exercised or constrained. For example, a political leader may be able to stir a group into a frenzy (and become even more popular) by identifying a scapegoat to blame for a community’s or nation’s problems, but would it be right? Is it ever right for a political leader to stir a populace into a frenzy? And what standards should govern the application of such power? Or, a person may be promoted to leadership positions of ever-greater responsibility and reward, but at a cost of broken relationships in his family life; would you choose that trade-off? The mere possession of power, of any kind, leads inevitably to ethical questions about how that power should and should not be used. The challenge of leadership becomes even more complex when we consider how individuals of different backgrounds, cultures, and nationalities may hold quite different values yet be thrown into increasingly closer interaction with each other as our world becomes both smaller and more diverse. This chapter will explore these fascinating and important aspects of leadership. Introduction Leadership and “Doing the Right Things” In Chapter 1, we referred to a distinction between leaders and managers that says leaders do the right things whereas managers do things right (Bennis, 1985). But just what does the “right things” mean? Does it mean the “morally right” things? The “ethically right” things? The “right things” for the company to be successful? And who’s to say what the “right things” are? Leaders face dilemmas that require choices between competing sets of values and priorities, and the best leaders recognize and face them with a commitment to doing what is right, not just what is expedient. Of course, the phrase doing what is 132
Slide 52: 48 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 6 Leadership and Values 133 right sounds deceptively simple. Sometimes it will take great moral courage to do what is right, even Leadership cannot just go along to when the right action seems clear. At other times, get along . . . Leadership must meet though, leaders face complex challenges that lack the moral challenge of the day. Jesse Jackson simple black-and-white answers. Whichever the case, leaders set a moral example to others that becomes the model for an entire group or organization, for good or bad. Leaders who themselves do not honor truth do not inspire it in others. Leaders mostly concerned with their own advancement do not inspire selflessness in others. Leaders should internalize a strong set of ethics, principles of right conduct or a system of moral values. Both Gardner (1990) and Burns (1978) have stressed the centrality and importance of the moral dimension of leadership. Gardner said leaders ultimately must be judged on the basis of a framework of values, not just in terms of their effectiveness. He put the question of a leader’s relations with his or her followers or constituents on the moral plane, arguing (with the philosopher Immanuel Kant) that leaders should always treat others as ends in themselves, not as objects or mere means to the leader’s ends (which, however, does not necessarily imply that leaders need to be gentle in interpersonal demeanor or “democratic” in style). Burns (1978) took an even more extreme view regarding the moral dimension of leadership, maintaining that leaders who do not behave ethically do not demonstrate true leadership. Whatever “true leadership” means, most people would agree that at a minimum it would be characterized by a high degree of trust between leader and followers. Bennis and Goldsmith (1997) describe four qualities of leadership that engender trust. These qualities are vision, empathy, consistency, and integrity. First, we tend to trust leaders who create a compelling vision: who pull people together on the basis of shared beliefs and a common sense of organizational purpose and belonging. Second, we tend to trust leaders who demonstrate empathy with us—who show they understand the world as we see and experience it. Third, we trust leaders who are consistent. This does not mean that we only trust leaders whose positions never change, but that changes are understood as a process of evolution in light of relevant new evidence. Fourth, we tend to trust leaders whose integrity is strong, who demonstrate their commitment to higher principles through their actions. Another important factor impacting the degree of trust between leaders and followers involves fundamental assumptions people make about human nature. Several decades ago, Douglas McGregor (1966) explained different styles of managerial behavior on the basis of their implicit attitudes about human nature, and his work remains quite influential today. McGregor identified two contrasting sets of assumptions people make about human nature, calling these Theory X and Theory Y. In the simplest sense, Theory X reflects a more pessimistic view of others. Managers with this orientation rely heavily on coercive, external-control methods to motivate workers such as pay, disciplinary techniques, punishments, and threats. They assume people are not naturally industrious or motivated to work. Hence, it is the manager’s job to minimize the harmful effects of workers’ natural laziness
Slide 53: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 49 134 Part Two Focus on the Leader and irresponsibility by closely overseeing their work and creating external incentives to do well and disincentives to avoid slacking off. Theory Y, on the other hand, reflects a view that most people are intrinsically motivated by their work. Rather than needing to be coaxed or coerced to work productively, such people value a sense of achievement, personal growth, pride in contributing to their organization, and respect for a job well done. Peter Jackson’s leadership was clearly consistent with a Theory Y view of human nature. When asked, “How do you stand up to executives?” Jackson answered, “Well, I just find that most people appreciate honesty. I find that if you try not to have any pretensions and you tell the truth, you talk to them and you treat them as collaborators, I find that studio people are usually very supportive.” But are there practical advantages to holding a Theory X or Theory Y view? Evidently there are. There is evidence that success more frequently comes to leaders who share a positive view of human nature. Hall and Donnell (1979) reported findings of five separate studies involving over 12,000 managers that explored the relationship between managerial achievement and attitudes toward subordinates. Overall, they found that managers who strongly subscribed to Theory X beliefs were far more likely to be in their lower-achieving group. One behavior common to many good leaders is that they tend to align the values of their followers with those of the organization or movement; they make the links between the two sets more explicit. But just what are values? How do values and ethical behavior develop? Is one person’s set of standards better or higher than another’s? These are the sorts of questions we will address in this section. What Are Values? Values are “constructs representing generalized behaviors or states of affairs that are considered by the individual to be important” (Gordon, 1975, p. 2). When Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty, or give me death,” he was expressing the value he placed upon political freedom. The opportunity to constantly study and learn may be the fundamental value or “state of affairs” leading a person to pursue a career in academia. Someone who values personal integrity may be forced to resign from an unethical company. Thus, values play a fairly central role in one’s overall psychological makeup and can affect behavior in a variety of situations. In work settings, values can affect decisions about joining an organization, organizational commitment, relationships with co-workers, and decisions about leaving an organization (Boyatzis & Skelly, 1989). It is important for leaders to realize that individuals in the same work unit can have considerably different values, especially since we cannot see values directly. We can only make inferences about people’s values based on their behavior. Some of the major values that may be considered important by individuals in an organization are listed in Table 6.1. The instrumental values found in Table 6.1 refer to modes of behavior, and the terminal values refer to desired end states (Rokeach, 1973). For example, some individuals value equality, freedom, and having a comfortable life above all else; others may believe that family security and salvation are important goals to strive for. In terms of instrumental values, such individuals may think that it is important always to act in an ambitious, capable,
Slide 54: 50 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 6 Leadership and Values 135 TABLE 6.1 People Vary in the Relative Importance They Place on Values Like the Following Source: Adapted from M. Rokeach, The Nature of Human Values (New York: Free Press, 1973). Terminal Values An exciting life A sense of accomplishment Family security Inner harmony Social recognition Friendship Instrumental Values Being courageous Being helpful Being honest Being imaginative Being logical Being responsible and honest manner, whereas others may think it is important only to be ambitious and capable. We should add that the instrumental and terminal values in Table 6.1 are only a few of those Rokeach has identified. How Do Values Develop? According to Massey (1979), each person’s values reflect the contributions of diverse inputs, including family, peers, the educational system, religion, the media, science and technology, geography, and current events (see Figure 6.1). Although one’s values can change throughout one’s life, they are relatively firmly established by young adulthood. Figure 6.2 represents the building blocks of leadership skills as a pyramid, and you can see that values are on the bottom of the pyramid (along with interests, motives, lifelong goals, personality traits and preferences, and intelligence). All of the attributes in that bottom row are relatively enduring and permanent; they serve as a foundation to other attributes of leadership that are less enduring and thus more modifiable. At the top of the pyramid are leadership skills and competencies that can be developed through practice. Massey used the term value programming to highlight the extent to which forces outside the individual shape and mold personal values. He analyzed changes in the value-programming inputs that characterized each of the decades since the 1920s and related them to dominant and distinctive values held among people who were value-programmed during those respective periods. FIGURE 6.1 Some influences on the development of personal values. Source: Adapted from M. Massey, The People Puzzle (Reston, VA.: Reston Publishing, 1979). Parents Religion Personal Value System Technology Media Education Peers
Slide 55: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 51 136 Part Two Focus on the Leader FIGURE 6.2 The building blocks of skills. Skills/ Competencies Knowledge Experience Intelligence Personality Traits and Preferences Values Interests Motives/Goals Boyatzis and Skelly (1989), Maccoby (1983), and Massey (1979) have all said that the pervasive influence of broad forces like these tend to create common value systems among people growing up at a particular time that distinguish them from people who grow up at different times. There are, of course, significant differences among individuals within any generational group, but these authors emphasized differences between groups. They attributed much of the misunderstanding between older leaders and younger followers to the fact that their basic value systems were formulated during quite different social and cultural conditions, and these analyses offer a helpful perspective for understanding how differences in values can add tension to the interaction between some leaders and followers. One indication of the ways times continue to change, in fact, is that the phrase older leaders and younger followers, as used above, is no longer so universally applicable as it once seemed. There are increasing numbers of younger leaders who have older followers, which makes an appreciation of generational differences more important than ever. Zemke (2001) is another researcher who has looked at differences in values across generations, and how those value differences impact their approaches to work and leadership. Here is his delineation of four generations of workers, each one molded by distinctive experiences during their critical developmental periods: The Veterans (1922–1943): Veterans came of age during the Great Depression and World War II, and represent a wealth of lore and wisdom. They’ve been a stabilizing force in organizations for decades, even if they are prone to digressions about “the good old days.” The Baby Boomers (1942–1960): These were the postwar babies who came of age during violent social protests, experimentation with new lifestyles, and pervasive questioning of establishment values. But they’re graying now, and don’t like to think of themselves as “the problem” in the workplace even though they frequently are. Boomers still have passion about bringing participation, spirit, heart, and humanity to the workplace and office. They’re also concerned about creating a level playing field for all, but they hold far too many meetings for the typical Gen Xer. The Gen Xers (1960–1980): Gen Xers grew up during the era of the Watergate scandal, the energy crisis, higher divorce rates, MTV, and corporate downsizing; many were
Slide 56: 52 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 6 Leadership and Values 137 latchkey kids. As a group they tend to be technologically savvy, independent, and skeptical of institutions and hierarchy. They are entrepreneurial and they embrace change (Baldwin & Trovas, 2002). Having seen so many of their parents work long and loyally for one company only to lose their job to downsizing, Xers don’t believe much in job security; to an Xer, job security comes from having the kinds of skills that make you attractive to an organization (Foley & LeFevre, 2001). Hence, they tend to be more committed to their vocation than to any specific organization. In fact, the freeagency concept born in professional sports also applies to Xers, who are disposed to stay with an organization until a better offer comes along. Among the challenges they present at work is how to meet their need for feedback despite their dislike of close supervision. Xers also seek balance in their lives more than preceding generations; they work to live rather than live to work. (Also see Highlight 6.1) The Nexters (1980 ): This is your generation, so any generalizations we make here are particularly risky. In general, however, Nexters share an optimism born, perhaps, from having been raised by parents devoted to the task of bringing their generation to adulthood; they are the children of soccer moms and Little League dads. They doubt the wisdom of traditional racial and sexual categorizing, perhaps not unexpected from a generation rich with opportunities like having Internet pen pals in Asia whom they can interact with any time of the day or night. Researchers at The Center for Creative Leadership have also been interested in Gen Xers and how their values impact the leadership process at work. One clear finding from this research involved the distinctively different view of authority held by Xers than previous generations. “While past generations might have at least acknowledged positional authority, this new generation has little respect for and less interest in leaders who are unable to demonstrate that they can personally produce. In other words, this generation doesn’t define leading as sitting in meetings and making profound vision statements, but instead as eliminating obstacles and giving employees what they need to work well and comfortably” (Deal, Peterson, & Gailor-Loflin, 2001). Gen Xers expect managers to “earn their stripes,” and not be rewarded with leadership responsibilities merely because of seniority. Often that attitude is interpreted as an indication of disrespect toward elders in general, and bosses in particular. It may be more accurate, however, to characterize the attitude as one of skepticism rather than disrespect. Such skepticism could have arisen from the fact that Generation X grew up during a time when there were relatively few heroes or leaders it could call its own. It also might have arisen from growing up in an environment of such pervasive marketing that anything smacking of “hype” is met with suspicion (Deal, Peterson, and Gailor-Loflin). That skepticism is also evident in the fact that 53 percent of them believe that the soap opera General Hospital will be around longer than Medicare, and that a majority of them are more Question authority, but raise your likely to believe in UFOs than that Social Security hand first. Bob Thaues will last until their retirement (Foley & LeFevre). Lest we overemphasize the significance of intergenerational differences, however, we should consider the results of a scientific sampling of over 1,000 people living in the United States (Ladd, 1994) which found little evidence of a generation gap in basic values.
Slide 57: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 53 138 Part Two Focus on the Leader Main Events in the Lives of Gen Xers Highlight 6.1 A number of historical events over the past three and a half decades have had significant impacts on the lives and worldviews of today’s emerging leaders. GENERAL 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated 1969 U.S. lands on the moon 1973 Watergate scandal begins 1975 Vietnam war ends 1976 Energy crisis 1979 Iran hostage crisis 1981 Center for Disease Control’s first published report on AIDS 1981 Reagan assassination attempt 1984 Ozone depletion detected 1984 Extensive corporate downsizing begins 1986 Space shuttle disaster 1986 Chernobyl disaster 1989 Berlin Wall falls 1990 Persian Gulf War Source: Adapted from B. Baldwin and S. Trovas, Leadership in Action, 21 (6), January/February 2002, p. 17. 1991 USSR dissolves 2001 Terrorist attacks on World Trade Center 2003 Enron and other corporate scandals TECHNOLOGICAL 1971 Intel’s first chip developed 1972 First e-mail management program 1974 Videocassette recorder introduced on the consumer market 1975 Microsoft founded 1975 Personal computer introduced on the consumer market 1979 First commercial cellular telephone system 1980 CNN begins 24-hour broadcasting 1981 MTV launched 1983 C Shugs@holly.colostate.eduompact discs mass marketed 1991 World Wide Web launched Indeed, the director of one of the largest polling organizations in the world called the results some of the most powerful he had seen in 30 years of public-opinion research. They showed, he said, “that even though young people buy different CDs and clothes, they do not buy into a set of values different from their elders” (Ladd, p. 50). Thus, while it’s true that experiences unique to particular generations help explain certain values characteristic of people in one generation, people from different generations still share many of the same values. But what might explain value differences within a given age group? Actually, they’re the same factors depicted in Figure 6.1 which Massey used to explain value differences across generations. There may be significant differences in the value-programming experiences of teenagers from the same generation based on factors like their family’s religious affiliation and involvement, the norms of the particular peer group they associate with, their formal education, and so on. Given all of this research on work values and how values develop, there are several issues worth commenting on further. First, like the title of this book, values are the result of education and experience. Values develop fairly early in life; education and religious, family, societal, and peer experiences play key roles in the development of a leader’s values. Second, once established, it is relatively difficult to change a
Slide 58: 54 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 6 Leadership and Values 139 leader’s values. If a person valued money, helping others, or being the center of attention while grow- So near is a falsehood to truth that a ing up, then it is very likely that they will find these wise man would do well not to trust same activities to be personally motivating as an himself on the narrow edge. Cicero adult leader. (Third, because it is difficult to change people’s underlying values, it’s probably unrealistic to expect that university level ethics courses or character development programs will change one’s underlying values.) Perhaps the only way to get leaders and followers to adhere to standards that run counter to their values is to have well-established and enforced codes of conduct, where the benefits of compliance far outweigh the costs of noncompliance (Curphy, Gibson, Macomber, Calhoun, Wilbanks, & Burger, 1998). Unfortunately, as we have seen with the numerous scandals of Wall Street over the past several years, many corporations appear to have poorly established or nonenforced codes of conduct. Values and Leadership How Values Impact Leadership Because values play such a central role in a person’s psychological makeup, they have a profound effect on leadership. First and foremost, it is important to understand that values play a key role in the choices made by leaders (Curphy, 2003; England & Lee, 1974). Values are a primary determinant in what data are reviewed by leaders and What Would You Do? Highlight 6.2 Here are several situations in which values play a large part in determining your response. How would you act in each one, and by what principles or reasoning process do you reach each decision? • Would you vote for a political candidate who was honest, competent, and agreed with you on most issues if you also knew that person was alcoholic, sexually promiscuous, and twice divorced? • Assume that as a teenager you smoked marijuana once or twice, but that was years ago. Would you answer truthfully on an employment questionnaire if it asked whether you had ever used marijuana? • Your military unit has been ambushed by enemy soldiers and suffered heavy casualties. Several of your soldiers have been captured, but you also captured one of the enemy soldiers. Would you torture the captured enemy soldier if that were the only way of saving the lives of your own soldiers? • Terrorists have captured a planeload of tourists and threatened to kill them unless ransom demands are met. You believe that meeting the ransom demands is likely to lead to the safe release of those passengers, but also likely to inspire future terrorist acts. Would you meet the terrorists’ demands (and probably save the hostages) or refuse to meet the terrorists’ demands (and reduce the likelihood of future incidents)? • If you were an elementary school principal, would you feel it was part of your school’s responsibility to teach moral values, or only academic subject matter? • Assume that you have been elected to your state’s legislature, and that you are about to cast the deciding vote in determining whether abortions will be legally available to women in your state. What would you do if your own strong personal convictions on this issue were contrary to the views of the majority of the people you represent? Source: Adapted from Stock (1991).
Slide 59: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 55 140 Part Two Focus on the Leader Ask Yourself These Questions Highlight 6.3 An important foundation of behaving ethically at work is to become more self-conscious of one’s own ethical standards and practices. The National Institute of Ethics uses the following questions in its SelfEvaluation to facilitate that kind of self-reflection: • How do I decide ethical dilemmas? • Do I have set ethical beliefs or standards? • If so, do I live by these beliefs or standards? • How often have I done something that I am ashamed of? • How often have I done things that I am proud of? • Do I admit my mistakes? • What do I do to correct mistakes that I make? Source: N. Trautman, Integrity Leadership (Longwood FL: National Institute of Ethics, 1998). • Do I often put the well-being of others ahead of mine? • Do I follow the golden rule? • Am I honest? • Do people respect my integrity? • List the three best things that have ever happened to me. • What is the most dishonest thing I have ever done? • Did I ever rectify the situation? • What is the most honest thing that I have ever done? how they define problems. Leaders with strong Commercial values are likely to focus on financial results and shortcomings; those with strong Aesthetic values are more likely to review quality indicators. Values also affect the solutions generated and the decisions made about problems. For example, followers with strong Security values will offer solutions that help ensure a stable and predictable work environment. But if the leader had a strong Recognition value, she might be more likely to choose a riskier solution that would thrust her in the spotlight. In addition, values often influence a leader’s perceptions of individual and organizational successes as well as the manner in which these successes are achieved. Leaders with strong Science values will define organizational success differently than those with strong Power values. Values also help leaders choose right from wrong, and between ethical and unethical behavior. Along these lines, research has shown that leaders with strong Commercial values and weak Altruistic values are often seen as greedy and selfish (Hogan & Curphy, 2004; Hogan, 2003). Many of these leaders are so obsessed with wealth and material possessions that they think nothing of “cooking the books” in order to make money. Unfortunately, many of the high visibility examples from Enron, Arthur Andersen, Tyco, WorldCom, Charter Communications, Computer Associates, Parmalat, Ahold NV, Boeing, Royal Dutch Shell, and the investment banking and mutual fund industries seem to confirm the notion that many top level executives are willing to do whatever it takes in order to make money (see Highlight 6.4). Even those executives with strong Commercial and weak Altruistic values who do not engage in organizationally delinquent behaviors think nothing of cutting thousands of jobs in order to improve “shareholder value.” These same executives, who also happen to own a considerable number of shares in their companies, often run their companies into the ground but personally make tens to hun-
Slide 60: 56 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 6 Leadership and Values 141 Values, Greed, and Leadership Highlight 6.4 Leaders with strong Commercial and weak Altruistic values are often characterized as being preoccupied with money. They can often be found just about anywhere in corporate America, but they seem to have the heaviest concentrations in the financial services industry. These leaders like to review financial information, look for opportunities to make more money, make decisions primarily driven by short-term or long-term financial gain, and enjoy the accumulation of wealth. Barbara Ley Toffler’s book Final Accounting: Ambition, Greed, and the Fall of Arthur Andersen provides a detailed account of how a culture of greed can ruin an organization. Arthur Andersen started as a highly reputable accounting firm that focused on helping corporations reconcile their finances at the end of the year. Recognizing that more money could be made by providing consulting versus accounting services, Arthur Andersen began to vigorously pursue the consulting business. One of the consulting services offered was ethics consulting. Barbara Toffler was the head of the Ethics and Responsible Business Practices Group, where she was responsible for helping companies establish internal ethics programs. These programs helped to generate tremendous fees for Arthur Andersen, some to the tune of $250,000 per month for specific clients. Toffler goes on to state that many of these programs were ill-designed, not needed, and had little impact. But the drive for fees overrode any need to service clients, and greed became the mantra of the day. David Peterson, of Personnel Decisions International, maintains that many leaders do not really understand their underlying values. And because leaders do not really know what they stand for, they oftentimes make choices that are not aligned with their personal values. Like the consulting services offered by Toffler, many of these choices appear to have positive short-term benefits but can have devastating long-term effects. Peterson maintains that the better leaders understand their values and how they affect the choices they make, the less likely they will be to make decisions that are misaligned with their values. Sources: B. Ley Toffler, Final Accounting: Ambition, Greed, and the Fall of Arthur Andersen (New York: Broadway Books, 2003); D. Peterson, “Character, Competence, and Context: Assessing and Improving Integrity Through Executive Coaching,” in R. T. Hogan (chair), Assessing Executive Failure: The Underside of Performance, symposium presented at the 18th Annual Conference of the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Orlando, FL, 2003. dreds of millions of dollars in the process (examples include the Qwest acquisition of US West or the AOL-Time Warner merger). Values not only affect the choices leaders make about what is and what is not important, they also have an impact on the choices leaders make about direct reports. Leaders tend to like followers with similar values and dislike those with dissimilar values. If you knew nothing about a person except his or her values, and those values were similar to your own, then it would be very likely that you would like this individual. The opposite is also true. Because unstructured interviews are a very common selection technique (see Chapter 4), in most cases these are more valued than competence-based assessments. Although hiring direct reports with similar values will make the decision-making process much easier, in many cases groups with identical values can sometimes miss the forest for the trees. For example, one of the authors worked with the top nine leaders of a billion dollar health care system in the United Kingdom. The system was $50,000,000 in debt, and the nine leaders were likely to get sacked if they did not turn their financial problems around by the end of the year. None of the nine leaders had strong
Slide 61: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 57 142 Part Two Focus on the Leader Commercial or Power values, but they all had strong Affiliation and Altruistic values. Their meetings focused entirely on patient care and staff morale and they did little real work to address their budget shortfall. Consequently, many of these leaders were let go at the end of the year. The key point here is that it is important for leaders to surround themselves with followers who possess divergent values. This will likely cause more tension and conflict within the group, but this approach will also make it more likely that a broader variety of problems and solutions will be brought forward for discussion (Hogan & Curphy, 2004). What values are most important to the leadership process? There is no definitive answer to that question; many different value schemas have been proposed, and many different instruments to measure values have been developed. For purposes of illustration we’ll look at one of these, presented in Table 6.2. In looking over the values in Table 6.2, it is important to note that there is nothing right or wrong, or good or bad, about any of these work values per se; some TABLE 6.2 Key Work Values Source: Adapted from J. Hogan and R. T. Hogan, Motives, Values and Preferences Inventory Manual (Tulsa, OK: Hogan Assessment Systems, 1996). Recognition: Leaders with strong Recognition values, such as politicians, want to stand out and be the center of attention. They value fame, visibility, and publicity, and are motivated by public recognition and seek jobs where they will be noticed. Power: Leaders with strong Power values enjoy competition, being seen as influential, and drive hard to make an impact. They value achievement and accomplishment and are motivated to work in jobs where they can achieve, get ahead, and succeed. Hedonism: Leaders with strong Hedonism values like to have fun at work and entertain others. They are motivated by pleasure, variety, and excitement, and can often be found in the entertainment, hospitality, recreation, sports, sales, or travel industries. Altruistic: Leaders with strong Altruism values, such as health care or educational leaders, believe in actively helping others who are less fortunate. They are motivated to help the needy and powerless, improve society, and believe in social justice. Affiliation: Leaders with strong Affiliation values, such as sales leaders, find being around and working with others to be highly motivating. They value meeting new people, networking, working in team environments. Tradition: Leaders with strong Tradition values, such as religious or military leaders, believe in family values and codes and conduct, and value moral rules and standards. These individuals are motivated to live a lifestyle that is in accordance to religious or institutional customs and standards of behavior. Security: Leaders with strong Security values, such as bureaucratic leaders, are motivated to work in stable, predictable, and risk-free environments. They create structure and processes in order to minimize uncertainty and avoid criticism. Commerce: Leaders with strong Commerce values, such as business leaders, are motivated by financial success. They are constantly on the lookout for new business opportunities and are concerned about wealth and material possessions. Aesthetics: Leaders with strong Aesthetics values, such as film directors, musical conductors or marketing leaders, are motivated to work in environments that place a premium on experimentation, artistic expression, and creative problem solving. They place more importance on appearance or quality than on quantity. Science: Leaders with strong Science values, such as research and development leaders, enjoy learning, digging deeply into problems, and keeping up to date on technology. They enjoy analyzing data to get at the truth.
Slide 62: 58 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 6 Leadership and Values 143 leaders think making money is very important, other leaders believe that their most important responsibility is helping others, and other leaders may believe being in the limelight or living a life according to one’s religious beliefs to be very important. Leaders are motivated to act in ways consistent with their values, and they typically spend most of their time engaged in activities that are consistent with their values. Similarly, as individuals, leaders and followers are not particularly motivated to work on activities that are inconsistent with their values. In most cases leaders possess several key values. The example in Figure 6.3 shows the results of a formal values assessment for a Vice President of Product Development for a leadership consulting firm. This individual is responsible for a team that creates, markets, sells, and delivers various psychological assessment and development products for leaders. Figure 6.3 indicates that she believes that working in a team environment (Affiliation), making a difference and having an impact (Power), and doing creative, high quality work (Aesthetics) are extremely important. Conversely, having the opportunity to work in a stable and predictable environment (Security), make money (Commerce), or do research (Science) are not nearly as important or motivating for her. Although our three leaders have not been subject to a formal values assessment, we can still speculate about which values each of them might consider most important. Peter Jackson appears to have strong Aesthetic and Power values. Colin Powell is likely to have strong Power, Recognition, and Tradition values. And Aung San Suu Kyi probably has strong Altruism and Tradition values. In other words, these three leaders—each successful—seems to have somewhat distinct values driving their behavior. Still another aspect of individual values is addressed in Highlight 6.5 on page 146. FIGURE 6.3 Leadership values profile. Source: Adapted from J. Hogan and R. T. Hogan, Motives, Values and Preferences Inventory (Tulsa, OK: Hogan Assessment Systems, 2002). 0 Scales Recognition Power Hedonism Altruistic Affiliation Tradition (1) Security Commerce (1) Aesthetics Science 36% 60% 14% 14% 78% 14% 1% 7% 60% 12% 10 20 30 40 Percentiles 50 60 70 80 90 Low Average High
Slide 63: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 59 144 Part Two Focus on the Leader Leadership and Organizational Values Just as individuals possess a set of personal values, so too do organizations possess a set of organizational values. Many times these values are featured prominently in the company’s annual report, website, and posters. These values represent the principals by which employees are to get work done and treat other employees, customers, and vendors. Whether these stated values truly represent operating principals or so much “spin” for potential investors will depend on the degree of alignment between the organization’s stated values and the collective values of top leadership (Hogan & Hogan, 1996; Hogan & Curphy, 2004). For example, many corporate value statements say very little about making money, but frankly this is the key organizational priority for most business leaders, and as such is a major factor in many company decisions. It is interesting to note, by the way, that there is often a significant gap between a company’s stated values and the way it truly operates. Knowing the values of top leadership can sometimes tell you more about how an organization actually operates than the organization’s stated values will. In any organization, the top leadership’s collective values play a significant role in determining organizational culture, just as an individual leader’s values play a significant role in determining team climate. Related to the notion of culture and climate is employee “fit.” Research has shown that employees with values similar to the organization or team are more satisfied and likely to stay; those with dissimilar values are more likely to Beware of the man who had no regard for his own reputation, since leave (Hogan & Hogan, 1996; Hogan & Curphy, 2004). Thus, one it is not likely he should have any reason why leaders fail is not due to a lack of competence, but for yours. rather due to a misalignment between personal and organizational George Shelley values. This is unfortunate, as leaders with dissimilar values may be exactly what the company needs to drive change and become more effective (Hogan & Curphy, 2004). Finally, values are often a key factor in conflict. Many of the most difficult decisions made by leaders have to do with choices between two values. This is particularly true when the choices represent values in opposition (see Table 6.3). Leaders with strong Commercial and Altruistic values, for example, would probably struggle mightily when having to make a decision about cutting jobs in order to improve profitability. Those leaders who have strong Commercial and weak Altruistic values (or vice versa) would have much less trouble making the same decision. Likewise, some leaders would have difficulties making decisions when friendships may get in the way of making an impact (Affiliation versus Power), or when taking risks to gain visibility runs counter to stability (Recognition versus Security). It is important to TABLE 6.3 Values in Opposition Source: Adapted from G. J. Curphy, Team Leader Program (St. Paul, MN: Author, 2004). Commercial (making money) vs. Altruistic (helping others) Affiliation (having friends) vs. Power (making an impact) Recognition (taking risks) vs. Security (minimizing risks) Hedonism (having fun) vs. Tradition (adhering to norms) Aesthetic (appearance) vs. Scientific (the truth)
Slide 64: 60 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 6 Leadership and Values 145 note that values also play a key role in conflict between groups. The differences between Bill Subordinates cannot be left to O’Reilly and Al Franken, the Israelis and Palestini- speculate as to the values of the ans, the Shiite and Sunni Muslims in Iraq, the Mus- organization. Top leadership must lims and Hindus in Kashmir, and Christians and give forth clear and explicit signals, Muslims in Kosovo all have to do with values. Be- lest any confusion or uncertainty exist over what is and is not cause values develop early and are difficult to permissible conduct. To do change, it will be extremely difficult to resolve the otherwise allows informal and conflicts between these groups. potentially subversive “codes of It’s vital for a leader to set a personal example of conduct” to be transmitted with a values-based leadership, and it is also important wink and a nod, and encourages an for leaders—especially more senior ones—to make inferior ethical system based on sure that clear values guide everyone’s behavior in “going along to get along” or the the organization. That’s only likely to happen, of notion that “everybody’s doing it. Richard Thornburgh, Former course, if the leader’s behavior sets an example of U.S. attorney general desired behavior. You might think of it as a necessary but not sufficient condition for principled behavior throughout the organization. That’s because if there is indifference or hypocrisy toward values at the highest levels, then it is fairly unlikely that principled behavior will be considered important by others throughout the organization. Bill O’Brien (1994), the former CEO of a major insurance company, likened an organization’s poor ethical climate to a bad odor one gets used to: Organizations oriented to power, I realized, also have strong smells, and even if people are too inured to notice, that smell has implications. It affects performance, productivity, and innovation. The worst aspect of this environment is that it stunts the growth of personality and character of everyone who works there (p. 306). Carried to an extreme, it can lead to the kinds of excesses all too frequently evident during the past decade: Who knew the swashbuckling economy of the 90’s had produced so many buccaneers? You could laugh about the CEOs in handcuffs and the stock analysts who turned out to be fishier than storefront palm readers, but after a while the laughs became hard. Martha Stewart was dented and scuffed [and subsequently convicted]. Tyco was looted by its own executives. Enron and WorldCom turned out to be the twin towers of false promises. They fell. Their stockholders and employees went down with them. So did a large measure of faith in big corporations. Time Magazine, January 2, 2003 Others, too, are calling attention to the organizational dimensions of ethical behavior. It seems clear that ethical behavior within an organization (or by it) is not simply the sum of the collective moralities of its members. Covey (1990), for example, has developed and popularized an approach called principle-centered leadership. This approach postulates a fundamental interdependence It’s important that people know what you stand for. It’s equally important that they know what you won’t stand for. Mary Waldrop
Slide 65: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 61 146 Part Two Focus on the Leader The Average Self-Rating on “Ethical Behavior” Is Way above Average Highlight 6.5 David Campbell, a senior fellow at The Center for Creative Leadership, is one of the most prolific reseachers in the world in the field of leadership. Among other things, he has authored numerous widely used surveys to assess various facets of leadership. The following story relates his efforts to develop an ethics scale for the Campbell Leadership Index (CLI). In preliminary work on the CLI, it seemed obvious that “ethics” was central to the practice of good leadership and, therefore, should be one of the scales on the instrument (the CLI now includes 17 scales, including ambitious, enterprising, considerate, entertaining, organized, and productive). Consequently, in the early versions of the survey Campbell included adjectives such as ethical, honest, trustworthy, and candid, and negative adjectives such as deceptive and scheming. As with other CLI scales, this one was normed so that the average person would receive a score of 50 on the ethics scale; obviously some would get higher scores and some lower scores. During the CLI testing period, however, a major problem emerged because almost no one wanted to believe that he or she was merely “average” in ethical behavior, let alone “below average.” To soften the impact of such feedback, Campbell changed the name of the scale to “trustworthy” in the hope that this would retain the meaning but lessen the adverse reaction. But that change helped little. Eventually Campbell changed the name of the scale to “credible,” which is more acceptable and also better captures the reasons why some executives may get low ratings on the scale despite self-perceptions of scrupulous honesty. between the personal, the interpersonal, the managerial, and the organizational levels of leadership. The unique role of each level may be thought of like this: Personal: The first imperative is to be a trustworthy person, and that depends on both one’s character and competence. Only if one is trustworthy can one have trusting relationships with others. Interpersonal: Relationships that lack trust are characterized by self-protective efforts to control and verify each other’s behavior. Managerial: Only in the context of trusting relationships will a manager risk empowering others to make full use of their talents and energies. But even with an empowering style, leading a high-performing group depends on skills such as team building, delegation, communication, negotiation, and selfmanagement. Organizational: An organization will be most creative and productive when its structure, systems (e.g., training, communication, reward), strategy, and vision are aligned and mutually supportive. Put differently, certain organizational alignments are more likely to nurture and reinforce ethical behavior among its members than others. Conflicts over values can arise even when an organization has clearly published values that are embraced by everyone. That can happen when employees and leaders have divergent perceptions of whether the leader’s behavior embodies important corporate values. At one company, for example, employees concluded that
Slide 66: 62 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 6 Leadership and Values 147 their CEO’s behavior had betrayed the very corporate values that he had been instrumental in establishing. As they perceived the CEO’s behavior deviating more and more from those values, employees gradually concluded that he had “sold out,” and they became disillusioned with his leadership. That disillusionment was a far cry from the initial perceptions employees had of their CEO. Consider the situation at Maverick when the CEO, John Bryant (both fictionalized names), started the company: Bryant located Maverick’s offices in an unassuming warehouse district and gave each member of his small staff a festive company shirt with a logo on the back and their name stitched over the front pocket, like shirts mechanics wear. He provided a companywide profit-sharing plan, above-market salaries, and perks like free lunch on Friday, and he encouraged people to head home by six o’clock. He recruited employees whose varied races, backgrounds, and lifestyles broadcast Maverick’s commitment to diversity, and on the weekends he let a minority youth organization use the company’s offices. He spoke passionately to everyone about Maverick’s people-oriented values and promoted them in company posters, client materials, and the employee handbook. In short, Bryant did everything right. And by all accounts, Maverick in its early years was a great place to work—employees were motivated, loyal, hardworking, and enthusiastically committed to the company and the ideals Bryant promoted (Edmondson & Cha, 2002, p. 18). Then the finger-pointing began. As the small, young company more than doubled in size during the 1990s, a remarkable shift occurred in how employees perceived the company and its leader. They came to see Bryant as a hypocrite, whose behavior violated everything he continued to proclaim the company stood for. As a consequence, employee commitment and creativity declined sharply. What could account for such an unfortunate turnaround? That’s not a simple question to answer, especially when the leader—Bryant himself—continued to see his own behavior in much more positive ways. Part of the answer to this enigma, it seems, involved a pivotal event in the company’s history. In 1995 Bryant decided to double the size of the company’s staff and operations. To him, this was a way to provide more professional growth and reward opportunities for staff. Employees, however, saw this as an act of greed on Bryant’s part that would erode company values by disrupting the small, close-knit family the company had been. They also saw other decisions by him as similarly self-serving. When he decided to give long-term employees shares in the company as a reward for their hard work, for example, other employees perceived this as inconsistent with the company’s commitment to equality. All the while this was happening, no one ever let Bryant himself know that perceptions of him had taken a 180-degree turn. In doing a sort of organizational postmortem of what happened at Maverick, it became clear that over time employees had implicitly and unconsciously shaped their understanding of the company’s values to correspond more closely with their own. For example, employees came to believe that hierarchies of position and power were inconsistent with Maverick’s values. In fact, no one ever had said anything like that. Thus, Bryant’s behavior was inconsistent with company values
Slide 67: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 63 148 Part Two Focus on the Leader as the employees had come to understand them, even though it wasn’t inconsistent with Bryant’s understanding of the values on which he’d founded the company. There’s an important lesson for leaders in this story that’s hinted at in Bryant’s own lack of awareness of the growing negative perceptions of his behavior. It’s unlikely that subordinate members of an organization will offer unsolicited negative perceptions to leaders when they think that the latter have violated the values. It’s essential, then, for leaders themselves to proactively invite discussion by regularly asking people what they’re thinking and feeling. You don’t want to be caught blind-sided like John Bryant was (Edmondson & Cha). When Good People Do Bad Things An important aspect of ethical conduct involves the mental gymnastics by which people can dissociate their moral thinking from their moral acting. One’s ability to reason about hypothetical moral issues, after all, does not assure that one will act morally. Furthermore, one’s moral actions may not always be consistent with one’s espoused values. Bandura (1986, 1990), in particular, has pointed out several ways people with firm moral principles nonetheless may behave badly without feeling guilt or remorse over their behavior. We should look at each of these. Moral justification involves reinterpreting otherwise immoral behavior in terms of a higher purpose. This is most dramatically revealed in the behavior of combatants in war. Moral reconstrual of killing is dramatically illustrated by the case of Sergeant York, one of the phenomenal fighters in the history of modern warfare. Because of his deep religious convictions, Sergeant York registered as a conscientious objector, but his numerous appeals were denied. At camp, his battalion commander quoted chapter and verse from the Bible to persuade him that under appropriate conditions it was Christian to fight and kill. A marathon mountainside prayer finally convinced him that he could serve both God and country by becoming a dedicated fighter. (Bandura, 1990, p. 164) Another way to dissociate behavior from one’s espoused moral principles is through euphemistic labeling. This involves using “cosmetic” words to defuse or disguise the offensiveness of otherwise morally repugnant or distasteful behavior. Terrorists, for example, may call themselves “freedom fighters,” and firing someone may be referred to as “letting him go.” Advantageous comparison lets one avoid self-contempt for one’s behavior by comparing it to even more heinous behavior by others (“If you think we’re insensitive to subordinates’ needs, you should see what it’s like working for Acme”). Through displacement of responsibility people may violate personal moral standards by attributing responsibility to others. Nazi concentration camp guards, for example, attempted to avoid moral responsibility for their behavior by claiming they were merely “carrying out orders.” A related mechanism is diffusion of responsibility, whereby reprehensible behavior becomes easier to engage in and live with if others are behaving the same way. When everyone is responsible, it seems, no one is responsible. This way of minimizing individual moral responsibility for collective action can be one negative effect of group decision making. Through disregard or distortion of consequences, people minimize the harm caused by their behavior. This can be a problem in bureaucracies
Slide 68: 64 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 6 Leadership and Values 149 when decision-makers are relatively insulated by their position from directly observing the consequences of their decisions. Dehumanization is still another way of avoiding the moral consequences of one’s behavior. It is easier to treat others badly when they are dehumanized, as evidenced in epithets like “gooks” or “satanworshippers.” Finally, people sometimes try to justify immoral behavior by claiming it was caused by someone else’s actions. This is known as attribution of blame. How widespread are such methods of minimizing personal moral responsibility? When people behave badly, Bandura (1977) said, it is not typically because of a basic character flaw; rather, it is because they use methods like these to construe their behavior in a self-protective way. Darley (1994) suggested still another way people justify seemingly unethical conduct, and his observations illuminate certain common leadership practices. Darley said ethical problems are almost inherent in systems designed to measure performance. The more any quantitative performance measure is used to determine a group’s or an individual’s rewards and punishments, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the action patterns and thoughts of the group or individual it is intended to monitor. . . The criterial control system unleashes enormous human ingenuity. People will maximize the criteria set. However, they may do so in ways that are not anticipated by the criterion setters, in ways that destroy the validity of the criteria. The people “make their numbers” but the numbers no longer mean what you thought they did. (Darley, 1994) This has been called Darley’s law, and it is exemplified in a story from Joseph Heller’s novel Only mediocrities rise to the top in Catch-22. You can read about it in Highlight 6.6, a system that won’t tolerate wave though Darley’s law is not limited to fiction. Hal- making. Lawrence J. Peter, berstam (1986) described another organization in Author of The Peter Principle which the “numbers game” had a corrupting effect. In this case, it was in the Ford Motor Company. In the eyes of those who worked in Ford plants around the country in the 1950s, Detroit “number crunchers” like Robert McNamara (later a secretary of defense during the Vietnam War) did not want to know the truth. McNamara and his people in Detroit were the ones who kept making liberal agreements with the unions and at the same time setting higher and higher levels of production while always demanding increased quality. They talked about quality, but they did not give the plant managers the means for quality; what they really wanted was production. So the plant managers were giving them what they wanted, numbers, while playing lip service to quality. Years later in Vietnam, some American officers, knowing McNamara’s love of numbers, cleverly juggled the numbers and played games with body counts in order to make a stalemated war look more successful than it was. They did this not because they were dishonest, but because they thought if Washington really wanted the truth it would have sought the truth in an honest way. In doing so they were the spiritual descendants of the Ford factory managers of the 1950s (p. 220). Darley described three general problems that can arise when performance measurement systems are put in place. A person might cheat on the measurement system by exploiting its weaknesses either in hopes of advancement or through
Slide 69: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 65 150 Part Two Focus on the Leader fear of falling behind. Or, even with the best will in the world, a person might act in a way that optimizes his or her performance measurements without realizing that this outcome was not what the system really intended. Finally, a person may even have the best interests of the system in mind and yet manipulate the performance measurement system to allow continuation of the actions that best fulfill his or her reading of the system goals. One major disadvantage of this particular approach is that it “takes underground” constructive dialogue about system goals or modifications in system measurements. What, ethically, should one do when one is part of a performance measurement system? Darley suggested “that the time for the individual to raise the moral issue is when he or she feels the pressure to substitute accountability for morality, to act wrongly, because that is what the system requires. And that intervention might then be directed at the system, by honorably protesting its design.” For those who are governed by a performance measurement system, a constant moral vigilance is necessary—it is needed most of all by those in leadership positions. Catch-22 Highlight 6.6 This story is about Yossarian, the central character of Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22. It demonstrates how a performance measurement system can create forces that morally corrupt the individuals functioning within that system. During World War II, the allied high command needed some measure of when each bomber crew flying over Germany had “done enough.” The answer they came up with was simply to count the number of bombing missions each crew had flown. It seemed to demand a commensurate risk among all concerned, and also seemed correlated with other primary objectives like the number of enemy factories destroyed. After flying a certain number of missions, crews expected to be rotated back to the states. What was Yossarian’s story? Terrified of flying the dangerous combat missions assigned to him, he flew his B-29 on different and infinitely safer routes over the open ocean. He simply dropped the plane’s entire payload of bombs there over water. From the point of view of the military indicator of missions flown, these were successful missions which even earned Yossarian points toward a safe follow-on assignment. Driven by fear, Yossarian had corrupted the indicator from one that was correlated with organizational success to one that was arguably negatively correlated with organizational success. You might wonder whether this proves the indicator was inherently flawed. Wasn’t the bomber command justified in designing the measurement system without consideration of this particular possibility? Was it not entitled to assume American soldiers would not commit acts of treasonous cowardice? The intriguing point of Heller’s novel is that Yossarian’s act was a perfectly normal response to the particular dynamics in which it arose. In Heller’s novel, Yossarian’s commanders were cheating on the system themselves! Some, for example, were trying to gain promotion by raising the number of missions required to go home while not flying any missions themselves. Other commanders let friends and favorites accumulate missions by flying “milk runs” in which little enemy opposition was experienced. Still other leaders tried to get credit for bombing missions even though, in fact, they had not flown any. The leadership itself, in other words, destroyed any possibility that pilots like Yossarian would see any moral barriers to cheating. Corruption is contagious, and Darley suggests that performance measurement systems inherently invite widespread corruption. Source: Adapted from Darley (1994).
Slide 70: 66 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 6 Leadership and Values 151 Leading across Cultures A rather common problem for office managers in the United States is controlling the use of the office copier. Frequently, office managers publish policies and procedures to govern use of the machines, and hence control administrative costs. When a U.S. manager of a water resources project in Indonesia did the same thing, however, an action he considered routine, he was accused of insensitivity to Indonesian ways—in fact, accused not just of unfriendliness but of unethical behavior. After a series of similar incidents, he lost his job. Leading across cultures requires an appreciation of the sometimes profound differences in the value systems of other cultures. What Is Culture? A good starting place for understanding differences in cultural value systems is with the concept of culture itself. Culture refers to those learned behaviors characterizing the total way of life of members within any given society. Cultures differ from one another just as individuals differ from one another. To outsiders, the most salient aspect of any culture typically involves behavior—the distinctive actions, mannerisms, and gestures characteristic of that culture. Americans visiting Thailand, for example, may find it curious and even bothersome to see male Thais hold hands with each other in public. They may react negatively to such behavior since it is untypical to them, and laden with North American meaning (e.g., “It’s okay for women to hold hands in public, but men just shouldn’t do that!”). Salient as such behaviors are, however, they are also just the tip of the iceberg. The “mass” of culture is not so readily visible, just as most of an iceberg lies beneath the water. Hidden from view are the beliefs, values, and myths that provide context to manifest behaviors (Kohls, 1984). A clear implication for business leaders in the global context, therefore, is the need to become aware and respectful of cultural differences and cultural perspectives. Barnum (1992) pointed out the importance of being able to look at one’s own culture through the eyes of another: Consciously or unconsciously they will be using their own beliefs as the yardsticks for judging you, so know how to compare those yardsticks by ferreting out their values and noting where they differ the least and most from yours. For example, if their belief in fatalism outweighs your belief in accountability, there will be conflicts down the road. This is a severe problem in the Middle East, for instance, and affects management styles in companies and even the ability to market life insurance, which is frowned upon in communities where Muslim observances are strong. (p. 153) A Framework for Understanding Cultural Differences Thus, it can be helpful to see one’s own culture through the eyes of another; just as it also can be helpful to see other cultures through eyes unbiased (or at least less biased) by one’s own filters. Hofstede (1980) described four dimensions of cultural values and beliefs: individualism versus collectivism, masculinity versus femininity, tolerance versus intolerance of uncertainty, and power distance versus power
Slide 71: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 67 152 Part Two Focus on the Leader equalization. More recently, researchers at the Center for Creative Leadership have developed a conceptual framework for analyzing cultural differences based on seven fundamental dilemmas that people of all cultures face (Wilson, Hoppe, & Sayles, 1996). Let us look at each of these seven dilemmas in greater detail. Source of Identity: Individual–Collective. This deals with the degree to which individuals should pursue their own interests and goals or contribute to a larger group, whether extended family, ethnic group, or company. Goals and Means of Achievement: Tough–Tender. This deals with how success is defined in a culture. Is it defined by tangible rewards like financial success and material well-being or by intangible rewards such as good relationships with others or spiritual satisfaction? Orientation to Authority: Equal–Unequal. How should people of different status, authority, or power behave toward each other—as equals or unequals? Response to Ambiguity: Dynamic–Stable. To what extent is uncertainty accepted or tolerated? In running an organization, are tight controls and structure imposed to ensure certainty, or is greater tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty evident via loose or nonexistent control systems? Means of Knowledge Acquisition: Active–Reflective. Is action or reflection more valued as a means of acquiring information and knowledge? Perspective on Time: Scarce–Plentiful. Is the sense or experience of time urgent or relaxed? Outlook on Life: Doing–Being. Which is preferred—mastery over nature or living in harmony with nature? Is the outcome of life more dependent upon human effort or on the expression of divine will? You probably can see how misunderstandings and slights can occur when people from different cultures are working together, but let us look at two specific applications of this scheme. First, consider the historic U.S. emphasis on individualism (e.g., the focus on self-confidence, self-control, self-concept, self-expression, or the way rugged individualists are heroically portrayed in film, television, and literature) and how it might impact work. Given an individualist perspective, certain management practices and expectations seem self-evident, such as the idea of individual accountability for work. When individual accountability is valued, for example, decision-making authority tends to be delegated to individual managers. What’s more, those same managers may be inclined to take personal credit when the job is well done. A different norm, however, applies in industrialized Japan. Decision making is often very timeconsuming, to assure that everyone who will be impacted by a decision has input on it beforehand. Another “self-evident” principle to the U.S. mind is that individual career progress is desirable and “good.” In some other cultures, however, managers resist competing with peers for rewards or promotions so as not to disturb the harmony of the group or appear self-interested. Another example of potential conflict or misunderstanding can be seen in the case of orientation to authority, how people should handle power and authority re-
Slide 72: 68 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 6 Leadership and Values 153 lationships with others. The United States is a relatively young and mobile country, populated I do believe in the spiritual nature mostly by immigrants. Relative to other countries, of human beings. To some it’s a there is little concern with family origin or class strange or outdated idea, but I background. There is a belief that success should believe there is such a thing as a come through an individual’s hard work and tal- human spirit. There is a spiritual dimension to man which should be ent, not by birthright or class standing. This all nurtured. leads to a relative informality at work, even Aung San Suu Kyi among individuals of strikingly different position within a company. Subordinates expect their bosses to be accessible, even responsive in some ways to their subordinates. In some other cultures, however, higher status in a company confers nearly unchallengeable authority, and an expectation as well that most decisions will be referred up to them (as distinguished from delegated down to others). You can see even from these two examples that the seven dimensions of cultural values create quite an array of possible tensions between people from different cultures working together. The Universality of Leadership Attributes It is an interesting question whether the attributes of effective leaders are shared universally around the world, or whether different attributes of leadership are valued more in some cultures than in others. A very ambitious project known as the GLOBE research program is addressing that question. Its goal is to develop an empirically based theory of leadership to help predict the effectiveness of leader and organizational practices in different countries. The GLOBE program has been going on since 1993, collecting data from over 17,000 middle managers from 92 different countries. So far, the project has identified 21 specific attributes and behaviors that are viewed universally across cultures as contributing to leadership effectiveness (House et al., 1999). They are listed in Table 6.4. In addition, the project has identified eight characteristics that were universally viewed as impediments to leader effectiveness (see Table 6.5). And GLOBE has identified 35 leader characteristics that are viewed as positive in some cultures but negative in others (see Table 6.6). TABLE 6.4 Leader Attributes and Behaviors Universally Viewed as Positive Trustworthy Just Honest Foresighted Plans ahead Encouraging Informed Excellence oriented Positive Dynamic Motive arouser Confidence builder Motivational Dependable Coordinator Intelligent Decisive Effective bargainer Win-win problem solver Administratively skilled Communicative Team builder Adapted from House et al., 1999, Cultural Influences on Leadership and Organizations: Project Globe. Advances in Global Leadership, Vol. 1, pp. 171–233. JAI Press Inc.
Slide 73: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 69 154 Part Two Focus on the Leader TABLE 6.5 Leader Attributes and Behaviors Universally Viewed as Negative Loner Asocial Noncooperative Irritable Nonexplicit Egocentric Ruthless Dictatorial Adapted from House et al., 1999, Cultural Influences on Leadership and Organizations: Project Globe. Advances in Global Leadership, Vol. 1, pp. 171–233. JAI Press Inc. TABLE 6.6 Examples of Leader Behaviors and Attributes That Are Culturally Contingent Ambitious Cautious Compassionate Domineering Independent Individualistic Logical Orderly Sincere Worldly Formal Sensitive Adapted from House et al., 1999, Cultural Influences on Leadership and Organizations: Project Globe. Advances in Global Leadership, Vol. 1, pp. 171–233. JAI Press Inc. Implications for Leadership Practitioners The perspectives and findings presented in this chapter have significant implications for leadership practitioners. Perhaps most important, leadership practitioners should expect to face a variety of challenges to their own system of ethics, values, or attitudes during their careers. Additionally, values often are a source of interpersonal conflict. Although we sometimes say two people don’t get along because of a personality conflict, often these conflicts are due to differences in value systems, not personality traits. Often, people on either side of an issue see only themselves and their own side as morally justifiable. Nonetheless, people holding seemingly antithetical values may still need to work together, and dealing with diverse and divergent values will be an increasingly common challenge for leaders. As noted earlier, interacting with individuals and groups holding divergent and conflicting values will be an inevitable fact of life for future leaders. This does not mean, however, that increased levels of interpersonal conflict are inevitable. Both leaders and followers might be well advised to minimize the conflict and tension often associated with value differences. Leaders in particular have a responsibility not to let their own personal values interfere with professional leader–subordinate relationships unless the conflicts pertain to issues clearly relevant to the work and the organization. Summary This chapter reviews evidence regarding the relationships between values and leadership. Values are constructs that represent general sets of behaviors or states of affairs that individuals consider to be important, and they are a central part of a leader’s psychological makeup. Values impact leadership through a cultural context within which various attributes and behaviors are regarded differentially— positively or negatively.
Slide 74: 70 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 6 Leadership and Values 155 Key Terms ethics, 133 Theory X, 133 Theory Y, 133 values, 134 value programming, 135 Veterans, 136 Baby Boomers, 136 GenXers, 136 Nexters, 137 principle-centered leadership, 145 moral justification, 148 euphemistic labeling, 148 advantageous comparison, 148 displacement of responsibility, 148 diffusion of responsibility, 148 distortion of consequences, 148 dehumanization, 149 attribution of blame, 149 Darley’s law, 149 culture, 151 Questions 1. Do you think it always must be “lonely at the top” (or that if it is not, you are doing something wrong)? 2. How do you believe one’s basic philosophy of human nature affects one’s approach to leadership? 3. Identify several values you think might be the basis of conflict or misunderstanding between leaders and followers. 4. Can a leader’s public and private morality be distinguished? Should they be? 5. Can a bad person be a good leader? 6. Are there any leadership roles men and women should not have equal opportunity to compete for? Leadership skills relevant to this chapter include: • • • • Communication Listening Managing conflict Credibility Skills Activity 1. Each person should select his or her own 10 most important values from the following list, and then rank-order those 10 from most important (1) to least important (10). Then have an open discussion about how a person’s approach to leadership might be influenced by having different “highest priority” values. The values are: Achievement, Activity (keeping busy), Advancement, Adventure, Aesthetics (appreciation of beauty), Affiliation, Affluence, Authority, Autonomy, Balance, Challenge, Change/Variety, Collaboration, Community, Competence, Competition, Courage, Creativity, Economic Security, Enjoyment, Fame, Family, Friendship, Happiness, Helping Others, Humor, Influence, Integrity, Justice, Knowledge, Location, Love, Loyalty, Order, Personal Development, Physical Fitness, Recognition, Reflection, Responsibility, SelfRespect, Spirituality, Status, Wisdom. 2. Explore how the experiences of different generations might have influenced the development of their values. Divide into several groups and assign each group the task of selecting representative popular music from a specific era. One group, for example, might have the 1950s, another the Vietnam War era, and another the 1990s. Using representative music from that era, highlight what seem to be dominant concerns, values, or views of life during that period.
Slide 75: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 71 156 Part Two Focus on the Leader Minicase “Balancing Priorities at Clif Bar” Gary Erickson is a man of integrity. In the spring of 2000 Erickson had an offer of more than $100 million from a major food corporation for his company Clif Bar, Inc. He had founded Clif Bar, Inc., in 1990 after a long bike ride. Erickson, an avid cyclist, had finished the 175-mile ride longing for an alternative to the tasteless energy bars he had brought along. “I couldn’t make the last one go down, and that’s when I had an epiphany—make a product that actually tasted good.” He took a look at the list of ingredients on the package and decided he could do better. He called on his experience in his family’s bakery and after a year in the kitchen, the Clif Bar—named for Erickson’s father—was launched in 1992. Within five years sales had skyrocketed to $20 million. He considered the $100 million offer on the table and what it meant for his company and decided against the deal. He realized that the vision he had for the company would be compromised once he lost control, so he walked away from the $100 million deal. He has stuck to his vision and values ever since. His commitment to environmental and social issues are evident in everything he does. On the environmental front, his company has a staff ecologist who is charged with working to reduce Clif Bar’s ecological footprint on the planet. More than 70 percent of the ingredients in Clif Bars are organic. A change in packaging has saved the company (and the planet) 90,000 pounds of shrink-wrap a year. And the company funds a Sioux wind farm to offset the carbon dioxide emissions from its factories. On the social side, Erickson launched a project called the 2,080 program (2,080 is the total number of hours a full-time employee works in one year). Through the 2,080 program employees are encouraged to do volunteer work on company time. Recently Erickson agreed to support employees who wanted to volunteer in Third World countries with salaries and travel expenses. Erickson is also committed to his team. He thinks about things like, “What should our company be like for the people who come to work each day?” He sees work as a living situation and strives to make Clif Bar, Inc.’s offices a fun place to be—there are plenty of bikes around; a gym and dance floor; personal trainers; massage and hair salon; a game room; an auditorium for meetings, movies, and music; dog days everyday; and great parties. As the company grows, however, maintaining such values may not be easy. Clif Bar already has 130 employees, and revenue has been rising by more than 30 percent a year since 1998, according to Erickson. “We’re at a point where we have to find a way to maintain this open culture while we may be getting bigger,” says Shelley Martin, director of operations. “It’s a balancing act.” 1. Without knowing Gary Erickson’s age, where would you guess he falls in the four generations of workers as delineated by Zemke? 2. Consider the key work values in Table 6.2. Recalling that leaders are motivated to act consistently with their values, what values appear to be most important to Gary Erickson? How does this compare to the leadership values profile for the Vice President of Product Development in Figure 6.3?
Slide 76: 72 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 6. Leadership and Values © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 6 Leadership and Values 157 3. Clif Bar, Inc., possesses a definite set of organizational values. If you visit the company website (www.clifbar.com) you will see evidence of these values: “Fight Global Warming” and “Register to Vote” are just as prominent as information about the product. Knowing some of the values of Gary Erickson, how closely aligned do you think the organizational values are to the way the company actually operates? Sources: http://www.fortune.com/fortune/smallbusiness/managing/articles/ 0,15114,487527,00.html; http://www.clipbar.com; July 2004, The Costco Connection, “Marathon Man,” p. 19.
Slide 77: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 73 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits Powell’s Rules for Picking People: Look for intelligence and judgment and, most critically, a capacity to anticipate, to see around corners. Also look for loyalty, integrity, a high energy drive, a balanced ego, and the drive to get things done. Colin Powell In Chapter 1 leadership was defined as “the process of influencing an organized group toward accomplishing its goals.” Given this definition, one question that leadership researchers have tried to answer over the past 100 years is whether certain personal attributes or characteristics help or hinder the leadership process. In other words, does athletic ability, height, personality, intelligence, or creativity help a leader to influence a group? Put in the context of our three leaders, are Colin Powell, Aung San Suu Kyi, or Peter Jackson smarter, more creative, more ambitious, or more outgoing than their less successful counterparts? Do these three leaders act in fundamentally different ways than their followers, and are these differences in behavior due to differences in their innate intelligence, certain personality traits, or creative ability? If so, then could these same characteristics also be used to differentiate successful from unsuccessful leaders, executives from firstline supervisors, or leaders from individual contributors? It was questions like these that led to what was perhaps the earliest theory of leadership, the Great Man theory (Stogdill, 1974). The roots of the Great Man theory can be traced back to the early 1900s, when many leadership researchers and the popular press maintained that leaders and followers were fundamentally different. This led to hundreds of research studies that looked at whether certain personality traits, physical attributes, intelligence, or personal values differentiated leaders from followers. Stogdill (1948) was the first leadership researcher to summarize the results of these studies, and he came to two major conclusions. First, leaders were not qualitatively different than followers; many followers were just as tall, smart, outgoing, and ambitious as the people who Introduction 158
Slide 78: 74 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits 159 were leading them. Second, some characteristics, such as intelligence, initiative, stress tolerance, responsibility, friendliness, and dominance, were modestly related to leadership success. In other words, people who were smart, hardworking, conscientious, friendly, or willing to take charge were often more successful in influencing a group to accomplish its goals than people who were less smart, lazy, impulsive, grumpy, or did not like giving orders. Having “the right stuff” in and of itself was no guarantee of leadership success, but it did improve the odds of successfully influencing a group toward the accomplishment of its goals. Subsequent reviews by Mann (1959) and Stogdill (1974) involving hundreds of more sophisticated studies came to the same two conclusions. Although these three reviews provided ample evidence that people with the right stuff were more likely to be successful as leaders, many leadership researchers focused solely on the point that leaders were not fundamentally different than followers. They erroneously concluded that personal characteristics could not be used to predict future leadership success; as a result most of the subsequent research shifted toward other leadership phenomena. It was not until the publication of seminal articles by Lord, DeVader, and Allinger (1986) and Hogan, Curphy, and Hogan (1994) that intelligence and personality regained popularity with leadership researchers. Because of these two articles and subsequent leadership research, we now know a lot about how intelligence and various personality traits help or hinder leaders in their efforts to influence others. This research also provided insight on the role that various situational and follower characteristics have in affecting how a leader’s intelligence and personality play out in the workplace. The purpose of this chapter is to summarize what we currently know about personality, intelligence, and leadership. As an overview, this chapter defines personality, intelligence, creativity, and emotional intelligence, reviews some of the key research findings for these concepts, and discusses the implications of this research for leadership practitioners. Personality Traits and Leadership What Is Personality? There is an optical illusion about every person we ever meet. In truth, they are all creatures of a given temperament, which will appear in a given character, whose boundaries they will never pass: but we look at them, they seem alive, and we presume there is impulse in them. In the moment, it seems like an impulse, in the year, in the lifetime, it turns out to be a certain uniform tune, which the revolving barrel of the music box must play. Ralph Waldo Emerson Despite its common usage, Robert Hogan (1991) noted that the term personality is fairly ambiguous, and has at least two quite different meanings. One meaning
Slide 79: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 75 160 Part Two Focus on the Leader refers to the impression a person makes on others. This view of personality emphasizes a person’s social reputation and reflects not only a description but also an evaluation of the person in the eyes of others. From the standpoint of leadership, this view of personality addresses two distinct issues: “What kind of leader or person is this?” and “Is this somebody I would like to work for or be associated with?” In a practical sense, this view of personality comes into play whenever you describe the person you work for to a roommate or friend. For example, you might describe him or her as pushy, honest, outgoing, impulsive, decisive, friendly, and independent. Furthermore, whatever impression this leader made on you, chances are others would use many of the same terms of description. In that same vein, many people would probably say that Colin Powell is self-confident, friendly, conventional, outgoing, and achievement-oriented, and that he handles pressure well. The second meaning of personality emphasizes the underlying, unseen structures and processes inside a person that explain why we behave the way we do; why each person’s behavior tends to be relatively similar across different situations, yet also different from another person’s behavior. Over the years psychologists have developed many theories to explain how such unseen structures may cause individuals to act in their characteristic manner. For example, Sigmund Freud (1913) believed that the intrapsychic tensions among the id, ego, and superego caused one to behave in characteristic ways even if the real motives behind the behaviors were unknown (i.e., unconscious) to the person. Although useful insights about personality have come from many different theories, most of the research addressing the relationship between personality and leadership success has been based on the trait approach, and that emphasis is most appropriate here. “Traits refer to recurring regularities or trends in a person’s behavior” (R. Hogan, 1991, p. 875), and the trait approach to personality maintains that people behave the way they do because of the strengths of the traits they possess. Although traits cannot be seen, they can be inferred from consistent patterns of behavior and reliably measured by personality inventories. For example, the personality trait of dependability differentiates leaders who tend to be hardworking and rule abiding from those who do not like to work hard and are more prone to break rules. Leaders getting higher scores on the trait of dependability on a personality inventory would be more likely to come to work on time, do a thorough job in completing work assignments, and rarely leave work early. We would also infer that leaders getting lower scores on the trait of dependability would be late to work more often, make impulsive decisions, or fail to follow through with commitments. Personality traits are useful concepts for explaining why people act fairly consistently from one situation to the next. This cross-situational consistency in behavior may be thought of as analogous to the seasonal weather patterns in different cities (Hogan, Hogan, & Roberts, 1996; Roberts, 1996). We know that it is extremely cold and dry in Minneapolis in January, and hot and humid in Hong Kong in August. Therefore, we can do a pretty good job predicting what the weather will generally be like in Minneapolis in January, even though our predictions for any particular day will not be perfect. Although the average temperature in Minneapolis hovers around 20°F, the temperature ranges from 30°F to 30°F on any single day in January. Similarly, knowing how two people differ on a particular
Slide 80: 76 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits 161 personality trait can help us predict more accurately how they will tend to act in a variety of situations. Just as various climate factors can affect the temperature on any single day, so can external factors affect a leader’s behavior in any given situation. The trait approach maintains that a leader’s behavior reflects an interaction between his or her personality traits and various situational factors (see, for example, Highlight 7.1.) Traits play a particularly important role in determining how people behave in unfamiliar, ambiguous, or what we might call weak situations. On the other hand, situations that are governed by clearly specified rules, demands, or organizational policies—strong situations—often minimize the effects traits have on behavior (Curphy, 1997a, c, 1996b; Hogan & Holland, 2003; Tett & Burnett, 2003). The strength of the relationship between personality traits and leadership effectiveness relationship is often inversely related to the relative strength of the situation (i.e., personality traits are more closely related to leadership effectiveness in weak situations). Given the accelerated pace of change in most organizations today, it is likely that leaders will be facing even more unfamiliar and ambiguous situations in the future. Therefore, personality traits may play an increasingly important role in a leader’s behavior. If organizations can accurately identify those personality traits and the individuals who possess them, then they should be able to do a better job promoting the right people into leadership positions. And if the right people are in leadership positions, the odds of achieving organizational success should be dramatically improved. The next section describes some of the Personality and the Presidency Highlight 7.1 Traits are unseen dispositions that can affect the way people act. Their existence can be inferred by a leader’s consistent pattern of behaviors. One way of examining a leader’s standing on the trait of achievement orientation is to examine one’s achievements and accomplishments over the life span. Leaders with higher levels of achievement orientation tend to set high personal goals and are persistent in the pursuit of these goals. When considering the following leader’s achievements and accomplishments, think about this person’s standing on this personality trait, and try to guess who this person might be: Age 23: lost a job. Age 23: was defeated in bid for state legislature. Age 24: failed in business venture. Age 25: was elected to legislature. Age 26: sweetheart died. Age 27: experienced several emotional problems. Age 27: was defeated in bid to be speaker of the house. Age 34: was defeated for nomination to Congress. Age 37: was elected to Congress. Age 39: lost renomination to Congress. Age 40: was defeated in bid for land office. Age 45: was defeated in bid for U.S. Senate. Age 47: was defeated for nomination to be vice president. Age 49: was defeated in bid for Senate a second time. Age 51: was elected president of the United States. The person was Abraham Lincoln.
Slide 81: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 77 162 Part Two Focus on the Leader efforts researchers have taken to identify those personality traits related to leadership effectiveness. The Five Factor Model of Personality: The Bright Side of Personality Although personality traits provide a useful approach to describing distinctive, cross-situational behavioral patterns, one potential problem is the sheer number of traitlike terms available to describe another’s stereotypical behaviors. As early as 1936 Allport and Odbert identified over 18,000 trait-related adjectives in a standard English dictionary. Despite this large number of adjectives, research has shown that most of the traitlike terms people use to describe others’ behavioral patterns could be reliably categorized into five broad personality dimensions. Historically, this five-dimension model was first identified by Webb in 1915 (Deary, 1996) and independently verified by Thurstone (1934), but over the years a number of researchers using very diverse samples and assessment instruments have noted similar results (see Hogan, Curphy, & Hogan, 1994). Given the robustness of the findings, there appears to be a compelling body of evidence to support these five dimensions of personality. These dimensions are referred to in the personality literature as the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality, and most modern personality researchers endorse some version of this model (Azar, 1995; Barrick & Mount, 1996; Curphy, 1998b; Hogan, 1991; Costo & McCrae, 1992, 1995; Hogan, Hogan, & Roberts, 1996; Barrick, 1999; Quirk & Fondt, 2000; Curphy, 2003c). At its core, the FFM of personality is a categorization scheme. Most, if not all, of the personality traits that you would use to describe someone else could be reliably categorized into one of the FFM personality diRule 13: When put into a position mensions. A description of the model can be found in Table 7.1. of command, take charge. The five major dimensions include surgency, dependability, agreeNorman Schwarzkopf ableness, adjustment, and intellectance. Perhaps the easiest way to understand this categorization scheme is to describe how our three world leaders would fall into each of the FFM categories. Surgency (also referred to as dominance, self-confidence, the need for power, or dynamic) involves patterns of behavior often exhibited in group settings and generally concerned with getting ahead in life (Michel & Hogan 1996; Hogan, 2000; Hogan & Holland, 2003; Curphy, 2003c). Such behavioral patterns often appear when someone is trying to influence or control others. Individuals higher in surgency are outgoing, competitive, decisive, impactful, and self-confident. Individuals lower in surgency prefer to work by themselves and have relatively little interest in influencing or competing with others. Because leaders’ decisiveness, competitiveness, and self-confidence can affect their ability to successfully influence a group, it is not surprising that leaders often have higher surgency scores than nonleaders (Barrick, 1999; Hurtz & Donovan, 2000; Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002; Hogan & Holland, 2003; Salgado, 2003). Given the behaviors associated with surgency, it is likely that our three world leaders would have higher surgency scores than most other people. More specifically, all three leaders appear to be driven, resourceful, goal oriented, and like influencing others, and as such they would all receive high scores on the Ambition dimension of Surgency. For example, Peter Jackson’s debut feature, Bad Taste, was an illustration of dogged perseverance. There was no budget for the
Slide 82: 78 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits 163 TABLE 7.1 The Five Factor Model of Personality Five Factor Dimensions Surgency Hogan Personality Inventory Dimensions Ambition Sociability Interpersonal sensitivity Prudence Behaviors/Items I like having responsibility for others. I have a large group of friends. I am a sympathetic person. I usually make “to do” lists. I practice what I preach. I rarely get into trouble. I remain calm in pressure situations. I take personal criticism well. I like traveling to foreign countries. I like staying up to speed on certain topics. Agreeableness Dependability Adjustment Adjustment Openness to Experience Inquisitive Learning Approach film; he paid for it all himself from his salary as a photo engraver. He had no equipment with which to make the film, so he bought a camera and built the rest himself. He had no cast or crew, but his friends volunteered, for a laugh. But the Sociability scores for our three leaders would vary dramatically. Peter Jackson and Aung San Suu Kyi do not have a high need to be around others. They can speak out on issues when necessary, but tend to work behind the scenes and avoid the limelight. Colin Powell, on the other hand, likes crowds and enjoys being the center of attention. He would likely have a much higher Sociability score than our other two key leaders. Another FFM personality dimension is agreeableness (also known as empathy, friendliness, interpersonal sensitivity, or the need for affiliation). This personality dimension concerns how one gets along with, as opposed to getting ahead of, others (Hogan, 2000; Hogan & Holland, 2003; Curphy, 2003c). Individu- If you need a friend in Washington, als high in agreeableness tend to be empathetic, get a dog. Harry Truman approachable, and optimistic; those lower in agreeableness are more apt to appear insensitive, distant, and pessimistic. Because teamwork and cooperation are important components of group functioning, it should not be surprising that leaders often have higher agreeableness scores than people in individual contributor roles (Barrick, 1999; Sandal, Endressen, Vaernes, & Rule 14: When put into a position Ursin, 1999; W. H, Burke, Barrett, & Mount, 2002; of command, do what is right. Hogan & Holland, 2003; Salgado, 2003). Chances Norman Schwarzkopf are that all three of our key leaders have fairly high agreeableness scores—all project warm, down-toearth, and approachable images and appear to be genuinely concerned about others.
Slide 83: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 79 164 Part Two Focus on the Leader Level 5 Leadership Highlight 7.2 Over the past 20 years, some private corporations, such as Coca-Cola, General Electric, British Petroleum, IBM, and Wal-Mart, have performed very well. People who invested $10,000 in these companies would have seen their investments increase four- to tenfold over this time. But there are some companies that outperformed even these high fliers. Jim Collins and his staff examined all the companies that appeared on the Fortune 500 list from 1965 to 1995 and found 11 companies that dramatically beat all the others in terms of returns. One critical component of this tremendous financial success was Level 5 Leadership. According to Collins, all of these companies were led by leaders who had a unique combination of humility and will. As Collins says, Abraham Lincoln never let his ego get in the way of his dream of building a great, enduring nation. Similarly, these corporate leaders did not let their egos get in the way of building great companies. These leaders avoided the spotlight (low Sociability scores), but they were very focused on creating a company that delivered outstanding results (high Ambition scores). They also possessed an unbreakable resolve that channeled all of their energy toward the success of their companies, as opposed to the pursuit of ever grander personal titles. All of these leaders were calm in crises, were never boastful and took responsibility for failure (high Adjustment scores), and were courteous and polite (high Agreeableness). These leaders set the tone for their respective organizations and spent a considerable amount of time surrounding themselves with the right people and building high performing teams. As a result, these companies returned $471 for every dollar invested in 1965. It is worth noting that Level 5 Leaders act quite differently from stereotypical corporate executives. Back in the late 1990s senior executives would do all they could to get on television, and many of these charismatic leaders seemed more interested in personal aggrandizement than company success (e.g., Dennis Kozlowski, John Rigas, Jeffrey Skilling, or Bernie Ebbers). Unfortunately, it appears that many Boards of Directors have not paid attention to the key lessons of Collins’s book, as they continue to look for charismatic rather than Level 5 CEOs to run their organizations. Sources: J. Collins, Good to Great (New York: Harper Collins, 2001); R. Khurana, “The Curse of the Superstar CEO,” Harvard Business Review, September, 2002, pp. 60–67; J. A. Sonnenfeld and R. Khurana, “Fishing for CEOs in Your Own Backyard,” The Wall Street Journal, July 30, 2002, p. B2; R. S. Peterson, D. B. Smith, P. V. Martorana, and P. D. Owens, “The Impact of Chief Executive Officer Personality on Top Management Team Dynamics: One Mechanism by Which Leadership Affects Organizational Performance,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 88 (5), 2003, pp. 795–808. Dependability (also known as conscientiousness or prudence) does not involve interacting with others but rather concerns those behavioral patterns related to one’s approach to work. Leaders who are higher in dependability tend to be planful and hardworking, follow through with their commitments, and rarely get into trouble. Those who are lower in dependability tend to be more spontaneous, creative, and rule bending, and less concerned with following through with commitments. Like surgency and agreeableness, research shows that individuals with higher dependability scores are more likely to be effective leaders than those with lower scores (Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002; Hogan & Holland, 2003; Salgado, 2003). In many ways dependability may be more concerned with management than leadership tendencies. Although leaders with higher scores are planful, organized, goal oriented, and prefer structure, they also tend to be risk averse, uncreative, somewhat boring, and dislike change. Again, the situation will determine whether these tendencies can help or hinder a leader’s ability to influence a group toward the ac-
Slide 84: 80 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits 165 complishment of its goals. For our three world leaders, Colin Powell would likely have the high- Some people are just more excitable est dependability scores; Peter Jackson and Aung than others. Kozmo Kramer, Seinfeld San Suu Kyi might have somehat lower scores. Adjustment (also known as emotional stability or self-control) is concerned with how people react to stress, failure, or personal criticism. Leaders higher in adjustment tend to be calm and tend not to take mistakes or failures personally, whereas those lower in adjustment may become tense, anxious, or exhibit emotional outbursts when stressed or criticized. Followers often mimic a leader’s emotions or behaviors under periods of high stress, so leaders who are calm under pressure and thick-skinned can often help a group stay on task and work through difficult issues. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. With her calm demeanor and high stress tolerance, Aung San Suu Kyi would probably have the highest adjustment scores of our three world leaders. Colin Powell would also have fairly high scores. Peter Jackson is more emotionally expressive and would likely have lower than average adjustment scores. Those behavioral patterns dealing with how one approaches problems, learns new information, and reacts to new experiences are related to the personality dimension of openness to experience (also known as intellectance, curiosity, inquisitiveness, and learning approach). Leaders higher in openness to experience I knew a college professor that was tend to be imaginative, broad-minded, curious, and in the same job for 37 years. What are more strategic, big-picture thinkers; they seek do you think this guy’s threshold for out new experiences through travel, the arts, stimulation is? movies, sports, reading, going to new restaurants, David Campbell or learning about new cultures. Individuals lower The Center for Creative in openness to experience tend to be more practical Leadership and have narrower interests; they like doing things the tried-and-true way rather than experimenting with new ways. It is important to note that openness to experience is not the same thing as intelligence—smart people are not necessarily intellectually curious. Our three world leaders all appear to be open to new experiences and intellectually curious. All are well traveled, have a broad set of interests, and are more strategic, big-picture thinkers; therefore, they would all have higher than average openness to experience scores. Like the other FFM dimensions, research has shown that openness to experience is an important component of leadership effectiveness (Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002; Hogan & Holland, 2003; Leivens, Harris, Van Keer, & Bisqueret, 2003; Salgado, 2003). Openness to experience seems particularly important at higher organizational levels or for overseas assignments. For example, people with higher openness to experience scores like to take a more strategic approach to solving problems. These higher scores help business unit leaders and CEOs to keep abreast of market trends, competitive threats, new products, and regulatory changes. And because people with higher openness to experience scores also like new and novel experiences, they often enjoy the challenges associated with living and leading in foreign countries.
Slide 85: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 81 166 Part Two Focus on the Leader Implications of the Five Factor Model The trait approach and the FFM provide leadership researchers and practitioners with several useful tools and insights. For one, personality traits provide researchers and practitioners with an explanation for leaders’ and followers’ tendencies to act in consistent ways over time. They help us to understand why some leaders are dominant versus deferent, outspoken versus quiet, planful versus spontaneous, warm versus cold, and so forth. It is also important to note that the behavioral manifestations of personality traits are often exhibited automatically and without much conscious thought. People high in surgency, for example, will often maneuver to influence or lead whatever groups or teams they are a part of without even thinking about it. Although personality traits predispose us to act in certain ways, we can nonetheless learn to modify our behaviors through experience, feedback, and reflection. As seen in Figure 7.1, personality traits are one of the key components of behavior and are relatively difficult to change. Moreover, because personality traits tend to be stable over the years and the behavioral manifestations of traits occur somewhat automatically, it is extremely important for leaders, and leaders to be, to have insight into their personalities. For example, consider a leader who is relatively low in the trait of adjustment, but also is deciding whether to accept a high-stress/high-visibility job. On the basis of his personality trait scores alone, we might predict that this leader could be especially sensitive to criticism, and could be moody and prone to emotional outbursts. If the leader understood that he may have issues dealing with stress and criticism, then he could choose not to take the position, modify the situation to reduce the level of stress, or learn techniques for effectively dealing with these issues. A leader who lacked this self-insight would probably make poorer choices and have more difficulties coping with the demands of this position (Curphy, 1996a). The FFM has proved to be very useful in several different ways. It is fairly robust, and most personality researchers currently embrace some form of the Big Five model (Azar, 1995; Barrick, 1999; Mount, Barrick, & Strauss, 1994; Barrick & Mount, 1996; Curphy, 1998b; Hogan, Hogan, & Roberts, 1996; Howard & Howard, 1995; Hurtz & Donovan, 2000; Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002; Hogan & Holland, 2003; Tett & Burnett, 2003; Salgado, 2003). Furthermore, the model has proved to be a very useful scheme for categorizing the findings of the personalityleadership performance research. Because of the results of this research, organiza- FIGURE 7.1 The building blocks of skills. Skills/ Competencies Knowledge Experience Easier to Change More Difficult to Change Intelligence Personality Traits and Types Values Interests Motives/Goals
Slide 86: 82 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits 167 tions now use the results of FFM personality assessments for hiring new leaders, providing leaders with developmental feedback about various personality traits, and as a key component in succession planning processes to promote leaders. Another advantage of the FFM is that it is a useful method for profiling leaders. For example, a business unit leader’s results on a FFM personality assessment, the Hogan Personality Inventory (Hogan & Hogan, 2002) can be found in Figure 7.2. According to this profile, this leader will generally come across to others as optimistic, resilient, and calm under pressure (high Adjustment); self-confident, goal oriented, and competitive (high Ambition); outgoing, liking to be the center of attention, but also distractible and a poor listener (high Sociability); diplomatic and charming, but will have trouble dealing with performance problems (high Interpersonal Sensitivity); planful and rule abiding (high Prudence); a strategic, big-picture thinker (high Inquistive); but who prefers to learn using a just-in-time, hands-on approach as opposed to sitting in a classroom setting. Other leaders will have different behavioral tendencies, and knowing this type of information before someone gets hired or promoted into a leadership position can help improve the odds of organizational success. When aggregated, these individual personality profiles can yield some interesting results. For example, Mumford, Zaccaro, Johnson, Diana, Gilbert, and Threlfall (2000) reported that a unique set of personality traits differentiated senior leaders in operational units compared with those in staff functions in the U.S. Army. Heckman and Roberts (1997) showed that engineers and accountants tended to be lower in the trait of surgency but higher in the trait of dependability. On the other hand, marketing and sales place a premium on creativity and on influencing others, and people in these occupations tended to be higher in surgency but lower in dependability. There is a compelling body of evidence showing that surgency, agreeableness, dependability, adjustment, and openness to experience are all positively correlated with leadership success—the higher the scores on these five FFM dimensions, the more likely an individual will be an effective leader (Curphy, 2001, 2003c, 2004e; Hogan, Curphy, & Hogan, 1994; Barrick, 1999; Quirk & Fandt, 2000; FIGURE 7.2 Leadership potential profile. Adjustment Source: Adapted with permission from Hogan Assessment Systems. 0 Scale 84% 100% 93% 83% 82% 76% 19% 10 20 30 Percentiles 40 50 60 70 80 90 Ambition Sociability Interpersonal Sensitivity Prudence Inquisitive Learning Approach Low Average High
Slide 87: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 83 168 Part Two Focus on the Leader Hurtz & Donovan, 2000; Judge, Higgens, Thoresen, & Barrick, 1999; Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002; Hogan & Holland, 2003; Tett & Burnett, 2003; Salgado, 2003). Some of this research also showed that surgency is the best predictor of a leadership job offer after an interview and successful completion of an overseas leadership assignment (Caldwell & Burger, 1998; Caliguiri, 2000). Agreeableness and openness to experience are also key factors in completing overseas leadership assignments and working in tightly confined team situations, such as submarine crews (Sandal, Endressen, Vaernes, & Ursin, 1999; Lievens, Harris, Van Keer & Bisqueret, 2003). Dependability is related to the amount of time people take to prepare for an interview and their overall job performance and satisfaction; lower scores increase their likelihood of engaging in counterproductive work behaviors (Barrick, 1999; Caldwell & Burger, 1998; Hurtz & Donovan, 2000; Sarchione, Cuttler, Muchinsky, & Nelson-Grey, 1998; Judge, Heller, & Mount, 2002; Barrick & Mount, 1996; Barrick, 1999). Higher adjustment scores also helped leaders to complete an overseas assignment, successfully cope with change, and report positive earnings per share after an initial public offering (Judge, Thoresen, Pucik, & Welbourne, 1999; Welbourne & Cyr, 1999). In a similar vein, Blake (1996) reported some interesting findings for military cadets who were higher in agreeableness and surgency. His research indicated that higher agreeableness was positively related to performance ratings during the freshman and sophomore years but that higher surgency was more strongly related to performance ratings over the last two years at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. Apparently getting along with others and developing strong social supports are very important during the first two years of a military cadet’s life, but getting ahead becomes more important over the last two years. It may be that it takes a couple of years to develop strong social networks and supports, and once they have been established, other personality traits, such as surgency, become more important. Another advantage of the Five Factor Model is that it appears universally applicable across cultures (Curphy, 1997a, 1996b; Hogan, Hogan, & Roberts, 1996; Schmidt, Kihm, & Robie, 2000; Salgado, 1997, 2003c). People from Asian, Western European, Middle Eastern, Eastern European, or South American cultures seem to use the same five personality dimensions to categorize, profile, or describe others. Not only do people from different cultures describe others using the same FFM framework, these dimensions all seem to predict job and leadership performance across cultures. For example, in a comprehensive review of the research, Salgado (1997, 2003) reported that all five of the FFM dimensions predicted blue collar, professional, and managerial performance in various European countries. But the strength of the personality-job performance relationship depends on the particular job. Some jobs, such as sales, put a premium on interpersonal skills and goal orientation (e.g., surgency and agreeableness); whereas manufacturing jobs put more of a premium on planning and abiding by safety and productivity rules (e.g., dependability). Researchers often get much stronger personality-job performance relationships when the personality traits being measured have some degree of job relatedness (Hogan & Holland, 2003; Tett & Burnett, 2003).
Slide 88: 84 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits 169 Can Offices and Bedrooms Be Used to Predict Personality Traits? Highlight 7.3 As described in this chapter, personality traits are fairly well ingrained and their associated behaviors almost automatic. We usually make estimates of others’ personality traits based on our interactions with them. But is it possible to make accurate predictions of others’ personality traits based on the way in which they organize and decorate their personal space? Azar (2002) describes a study where seven to eight raters made predictions of others’ FFM dimension scores based solely on inspections of their offices or bedrooms. Approximately 140 offices and bedrooms were inspected, and the occupants of these rooms also completed an FFM personality assessment. The researchers found that the inspectors were very good at predicting occupants’ dependability and openness to experience FFM dimension scores. Some offices and bedrooms were neat and tidy; others were messy (the dependability dimension). Some had collections of art from strange and exotic lands; others were strictly functional in nature (e.g., openness to experience dimension). But other FFM dimension scores, such as adjustment and surgency, were much more difficult to predict based on environmental scanning and seem to depend more on interpersonal interactions with others. So the next time you visit a professor’s office, see if you can predict his or her dependability and openness to experience scores. Chances are you will be pretty close to getting it right. Source: B. Azar, “Does Your Office Betray Your Personality?” Monitor on Psychology, March 2002, pp. 26–27. In summary, there are several things we can say about the bright side of personality. First, people tend to describe others using traitlike terms, and personality traits can be reliably categorized into the five major dimensions of the FFM. Second, personality traits can be reliably assessed, and these assessments can be used to make predictions about how people will typically behave at work. Third, there is an overwhelming body of research that shows all five of the FFM dimensions are related to leadership success across different cultures. However, the strength of the personality-leadership performance relationships will depend on the particular demands of the situation and the job. Fourth, personality tends to be difficult to change—people are “hard wired” to exhibit those behaviors associated with their personality traits. Fifth, all behavior is under conscious control. We may more or less have an automatic response to stress based on our adjustment scores, but we can choose to act differently if we want to. But it does take conscious effort to exhibit nontrait behaviors. Sixth, having insight into one’s personality traits can give people information about their potential leadership strengths and development needs and how much effort they will have to put forth to overcome these needs. Why Do Some Leaders Fail? The Dark Side of Personality One of the more provocative ideas in the recent leadership literature concerns the base rate of managerial incompetence. Hogan and Hogan, (2001), Curphy (2003a, b; 2004 a, e), Curphy and Hogan (2004 a, b) and Hogan and Curphy (2004) maintain that approximately 50 percent of the Managerial failure may be due more to having undesirable qualities than lacking desirable ones. Bob and Joyce Hogan Hogan Assessment Systems
Slide 89: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 85 170 Part Two Focus on the Leader persons in leadership positions may be incompetent. This means that half of these individuals are unable to build the cohesive, goal-oriented teams needed to get long-term results through others. Some people in leadership positions seem able to get results without building a team, but these results are typically very short-term. Others seem more focused on playing the role of a cheerleader and are able to build cohesive teams, but these teams often do not get much accomplished. Many of you might think that the base rate is actually closer to 5–7 percent— companies or organizations could not be successful with such a high level of incompetence among the management ranks. But a simple test of managerial incompetence might help shed some light on the matter. Count up the number of people you have ever worked for. These individuals might be former teachers, volunteer group leaders, coaches, supervisors, etc. Of these former bosses, how many of them would you work or play for again? If you are like many of the other people who have answered this question, then I did not have sexual relations with the chances are you need less than one hand to count the number that woman. of former bosses you would work for again. Curphy and Hogan Bill Clinton (2004a) state there are several reasons for this high level of incompetence, some of which include invalid selection and succession planning systems (see Chapter 4), ill-defined performance expectations (see Chapter 9), and poorly designed leadership development programs (see Chapter 3). But dark-side personality traits are some of the other key reasons for the high failure rate of leaders. Dark-side personality traits are irritating, counterproductive behavioral tendencies that interfere with a leader’s ability to build cohesive teams and cause followers to exert less effort toward goal accomplishment (Hogan & Hogan, 2001; Dotlich & Cairo, 2003). A listing of 11 common darkside traits can be found in Table 7.2. Any of these 11 tendencies, if exhibited on a regular basis, will negatively affect the leader’s ability to get results through others. And if you examined the reasons why those former bosses did not make your short list of leaders you would like to work for again, then it is very likely that these incompetent leaders possessed one or more of these 11 dark-side personality traits. There are several aspects of dark-side personality traits that are worth noting. First, everyone has at least one dark-side personality trait. Figure 7.3 shows a graphic output from a typical dark-side personality measure, and indicates that this individual has strong leisurely and diligent tendencies and moderate cautious and dutiful tendencies (scores above the 90th percentile indicate a high risk and 70–89th percentile indicate a moderate risk of dark-side tendencies). Second, these dark-side traits have a bigger influence on performance for people in leadership versus followership roles. An individual contributor might have leisurely or cautious tendencies, but because they do not have to get work done through others these tendencies have less of an impact on their work units than if these same individuals were first-line supervisors or business unit leaders. Let there be no doubt that these individual contributors may not be fun to work with, but their counterproductive tendencies will not be as debilitating to their teams as they would if these people were leading their teams. Third, the dark-side traits are usually only apparent when leaders are not attending to their public image. In other words, people will not see the behaviors associated with dark-side traits when leaders are
Slide 90: 86 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits 171 TABLE 7.2 Dark-Side Personality Traits Source: Hogan Assessment Systems, The Hogan Development Survey (Tulsa, OK. 2002). Excitable Skeptical Cautious Reserved Leisurely Bold Mischievous Colorful Imaginative Diligent Dutiful Leaders with these tendencies have difficulties building teams because of their dramatic mood swings, emotional outbursts, and inability to persist on projects. Leaders with this dark-side trait have an unhealthy mistrust of others, are constantly questioning the motives and challenging the integrity of their followers, and are vigilant for signs of disloyalty. Because these leaders are so fearful of making “dumb”mistakes, they alienate their staffs by not making decisions or taking action on issues. During times of stress these leaders become extremely withdrawn, are uncommunicative, difficult to find, and unconcerned about the welfare of their staffs. These passive-aggressive leaders will only exert effort in the pursuit of their own agendas and will procrastinate or not follow through with requests that are not in line with their agendas. Because of their narcissistic tendencies, these leaders often get quite a bit done. But their feelings of entitlement, inability to share credit for success, tendency to blame their mistakes on others, and inability to learn from experience often results in trails of bruised followers. These leaders tend to be quite charming but take pleasure in seeing if they can get away with breaking commitments, rules, policies, and laws. When caught, they also believe they can talk their way out of any problem. Leaders with this tendency believe they are “hot” and have an unhealthy need to be the center of attention. They are so preoccupied with being noticed that they are unable to share credit, maintain focus, or get much done. Followers question the judgment of leaders with this tendency, as these leaders think in eccentric ways, often changing their minds, and make strange or odd decisions. Because of their perfectionistic tendencies, these leaders frustrate and disempower their staffs through micro-management, poor prioritization, and an inability to delegate. These leaders deal with stress by sucking up to superiors. They lack spines, are unwilling to refuse unrealistic requests, won’t stand up for their staffs, and burn them out as a result. concerned with how they are coming across to others. These tendencies are much more likely to appear under times of stress, when multitasking or focusing on task accomplishment, during crises, or when leaders feel comfortable enough around others to “let their guard down” (Hogan & Hogan, 2001; Dotlich & Cairo, 2003; Curphy, 2003c; Hogan & Curphy, 2004). And given the high level of stress, challenge, and complexity associated with most leadership positions, the conditions are ripe for the appearance of dark-side traits. Fourth, many dark-side traits co-vary with social skills and are difficult to detect in interviews, assessment centers, or with bright-side personality inventories (Hogan & Curphy, 2004; Curphy & Hogan, 2004a; Hogan & Hogan, 2001; Dotlich
Slide 91: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 87 172 Part Two Focus on the Leader FIGURE 7.3 Leadership challenge profile. Source: Adapted with permission from Hogan Assessment Systems. 0 Scale Excitable Skeptical Cautious Reserved Leisurely Bold Mischievous Colorful Imaginative Diligent Dutiful 16% 12% 74% 6% 91% 49% 34% 18% 43% 94% 76% 10 20 30 40 Percentiles 50 60 70 80 90 No Risk Low Risk Moderate Risk High Risk & Cairo, 2003; Brinkmeyer & Hogan, 1997; Brown, 1977; Curphy, 1997d; Curphy, Gibson, Asiu, Horn, & Macomber, 1994; Hogan, Curphy, & Hogan, 1994; McDaniel, 1999; Rybicki & Klippel, 1997). Fifth, the 11 dark-side personality traits are related to extreme FFM scores. For example, diligent is often associated with extremely high dependability scores, and excitable is associated with extremely low adjustment scores. However, just because a person has an extremely high or low FFM dimension score does not necessarily mean they also possess the corresponding dark-side personality traits. But there are strong relationships between the FFM and the dark-side personality traits (Hogan & Hogan, 2001; Curphy 2003c). Sixth, the behaviors associated with dark-side personality traits can occur at any leadership level, and many times organizations tolerate these behaviors because the leader is smart, experienced, or possesses unique skills (see Highlight 7.4). Along these lines, persons with bold tendencies are particularly adept at moving up in organizations. Nothing ever got launched without a healthy dose of narcissism, and leaders with bold tendencies are quick to volunteer for new assignments, take on seemingly impossible challenges, and consistently underestimate the amount of time, money, and effort it will take to get a job accomplished. In some cases these leaders pull out the seemingly impossible and get promoted because of their accomplishments. But when things go south (which they often do), these same leaders are quick to blame the situation or others for their failures, and as a result never learn from their mistakes (Hogan & Curphy, 2004; Curphy & Hogan, 2004a; Kramer, 2003; Lubit, 2002; Dotlich & Cairo, 2003; Hogan & Hogan, 2001). So if virtually everyone has dark-side personality tendencies, what can he or she do about them? First and foremost, leaders and leaders to be need to identify their dark-side personality traits. This can be done by asking trusted others about how
Slide 92: 88 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits 173 An Example of Dark-Side Personality Traits Highlight 7.4 The subject in this case is a CEO of a $2 billion book publishing company who was dismissed as part of a corporate buyout. The individual started his career with the company as a book salesman over 30 years ago and reigned as the CEO for over 15 years. His leadership credo was “business is conflict. . . You don’t get excellence by saying yes. You get love, but you don’t get excellence. This company has raised the hurdles of excellence every bloody day.” According to his staff, the subject ruled by intimidation and fear. His profane harangues were an industry legend. Scores of former employees tell of meetings at which he publicly threatened to lop off people’s hands or private body parts or tear out their throats for failure to perform. Whenever something went wrong or a goal wasn’t achieved, the subject always saw it as a personal matter rather than the result of the business situation. As a result, the subject always placed personal blame for failure and the staff quickly learned not to come forward with problems. He rarely went through a single meeting without going after someone, and people saw his use of degradation and humiliation as a way of controlling his staff. Many of his staff saw the buyout as the only way to get rid of the CEO. He had been in place for over 15 years and played a key role in making the company a multibillion-dollar organization. Nevertheless, after the buyout the parent organization faced the specter of mass resignations if the subject was allowed to remain as CEO. As a result of the discontent of his staff, the CEO was asked to resign. Unfortunately, even to this day the CEO has no idea why he was let go, and seems genuinely despondent over the decision. When confronted with stories of abuse and intimidation, he either denies that they ever took place or claims that they were blown all out of proportion. Source: R. T. Hogan, G. J. Curphy, and J. Hogan, “What Do We Know about Leadership: Effectiveness and Personality,” American Psychologist 49 (1994) pp. 493–504. one acts under pressure or what behaviors interfere with their ability to build teams, or by completing a dark-side personality assessment. Once these counterproductive tendencies are identified, leaders then need to understand the situations or conditions in which these tendencies are likely to appear. Again, dark-side traits are most likely to appear during times of stress and heavy workload, so finding ways to better manage stress and workload will help reduce the likelihood of these dark-side tendencies. Just being aware of one’s dark-side tendencies and understanding the circumstances in which they appear will go a long way toward controlling the manifestation of counterproductive leadership behaviors. Exercise and other stress reduction techniques, and having trusted followers who can tell leaders when they are exhibiting dark-side traits, can also help control these tendencies. Finally, having higher scores on the FFM dimension of adjustment also helps with some of these dimensions, as these leaders seem to be better able to cope with stress than those with low scores (Curphy, 2003a, c). Intelligence and Leadership What Is Intelligence? The first formal linkage between intelligence and leadership was established around 1115 B.C. in China, where the dynasties used standardized tests to determine which citizens would play key leadership roles in the institutions they had
Slide 93: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 89 174 Part Two Focus on the Leader Personality Types and Leadership Highlight 7.5 Bright and dark-side traits provide useful frameworks for describing leaders’ behaviors, but they are not the only way to describe personality. An alternative way to describe how leaders and followers differ in their day-to-day behavior patterns is through types, or in terms of a personality typology. Unlike traits, which assume people fall somewhere along a continuum of low to high scores on any particular bright- or dark-side personality dimension, personality typology assumes that there are qualitatively different types of people and leaders. The signs of the Zodiac provide an unscientific but popular illustration of personality typology. For example, Leos are assumed to be fundamentally different than Pisces or Aquarians. The same holds true for the Chinese calendar; people born in the year of the Monkey are assumed to be qualitatively different than people born in the year of the Pig or Goat. One group of personality researchers has expanded the notion of types to formal personality assessment. Myers (1976, 1977, 1980; Myers & Briggs, 1943/1962; Myers & McCaulley, 1985) extended the research of a famous psychologist, Carl Jung, and has created an instrument that categorizes people into one of 16 personality types. This instrument, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) (Myers & Myers, 2001, 2003; Quenk & Kummerow, 2001), is perhaps the most popular psychological assessment and is taken by over 2 million people per year (Quast & Hansen, 1996; Thayer, 1988). The MBTI is used in 89 of the Fortune 100 companies and in college-level and adult leadership development courses, career and marriage counseling, child-rearing programs, coaching programs, and team-building interventions. According to Myers and McCaulley (1985), people differ on four bipolar dimensions, which include extraversion–introversion, sensing–intuition, thinking–feeling, and judging–perceiving. Scores on each of the four dimensions results in one of the 16 personality types (e.g., extraversion, intuition, thinking, and judging type, or an introversion, sensing, thinking, and judging type, etc.). The test publishers have done extensive research on the MBTI, and overall it is a welldesigned instrument that can help people understand differences and what they might need to do to be more effective. But the instrument does have some limitations. First, the MBTI has somewhat of a cultlike following, and many of its converts can only see the world through MBTI glasses (Curphy & Gibson, 1996). Personality types can become a perceptual filter by which we perceive others, as well as a rationalization for our own or others’ behavior. Second, personality types are not stable—research indicates that types will change 50 percent of the time during a retest (McCarley & Carskadon, 1983; Myers & McCaulley, 1985). Because of the instability of types, it is difficult to see how the assessment could be used for selection or development purposes, as types are likely to change from one setting to the next. Despite these limitations, the MBTI is a very popular and useful instrument for understanding the nature of personality and how it plays out in day-to-day behaviors. Sources: McCarley and Carskadon, 1983, p. 570; Myers, 1976, 1977, 1980, p. 572; Myers and Briggs, 1943/1965, p. 573; Myers and McCaulley, 1985, p. 573; P. B. Myers and K. D. Myers. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Step II (Form Q) Profile (Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press, 2001, 2003); Quast & Hansen, 1996, p. 577; N. L. Quenk and J. M. Kummerow. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Step II (Form Q) Profile (Form B) (Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press, 2001); Thayer, 1988, p. 584. set up to run the country (DuBois, 1964). Using intelligence tests to identify potential leaders in the United States goes back to World War I, and to a large extent this use of intelligence testing continues today. Over 100 years of very comprehensive and systematic research provides overwhelming evidence to support the notion that general intelligence plays a substantial role in human affairs (Arvey et al., 1994; Humphreys, 1984; Neisser et al., 1996; Ree & Earles, 1992, 1993; Riggio, 2002; Schmidt & Hunter, 1992; Scarr, 1989; Sternberg, 1997, 2002, 2003a; Salgado, Ander-
Slide 94: 90 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits 175 son, Moscoso, Bertua, de Fruyt & Rolland, 2003). Still, intelligence and intelligence testing are Perhaps no concept in the history of among the most controversial topics in the social psychology has had or continues to sciences today. There is contentious debate over have as great an impact on everyday questions like how heredity and the environ- life in the Western world as that of ment affect intelligence, whether intelligence general intelligence. Sandra Scarr tests should be used in public schools, and whether ethnic groups differ in average intelligence test scores. For the most part, however, we will bypass such controversies here. Our focus will be on the relationship between intelligence and leadership. (See Arvey et al., 1994; Azar, 1995; Brody, 1992; Cronbach, 1984; Humphreys, 1984; Linn, 1989; Neisser et al., 1996; and Sternberg, 1997, for reviews of these controversies.) We define intelligence as a person’s all-around effectiveness in activities directed by thought (Arvey et al., 1994; Cronbach, 1984). So what does this definition of intelligence have to do with leadership? Research has shown that more intelligent leaders are faster learners; make better assumptions, de- To a large extent, leaders get paid to ductions, and inferences; are better at creating a solve problems and get results. Gordy Curphy compelling vision and developing strategies to make their vision a reality; can develop better solutions to problems; can see more of the primary and secondary implications of their decisions; and are quicker on their feet than leaders who are less intelligent (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994; Lord, DeVader, & Allinger, 1986; Ferris, Witt, & Hochwarter, 2001; Curphy, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003b, 2004e; Sternberg, 1997, 2002, 2003a, b; Salgado et al., 2003; Nutt, 1999). To a large extent people get placed into leadership positions to solve problems, be they customer, financial, operational, interpersonal, performance, political, educational, or social in nature. Therefore, given the behaviors associated with higher intelligence, it is easy to see how a more intelligent leader will oftentimes be more successful in influencing a group to accomplish its goals than a less intelligent leader. Like personality traits, however, intelligence alone is not enough to guarantee leadership success. There are plenty of smart people who make poor leaders just as there are less intelligent people who are great leaders. Nevertheless, many leadership activities do seem to involve some degree of decision-making and problem-solving ability, which means that a leader’s intelligence can affect the odds of leadership success in many situations. As seen in Figure 7.4, intelligence is relatively difficult to change. Like personality, it is also an unseen quality and can only be inferred by observing behavior. Moreover, intelligence does not affect behavior equally across all situations. Some activities, such as following simple routines, put less of a premium on intelligence than others (Salgado et al., 2003). Finally, we should point out that our definition of intelligence does not imply that intelligence is a fixed quantity. Although heredity plays a role, intelligence can be and is modified through education and experience (Arvey et al., 1994; Brody, 1997; Cronbach, 1984; Humphreys, 1989; Neisser et al., 1996; Rushton, 1997; Sternberg, 2002, 2003a, b).
Slide 95: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 91 176 Part Two Focus on the Leader FIGURE 7.4 The building blocks of skills. Source: © Personnel Decisions International, 1997. Competencies/ Skills/ Behaviors Easier to Change More Difficult to Change Knowledge • Practical intelligence Experience • Practical intelligence Intelligence • Analytic intelligence • Synthetic abilities • Creative intelligence Personality Traits & Preferences Values Interests Motives/Goals The Triarchic Theory of Intelligence Although there is a strong, positive relationship between intelligence and leadership effectiveness, there is still an ongoing debate about the nature of intelligence. Many psychologists have tried to determine the structure of intelligence; is intelligence a unitary ability, or does it involve a collection of related The first method for estimating the mental abilities (Azar, 1995; Gardner, 1983; Herrnstein & Murray, intelligence of a ruler is to look at 1994)? Other psychologists have said that the process by which peothe men he has around him. ple do complex mental work is much more important than deterNiccol` Machiavelli mining the number of mental abilities (Sternberg, 1985, 1997). o Perhaps the most comprehensive and compelling theory of intelligence developed and tested over the past 20 years is Sternberg’s (1985, 1997, 2002, 2003a, b) triarchic theory of intelligence. It also offers some of the most significant implications for leadership. The triarchic theory focuses on what a leader does when solving complex mental problems, such as how information is combined and synthesized when solving problems, what assumptions and errors are made, and the like. According to this theory, there are three basic types of intelligence. Analytic intelligence is general problem-solving ability and can be assessed using standardized mental abilities tests. Leaders and followers with higher levels of analytic intelligence tend to be quick learners, do well in school, see connections between issues, and have the ability to make accurate deductions, assumptions, and inferences with relatively unfamiliar information. There is still much, however, that analytic intelligence does not explain. There are a number of people who do well on standardized tests but not in life (Sternberg, Wagner, Williams, & Horvath, 1995; Ferris, Witt, & Hochwarter, 2001; Sternberg, 2002, 2003a, b). At the same time, some people do relatively poorly on standardized intelligence tests but often develop ingenious solutions to practical problems. For example, Sternberg and his associates described a situation where students in a school for the mentally retarded did very poorly on standardized tests yet consistently found ways to defeat the school’s elaborate security Everyone is ignorant, only on system. In this situation the students possessed a relatively high different subjects. level of practical intelligence, or “street smarts.” People with street Will Rogers smarts know how to adapt to, shape, or select new situations in order to get their needs met better than people lacking street smarts
Slide 96: 92 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits 177 (e.g., think of a stereotypical computer nerd and an inner-city kid both lost in downtown New York). In other words, practical intelligence involves knowing how things get done and how to do them. For leaders, practical intelligence involves knowing what to do and how to do it when confronted with a particular leadership situation, such as dealing with a poorly performing subordinate, resolving a problem with a customer, or getting a team to work better together (Hedlund, Forsythe, Horvath, Williams, Snook, & Sternberg, 2003) (see Highlights 7.6 and 7.7). Because of its potential importance to leadership effectiveness, there are several other aspects of practical intelligence worth noting. First, practical intelligence is much more concerned with knowledge and experience than analytic intelligence (see Figure 7.4). Leaders can build their practical intelligence by building their leadership knowledge and experience. Thus, textbooks such as this one can help you to build your practical intelligence. Getting a variety of leadership experiences, and perhaps more important, reflecting on these experiences, will also help you to build practical intelligence. Second, practical intelligence is domain specific. A leader who has a lot of knowledge and experience in leading a pharmaceutical research team may feel like a duck out of water when asked to lead a major fund-raising effort for a charitable institution. As another example, one of the authors worked with a highly successful retail company having over 100,000 employees. All of the key leaders had over 20 years of retail operations and merchandising experience, but they also did very poorly on standardized intelligence tests. The company had successfully expanded in the United States (which capitalized on their practical intelligence), but their attempt to expand to foreign markets was an abysmal failure. This failure was due in part Real Examples of Analytic and Practical Intelligence (or Lack Thereof) Highlight 7.6 Chuck Shepherd’s newspaper article “News of the Weird” and Wendy Northcutt’s book, The Darwin Awards, provide ample examples of the importance of analytic and practical intelligence. Here are some of the typical stories you can find in these manuscripts and at www.DarwinAwards.com: 1. AT&T fired President John Walter after only nine months, saying he lacked intellectual leadership. He received a $26 million dollar severance package for his efforts. Perhaps it is not Walter who is lacking intelligence . . . 2. Police in Los Angeles had good luck with a robbery suspect who just couldn’t control himself during a lineup. When detectives asked each man in the lineup to repeat the words, “Give me all your money or I’ll shoot,” the man shouted, “That’s not what I said!” 3. Some folks, new to boating, were having a problem. No matter how hard they tried, their brand new 22-foot power boat was very sluggish in almost every maneuver, no matter how much power was applied. After about an hour of trying to make it go, they putted to a nearby marina, thinking someone there could tell them what was wrong. A thorough topside check revealed everything in perfect working condition. The engine ran fine, the outboard drive went up and down, and the prop was the correct size and pitch. One of the marina guys then jumped into the water to check underneath and nearly choked from laughing so hard. He discovered that the trailer was still strapped securely in place under the boat.
Slide 97: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 93 178 Part Two Focus on the Leader The Triarchic Theory of Intelligence and Decision Making Highlight 7.7 Leaders spend a significant amount of time solving problems, and the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence has some important implications for decision making. First, if practical intelligence is an important component of decision making (which it is), then it is equally important that the knowledge leaders possess accurate information about their organizations and the environments in which they operate. Although leaders see lots of data, they tend to only focus on the here and now and have difficulties seeing the forest from the trees. As a result, top leaders often have a distorted picture of their organizations and environments. For example, research by Mezias and Starbuck (2003) shows that business unit leaders and CEOs can be off by as much as 200 percent on industry growth estimates, business unit sales growth, quality indicators, etc. And this imprecise knowledge of the business, combined with an advocacy problem-solving process and a tendency for leaders to surround themselves with yea-sayers may be primary reasons why approximately half of all major organizational decisions turn out wrong (Nutt, 1999; Garvin & Roberto, 2001). There are several things leaders can do to avoid making poor decisions based on imperfect data. Perhaps the most important step is to get leaders to look at the same data before making important organizational decisions. All too often leaders come to key decision-making meetings with very different ideas of what is happening with their organizations. And as described above, many of these ideas are simply wrong. By reviewing the same data, asking probing questions, and discussing how the data fit together can go a long way toward getting decision makers on the same page and developing better solutions to organizational problems. Sources: G. J. Curphy, The Blandin Health Care Leadership Program (Grand Rapids, MN: The Blandin Foundation, 2004f); G. J. Curphy, The Blandin Education Leadership Program (Grand Rapids, MN: The Blandin Foundation, 2004g); D. A. Garvin and M. A. Roberto, “What You Don’t Know about Making Decisions,” Harvard Business Review, September 2001, pp. 108–14; P. T. Nutt, “Surprising but True: Half the Decisions in Organizations Fail,” Academy of Management Executive 1999 (4), pp. 75–90; J. Magretta, “Why Business Models Matter,” Harvard Business Review, May 2002, pp. 86–95; J. M. Mezias and W. H. Starbuck, “What Do Managers Know, Anyway?” Harvard Business Review, May 2003, pp. 16–17. to the leaders’ inability to learn, appreciate, or understand the intricacies of other cultures (analytic intelligence), their lack of knowledge and experience in foreign markets (practical intelligence), and in turn their development of inappropriate strategies for running the business in other countries (a combination of analytic and practical intelligence). Thus, practical intelligence is extremely useful when leading in familiar situations, but analytic intelligence may play a more important role when leaders are facing new or novel situations. Third, this example points out the importance of having both types of intelligence. As seen in Highlight 7.7, organizations today are looking for leaders and followers who have the necessary knowledge and skills to succeed (practical intelligence) and the ability to learn (analytic intelligence) (Stamps, 1996; Sternberg 2002, 2003a, b; Connelly, Gilbert, Ziccaro, Threlfell, Marks, & Mumford, 2000; Cox, 2000). Fourth, it may be that high levels of practical intelligence may compensate for lower levels of analytic intelligence. Leaders having lower analytic abilities may still be able to solve complex work problems or make good decisions provided they have plenty of job-relevant knowledge or experience. But leaders with more analytic intelligence, all things being equal, may develop their street smarts more quickly than leaders with less analytic intelligence. Analytic intelligence may play
Slide 98: 94 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits 179 a lesser role once a domain of knowledge is mastered, but a more important role when encountering new situations. The third component of the triarchic theory of intelligence is creative intelligence. Creative intelligence is the ability to produce work that is both novel and useful (Sternberg, 1997, 2001; Sternberg & Oess, 2001; Kersting, 2003; Sternberg & Lubart, 1996). Using both criteria (novel and useful) as components of creative intelligence helps to eliminate many of the more outlandish solutions The best way to have a good idea is to a potential problem by ensuring that adopted to have a lot of ideas. Dr. Linus Pauling solutions can be realistically implemented or have some type of practical payoff. Several examples might help to clarify the novel and practical components of creative intelligence. The inventor of Velcro got his idea while picking countless thistles out of his socks; he realized that the same principle that produced his frustration might be translated into a useful fastener. The inventor of 3M’s Postit notes was frustrated because bookmarks in his church hymnal were continually sliding out of place, and he saw a solution in a low-tack adhesive discovered by a fellow 3M scientist. The scientists who designed the Spirit and Opportunity missions to Mars were given a budget that was considerably smaller than that of the previous missions to Mars. Yet the scientists were challenged to develop two spacecraft that had more capabilities than the Pathfinder and the Viking Lander. Their efforts with Spirit and Opportunity were a resounding success, due in part to some of the novel solutions used both to land the spacecrafts (an inflatable balloon system) and to explore the surrounding area (both were mobile rovers). Two of the more-interesting questions surrounding creativity concern the role of intelligence and the assessment of creative ability. Research by Sternberg and Lubart (1996) shows that analytic intelligence correlates at about the .5 level with creative intelligence. Thus, the best research available indicates that analytic intelligence and creativity are related, but the relationship is far from perfect. Some level of analytic intelligence seems necessary for creativity, but having a high level of analytic intelligence is no guarantee that a leader will be creative. And like practical intelligence, creativity seems to be specific to certain fields and subfields: Most composers are not architects, and most writers are not mathematicians (Cronbach, 1984; Sternberg & Lubart, 1996; Sternberg & Oess, 2001; Sternberg 2002a, 2003a, b). In addition, actually assessing creativity is no simple matter. Tests of creativity, or divergent thinking, are very different from tests that assess convergent thinking. Tests of convergent thinking usually have a single best answer; good examples here are most intelligence and aptitude tests. Conversely, tests of creativity or divergent thinking have many possible answers (Guilford, 1967). Although Sternberg and Lubart (1996), Sternberg and Oess (2001), and Sternberg (2001) all showed that it is possible to reliably judge the relative creativity of different responses, the fact remains that judging creativity is more difficult than scoring convergent tests. For example, there are no set answers or standards for determining whether a movie, a marketing ad, or a new manufacturing process is truly creative. Another difficulty in assessing creativity is that it may wax and wane over time; many of the most creative people seem to have occasional dry spells or writer’s block. This
Slide 99: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 95 180 Part Two Focus on the Leader is very different from analytic intelligence, where performance on mental abilities tests remains fairly constant over time. The Components of Creative Intelligence So far we have discussed creative intelligence as a unitary ability. However, as seen in Table 7.3, research suggests that creativity appears to be made up of seven components: synthetic ability, analytic intelligence, practical intelligence, thinking style, personality factors, intrinsic motivation, and environMost artists have to hack through a mental factors (Amabile, 2001; Amabile & Conti, 1995; Amabile, tangled thicket of negativity, logic, Schatzel, Moneta, & Kramer, 2004; Reiter-Palmon & Illies, 2004; and procrastination on the way to Kersting, 2003; Kohn, 1987; Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Sterncreating anything. Peter seems to be berg, 1985, 2001, 2003a, b; Sternberg & Grigorenko, 1997; Sternberg supernaturally free of any such & Lubart, 1996). Synthetic ability is what we traditionally view as concerns. This is a guy with a big creativity; these skills help people see things in new ways or recwide conduit running from the ognize novel patterns or connections. Analytic intelligence helps creative, imaginative part of his people to evaluate solutions, and practical intelligence provides brain, straight to the place where most of us keep our willpower. That the knowledge and experience base from which novel solutions are developed. According to Sternberg and Lubart (1996), and could be a recipe for a monstrously Sternberg, (2003a, b) these first three components are very imporselfish ego. Again, Jackson’s ability tant to the creative process, and leaders lacking in any one of them to chase goals doesn’t come with that type of baggage. He’s driven, will be less creative than those possessing all three. and he’s incredibly demanding, but Thinking style is somewhat related to synthetic ability. Thinkhe’s always focused on results, ing styles are not abilities per se, but rather are the preferred ways never on himself. for using the abilities one has (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 1997). For Costa Botes example, some people seem to prefer improving or adapting alScreenwriter ready existing products or processes. A first-line supervisor in a manufacturing facility may be very adept at modifying existing production schedules or equipment in order to better meet customers’ needs. Other people seem to prefer developing completely new products. A team leader tasked with developing a new ad campaign for a major brewer TABLE 7.3 The Components of Creative Intelligence Synthetic Ability: These skills help people see things in new ways or recognize novel connections between seemingly unrelated issues or concepts. Analytic Intelligence: This helps to evaluate the usefulness of potential solutions to problems. Practical Intelligence: Novel solutions to problems are usually based on relevant knowledge and experience. Thinking Style: People either prefer to modify what already exists or completely start over with new solutions. Personality Factors: Lower prudence, higher openness to experience, and higher surgency scores are related to creativity. Intrinsic Motivation: People tend to generate more creative solutions when the problem at hand is personally interesting. Environmental Factors: Supportive leadership, a lack of time pressure, team stability, and weaker social ties are all related to generating more creative solutions to problems.
Slide 100: 96 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits 181 might come up with a series of promotional ads using novel attention-getting devices, such as frogs or chameleons. According to Kirton (1987), these two examples illustrate the difference between adaptive and innovative thinking styles. Adaptors prefer to modify or change existing products or processes; innovators prefer to create entirely new processes or products. Adaptors and innovators may have the same level of synthetic ability, but they just seem to use this ability in different ways. It is important to note that U.S. companies seem particularly adept at developing new technology (i.e., innovation), whereas Japanese industries are very good at improving the technology and finding efficient ways to bring it to the marketplace (i.e., adaptation). Several personality factors also seem to play a role in creativity. More specifically, people having higher levels of self-confidence, independence, and energy (syngery), risk-taking and impulsiveness (dependability), and natural curiosity (openness to experience) seem to be more creative than people who lack self-confidence, are more conforming, and are less open to new and novel experiences (Amabile, 2001; Amabile & Gryskiewicz, 1987; Hogan & Morrison, 1993; Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Sternberg & Lubart, 1996; Zhou, 2003; Curphy, 2003c). People will also be more creative when they are intrinsically motivated or feel challenged by the subject matter or problem itself (Amabile, 2001; Amabile & Hennessey, 1988; Sternberg, 2002; Amabile et al., 2004; Tierney & Farmer, 2002; Tierney, Farmer, & Graen, 1999). Creative people are more likely to focus attention on solving the problem at hand, not on the need to meet deadlines, make money, or impress others. Finally, several situational or environmental factors appear related to creativity. People who have more complex or challenging jobs, who have supportive, noncontrolling leaders and are given ample time seem to be more creative than people in uninteresting jobs who are under tight deadlines and also have highly controlling supervisors (Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Zhou, 2003; Shalley & Gilson, 2004; Amabile et al., 2004; Dingfelder, 2003; Basadur, 2004; Farson & Keyes, 2002; Farmer, Tierney, & Kung-McIntyre, 2003). Several aspects of work groups also seem to affect creativity. Although the size of the group did not seem to matter, teams that were given clear goals, stayed task focused, and provided mutual support and participation often developed more innovative solutions than teams lacking these qualities (West & Anderson, 1996). Team stability also seems to play a role in creativity. Amabile and Conti (1995; 1997) studied companies before, during, and after going through a large downsizing, and reported that teams that remained relatively intact during this process were substantially more creative in terms of patent applications than teams that were broken up. These authors also reported that an organization’s support for creativity, in terms of time and resources, was a key factor in the creativity of individual employees. Another factor that affects creativity is team cohesiveness. You might think that teams with higher levels of cohesiveness would be more creative than teams that do not get along, but research shows that just the opposite is true. Because highly cohesive teams tend to share the same values, their team members often look at the world in similar ways. Teams having members with dissimilar values will likely have more conflict, but they are also more likely to look at problems from different
Slide 101: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 97 182 Part Two Focus on the Leader perspectives. And looking at issues differently is critical to creative problem solving (Florida, Cushing, & Gates, 2002; Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003). The story of Chester Carlson provides a good example of how some of the seven components play important roles in developing a creative and useful solution to a problem. Chester Carlson invented the photocopy duplicating process, which revolutionized office work. Duplicating machines are relied on so much today that most people probably assume the invention was met with instant accept- The fastest way to succeed is to ance. That was not the case, however. Most people double the failure rate. Thomas Watson, Sr. do not realize that it was 22 years from the time IBM Carlson got the idea to the time his product became commercially available—or that refining and “selling” his concept was an uphill battle primarily because of the existence of carbon paper. (With carbon paper, people thought, why would you need anything else?) His solution for making copies of documents was certainly imaginative, but it was also derived from his considerable technical expertise. Moreover, his persistence in developing and persuading others of the potential of his process is a testament to the importance of intrinsic motivation in creativity. Creative thinking is not an entirely rational or conscious process. Many times we do our most imaginative thinking unconsciously; people often gain sudden insights to an old problem out of the blue. There are interesting anecdotal accounts of how different creative thinkers recognized and even harnessed these unconscious processes. Albert Einstein, for example, once remarked that he got his best ideas in the morning when he was shaving. The great inventor Thomas Edison reportedly developed a technique to awaken himself and capture the typically unusual imagery and mental activity occurring as one falls asleep. These thinkers recognized the mind’s fertility during its resting periods. Einstein’s and Edison’s receptivity to ideas emerging from their nonlogical mental processes was surely an important part of their genius. They were able to harness their unconscious rather than censor it, as many of us may do by suppressing or discounting mental activity that seems purposeless, nonsensical, or threatening. Implications of the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence The three types of intelligence in Sternberg’s theory correspond nicely with the three leaders identified in Chapter 1. Although the three leaders probably possess high levels of all three types of intelligence, Colin Powell has a highly developed level of practical intelligence for leading in the military. He has commanded a number of large and small military units and held If I had to sum up in one word what line and staff positions during times of peace and war. And over makes a good manager, I’d say the past four years he has been able to build his knowledge of fordecisiveness. You can use the eign affairs in his role as secretary of state. Likewise, Aung San Suu fanciest computers to gather the Kyi has developed a highly evolved knowledge base of the numbers, but in the end you have to Burmese political system and how to change it. Peter Jackson set a timetable and act. clearly has the highest level of creative intelligence; few people Lee Iacocca could match the professional awards and financial gains made by his Lord of the Rings films.
Slide 102: 98 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits 183 Some 200 separate studies have examined the relationship between intelligence test scores and leadership effectiveness or emergence, and these studies have been the topic of major reviews by Stogdill (1948); Mann (1959); Ghiselli (1963); Stogdill (1974); Bray, Campbell, and Grant (1974); Cornwell (1983); Bray and Howard (1983); Lord, DeVader, and Allinger (1986); Bass (1990); and Fiedler (1992). These 10 reviews provided overwhelming support for the idea that leadership effectiveness or emergence is positively correlated with analytic intelligence. Nonetheless, it is important to recognize that the correlation between analytic intelligence and leadership success is far from perfect. Leadership situations that are relatively routine, unchanging, or require specific in-depth product or process knowledge may place more importance on practical intelligence than analytic intelligence. Having a high level of analytic intelligence seems more important when solving ambiguous, complex problems, such as those encountered by executives at the top levels of an organization. Here leaders must be able to detect themes and patterns in seemingly unrelated information, make accurate assumptions about market conditions, or make wise merger, acquisition, or divestiture decisions. Further evidence that higher levels of analytic intelligence are associated with top leaders can be found in Figure 7.5. Although a high level of analytic intelligence is usually an asset to a leader, research also suggests that in some situations analytic intelligence may have a curvilinear relationship with leadership effectiveness (Ghiselli, 1963; Stogdill, 1974). When differences in analytic intelligence between leader and followers are too great, communication can be impaired; a leader’s intelligence can become an impediment to being understood by subordinates (Bass, 1990; Ferris, Witt, & Hochwarter, 2001). An alternative explanation for the curvilinear relationship between analytic intelligence and leadership effectiveness may have to do with how stress affects leader–subordinate interactions. Fiedler (1992, 2002) and Gibson (1992) found that smart but inexperienced leaders were less effective in stressful FIGURE 7.5 Average Power Test Scores (Raw) 67 66 65 64 63 62 61 N= Supervisor N = 1042 First-line Manager Middle Manager N = 2785 N = 3929 Executive N = 3038 Average intelligence test scores by management level. Source: N. Kuncel, “Personality and Cognitive Differences among Management Levels” (Unpublished manuscript, Personnel Decisions International, Minneapolis, 1996).
Slide 103: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 99 184 Part Two Focus on the Leader situations than less intelligent, experienced leaders. An example of this finding was clearly demonstrated in the movie Platoon. In one frantic scene, an American platoon is ambushed by the Vietcong, and an inexperienced, college-educated lieutenant calls for artillery support from friendly units. He calls in the wrong coordinates, however, and as a result artillery shells are dropped on his own platoon’s position rather than the enemy’s position. The situation comes under control only after an experienced sergeant sizes up the situation and tells the artillery units to cease firing. This example points out the importance of practical intelligence in stressful situations. Leaders revert to well-practiced behaviors under periods of high stress and change, and leaders with high levels of practical intelligence have a relatively broad set of coping and problem-solving behaviors to draw upon in these situations. Because of the level of stress and change associated with many leadership positions today, systematically improving practical leadership skills through education and experience is extremely important for leaders and leadersto-be. With respect to creative intelligence, perhaps the most important point leaders should remember is that their primary role is not so much to be creative themselves as to build an environment where others can be creative. This is not to say that leaders should be uncreative, but rather that most innovations have their roots in ideas developed by people closest to a problem or opportunity (i.e., the workers). Leaders can boost the creativity throughout their groups or organizations in many ways, but particularly through selecting creative people in the first place, and providing opportunities for others to develop their creativity, and through broader interventions like making sure the motivation or incentives for others are conducive to creativity and providing at least some guidance or vision about what the creative product or output should look like (Basadur, 2004; Reiter-Polman & Illies, 2004; Shalley & Gilson, 2004; Amabile et al., 2004; Mumford, Scott, Gaddis, & Strange, 2002; Zhou, 2003; Sternberg, Kaufman, & Pretz, 2003). There are several things leaders can do to improve the group and organizational factors affecting creativity. Leaders should be mindful of the effect various sorts of incentives or rewards can have on creativity; certain types of motivation to work are more conducive to creativity than others. Research has shown that people tend to generate more creative solutions when they are told to focus on their intrinsic motivation for doing so (i.e., the pleasure of solving the task itself) rather than focusing on the extrinsic motivation (i.e., public recognition or pay) (Amabile, 1985, 2001; Amabile & Hennessey, 1988; Tierney, Farmer, & Graen, 1999). When they need to foster creativity, leaders may find it more effective to select followers who truly enjoy working on the task at hand (i.e., are intrinsically motivated) rather than relying on rewards (i.e., extrinsic motivation) to foster creativity. It is also helpful to remember that synthetic abilities can also be hindered if people believe that their ideas will be evaluated. The experiments of Amabile (1983, 1987) and Zhou (1998) showed that students who were told their projects were to be judged by experts produced less creative projects than students who were not told their projects would be judged. A similar sort of phenomenon can occur in groups. Even when a group knows its work must ultimately be evaluated, there is a pronounced tendency for members to be evaluative and judgmental too early in
Slide 104: 100 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits 185 TABLE 7.4 Creativity Killers: How to Squelch the Creativity of Direct Reports Source: T. M. Amabile and J. Zhou, in S. F. Dingfelder, “Creativity on the Clock,” Monitor on Psychology, November, 2003, pp. 56–58. The following is a list of things leaders can do if they wish to stifle the creativity of their followers: Take Away All Discretion and Autonomy: People like to have some sense of control over their work. Micromanaging staff will help to either create yea-sayers or cause people to mentally disengage from work. Create Fragmented Work Schedules: People need large chunks of uninterrupted time to work on novel solutions. Repeated interruptions or scheduling “novel solution generation time” in 15-minute increments around other meetings will disrupt people’s ability to be innovative. Provide Insufficient Resources: People need proper data, equipment, or money to be creative. Cut these off, and watch creativity go down the tubes. Focus on Short-Term Goals: Asking a person to be creative at right this moment is like asking Chris Rock to be funny the first time you meet him. People can be creative and funny if given enough time, but focusing on only short-term outcomes will dampen creativity. Create Tight Timelines: The tighter the deadlines, the more likely that innovation will be reduced. Discourage Collaboration and Coordination: The best ideas often come from teams having members with very different work experiences and functional backgrounds. By discouraging cross-functional collaboration, leaders can help guarantee that team members will only offer up tried and true solutions to problems. Keep People Happy: If you keep workers happy enough, then they will have little motivation to change the status quo. the solution-generating process. This tends to reduce the number of creative solutions generated, perhaps because of a generally shared belief in the value of critical thinking (and in some groups the norm seems to be the more criticism the better) and of subjecting ideas to intense scrutiny and evaluation. When members of a group judge ideas as soon as they are offered, two dysfunctional things can happen. People in the group may censor themselves (i.e., not share all their ideas with the group), as even mild rejection or criticism has a significant dampening effect (Prince, 1972), or they may prematurely reject others’ ideas through negativistic focus on an idea’s flaws rather than its possibilities. Given these findings, leaders may want to hold off on evaluating new ideas until they are all on the table, and should also encourage their followers to do the same. Finally, leaders who need to develop new products and services should try to minimize the level of turnover in their teams and provide them with clear goals. Teams having unclear goals may successfully develop new or novel products, but these products may have low marketability or usefulness. Two examples might help illustrate this point. In the 1980s Texas Instruments (TI) decided to delve into the personal computer business. TI had a reputation for technical excellence, and one of the best managers in the company was asked to head up the project. The manager did not have a clear sense of what customers wanted or what a personal computer should be able to do. This lack of clarity had some fairly dramatic effects. As more and more engineers were added to the project, more and more innovative hardware ideas were added to the computer design. These additions caused the
Slide 105: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 101 186 Part Two Focus on the Leader project to take much longer and cost a lot more than planned, but the TI personal computer ended up winning a number of major engineering awards. Unfortunately, it was also a business disaster, as the product ultimately failed to meet customer needs. Although Compaq computers arose from the ashes of TI’s failure, the TI project serves as a good example for a concept called creeping elegance. Leaders not having a clear vision of what a final project should look like may end up with something that fails to meet customer needs. Leaders need to provide enough room for creativity to flourish, but enough direction for effort to be focused (Shalley & Gilson, 2004; Farson & Keyes, 2002). One industry that places a premium on creativity is the motion picture industry. Because creativity is so important to the commercial success of a movie, it is relatively easy for a movie to succumb to creeping elegance. But how do movie directors successfully avoid creeping elegance when dealing with highly creative people having huge egos? Part of the answer may be in the approach of two of Hollywood’s most successful directors. Steven Speilberg and Ron Howard said that before they ever shot a scene they first had a very clear picture of it in their own minds. If they did not have a clear picture, then they sat down with the relevant parties and worked it out. Both situations point out the importance of having a clear vision when managing creativity. Intelligence and Stress: Cognitive Resources Theory In the preceding section we noted that intelligence may be a more important quality for leaders in some situations than others. You may be surprised to learn, however, that recent research actually suggests there are times when intelligence may be a disadvantage. A key variable affecting this paradoxical finding seems to be whether or not the leader is in a stressful situation. Recent research suggests that stress plays a key role in determining just how a leader’s intelligence affects his or her effectiveness. While it is not surprising that stress affects behavior in various ways, Fiedler and Garcia (1987) developed the cognitive resources theory (CRT) to explain the interesting relationships between leader intelligence and experience levels, and group performance in stressful versus nonstressful conditions. As first described in Chapter 4, CRT consists of several key concepts. Certainly one of these is intelligence. Fiedler and Garcia (1987) and Fiedler (1995, 2002) defined intelligence as we have earlier—it is one’s all-around effectiveness in activities directed by thought and is typically measured using standardized intelligence tests (i.e., analytic intelligence). Another key concept is experience, which represents the habitual behavior patterns, overlearned knowledge, and skills acquired for effectively dealing with task-related problems (i.e., practical intelligence). Although experience is often gained under stressful and unpleasant conditions, experience also provides a “crash plan” to revert back to when under stress (Fiedler, 1992, 1995, 2002). As Fiedler observed, people often act differently when stressed, and the crash plan describes this change in behavior patterns. For most of the CRT studies, experience has been defined as time in the job or organization. A third key concept in CRT is stress. Stress is often defined as the result of conflicts with superiors or the apprehension associated with performance evaluation (Fiedler, 1995; Gibson, 1992). This interpersonal stress is believed to be emotionally disturbing
Slide 106: 102 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits 187 and can divert attention from problem-solving activities (Sarason, 1986). In other words, people can get so concerned about how their performance is being evaluated that they may fail to perform at an optimal level. In sum, cognitive resources theory provides a conceptual scheme for explaining how leader behavior changes under stress levels to impact group performance. Cognitive resources theory makes two major predictions with respect to intelligence, experience, stress, and group performance. First, because experienced leaders have a greater repertoire of behaviors to fall back on, leaders with greater experience but lower intelligence are hypothesized to have higher-performing groups under conditions of high stress. Experienced leaders have “been there before” and better know what to do and how to get it done when faced with highstress situations. Leaders’ experience levels can interfere with performance under low-stress conditions, however. That leads to a second hypothesis. Because experience leads to habitual behavior patterns, leaders with high levels of experience will have a tendency to misapply old solutions to problems when creative solutions are called for (Fiedler, 1992, 1995, 2002). Experienced leaders overrely on the tried and true when faced with new problems, even when under relatively low periods of stress. Thus, leaders with higher levels of intelligence but less experience are not constrained by previously acquired behavior patterns and should have higher-performing groups under low-stress conditions. In other words, experience is helpful when one is under stress but is often a hindrance to performance in the absence of stress. These two major predictions of CRT can be readily seen in everyday life. For the most part, it is not the most intelligent but the most experienced members of sporting teams, marching bands, acting troops, or volunteer organizations who are selected to be leaders. These leaders are often chosen because other members recognize their ability to perform well under the high levels of stress associated with sporting events and public performances. In addition, research with combat troops, firefighters, senior executives, and students has provided reasonably strong support for the two major tenets of CRT (Fiedler & Garcia, 1987; Fiedler, 1992, 1995, 2002; Gibson, 1992). Despite this initial empirical support, one problem with CRT concerns the apparent dichotomy between intelligence and experience. Fiedler and Garcia’s (1987) initial investigations of CRT did not examine the possibility that leaders could be both intelligent and experienced. Subsequent research by Gibson (1992) showed not only that many leaders were both intelligent and experienced, but also that these leaders would fall back on their experience in stressful situations and use their intelligence to solve group problems in less-stressful situations. Another issue with CRT concerns the leader’s ability to tolerate stress. As Schonpflug (1995) and Zaccaro (1995) correctly pointed out, some leaders may be better able to tolerate high levels of stress than others. Some leaders may have personalities characterized by high adjustment scores, and it may be that such leaders may do well in high-stress situations even when they lack experience because of their inherent ability to handle stress. Further research on this issue seems warranted. In general, Fiedler and his colleagues have provided solid evidence to support the major tenets of CRT. Because of this research, CRT has several important
Slide 107: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 103 188 Part Two Focus on the Leader implications for leaders. First, it may be that the best leaders are often smart and experienced. Although intelligence tests are good indicators of raw mental horsepower, it is just as important for leaders to broaden their leadership knowledge and experience if they want to be successful in high-stress situations. This latter point may be very important today, where the additional stress of organizational downsizing and “delayering” may cause the performance of leaders to be scrutinized even more closely than in the past. In fact, this additional scrutiny may well cause leaders who were previously successful to perform rather poorly in this high-stress environment. Second, leaders may not be aware of the degree to which they are causing stress in their followers. If followers perceive that their performance is being closely watched, then they are likely to revert to their crash plans in order to perform. If the situation calls for new and novel solutions to problems, however, the leaders’ behavior may be counterproductive. A key point here is that leaders may be unaware of their impact on followers. For example, they may want to review their followers’ work more closely in order to be helpful, but followers may not perceive it this way. Third, the level of stress inherent in the position needs to be understood before selection of leaders. Those doing the selection to fill high-stress leadership positions can either look for experienced leaders or reduce the stress in the situation so that more intelligent leaders can be more successful (Levy-Leboyer, 1995; Fielder, 2002). Another alternative could be to hire more intelligent leaders and put them through some type of stress management program so that the effects of stress are minimized (Fielder, 1995, 2002). It is also possible that experienced leaders may get bored if placed into low-stress positions (Ganzach, 1998). Emotional Intelligence and Leadership What Is Emotional Intelligence? In terms of the building blocks of skills, Chapter 6 described the role values play in leadership. Similarly, this chapter has discussed how bright- and dark-side personality traits and analytic, practical, and creative intelligence are related to leadership effectiveness. But we have not discussed whether moods affect leaders’ ability to build teams and get results through others. Moods and emotions are constantly at play at work, yet most people are hesitant to discuss moods with anybody other than close friends. It also appears that moods can be contagious, in that the moods of leaders often affect followers in both positive and negative ways. And charismatic or transformational leaders use emotions as the catalyst for achieving better than expected results (see Chapter 13). Given the importance and prevalence of emotions in the workplace, it would seem that there would be a wealth of research regarding mood and leadership effectiveness. But this is not the case. Researchers have really begun to seriously examine the role of emotions in leadership only over the past 15–20 years. The relationships between a leader’s emotions and their effects on teams and outcomes became popularized with the publication of a book, Emotional Intelligence (Goleman, 1995). But what is emotional intelligence (EQ), and how is it the same as or different from personality or the three types of intelligence described in this chapter?
Slide 108: 104 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits 189 Unfortunately, there appears to be at least four major definitions of emotional intelligence. The term There is no single entity called EQ emotional intelligence can be attributed to two psy- (emotional intelligence quotient) as chologists, Peter Salovey and John Mayer, who people have defined it. One studied why some bright people fail to be success- sympathetic interpretation of what ful. Salovey and Mayer (1990) discovered that many journalists were saying is that there were a dozen unrelated things, of them ran into trouble because of their lack of inwhich collectively might predict terpersonal sensitivity and skills, and defined emo- more than intelligence, things like tional intelligence as a group of mental abilities that warmth, optimism, and empathy. help people to recognize their own feelings and But there was nothing new about those of others. Bar-On (1996) believed that emo- that. Instead, the story became this tional intelligence was another way of measuring fabulous new variable that is going human effectiveness and defined it as a set of 15 to outpredict intelligence. There is abilities necessary to cope with daily situations and no rational basis for saying that. John Mayer get along in the world. Aberman (2000) defined emotional intelligence as the degree to which thoughts, feelings, and actions were aligned. According to Aberman, leaders are more effective and “in the zone” when their thoughts, feelings, and actions were perfectly aligned. Daniel Goleman, a science writer for the New York Times, substantially broadened these definitions and summarized some of this work in his books Emotional Intelligence (1995) and Working with Emotional Intelligence (1998). Goleman argued that success in life is based more on one’s self-motivation, persistence in the face of frustration, mood management, ability to adapt, and ability to empathize and get along with others than on one’s analytic intelligence or IQ. Table 7.5 provides a comparison between the Salovey and Mayer, Bar-On, and Goleman models of emotional intelligence. Caruso, Mayer, and Salovey (2002) maintain that these four definitions of EQ can be broken down into two models: an ability model and a mixed model of emotional intelligence. The ability model focuses on how emotions affect how leaders think, decide, plan, and act. This model defines emotional intelligence as four separate but related abilities, which include: (a) the ability to accurately perceive one’s own and others’ emotions; (b) the ability to generate emotions to facilitate thought and action; (c) the ability to accurately understand the causes of emotions and the meanings they convey; and (d) the ability to regulate one’s emotions. According to Caruso, Mayer, and Salovey (2002), some leaders might be very good at perceiving emotions and leveraging them to get results through others, but have difficulties regulating their own emotions. Or they could be very good at understanding the causes of emotions but not as good at perceiving others’ emotions. The ability model is not intended to be an all-encompassing model of leadership, but rather supplements the FFM and Triarchic Theory of Intelligence. Just as leaders differ on adjustment or practical intelligence, so do they differ on their ability to perceive and regulate emotions. The ability model of EQ is helpful because it allows researchers to determine if EQ is in fact a separate ability and whether it can predict leadership effectiveness over and above the FFM and cognitive abilities. The Goleman and Bar-On definitions of EQ fall into the mixed model category. These researchers believe emotional intelligence includes not only the abilities outlined in the previous paragraph but also includes a number of other attributes. As
Slide 109: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 105 190 Part Two Focus on the Leader TABLE 7.5 Ability and Mixed Models of Emotional Intelligence Sources: R. Bar-On, Emotional Quotient Inventory (North Tonawanda, NY: Multi Health Systems, Inc. 2001); D. Goleman, Working with Emotional Intelligence (New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1998); D. R. Caruso, J. R. Mayer, and P. Salovey, “Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Leadership,” in R. E. Riggio, S. E. Murphy, and F. J. Pirozzolo (Eds.), Multiple Intelligences and Leadership (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002), pp. 55–74; On line source: http://www. eiconsortium.org. Ability Model Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso Goleman et al. Perceiving Emotions Mixed Models Bar-On Self-Awareness Intrapersonal Emotional Awareness Self-Regard Accurate Self-Assessment Emotional Self-Awareness Self-Confidence Assertiveness Independence Self-Actualization Self-Regulation Interpersonal Self-Control Empathy Trustworthiness Social Responsibility Conscientiousness Interpersonal Relationship Adaptability Innovation Motivation Adaptability Achievement Reality Testing Commitment Flexibility Initiative Problem-Solving Optimism Empathy Understanding Others Stress Management Developing Others Stress Tolerance Service Orientation Impulse Control Diversity Political Awareness General Mood Optimism Social Skills Happiness Influence Communication Conflict Management Leadership Change Catalyst Building Bonds Collaboration/Cooperation Team Capabilities Managing Emotions Using Emotions Understanding Emotions such, the mixed model provides a much broader, more comprehensive definition of emotional intelligence. A quick review of Table 7.5 shows that the attributes of emotional intelligence are qualities that most leaders should have, and Goleman (1998) and Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee (2001; 2002) maintain that leaders need more or less all of these attributes to be emotionally intelligent. Moreover, the mixed model of emotional intelligence has been much more popular with human resource professionals and in the corporate world than the ability model. But does the mixed model really tell us anything different from what we already know? More specifically, is the mixed model any different than the FFM of personality? The fact of the matter is that the mixed model is very, very similar to the FFM. Comprehensive research by Van Rooy and Viswesvaran (in press) showed that EQ
Slide 110: 106 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits 191 predicts job performance no better than the FFM, and research by Caruso, Mayer, and Salovey (2002) that the mixed model does not predict important job outcomes over and above the FFM. Goleman and Bar-On should deservedly get credit for popularizing the notion that noncognitive abilities are important predictors of leadership success. But on the negative side, they also maintain that they have discovered something completely new and do not give enough credit to the 100 years of personality research that underlie many of the attributes in the mixed model. Can Emotional Intelligence Be Measured and Developed? The publication of Emotional Intelligence (Goleman, 1996) has sprouted a cottage industry of books, training programs, and assessments related to measurement and development of emotional intelligence. Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) is a measure of the ability model of emotional intelligence and asks subjects to recognize the emotions depicted in pictures, what moods might be helpful in certain social situations, and so forth (Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso, 2001). Bar-On has self, self-other, youth, and organizational measures of emotional intelligence, such as the Bar-On Emotional Quotient—360 or EQi-S (Bar-On, 2002). The Emotional Competence Inventory (ECI) was developed by Goleman and consists of 10 questionnaires. These questionnaires are completed by the individual and nine others; the responses are aggregated and given to the participant in a feedback report. Because these researchers have defined emotional intelligence differently and use a different process to assess EQ, it is not surprising that these instruments often provide leaders with conflicting results (Schwartz, 2000). Nevertheless, the Air Force Recruiting Service has used the EQi to screen potential recruiters; it found that candidates scoring higher on the attributes of assertiveness, empathy, happiness, self-awareness, and problem solving were much less likely to turn over prematurely in the position and had a 90 percent chance of meeting their recruiting quotas (Schwartz, 2000). One issue that most EQ researchers do agree upon is that emotional intelligence can be developed. Goleman and Aberman have developed one- to five-day training programs to help leaders improve their emotional intelligence; Bar-On has developed 15 e-learning modules that are available at EQ University.com. One of the big adopters of EQ training has been the sales staff at American Express Financial Advisors (AEFA). Leaders at AEFA discovered that the company had a well-respected set of investment and insurance products for customers, but many sales staff were struggling with how to respond to the emotions exhibited by clients during sales calls. Moreover, the best salespeople seem to be better able to “read” their clients’ emotions and respond in a more empathetic manner. Since 1993 more than 5,500 sales staff and 850 sales managers at AEFA have attended a five-day training program to better recognize and respond to the emotions exhibited by clients. AEFA found that sales staff attending this program increased annual sales by an average of 18.1 percent, whereas those who did not attend training only achieved a 16.1 percent increase. However, the sample was very small and the comparison somewhat unfair because the control group did not receive any kind of sales training in lieu of the EQ training (Schwartz, 2000). Therefore, it is uncertain whether the EQ training content actually adds value over and above five days of sales training.
Slide 111: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 107 192 Part Two Focus on the Leader Implications of Emotional Intelligence Aberman (2000) maintained that people can be extremely ineffective when their thoughts, feelings, and actions are misaligned—for example, arguing with someone on your cellular phone when driving on the interstate highway. It seems likely that leaders who are thinking or feeling one thing and actually doing something else are probably less effective in their ability to influence groups toward the accomplishment of their goals. The EQ literature should also be credited with popularizing the idea that noncognitive abilities, such as stress tolerance, assertiveness, and empathy, can play important roles in leadership success. Today, many organizations are using both cognitive and noncognitive measures as part of the process of hiring or promoting leaders. Finally, the EQ literature has also helped to bring emotion back to the workplace. Human emotions are very important aspects of one-on-one interactions and teamwork (Druskat & Wolff, 2001), but too many leadership practitioners and researchers have chosen to ignore the role they play. When recognized and leveraged properly, emotions can be the motivational fuel that help individuals and groups to accomplish their goals. When ignored or discounted, emotions can significantly impede a leader’s ability to influence a group. As discussed in the FFM section of this chapter, leaders who can empathize and get along with others are often more successful than those who cannot. Some of the more recent research in emotional intelligence indicates what moderates employees’ reactions to job insecurity and their ability to cope with stress when threatened with job loss. Employees with lower EQ reported more negative emotional reactions and used less effective coping strategies when dealing with downsizing than those with higher EQ (Jordan, Ashkanasy, & Hartel, 2002). Along these lines, Wong and Law (2002) report positive relationships between leaders’ and followers’ EQ scores, job performance, and job satisfaction. And Boyatzis, Stubbs, and Taylor (2002) accurately point out that most MBA programs are more focused on cognitive abilities and developing financial skills than on those abilities needed to successfully build teams and get results through others. Despite these positive contributions, emotional intelligence has several limitations. First, some researchers, Goleman in particular, have maintained that EQ is more important than intelligence when it comes to leadership success. Unfortunately, none of the research bears this out. The simple fact of the matter is that leaders will not be successful if they have lots of EQ but little IQ; the most effective leaders have both of these qualities. Second, Goleman and his associates and BarOn have not acknowledged the existence of personality, much less 100 years of personality–leadership effectiveness research. As seen in Table 7.6, Goleman’s conceptualizations of EQ look very similar to the FFM found in Table 7.1. At least as conceptualized by these two authors, it is difficult to see how EQ is any different from personality. Third, if the EQ attributes are essentially personality traits, then it is difficult to see how they will change as a result of a training intervention. Personality traits are very difficult to change, and the likelihood of changing 20 to 40 years of day-to-day behavioral patterns as the result of some e-learning modules or a five-day training program seems highly suspect. As we will see in the next
Slide 112: 108 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits 193 chapter, people can change their behavior, but it takes considerable effort and coaching over the long term to make it happen. Finally, an important question to ask is whether EQ is really something new, or simply a repackaging of old ideas and findings? If EQ is defined as an ability model, such as the one put forth by Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso, then emotional intelligence probably is a unique ability and worthy of additional research (see Figure 7.6). A leader’s skills in accurately perceiving, regulating, and leveraging emotions seem vitally important in building cohesive, goal-oriented teams, and measures like the MSCEIT (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2001) could be used in conjunction with FFM and cognitive abilities measures to hire and develop better leaders. But if EQ is defined as a mixed model, then it is hard to see that Goleman and his associates and Bar-On are really telling us anything new. TABLE 7.6 Comparison between the FFM and Goleman’s Model of EQ Goleman et al. Self-Awareness Emotional Awareness Accurate Self-Assessment Self-Confidence Self-Regulation Self-Control Trustworthiness Conscientiousness Adaptability Innovation Motivation Achievement Commitment Initiative Optimism Empathy Understanding Others Developing Others Service Orientation Diversity Political Awareness Social Skills Influence Communication Conflict Management Leadership Change Catalyst Building Bonds Collaboration/Cooperation Team Capabilities Likely FFM Correlates Agreeableness Adjustment Surgency Adjustment, Dependability Dependability Dependablity Adjustment, Dependability Openness to Experience, Dependability Surgency Surgency Surgency Adjustment Agreeableness Openness to Experience Agreeableness Agreeableness Agreeableness Surgency, Agreeableness Surgency Agreeableness Surgency Surgency Agreeableness Agreeableness Surgency, Agreeableness
Slide 113: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 109 194 Part Two Focus on the Leader FIGURE 7.6 Emotional intelligence and the building blocks of skills. Skills/ Competencies Knowledge Experience Analytic, Practical, Creative, and Emotional Intelligence Personality Traits and Types Values Interests Motives/Goals Summary This chapter examined the relationships between personality, intelligence, and emotional intelligence with leadership success. In general, all of these attributes can help a leader to influence a group toward the accomplishment of its goals, but in and of themselves they are no guarantee of leadership success. Oftentimes the situation will dictate which personality traits, components of intelligence, or emotional intelligence attributes will positively affect a leader’s ability to influence a group. Although the term personality has many different meanings, we use the term to describe one’s typical or characteristic patterns of behavior. There are several different theories to describe why people act in characteristic ways, but the trait approach to personality has been the most thoroughly researched, and as such plays a key role in the chapter. The adoption of the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality has helped to clarify the personality–leadership relationships, and researchers have noted that leadership success is positively correlated with the FFM personality dimensions of surgency, dependability, agreeableness, and adjustment. The FFM comprises the bright side of personality, but there are a number of traits that also constitute the dark side of personality. Dark-side personality traits are irritating, counterproductive behaviors that are exhibited during times of stress and interfere with a leader’s ability to build teams or get results through others. Virtually everyone has one or two dark-side traits; some of the keys to being a more successful leader is knowing which dark-side traits you possess, identifying the situations in which they appear, and developing strategies to manage them. The most recent theory for understanding intelligence divides it into three related components: analytic intelligence, practical intelligence, and creative intelligence. All three components are interrelated. Most research shows that leaders possess higher levels of analytic intelligence than the general population, and that more intelligent leaders often make better leaders. Analytic intelligence appears to confer two primary benefits upon leaders. First, leaders who are smarter seem to be better problem solvers. Second, and perhaps more important, smarter leaders seem to profit more from experience. The roles of practical and creative intelligence in leadership are receiving increasing attention. Practical intelligence, or one’s relevant job knowledge or experi-
Slide 114: 110 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits 195 ence, is proving to be extremely important for leaders. Leaders with higher levels of practical intelligence seem to be better at solving problems under stress. Moreover, practical intelligence seems to be the easiest of the three components to change. This implies that leaders should use techniques such as the action-observation-reflection model, described in Chapter 3, to extract the most learning from their experiences. Creative intelligence involves developing new and useful products and processes, and creativity is extremely important to the success of many businesses today. Creativity consists of seven components, including synthetic abilities, analytic intelligence, practical intelligence, thinking skills, relevant personality traits, intrinsic motivation, and several environmental factors. Understanding the seven components of creativity is important as the factors can give leaders ideas about how to improve their own and their followers’ creativity. It is important that leaders learn how to successfully stimulate and manage creativity, even more than being creative themselves. In some ways emotional intelligence is a relatively new concept, and there are at least four different definitions of emotional intelligence. Generally, emotional intelligence has to do with understanding and responding to one’s own and others’ emotions. Leaders who can better align their thoughts and feelings with their actions may be more effective than leaders who think and feel one way about something but then do something different about it. Although emotional intelligence has helped to point out the role emotions and noncognitive abilities play in leadership success, some of it seems to be nothing more than another label for personality. If this is the case, then emotional intelligence may be a leadership fad that will fade away over time. Key Terms Great Man theory, 158 personality, 159 trait approach, 160 traits, 160 weak situations, 161 strong situations, 161 Five Factor Model of personality, 162 surgency, 162 agreeableness, 163 Level 5 Leadership, 164 dependability, 164 adjustment, 165 openness to experience, 165 managerial incompetence, 169 dark-side personality traits, 170 types, 174 personality typology, 174 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI,) 174 extraversion– introversion, 174 sensing–intuition, 174 thinking–feeling, 174 judging–perceiving, 174 intelligence, 175 triarchic theory of intelligence, 176 analytic intelligence, 176 practical intelligence, 176 creative intelligence, 179 divergent thinking, 179 convergent thinking, 179 synthetic ability, 180 adaptive thinking style, 181 innovative thinking style, 181 creeping elegance, 186 cognitive resources theory (CRT), 186 emotional intelligence, 189
Slide 115: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 111 196 Part Two Focus on the Leader Questions 1. What FFM and dark-side personality traits do you think would help professional sports players be more or less successful? Would successful coaches need the same or different personality traits and preferences? Would successful players and coaches need different traits for different sports? 2. Do you think personality is a helpful dimension for understanding the effectiveness of political leaders? Does this question necessarily imply that successful political leaders have good personalities, and unsuccessful ones bad personalities? (Hint: explore this issue by considering both the bright and the dark side of personality.) 3. Think of all the ineffective leaders you have ever worked or played for. What dark-side traits did these leaders possess that caused them to be ineffective? 4. Individuals may well be attracted to, selected for, or successful in leadership roles early in their lives and careers based on their analytic intelligence. But what happens over time and with experience? Do you think wisdom, for example, is just another word for intelligence, or is it something else? 5. What role would downsizing play in an organization’s overall level of practical intelligence? 6. We usually think of creativity as a characteristic of individuals, but might some organizations be more creative than others? What factors do you think might affect an organization’s level of creativity? 7. Can better leaders more accurately perceive and leverage emotions? How could you determine if this was so? The leadership skills relevant to this chapter include: • • • • Learning from experience Problem solving Improving creativity Diagnosing performance problems in individuals, groups, and organizations Skills Activity 1. Your instructor has access to as on-line FFM and dark side personality assessments. Both instruments take about 40 minutes to complete and could be given as homework. Once the assessments are completed, you should review the feedback reports and discuss in class. 2. Your instructor could suspend a 30-foot rope approximately 2 feet off the ground. You and the rest of the class would get on one side of the rope. The rope represents an electrified fence, and your task is to get everyone successfully over the rope without touching it. You may not touch, lower, raise, or adjust the rope in any manner. You may not let any part of your skin or clothing touch the rope, nor can you drape anything over the rope to protect you from the current. There are two rules you must follow to successfully navigate the rope. First, before starting to cross the fence, everyone in the group must form a line parallel to the rope and hold hands with the people on either side. These links with the other people in the group cannot be broken. Second, a quality
Slide 116: 112 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 7 Leadership Traits 197 error is committed if any group member touches the fence. If the group detects their own error, then only the person currently attempting to navigate the fence needs to start over. If the instructor catches the error but the group does not, then the instructor has the right to have the entire group start over. This is analagous to catching a bad product before it is delivered to a customer instead of delivering defecting products to customers. You will have about 25 minutes to plan and execute this exercise. Minicase “Lessons on Leadership from Ann Fudge” How do you rescue one of the largest advertising and media services firms in the world from a downward spiral? That is the question Martin Sorrell faced when his London-based WPP Group acquired Young & Rubicam in 2000. After many years on top, Y&R was starting to lose momentum—and clients. Kentucky Fried Chicken, United Airlines, and Burger King had all decided to take their advertising dollars elsewhere. Sorrell needed to stop the exodus, but how? He decided a fresh face was needed and started a search for a new CEO for Y&R—he wanted a dynamic leader who could revitalize Y&R. He found such a leader in Ann Fudge. Ann Fudge was formerly president of Kraft Foods. At Kraft she had been responsible for the success of the $5 billion division that included well-known brands such as Maxwell House, Grape Nuts, Shredded Wheat, and General Foods International Coffees. Fudge’s reputation as a charismatic leader who listens was a major issue for Sorrell when he went looking for a new CEO for Y&R. Among the talents Fudge had to offer was an ability to interact effectively with all constituencies of a consumer business. Mattel Chairman and CEO Bob Eckert was Fudge’s boss when he was president and CEO of Kraft. Of Fudge, Eckert says, “She is equally comfortable with consumers at the ballpark, factory workers on a production line, and executives in the boardroom. She could engage all three constituents in the same day and be comfortable. She is very comfortable with herself, and she’s not pretending to be someone else. That’s what makes her such an effective leader.” Her commitment to her work and the people she works with is evident in the lesson she offers to other leaders: 1. Be yourself, do not feign behavior that you think will make you “successful.” 2. Always remember it’s the people, not you. A leader cannot be a leader if he/she has no followers. Be honest with people. Give them feedback. Put the right people in the right jobs. Surround yourself with the smartest people you can find— people who will offer differing perspectives and diversity of experience, age, gender, race. 3. Touch your organization. It’s easy to get stuck behind your desk. Fight the burden of paperwork and get out in the field. Don’t be a remote leader. You cannot create a dynamic culture if people can’t see, hear, touch you. Let them know you as a person.
Slide 117: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 7. Leadership Traits © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 113 198 Part Two Focus on the Leader 4. Steer the wheel with a strategic focus, yet maintain a wide peripheral vision. Know when to stop, speed up, slow down, brake quickly, swerve, or even gun it! Fudge had a difficult decision to make when she was approached by Sorrell about the position at Y&R. She was in the midst of a two-year break—after 24 years working for corporate America, Fudge decided to take some time for herself. She had left her position as president of Kraft Foods in 2001 based not on her dissatisfaction with her job, but on a desire to define herself by more than her career. “It was definitely not satisfaction, it was more about life,” says Fudge about her sabbatical. During her two-year break she traveled, cycling around Sardinia and Corsica; she took up yoga; and she wrote a book: The Artist’s Way at Work, a manual for improving creatively and innovation on the job. Fudge took on the challenge and has not looked back. In her tenure at Y&R she has worked hard to get Y&R back on top. She has traveled the globe, visiting with Y&R empioyees around the world living rule number 3 of her own leadership rules. She frequently puts in 15-hour days pushing her strategy to focus on clients, encouraging teamwork, and improving creativity. A major undertaking for Fudge is to try and bring together the various business entities under the Y&R umbrella to better meet the needs of clients. She’s also trying to institute a Six Sigma method for creativity—looking for ways to increase productivity so employees have more time to be creative. Fudge’s hard work is paying off. Y&R has recently added Microsoft and Toys R Us to their list of clients, and, if Fudge has her way, the list will continue to grow until Y&R is back on top. 1. How would Ann Fudge fall into each of the Five Factor Model (FFM) categories? 2. Consider the components of creative intelligence from Table 7.3. Identify the key components that have impacted Ann Fudge’s success. 3. Ann Fudge decided to take a sabbatical to focus more on her personal life. Based on her experience, what are some of the benefits to such a break? What might be some of the drawbacks? Sources: Diane Brady, “Act Two: Ann Fudge’s two-year break from work changed her life. Will those lessons help her fix Young & Rubicam?”, Business Week (3/29/04), p. 72; http://www.internetmarketing-branding.com/News/african_american.htm; http://www.brandweek.com/brandweek/search/ article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id 1000506747; http://www.linkageinc.com/conferences/leadership/gild/
Slide 118: 114 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 8 Leadership Behavior The leader sets the example. Whether in the Army or in civilian life, the other people in the organization take their cue from the leader—not from what the leader says, but what the leader does. Colin Powell Throughout Chapters 4–7 we have been talking about different ways to assess leaders. But when all is said and done, how can we tell “good” leaders from “bad” leaders? One way to differentiate leaders is to look at results; some leaders have a track record of getting good results across a variety of situations whereas others seem to have difficulties getting work done through others. But another key way we distinguish between effective and ineffective leaders is to look at what they do on a day-to-day basis. Some leaders do a good job making decisions, providing direction, creating plans, giving regular feedback, and getting their followers the resources they need to be successful. Other leaders have difficulties making decisions, set vague or unclear goals, and ignore followers’ requests for equipment. Although a leader’s values, personality, and intelligence are important, variables like these only have an indirect relationship with leadership effectiveness. Their effect presumably comes from the impact they have on leader behavior, which appears to have a more direct relationship with the leader’s ability to build teams and get results through others. One advantage of looking at leaders in terms of behavior instead of, say, personality is that behavior is often easier to measure; leadership behaviors can be observed whereas personality traits, values, or intelligence must be inferred from behavior or measured with tests. Another advantage of looking at leader behavior is that many people are less defensive about, and feel in more control of, specific behaviors than they do about their personalities or intelligence. This point has significant implications for developing leadership skills, a topic we will take up in detail at the end of this book. 199 Introduction
Slide 119: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 115 200 Part Two Focus on the Leader Leaders with certain traits, values, or attitudes may find it easier to effectively perform some leadership behaviors than others. For example, leaders with higher agreeableness scores (as defined in Chapter 7) may find it relatively easy to show concern and support for followers but may also find it difficult to discipline followers. Likewise, leaders with low recognition and affiliation values (Chapter 6) and who score low on the personality trait of sociability (Chapter 7) will be less comfortable giving public presentations. But because behavior is under conscious control, we can always choose to change our behavior as leaders if we want to. It is important to remember, however, that the ease in which we exhibit or can change behavior will partly be a function of our values, personality, and intelligence. Followers and the situation are the two other major factors to keep in mind when evaluating leadership behavior. As described in Chapter 7, strong situational norms can play pervasive roles in leaders’ behavior. Similarly, follower and situational factors can help determine whether a particular leadership behavior is “bad” or “good.” Say a leader provided a group of followers with extremely detailed instructions on how to get a task accomplished. If the followers were new to the organization or had never done the task before, then this level of detail would probably help the leader get better results through others. But if the followers were very experienced, then this very same leader behavior would likely have detrimental effects. The same would be true if the company was in a financial crisis versus having a very successful year. This chapter begins with a discussion on why it is important to study leadership behavior. We then review some of the early research on leader behavior, and discuss several ways to categorize or conceptualize different leadership behaviors. Next, we briefly summarize what is currently known about a common leadership behavior assessment technique, the 360-degree, or multirater, feedback questionnaire. The last section provides both a research perspective and some practical advice on behavioral change. It includes such topics as development planning, coaching, and mentoring. Studies of Leadership Behavior Why Study Leadership Behavior? Thus far, we have reviewed research on a number of key variables affecting leadership behavior, but we have not directly examined fundamentally what leaders actually do to successfully influence a group. For example, what did Colin Powell do as a lieutenant to influence his platoon in Vietnam, and were the behaviors needed to be successful as the chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or secretary of state the same as or different from those needed in Vietnam? What exactly did Peter Jackson do to get a troupe of actors to commit to seven years of filming a trilogy that many said could not be done? Or to get New Line Productions to invest the $250,000,000 needed to create the movies? What did Aung San Suu Kyi do to win the Nobel Prize for Peace, and what does she continue to do that allows her to attract followers to the democracy movement in Burma? Because of these questions, it is appropriate to turn our attention to leader behavior itself, for if we could identify how successful leaders act
Slide 120: 116 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 8 Leadership Behavior 201 compared with unsuccessful leaders, then we could design systems that would allow us to hire, For every person who’s a manager develop, and promote the skills necessary for or- and wants to know how to manage ganizations to succeed in the future. Unfortunately, people, there are 10 people who are given the success of the Dilbert comic strip and the being managed and would like to explosive growth of management consulting firms, figure out how to make it stop. Scott Adams, it appears that there are a number of leaders (or the creator of “Dilbert” persons in positions of leadership) who either do not know what to do and how to do it, or do not realize how their behavior is affecting the people who work for them (Curphy, 1996a; 1998a; 2002; 2003a, b, 2004a, e, h; Curphy & Hogan, 2004a, b; Hogan & Curphy, 2004; Chavan & Colvin; 1999). Before we go into the different ways to categorize what leaders do to influence a group, it might be good to review what we know so far about leadership skills and behaviors. As seen in Figure 8.1, leadership behaviors (which include skills and competencies) are a function of intelligence, personality traits, emotional intelligence, values, attitudes, interests, knowledge, and experience. The factors in the bottom layer of blocks are relatively difficult to change, and they predispose a leader to act in distinctive ways. As described in Chapter 7, one’s personality traits are pervasive and almost automatic, occurring typically without much conscious attention. The same could be said about how values, attitudes, and intelligence affect behaviors. Over time, however, it is hoped that leaders learn and discern which behaviors are more appropriate and effective than others. It is always useful to remember the pivotal roles individual difference and situational variables can play in a leader’s actions (see Highlight 8.1). The Early Studies If you were asked how to study and identify the behaviors that best differentiated effective from ineffective leaders, how would you do it? Interviews, behavioral observation, and paper-and-pencil techniques (e.g., questionnaires) would seem FIGURE 8.1 The building blocks of skills. Behavior/ Skills/ Competencies Initiating Structure & Consideration Employee & Job-Centered Dimensions The Leadership Grid 360-Degree Feedback Managerial Derailment Self-Defeating Behaviors Coaching and Mentoring Behaviors Knowledge Experience Intelligence Personality Traits, Types, and Emotional Intelligence Values Interests Motives/Goals
Slide 121: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 117 202 Part Two Focus on the Leader Behaviors versus Skills Highlight 8.1 Leadership behaviors are somewhat different from leadership skills. A leadership behavior concerns a specific action, whereas a leadership skill consists of three components, which include a well-defined body of knowledge, a set of related behaviors, and clear criteria of competent performance. Perhaps leadership skills may be better understood by using an analogy from basketball. People differ considerably in their basketball skills; good basketball players know when to pass and when to shoot, and are adept at making layups, shots from the field, and free throws. Knowing when to pass and when to shoot is an example of the knowledge component, and hitting layups and free throws are examples of the behavioral component of skills. In addition, shooting percentages can be used as one criterion for evaluating basketball skills. Leadership skills, such as delegating, can be seen much the same way. Good leaders know when and to whom a particular task should be delegated (i.e., knowledge), they effectively communicate their expectations concerning a delegated task (i.e., behavior), and they check to see whether the task was accomplished in a satisfactory manner (i.e., criteria). Thus, a skill is knowing when to act, acting in a manner appropriate to the situation, and acting in such a way that it helps the leader accomplish team goals. to be the most likely approaches. You could ask leaders what they do, follow the leaders around to see how they actually behave, or administer questionnaires to ask them and those they work with how often the leaders exhibited certain behaviors. These three approaches have been used extensively in past and present leadership research. Much of the initial leader behavior research was conducted at Ohio State University and the University of Michigan. Collectively, the Ohio State University studies developed a series of questionnaires to measure different leader behaviors in work settings. Hemphill (1949) began this development effort by collecting over 1,800 questionnaire items that described different types of leadership behaviors. These items were collapsed into 150 statements, and these statements were then used to develop a questionnaire called the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ) (Hemphill & Coons, 1957). In order to obtain information about a particular leader’s behavior, subordinates were asked to rate the extent to which their leader performed behaviors like the following: He lets subordinates know when they’ve done a good job. He sets clear expectations about performance. He shows concern for subordinates as individuals. He makes subordinates feel at ease. In analyzing the questionnaires from thousands of subordinates, the statistical pattern of responses to all the different items indicated leaders could be described in terms of two independent dimensions of behavior called consideration and initiating structure (Fleishman, 1973; Halpin & Winer, 1957). Consideration refers to how much a leader is friendly and supportive toward subordinates. Leaders high
Slide 122: 118 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 8 Leadership Behavior 203 in consideration engage in many different behaviors that show supportiveness and concern, such as speaking up for subordinates’ interests, caring about their personal situations, and showing appreciation for their work. Initiating structure refers to how much a leader emphasizes meeting work goals and accomplishing tasks. Leaders high in initiating structure engage in many different task-related behaviors, such as assigning deadlines, establishing performance standards, and monitoring performance levels. The LBDQ was not the only leadership questionnaire developed by the Ohio State researchers. They also developed, for example, the Supervisory Descriptive Behavior Questionnaire (SBDQ), which measured the extent to which leaders in industrial settings exhibited consideration and initiating structure behaviors (Fleishman, 1972). The Leadership Opinion Questionnaire (LOQ) asked leaders to indicate the extent to which they believed different consideration and initiating behaviors were important to leadership success (Fleishman, 1989). The LBDQ-XII was developed to assess 10 other categories of leadership behaviors in addition to consideration and initiating structure (Stogdill, 1959). Some of the additional leadership behaviors assessed by the LBDQ-XII included acting as a representative for the group, being able to tolerate uncertainty, emphasizing production, and reconciling conflicting organizational demands. Rather than trying to describe the variety of behaviors leaders exhibit in work settings, the researchers at the University of Michigan sought to identify leader behaviors that contributed to effective group performance (Likert, 1961). They concluded that four categories of leadership behaviors are related to effective group performance: leader support, interaction facilitation, goal emphasis, and work facilitation (Bowers & Seashore, 1966). Both goal emphasis and work facilitation are job-centered dimensions of behavior similar to the initiating structure behaviors described earlier. Goal emphasis behaviors are concerned with motivating subordinates to accomplish the task at hand, and work facilitation behaviors are concerned with clarifying roles, acquiring and allocating resources, and reconciling organizational conflicts. Leader support and interaction facilitation are employee-centered dimensions of behavior similar to the consideration dimension of the various Ohio State questionnaires (see Table 8.1). Leader support includes behaviors where the leader shows concern for subordinates; interaction facilitation includes those behaviors where leaders act to smooth over and minimize conflicts among followers. Like the researchers at Ohio State, those at the University of Michigan also developed a questionnaire, the Survey of Organizations, to assess the degree to which leaders exhibit these four dimensions of leadership behaviors (Bowers & Seashore, 1966). Although the behaviors composing the task-oriented and people-oriented leadership dimensions were similar across the two research programs, there was a fundamental difference in assumption underlying the work at the University of Michigan and that at Ohio State. Researchers at the University of Michigan considered job-centered and employee-centered behaviors to be at opposite ends of a single continuum of leadership behavior. Leaders could theoretically manifest either strong employee or job-centered behaviors, but not both. On the other hand, researchers at Ohio State believed that consideration and initiating structure were
Slide 123: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 119 204 Part Two Focus on the Leader TABLE 8.1 Ohio State Dimensions Initiating Structure Consideration University of Michigan Dimensions Goal Emphasis & Work Facilitation Leader Support & Interaction Facilitation independent continuums. Thus, leaders could be high in both initiating structure and consideration, low in both dimensions, or high in one and low in the other. The key assumption underlying both research programs was that certain behaviors could be identified that are universally associated with a leader’s ability to successfully influence a group toward the accomplishment of its goals. Here are the kinds of questions researchers were interested in: From the University of Michigan perspective, who tends to be more effective in helping a group to accomplish its goals, job- or employee-centered leaders? From the Ohio State perspective, are leaders who exhibit high levels of both taskand people-oriented behaviors more effective than those who exhibit only task or people behaviors? What role do situational factors play in leadership effectiveness? Are employeecentered leadership behaviors more important in nonprofit organizations or downsizing situations, whereas job-centered behaviors are more important in manufacturing organizations or start-up situations? The answers to these questions have several practical implications. If leaders need to exhibit only job- or employee-centered behaviors, then selection and training systems need to focus only on these behaviors. But if situational factors play a role, then researchers need to identify which variables are the most important, and to train leaders how to modify their behavior accordingly. As you might suspect, the answer to all of these questions is, “It depends.” In general, researchers have reported that leaders exhibiting a high level of consideration or employee-centered behaviors had more satisfied subordinates. Leaders who set clear goals, explained what followers were to do and how to get tasks accomplished, and monitored results (i.e., initiating structure or job-centered) often had higher-performing work units if the group faced relatively ambiguous or illdefined tasks (Bass, 1990; Judge, Piccolo, & Ilies, 2003; Eisenberger, Stinglhamber, Vandenberghe, Sucharski, & Rhoades, 2002). At the same time, however, leaders whose behavior was highly autocratic (an aspect of initiating structure) were more likely to have relatively dissatisfied subordinates (Bass, 1990). Findings like these suggest that there is no universal set of leader behaviors always associated with leadership success. Often the degree to which leaders need to exhibit task- or people-oriented behaviors depends upon the situation, and it is precisely this finding that prompted the research underlying the contingency theories of leadership described in Chapter 12. If you review these theories you will see strong links to the job- and employee-centered behaviors identified 40 years ago. Alternative Conceptualizations of Leadership Behaviors The Ohio State and University of Michigan studies were a good first step in describing what leaders actually do. Other researchers have extended these findings into more user-friendly formats or developed different schemes for categorizing
Slide 124: 120 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 8 Leadership Behavior 205 FIGURE 8.2 The Leadership Grid figure. Source: Robert R. Blake and Anne Adams McCanse, Leadership Dilemmas—Grid Solutions (Houston: Gulf Publishing, 1991), p. 29. Copyright 1991, by Scientific Methods, Inc. Reproduced by permission of the owners. High 9 1,9 Country Club Management: Country Club Management: Thoughtful attention to the needs of Thoughtful attention to the needs of the people for satisfying relationships the people for satisfying relationships leads to a comfortable, friendly leads to a comfortable, friendly organization atmosphere and work organization atmosphere and work tempo. tempo. 9,9 Team Management: Work accomplishment is from committed people; interdependence through a "common stake" in organization purpose leads to relationships of trust and respect. 8 7 Concern for People 6 Middle-of-the-Road Management: 5 5,5 Adequate organization performance is possible through balancing the necessity to get work out while maintaining morale of people at a satisfactory level. 4 3 Impoverished Management: Exertion of minimum effort to get required work done is appropriate to sustain organization management.. management. 2 Authority-Compliance Management: Efficiency in operations results from arranging conditions of work in such a way that human elements interfere to a minimum degree. 1 Low 1,1 1 Low 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9,1 ® 9 High Concern for Results leadership behaviors. Like the earlier research, these alternative conceptualizations are generally concerned with: (a) identifying key leadership behaviors, (b) determining whether these behaviors have positive relationships with leadership success, and (c) developing those behaviors related to leadership success. One popular conceptualization of leadership is really an extension of the findings reported by the University of Michigan and Ohio State leadership researchers. The Leadership Grid® profiles leader behavior on two dimensions: concern for people and concern for production (Blake & McCanse, 1991; Blake & Mouton, 1964). The word concern reflects how a leader’s underlying assumptions about people at work and the importance of the bottom line affect leadership style. In that sense, then, the Leadership Grid deals with more than just behavior. Nonetheless, it is included in this chapter because it is such a direct descendant of earlier behavioral studies. As Figure 8.2 shows, leaders can get scores ranging from 1 to 9 on both concern for people and concern for production depending on their responses to a leadership questionnaire. These two scores are then plotted on the Leadership Grid, and the two score combinations represent different leadership orientations.
Slide 125: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 121 206 Part Two Focus on the Leader Each orientation reflects a “unique set of assumptions for using power and authority to link people to production” (Blake & McCanse, 1991, p. 29). Amid the different leadership styles, the most effective leaders are claimed to have both high concern for people and high concern for production, and Leadership Grid training programs are designed to move leaders to a 9,9 leadership style. Whereas this objective seems intuitively appealing, where do you think Aung San Suu Kyi, Colin Powell, or Peter Jackson score on these two dimensions? Do all three of them show a high concern for production and people? Are there differences between the three leaders, or are all three 9,9 leaders? Although the Leadership Grid can be useful for describing or categorizing different leaders, we should note that the evidence to support the assertion that 9,9 leaders are the most effective comes primarily from Blake, Mouton, and their associates. However, other more recent research might shed some light on whether 9,9 leaders are really the most effective. Robie, Johnson, Nilsen, and Hazucha (2001) conducted a study of 1,400 managers in the United States, Germany, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, France, and Belgium to determine whether the same leadership behaviors were related to effectiveness across countries. They reported that leadership behaviors associated with problem solving and driving for results (initiating structure or 9,1 leadership) were consistently related to successfully influencing a group to accomplish its goals, regardless of country. Similar results about initiating structure and job performance were reported by Judge, Piccolo, and Ilies (2003). Using 800 managers in a U.S. high-tech firm, Goff (2000) reported that managers who spent more time building relationships (consideration or 1,9 leadership) also had more satisfied followers (i.e., they were less likely to leave the organization). Likewise, Judge, Piccolo, and Ilies (2003) and Eisenberger et al. (2002) reported strong support for the notion that higher consideration behavior can reduce employee turnover. These results seem to indicate that the most effective leadership style might just depend on the criteria used to judge effectiveness. The context and style of a leader’s behavior are factors which affect impact (see Highlight 8.2). So far in this section we have described several ways to categorize leaders or leadership behaviors, but what are the implications of this research for leadership practitioners? Believe it or not, you can see the practical application of this leadership behavior research in just about every Global 1000 company. As first discussed in Chapter 4, competency models describe the behaviors and skills managers need to exhibit if an organization is to be successful (King, Fowler, & Zeithaml, 2001). Just as leaders in different countries may need to exhibit behaviors uniquely appropriate to that setting to be successful, different businesses and industries within any one country often emphasize different leadership behaviors. Therefore, it is not unusual to see different organizations having distinct competency models depending upon the nature and size of the business, its level of globalization, or the role of technology or teams in the business (Peterson, 1998; Ulrich, Zenger & Smallwood, 1999). An example of a competency model for a major high-tech firm can be found in Figure 8.3. The inside wheel represents the general competencies, and the outside wheel represents the more specific skills managers in this company need to carry it successfully through the 21st century.
Slide 126: 122 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 8 Leadership Behavior 207 Does Humor Matter? Highlight 8.2 Leaders exhibit many kinds of behavior. Some are focused on task accomplishment, whereas others are more related to supporting followers. Some leaders are naturally funny, and others seem stern and humorless. Does a leader’s sense of humor affect his or her ability to influence a group toward the accomplishment of its goals? Several researchers examined this question and discovered the answer is not a simple yes or no. Laissez-faire leaders (1,1) who used humor reported having more satisfied followers, but did not have higher performing work groups. Task-focused leaders (9,1) who used humor actually had less satisfied and lower performing work units. Apparently their use of humor seemed out of sync with their constant focus on goal setting, productivity, and cost-cutting initiatives. Transformational leaders (9,9), and those leaders with high levels of emotional intellegence who used humor seemed to have higher performing work groups. The key lesson from this research appears to be that the impact of a leader’s humor will depend on the leader’s style and the context in which it is delivered. Task-focused leaders should be keenly attuned to followers’ needs when the company is facing an economic downturn or a difficult organizational dilemma, and also be aware that the use of humor in these situations will probably have just the opposite effect as intended. Sources: B. J. Avolio, J. M. Howell, and J. J. Sosik, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Bottom Line: Humor as a Moderator of Leadership Style Effects,” Academy of Management Journal 42, no. 2 (1999), pp. 219–27; F. Sala, “Laughing All the Way to the Bank,” Harvard Business Review, September 2003, pp. 16–17. Many of the best organizations now have competency models for different levels of management. For example, the behaviors and skills needed by department supervisors, store managers, district managers, regional vice presidents, and division presidents at The Home Depot vary considerably, and these differences are reflected in the competency models for each management group. These models help to clarify expectations of performance and describe the skills necessary for promotion. They also help human resource professionals to design selection, development, performance management, and succession planning programs so that organizations have a steady supply of leadership talent (Bracken, 1994; Curphy, 2001, 2002, 2003a, 2004a, e; Hogan & Warrenfelz, 2003; Louiselle, Bridges, & Curphy, 2003; Gebelein, 1994, 1996; Schippmann, Ash, Battista, Carr, Eyde, Hesketh, Kehoe, Pearlman, Prien, & Sanchez, 2000; Tett, Guterman, Bleier, & Murphy (in press). According to Hogan and Warrenfelz (2003), the skills and behaviors found in virtually every organizational competency model fall into one of four major categories. Intrapersonal skills are those leadership competencies and behaviors having to do with adapting to stress, goal orientation, and adhering to rules and include the competencies found in Demonstrating Adaptability and Personal Values & Mastery in Figure 8.3. It is important to note that these skills and behaviors do not involve interacting with others, and they are among the most difficult to change. Interpersonal skills are those that involve direct interaction, such as communicating and building relationships with others. The competencies of Communication Skills and Aligning People & Processes in Figure 8.3 fall into this category, and these skills are somewhat easier to develop. The competencies of Sponsoring
Slide 127: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 123 208 Part Two Focus on the Leader An example of a management competency model for a Fortune 500 high-tech firm. Source: Personnel Decisions. Copyright 1991, Personnel Decisions. All rights reserved. Used with permission. Acts with Inte grity Demo nstrat es & Se l f-con Courage fiden ce Val ues Div De ers ve ity lo ps On es elf FIGURE 8.3 es Plans Establish ages n Man entatio lem Imp on ts ses ul cu Res ly Fo ess nt sin ie Bu f ic Ef Management Skills The D Co em mm ons tr Im unic ates pa ati ct on Foste Comm rs Open unica tion s High Show ment it Comm C Mo reate En tivat s a vir on ional me nt s ate str ility n mo tab De dap A ps Coaches & Develo Change and Motivation & Development of Others in Figure 8.3 fall into the Leadership skills category. These are the skills and behaviors concerned with building teams and getting results through others, and these are more easily developed than the skills and behaviors associated with the first two categories. Finally, the competencies of Vision & Strategy and Management Skills fall into the Business skills category. These skills and competencies are often the focus of MBA programs and are the easiest to learn of the four categories. The Hogan and Warrenfelz (2003) domain model of leadership competencies is important as it allows people to see connections between seemingly different organizational competency models and makes predictions about how easy or difficult it will be to change various leadership behaviors and skills. Although organizational competency models have played a pervasive role in selecting, developing, and promoting government and business leaders, they have not played much of any role in another common form of leadership, which is community leadership. Community leadership is the process of building a team ks or W Personal Values & Mastery Vision & Strategy ov Pr Communication Skills PROFILOR ® s lem rob ities Pn es lyz r t u na p p o AO n & ses o ds Focu er Nee tom Cus ems Strategic Syst Thinking id e isi sV on Wheel Achieve Results Motivation & Development of Others Aligning People & Processes Builds Relatio nships Sponsoring Change Org Disp aniz l atio ays nal Fo Sav ste vy rs Tea D mw es ork & ign Pr s S oc ys es tem se ss s te va no ge In an Ch ns pio am flict Ch Con ges na Ma s Others Influence Composites Self-Managed Work Team Empowerment
Slide 128: 124 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 8 Leadership Behavior 209 of volunteers to accomplish some important community outcome (Krile, Lund, & Curphy, 2005), and represents an alternative conceptualization of leadership behavior. Examples of community leadership might include forming a group to raise funds for a new library, gathering volunteers for a blood drive, or organizing a campaign to stop the construction of a Wal-Mart. Thus, community leadership takes place whenever a group of volunteers gets together to make something happen (or not happen) in their local community. But leading a group of volunteers is very different than being a leader in a publicly traded company, the military, or in a government agency. For one thing, community leaders do not have any position power; they cannot discipline followers who do not adhere to organizational norms, get tasks accomplished, or show up to meetings. They also tend to have fewer resources and rewards than most other leaders. And because there is no formal selection or promotion process, anyone can be a community leader. But whether they will be successful in their community change effort will depend on three highly interrelated competencies (see Figure 8.4). Just as you need the three ingredients of oxygen, fuel, and an igniter to start a fire, so will you need the three competencies of framing, building social capital, and mobilization to successfully drive community change efforts. Framing is the leadership competency of helping a group or community recognize and define its opportunities and issues in ways that result in effective action. Framing helps the group or community decide what needs to be done, why it is important that it be done, and how it is to be done, and to communicate that in clear and compelling ways. Any community could take on a myriad of potential projects, but many of these projects never get off the ground because the person “in charge” never framed the project in such a way that others could understand: (a) the outcome; (b) how they would benefit by the outcome; or (c) what they would need to do to achieve the outcome. Building social capital is the leadership competency of developing and maintaining relationships that allow people to work together in the community across their differences. Just as financial capital allows an individual to make choices FIGURE 8.4 The components of community leadership. Source: J. Krile, D. Lund & G. Curphy, The Handbook of Community Leadership (Grand Rapids, MN: The Blandin Foundation, 2005). The Components of Community Leadership Framing Strengthened Community Social Capital Mobilization
Slide 129: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 125 210 Part Two Focus on the Leader about what they can purchase, such as buying a new television, car, or house, so too does social capital allow a community leader to make choices about which community change initiatives or projects are likely to be successful. If you have very little money, your options are severely limited. Likewise, leaders lacking social capital will have a very difficult time getting anything done in their communities, as they will not be able to mobilize the resources necessary to turn their vision into reality. Social capital is the power of relationships shared between individuals, an individual and a group, or between groups. Engaging a critical mass to take action to achieve a specific outcome or set of outcomes is the leadership competency of mobilization. Community leaders will have achieved a critical mass when they have enough human and other resources to get done what they want to get done. People, money, equipment, and facilities are often needed to pass bond issues or attract new businesses to a community. Mobilization is about strategic, planned purposeful activity to achieve clearly defined outcomes. Almost anyone can get resources moving, but it takes leadership to get enough of the right resources moving toward the same target. So how would the community leadership model come into play if you wanted to have a new student union built on your campus? First, you would need to frame the issue in such a way that other students understood what was in it for them and what they would need to do to make a new student union become reality. Second, you would need to reach out and build relationships with all of the current and potential users of the new student union. You would need to identify the formal and informal leaders of the different user groups and meet with them in order to gain and maintain their trust. Third, you would need these different user groups to take action in order to get the new student union built. Some of these actions might include raising funds, making phone calls, canvassing students to sign petitions, mounting a publicity campaign, and meeting with university and state officials who are the key decision makers about the issue. It is worth noting that you need to do all three of the community leadership components well if you are to be successful. You might be able to succinctly frame the issue, but if you lacked social capital or could not get a critical mass mobilized, then you would probably not get very far on building the new student union. The same would be true if you had a broad and well-established network of students but did not frame the issue in such a way that followers could take action. It is likely that as many community change efforts fail as succeed, and the reasons for failure often have to do with inadequate framing, social capital, or mobilization. Assessing Leadership Behaviors: Multirater Feedback Instruments One way to improve leadership effectiveness is to provide leadership practitioners with feedback regarding the frequency and skill with which they perform various types of leadership behaviors. A $200-million industry has developed over the past two decades to meet this need. This is the 360-degree, or multirater feedback, instrument industry, and it is difficult to overestimate the importance it has had on management development both in the United States and overseas. Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, has stated that these tools have been critical to GE’s success (Gebelein, 1994; Tichy & Cohen, 1997). Practically all of the Global 1000 companies are using some type of multirater feedback instrument for man-
Slide 130: 126 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 8 Leadership Behavior 211 agers and key individual contributors (Edwards & Ewen, 1996; Campbell, Curphy, & Tuggle, 1995; Every ten years or so a new Lepsinger & Lucia, 1997; Tornow & London, 1998; management innovation comes Collins, 1999; Morical, 1999; Bracken, Timmreck, along that generates much & Church, 2000; Atkins & Wood, 2002; Curphy, enthusiasm in organizations. Three 2002, 2003a, 2004a; Toegel & Conger, 2003). Multi- hundred and sixty degree feedback has perhaps been the most notable rater feedback instruments have been translated management innovation of the into 16 different languages, and well over five mil- 1990s. lion managers have now received feedback on LeeAnn Atwater their leadership skills and behaviors from these and David Waldman instruments (Curphy, 2001). Because of the pervasiveness of multirater feedback in both the public and private sectors, it will be useful to examine some of the issues surrounding these instruments. Bracken, Timmreck and Church (2000) and Atkins and Wood (2002) pointed out that many managers and human resource professionals have assumed that a manager’s self-appraisal was the most accurate source of information regarding leadership strengths and weaknesses. This view has changed, however, with the introduction of multirater feedback instruments. These tools show that direct reports, peers, and superiors can have very different perceptions about a target leader’s behavior, and these perspectives can paint a more accurate picture of the strengths and development needs of the leader than self-appraisals alone (see Figure 8.5). A manager may think he or she gets along exceptionally well with others, but if 360-degree feedback ratings from peers and direct reports indicate that the manager is very difficult to work with, then the manager should gain new insights on what to do to improve his leadership effectiveness. Prior to the introduction of 360-degree instruments, it was difficult for managers to get accurate information about how others perceived their on-the-job behaviors since the feedback they received from others in face-to-face meetings tended to be adulterated or watered down (Campbell, Curphy, & Tuggle, 1995; Peiperl, 2001; Curphy 2002a, 2004a; Toegel & Conger, 2003; Jackman & Strober, 2003). Moreover the higher one goes in an organization, the less likely one is to ask for feedback which results in bigger discrepancies between self and other perceptions (Jackman & Strober, 2003; Sala, 2003). And, as described in Chapter 7, many of the most frequent behaviors exhibited by leaders are rooted in personality traits and occur almost automatically, and many leaders do not understand or appreciate their impact on others. As a result, FIGURE 8.5 Sources for 360-degree feedback. Self Boss 360˚ Feedback Results Peers Direct Reports
Slide 131: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 127 212 Part Two Focus on the Leader for a long time it was difficult for managers to determine how to leverage leadership strengths and overcome behavioral deficits. Today, most organizations use 360-degree tools for management development, as a part of a training or coaching program, in succession planning, or even as a part of the performance appraisal process (Lepsinger & Lucia, 1997; Ghorpede, 2000; DeNisi & Kluger, 2000; Bracken, Timmreck, & Church, 2000; Church & Waclawski, 2001; Curphy, 2002, 2004a; Pfau & Kay, 2002; Toegel & Conger, 2003). Given the pervasive role 360-degree feedback plays in many organizations today, it is interesting to note that research is just starting to catch up with the use of these tools. Much of this research has explored whether 360-degree feedback even matters, whether self-observer perceptual gaps matter, whether leaders’ ratings can improve over time, and whether there are meaningful culture/ gender/race issues with 360-degree feedback ratings. With respect to the first issue, Atwater, Waldman, Atwater, and Cartier Three hundred and sixty degree (2000) and Sala and Dwight (2002) reported that leaders who refeedback results show that there are ceived 360-degree feedback had higher performing work units plenty of leaders who are leadership than leaders who did not receive this type of feedback. Church legends in their own minds but are (1997, 2000) looked at independent measures of performance and also charismatically challenged in reported that leaders receiving higher other (i.e., boss, peer, and dithe eyes of others. rect report) ratings did get more accomplished than those who reGordy Curphy ceived lower ratings. These results indicate that 360-degree feedback ratings do matter (Ghorpade, 2000). But a study of 750 firms by Watson-Wyatt, a human resource consulting firm, reported that companies that used 360-degree feedback systems had a 10.6 percent decrease in shareholder value (Pfau & Kay, 2002). Although this research provides strong evidence that 360-degree feedback may not “work,” it is important to note how these systems were being used in these firms. For the most part, Pfau and Kay (2002) examined firms using 360-degree feedback for performance appraisal, not development purposes. This distinction is important, as most 360-degree feedback systems are not designed to make comparisons between people. Instead, these systems are designed to tell leaders about their own relative strengths and development needs. But because 360-degree feedback are data based and provide good development feedback, many organizations decided to modify the process for performance appraisal purposes. This was a mistake, as with performance appraisals people are looking for favorable versus accurate feedback, and raters are induced to collude with each other if they know their pay or bonuses are going to be based on 360-degree feedback ratings (Toegel & Conger, 2003; Jackman & Strober, 2003; Greguras, Robie, Schleicher, & Goff III, 2003; Curphy, 2004g). When organizations use 360-degree feedback for performance appraisal purposes, they often get highly inflated ratings that do not provide good developmental feedback and make it difficult to make comparisons between leaders. The end result is a costly, timeintensive performance appraisal system that has little if any benefit to the individual or the boss and yields organizational results similar to those reported by Pfau and Kay (2002). The bottom line is that 360-degree feedback systems can add tremendous value, but only if they are used for development purposes (Toegel & Conger, 2003; Curphy & Hogan, 2004b).
Slide 132: 128 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 8 Leadership Behavior 213 As stated earlier, one of the advantages of 360degree feedback is that it provides insight into self- In many cases the only person who perceptions and others’ perceptions of leadership is surprised by his or her 360skills. But do self-observer gaps matter? Are leaders degree feedback results is the more effective if they have a high level of insight feedback recipient. Gordy Curphy (i.e., rate their strengths and weaknesses as a leader the same as others do)? Some level of disagreement is to be expected, as bosses, peers, and direct reports may each have different expectations for a leader (Chueng, 1999; Hooijberg & Choi, 2000; Greguras & Robie, 1998; Mount, Judge, Scullen, Sytsma, & Hezlett, 1998). Nevertheless, insight does not seem to matter as far as leadership effectiveness is concerned. Even leaders with large self-observer gaps were effective as long as they had high observer ratings. On the other hand, the least effective leaders were those with high self and low others’ ratings (Fleenor, McCauley, & Brutus, 1996; Church, 1997; Atwater, Ostroff, Yammarino, & Fleenor, 1998; Brett & Atwater 2001; Atkins & Wood, 2002; Sala & Dwight, 2002; Sala, 2003). The important lesson here is that leadership is in the eyes of others. And the key to high observer ratings is to develop a broad set of leadership skills that will help groups to accomplish their goals. Highlight 8.3 illustrates the responses of leaders who rejected their 360-degree feedback. Another line of research has looked at whether 360-degree feedback ratings improve over time. In other words, is it possible to change others’ perceptions of a leader’s skills? One would hope that this would be the case, given the relationship between others’ ratings and leadership effectiveness. Walker and Smither (1999) reported that managers who shared their 360-degree feedback results with their followers and worked on an action plan to improve their ratings had a dramatic improvement in others’ ratings over a five-year period. Johnson and Johnson (2001) Some of the Top Reasons for Rejecting Observer Feedback Highlight 8.3 Being a leader is a tough job. Being a good leader is even tougher. Everyone you work with believes he or she is an expert on the subject of leadership, and it is difficult to keep everyone happy all of the time. Most leaders put forth considerable effort to be effective only to discover that they may be coming up short in the eyes of others. As a result, many leaders find 360degree feedback to be a very valuable but somewhat unpleasant experience. The most effective leaders are those who accept unflattering feedback and do something about it. Less effective leaders are those who refuse to accept their 360-degree feedback results. The following are actual quotes of leaders who rejected their 360-degree feedback results: • “My former boss told me to act this way. I’m actually nicer.” • “These ratings are biased because some of my observers are jealous of my promotion.” • “Human resources should have given this survey to more conscientious people.” • “The strengths are accurate, but the weaknesses are overstated.” • “I think my observers had the rating scale backwards when they completed the questionnaires.” • “These people aren’t aware that I have changed those behaviors.”
Slide 133: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 129 214 Part Two Focus on the Leader looked at 360-degree ratings over a two-year period and reported leadership productivity improvements of 9.5 percent for 515 managers in a manufacturing company. DeNisi and Kluger (2000), Church and Waclawski (2001), Curphy (2002), Waldman (2003), Smither, London, Flautt, Vargas & Kucine (2003), and Curphy & Hogan (2004a, b) aptly pointed out that 360-degree feedback alone is often not enough to improve leadership skills. Leaders must set development goals and commit to a development plan to improve skills if they want to see improvement in others’ ratings (and, in turn, leadership effectiveness) over time. The last line of research has explored whether there are important cultural, racial, or gender issues with 360-degree feedback. In terms of cultural issues, some countries, such as Japan, do not believe that peers or followers should provide leaders with feedback (Tornow & London, 1998). Other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, tend more to avoid conflict and provide only positive feedback to leaders (Curphy, 2001). The latter phenomenon is not limited to other countries, but appears also in the United States where researchers working in small organizations or in rural communities often report similar findings. People seem more hesitant to provide leaders with constructive feedback if they have to deal with the consequences of this feedback both on and off work (Curphy, 2001, 2002, 2003a, 2004a, g, h). The implication of these findings is that 360-degree feedback is not a management panacea; societal or organizational culture plays a key role in the accuracy and utility of the 360-degree feedback process. With respect to racial differences, a comprehensive study by Mount, Sytsma, Hazucha, and Holt (1997) looked at the pattern of responses from bosses, peers, and subordinates for over 20,000 managers from a variety of U.S. companies. In general, these researchers reported that blacks tended to give higher ratings to other blacks, irrespective of whether they were asked to provide peer, subordinate, or boss ratings. However, the overall size of this effect was rather small. White peers and subordinates generally gave about the same level of ratings for both black and white peers and bosses. This was not the case for white bosses, however, who tended to give significantly higher ratings to whites who reported directly to them. These findings imply that black leaders are likely to advance at a slower pace than their white counterparts, as 80–90 percent of salary, bonus, and promotion decisions are made solely by bosses (Bernardin & Beatty, 1984). Later in this chapter Thomas (2001) will describe now these racial differences play out in mentoring programs. With respect to gender issues, research indicates that there are some gender differences, though these differences tend to be slight. Female managers tend to get higher ratings on the majority of skills, yet their male counterparts are generally perceived as having higher advancement potential. There does not appear to be any same-sex bias in 360-degree feedback ratings, and female managers tend to be lower self-raters. Male managers tend to have less accurate self-insight and a higher number of blind spots when compared to their female counterparts (Personnel Decisions International, 1995). So what should a leadership practitioner take away from all of this 360-degree feedback research? First, given the popularity of the technique, it is likely that you will receive 360-degree feedback sometime in your career. Second, 360-degree feedback should be built around an organization’s competency model, which in
Slide 134: 130 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 8 Leadership Behavior 215 turn describes the leadership behaviors needed to achieve organizational goals (Ulrich, Zenger, & Smallwood, 1999, Curphy 2004a; Curphy & Hogan, 2004a, b). Third, 360-degree feedback may be one of the best sources of “how” feedback for leadership practitioners. Leaders get plenty of “what” feedback—what progress they are making toward group goals, what level of customer service is being achieved, win–loss records, and so on, but they get very little feedback on “how” they should act to get better results. Multirater instruments provide this feedback. Fourth, effective leaders seem to have a broad set of well-developed leadership skills. Fifth, leaders need to create specific goals and development plans in order to improve leadership skills—360-degree feedback results give leaders ideas on what to improve but may not be enough in and of themselves to affect behavioral change. Sixth, leadership behavior can change over time, but it may take a year or two to acquire new skills and for the changes to be reflected in 360-degree feedback ratings. Finally, there are some cultural, racial, and gender issues associated with 360-degree feedback, and practitioners should be aware of these issues before implementing any 360-degree feedback process. Managerial Derailment and Self-Defeating Behaviors So far we have talked about what leaders can do in order to improve their effectiveness. The first lesson might be to determine which behaviors are most closely aligned with success, perhaps by identifying key behaviors by means of a competency model. Another lesson might be to get 360degree feedback on these key behaviors. This feedback helps identify strengths and potential CEOs are three times more likely to development needs. Not all leaders, however, get booted than a generation ago. truly learn such lessons. It might behoove us to Ram Charan and look not just at how leaders succeed, but at the Geoffrey Colvin complementary question: why some leaders fail? We can learn valuable lessons about what not to do as a leader by studying them. There is a growing body of research that indicates that somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of managers and executives fail (Charan & Colvin, 1999; Hogan, Curphy, & Hogan, 1994; Sloane, Hezlett, Kuncel, & Sytsma, 1996; Dotlich & Cairo, 2001; Curphy, 2003a, 2004a; Curphy & Hogan, 2004a). These figures imply that up to half of the leaders in any organization are not going to be able to build cohesive teams or achieve business results, which unfortunately lends some weight to Scott Adams’s quote at the beginning of the chapter. Initial research on managerial derailment—whereby individuals who at one time were on the fast track now had their careers derailed—was conducted in the early 1980s by researchers at the Center for Creative Leadership. The researchers went to the human resource departments in a number of Fortune 100 companies seeking lists of their “high-potential” managers. McCall and Lombardo (1983) defined high potentials as those individuals who had been identified as eventually becoming either the CEO/president or one of his or her direct reports sometime in the future. They waited for three years
Slide 135: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 131 216 Part Two Focus on the Leader We believe managerial failure is due more to having undesirable qualities than lacking desirable ones. Robert and Joyce Hogan Hogan Assessment Systems and then returned to these organizations to ask what had happened to the people on the lists. They discovered that roughly a quarter of the high potentials had been promoted to one of the top two levels in the organization, and an equal percentage had not yet been promoted but would be as soon as a position became available. Another 25 percent had left the company; some had quit to form their own company and others were given a better offer somewhere else. Finally, about a quarter of the people on the list were no longer being considered for promotion. If they were still with the company, then they had been moved to a less influential and visible position. Many others had been asked to leave the company. These individuals represented cases of managerial derailment. Several other researchers have investigated the managerial derailment phenomenon (Hazucha, 1992; Lombardo, Ruderman, & McCauley, 1987; Peterson, 1993a, 1993b; Van Velsor & Leslie, 1995; Dotlich & Cairo, 2001). This more recent research used much larger samples (Peterson examined over 600 derailed managers), European samples, and more sophisticated assessment tools (i.e., 360-degree feedback instruments). Moreover, a substantially higher percentage of women and minorities were represented in this more recent research, as the initial high-potential list was dominated by white males. As Van Veslor and Leslie (1995) pointed out, this research focused on identifying those factors which helped derailment candidates get initially identified as high potentials, as well as on those factors contributing to their ultimate professional demise. Although these studies varied in many ways, there are many consistent findings across them. Both groups were smart, ambitious, willing to do whatever it took to get the job done, and had considerable technical expertise. In other words, all of the high-potential candidates had impressive track records in their organizations. On the other hand, the derailed candidates exhibited one or more behavioral patterns not evident in the high potentials who succeeded. The derailment themes can be found in Table 8.2 and are described in more detail below. It is important to note that four of the derailment themes included in Table 8.2 have been consistently reported in the research both in the United States and Europe, and that apparently a new theme is emerging and another is disappearing over time. The first derailment pattern has to do with an inability to build relationships with coworkers. The derailed managers exhibiting this pattern of behavior were very insensitive to the needs and plights of their followers and co-workers, and were often overly competitive, demanding, and domineering. They embraced the “my way or the highway” school of management. Many were also extremely arrogant and truly believed no one in their organizations was as good as they were, and they let their co-workers know it every chance they could. Some of these derailed managers also did whatever they felt necessary to get the job done, even if it meant stepping on a few toes in the process. Unfortunately, this is not one of the recommended techniques for winning friends and influencing people. It’s better to remember the old adage that you should be careful whom you step on going up the ladder, because you may meet them again on your way down. Many of these managers left a trail of bruised people who were just waiting for the right opportunity
Slide 136: 132 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 8 Leadership Behavior 217 TABLE 8.2 Themes in Derailment Research Four Enduring Themes Problems with interpersonal relationships McCall & Lombardo (1983) Insensitive to others; cold, aloof, arrogant; overly ambitious Betrayal of trust; poor performance Failing to staff effectively Unable to adapt to a boss with a different style, unable to think strategically Morrison et al. (1987) Poor relationships, too ambitious Lombardo & McCauley (1988) Problems with interpersonal relationships, isolates self United States (1993–94) Poor working relations Europe (1993–94) Poor working relations, organizational isolation, authoritarian, too ambitious Too ambitious, poor performance Inability to build and lead a team Unable to develop or adapt Failure to meet business objectives Inability to build and lead a team Inability to develop or adapt Performance problems Can’t manage subordinates Unable to adapt to a boss or culture, not strategic Lack of followthrough Difficulty molding a staff Strategic differences with management, difficulty making strategic transitions — Too ambitious, lack of hard work Inability to build and lead a team Unable to develop or adapt to conflict with upper management Emergent themes — Too narrow business experience Not prepared for promotion, narrow functional orientation — Not prepared for promotion, narrow functional orientation — Disappearing themes Overdependent on advocate or mentor — Overdependence Source: E. Van Velsor and J. B. Leslie, “Why Executives Derail: Perspectives across Time and Cultures,” Academy of Management Executive 9, no. 4 (1995), pp. 62–71. to bring these leaders down. Highlight 8.4 illustrates the case of a sales manager with derailment potential. According to Van Velsor and Leslie (1995), approximately two-thirds of European and one-third of American derailment candidates fall into this pattern. For example, a female vice president of marketing and sales for a cellular phone company was fired from her $200,000 a year job for exhibiting many of the behaviors just listed. She was very bright, had an excellent technical background (an engineer by training), had already been the CEO for several smaller organizations,
Slide 137: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 133 218 Part Two Focus on the Leader An Example of a Derailed Leader Highlight 8.4 The following is a story about a sales manager who seems to have derailment potential. See if you can pick out which derailment factors may be at play in this story. In addition, what advice would you give to the writer to “fix” the problem? I’ve been working in a medium-sized manufacturing company for the past 20 years. I’m not in sales, but interact with salespeople on a daily basis. Over the past year or so, I have noticed the sales force has been frustrated. After numerous conversations not only with the sales force, but also with other people in all aspects of the company, I have realized that the poison is coming from one person: Mike, the sales manager. Mike has been with the company for over 10 years and has successfully maneuvered his way to the position of sales manager. All of his promotions were given to him because of his own self-promotion. He has an enormous ego. His tactics of bulldog management, double standards, and outright lying is driving his sales force out and is frustrating people all over the company. He is disliked, even hated, by almost everyone in the company. Amazingly, Mike doesn’t realize what people think of him. I believe the owners tolerate Mike’s behavior because he has produced decent sales over the years. This year sales are substantially down. I believe the company is going to start to lose good salespeople because of Mike. Here’s why: Nobody will confront him because if they do, he threatens them or makes them do some ridiculous assignment. All conversations with Mike are one-sided. If you bring up a concern that involves him, he will change the subject and dismiss you. It’s like he is afraid of the truth. He is dishonest and essentially a loose cannon. I believe the owners know the truth about Mike but they continue to let him act this way. I believe Mike will never leave because he knows he could never get away with the things he does anywhere else. My concern is that if the owners don’t fix the “Mike problem” they will start to lose good salespeople. Any advice? Source: J. Lloyd, “Good Firms Work to Find Out Truth about Bad Managers,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, August 20, 2000, p. 20. and worked very long hours. Her in-depth managerial assessment results (Chapters 4 and 7) indicated that she also had a strong leaderlike personality, with higher scores in surgency and dependability and average scores in agreeableness and adjustment. This assessment also indicated she had extremely high bold scores, and at work this dark-side trait would manifest itself by her talking down to people, quickly identifying and capitalizing on others’ faults, constantly commenting on their incompetence, running over her peers when she needed resources or support, promoting infighting among her peers and subordinates, and expecting to be pampered. Interestingly, she had no idea she was having such a debilitating effect on those she worked with until she received her 360-degree feedback. Had she received this feedback sooner, she might have been able to stop her career from derailing. The devil that you know is better Charan and Colvin (1999) and Dotlich & Cairo (2001) stated that than the one you do not know. people problems are one of the primary reasons why CEOs fail. Old folk saying However, unlike derailed midlevel managers, most CEOs get along with others in the company. The problem with CEOs is that they get along with some of their direct reports too well and do not take timely action to address problem performers. More specifically, some CEOs fail because they place loyal subordinates into jobs they are incapable of handling, falsely
Slide 138: 134 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 8 Leadership Behavior 219 believe they can help poorly performing subordinates to change ineffective behavior, do not want to offend Wall Street or the board by letting popular (but ineffective) executives go, or do not feel comfortable hiring outsiders to fill key executive positions. Another derailment pattern identified in Table 8.2 is a failure to meet business objectives. Although both successful and derailed managers experience business downturns, the groups handled setbacks quite differently. Successful managers took personal responsibility for their mistakes and sought ways to solve the problem. Derailed managers tended to engage in finger-pointing and blaming others for the downturn. But as long as things were going well, it was difficult to differentiate these two groups on this factor. Some of these managers were also untrustworthy. They either blatantly lied about business results or failed to keep promises, commitments, or deadlines. The most common reason for CEO failure is the inability to meet earnings projections (Charan & Colvin, 1999; Dotlich & Cairo, 2001). However, this inability to meet financial projections is not the result of a poor business strategy, unwanted products and services, or inadequate distribution channels. Most CEOs have well-above-average analytic and practical intelligence, so they usually do not have a problem developing a vision or strategy for the company, nor do they make poor decisions concerning which markets to pursue and products to develop. In many cases, CEOs fail to get results because of their inability to execute according to the business strategy. They tend to get distracted and lose focus or do not hold their direct reports accountable for getting the results outlined in their business plans. The third derailment pattern identified by Van Velsor and Leslie (1995) was an inability to lead and build a team. Some managers derailed because they hired staff who were just like themselves, which in turn only served to magnify their own strengths and weaknesses. Others wanted to stay in the limelight and hired staff less capable than they were. Still others micromanaged their staffs, When the dog is dead, the fleas are even when not expert themselves in the tasks (not gone. Puerto Rican folk saying that it’s ever recommended). These bosses wanted their followers to “check their brains at the door” before coming to work. One thing that often underlies this pattern is a lack of trust and high colorful and diligent scores (Chapter 7). All of the dark-side traits listed in Chapter 7 can make it difficult for leaders to build cohesive, goal-oriented teams. But another key reason why leaders cannot build teams is when they spend too much time doing activities below their leadership level. The notion of leadership levels was first introduced in Chapter 4, which outlined the activities normally associated with individual contributor, front-line leaders, mid-level leaders, functional leaders, business unit leaders, and CEOs. Leaders who are at the functional leader level but spend too much time doing individual contributor or front-line leader tasks risk disempowering all the managers who work for them. Because these leaders are making all the decisions that their followers would normally make, followers become disengaged with work and team performance suffers as a result. Another derailment profile has to do with a leader’s inability to adapt to new bosses, businesses, cultures, or structures. As pointed out earlier in this chapter,
Slide 139: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 135 220 Part Two Focus on the Leader many business situations require different leadership behaviors and skills, and some derailed managers could not adapt or adjust their styles to changing bosses, followers, and situations. They persisted in acting the same way, even when it was no longer appropriate to new circumstances. When solving problems, they often imposed past solutions that were no longer viable (i.e., high cautious scores from Chapter 7). For example, a first-line supervisor for an electronics firm that built video poker machines was having a very difficult time transitioning from his old job as a missile guidance repairman in the U.S. Air Force. He thought he should lead his subordinates the way he led others in the military: his staff should be willing to work long hours and over the weekends without being told, and to travel for extended periods of time with short notice. Their thoughts or opinions on ways to improve work processes did not matter to him, and he expected everyone to maintain cool and professional attitudes at work. After half of his staff quit as a direct result of his supervision, he was demoted and replaced by one of his subordinates. In the past, organizations could afford to take their time in identifying and developing leadership talent. Many of the best organizations today have strong programs for systematically developing leadership bench strength (Charan, Drotter, & Noel, 2001; Tichy & Cohen, 1997; Curphy, 1998a, 2002, 2003c, 2004a, c; Curphy & Hogan, 2004a, b). However, more and more organizations today are under increasing pressure to find good leaders quickly, and they are increasingly asking their own high-potential but inexperienced leadership talent to step up to the plate and fill these key roles. Although these new leaders are bright and motivated, they often have narrow technical backgrounds and lack the leadership breadth and depth necessary for the new positions. These leaders often skip various leadership levels (see Chapter 4), and the unfortunate result is that many of these leaders leave the organization because of inadequate preparation for promotion. For example, a relatively young woman attorney was promoted to be the vice president of human resources in a large telecommunications firm. Although she was extremely bright and ambitious, it soon became apparent that she lacked much of the necessary skill or knowledge. Although she tried very hard to be successful, she kept acting as a front-line leader instead of a functional leader and failed to earn the respect of her staff. After six months she was given a generous separation package and asked to leave the company. According to Van Velsor and Leslie (1995), this is a relatively new derailment theme. Given the contributing factors, it is also a theme that is likely to be more prevalent in the future. Most derailed managers manifested several of these themes; the presence of only one of these behavioral patterns was usually not enough for derailment. The only exception to this rule was a failure to meet business objectives. Managers who did not follow through with commitments, broke promises, lied, were unethical, and did not get results did not stay on the high-potential list for long (i.e., high mischievous and bold scores from Chapter 7). Although this research has not identified any unique derailment patterns for minorities, some male-female differences have been noted. Females were more likely to derail because of their inability to deal with broader and more complex organizational issues or to lead people from different technical backgrounds than their own (practical intelligence). Males were more likely to derail because of their arrogance, inflexibility, or abrasive interper-
Slide 140: 136 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 8 Leadership Behavior 221 TABLE 8.3 Common SelfDefeating Behaviors Source: M. R. Cudney and R. E. Hardy, Self-Defeating Behaviors (San Francisco: HarperCollins. 1993). Procrastination Defensiveness Worrying Alienating Hostility Perfectionism Suspiciousness Overcommitted Overly critical Rigidity Overcontrolling Inability to trust others sonal style (bold, cautious, or excitable dark side The first and paramount traits). One might think that most managers exhibit- responsibility of anyone who ing derailment behavioral patterns would be purports to manage is to manage aware of the negative impact they have on others. the self: one’s own integrity, character, ethics, knowledge, Unfortunately, this is not always so. Many manwisdom, temperament, words, and agers on the path to derailment are simply un- acts. It is a complex, unending, aware of the way they come across to others. incredibly difficult, oft-shunned Research on self-defeating behaviors may explain task. We spend little time and rarely how these counterproductive behavior patterns excel at self-management precisely develop and why some managers lack insight into because it is so much more difficult their behavior. According to Cudney and Hardy than prescribing and controlling the (1993), a self-defeating behavior is an action or behavior of others. However, attitude that once helped an individual cope with without management of self, people a stressful experience but interferes with the indi- are not fit for authority no matter how much they acquire, for the vidual’s ability to cope in new situations. more authority they acquire the A list of some of the more common selfmore dangerous they become. It is defeating behaviors can be found in Table 8.3. management of the self that should You can also see that the behaviors in Table 8.3 are occupy 50 percent of our time and similar to the derailment themes and the dark- the best of our ability. And when we side personality traits previously identified in do that, the ethical, moral, and Chapter 7. Like the behaviors associated with spiritual elements of management dark-side personality traits, a big part of the are inescapable. problem with self-defeating behaviors is that Dee Hock they are highly practiced and often performed automatically, with little conscious thought. Furthermore, a person may rationalize the appropriateness of a self-defeating behavior by recalling some particular situation where the behavior was adaptive (or seemed so). But problems may occur when such behaviors get generalized from unusual circumstances to most circumstances. For example, everyone worries about some things sometimes (e.g., how an interview is going to go; whether your presentation made a good impression on the audience, whom to select for an important assignment, whether to major in this subject or that). Worrying becomes a problem, however, when it becomes habitual and consuming—when it keeps you from doing anything else or from actually making a decision. It may never be particularly helpful, but that’s when it becomes truly self-defeating.
Slide 141: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 137 222 Part Two Focus on the Leader How could such a seemingly irrational and counterproductive behavior ever become a habit for some people? Strange as it may seem, it can happen through reinforcement. The head of a management consulting firm was asked to open a new office in a large U.S. city. He worked an average of 70–80 hours a week identifying and building relationships with and delivering products and services to key clients. These efforts paid off, and in less than three years the office had grown from 1 to 15 people and from $50,000 to $2,500,000 in annual revenue. As staff and revenues grew, the head of the firm was reinforced through bonus and salary increases to continue to build relationships with, and deliver services to, clients. Unfortunately, this leader failed to acknowledge the importance of supporting, coaching, and developing his people—he was a classic task-focused, 9,1 leader. He also spent a vast majority of his time doing individual contributor versus midlevel leader work. Although this style of leadership was effective for opening the office, his overcommitment to task performance began to have a debilitating effect on the morale of the office. The leader in this case was fortunate enough to recognize the impact of his self-defeating behaviors, and was able to utilize some of the techniques in the next section to change these behaviors, improve morale, and continue to obtain good business results. Another example of the potential consequences of self-defeating behaviors is in Highlight 8.5. The Invisible Barrier—What Precludes Black Managers from Advancement? Highlight 8.5 Herdie Baisden, a black general manager and vice president of a management consulting firm, has investigated why black managers failed to advance in many organizations. Working with a variety of psychological assessment instruments as well as 360degree feedback tools, Baisden noted that black managers tended to react differently to negative feedback than white managers. Baisden stated that blacks tended to dismiss this information as a product of racism rather than viewing it as a springboard for improvement. Blacks also tended to avoid feedback because they felt they needed to be exceptionally competent to succeed and wanted to project an image that “everything is under control and I don’t need any help.” When black managers did seek feedback from others, they often turned to others they could trust—other blacks. Blacks make up only 6 percent of management but they turned to blacks 22 percent of the time when soliciting feedback. These reactions often resulted in distorted 360-degree feedback ratings for black managers. These individuals tended to overrate their own performance and have bigger self-other gaps between their own ratings and their bosses’ ratings of them when compared to white managers. Baisden stated that some of these protective behaviors may be natural outgrowths of the work situations facing black managers. If a black manager perceives that a work environment is nonsupportive at best or hostile at worst, then these behaviors make sense. Unfortunately, these reactions ultimately become self-defeating behaviors, as they prevent black managers from getting the feedback they need in order to improve. Baisden maintains that blacks wishing to advance need to be receptive to feedback from others. This not only provides them with developmental ideas, it also tells the organization that the manager is willing to take risks and grow. Source: H. Baisden, PDI Indicator: The Rise of Black Managers (Minneapolis: Personnel Decisions, 1993).
Slide 142: 138 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 8 Leadership Behavior 223 Changing Behavior Why Change Behavior? The material covered so far can help leadership practitioners better understand the key behaviors Organizations don’t change; people associated with success; how successful leader- change. If you want your ship behaviors may vary depending on the lead- organization to do something ership level, country, culture, or business; what differently, then you’ll have to figure out how to get people to kind of behaviors could get them into trouble; and change their behavior. how to get feedback on these behaviors. But the David B. Peterson fact of the matter is that knowing this information is not enough. Ultimately, some of the leader’s behavior needs to change. But changing behavior, especially long-standing patterns of behavior, can be quite difficult. How many times have you asked yourself how you could possibly change your own or another’s behavior? Learning how to change your own and others’ behaviors is a key leadership skill, given that situations, technology, organizational structure, followers, bosses, products, rules and regulations, and competitors seem to be in a constant state of flux. Moreover, think about the new behaviors and skills you will need to acquire as you move from individual contributor, front-line supervisor, midlevel manager to executive roles. Just as the head of the management consulting firm learned to add more supportive or employee-centered behaviors to his repertoire, so must you learn how to adapt your behavior to meet the changing demands of the role or situation (see Highlight 8.6). But learning how to change your own behavior is often not enough. Good leaders also know how to change and modify the behaviors of their followers so that they can be more effective team members and better achieve team goals. In the next section we discuss research surrounding three common methods of behavioral change: development planning, coaching, and mentoring. While this section is primarily research focused, practical tips on how to change behavior through development planning and coaching can be found in Part V of this book. Development Planning How many times have you made a resolution to change a habit, only to discover two months later that you are still exhibiting the same behaviors? This is often the fate of well-intentioned When you’re in a new job where New Year’s resolutions. Most people do not even you’re stretched, your focus should make such resolutions since the failure rate is so be on learning, not getting an A. Mary Dee Hicks high. Given this track record, you might wonder if it is even possible to change one’s behavior, particularly if it has been reinforced over time and is exhibited almost automatically. Fortunately, however, it is possible to change behavior, even long-standing habits. For example, many people permanently quit smoking or drinking without going through any type of formal program (Miller & Rollnick, 1991; Polivy & Herman, 2002). Others may change after they gain insight into how their behavior affects others. Some will need support to maintain a behavioral change over time, while still others seem destined to never change.
Slide 143: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 139 224 Part Two Focus on the Leader Can People Really Change? Highlight 8.6 When all is said and done, the terms leadership and change are almost synonymous. Effective leaders are those who are constantly changing their own and followers’ behaviors in order to better adapt to the situations they face. Leaders and followers often have to exhibit new behaviors with the launch of new products and services, the introduction of new IT or financial systems, the acquisition or divestiture of companies, or the downsizing of staff. Although there is constant pressure to change, it is important to understand that many people naturally resist change. Some of this resistance stems from difficulty in dealing with ambiguity, some of it comes from a fear of no longer knowing the rules and what it will take to succeed, and some of it is out of competing agendas and a strong fear of failure. Successful leaders are those that can consistently overcome the resistance to change and get people to exhibit different behaviors in order to achieve team goals. But how much can people really change? According to the book, First, Break All the Rules (Buckingham & Coffman, 1999), people change very little. These authors believe people are more or less “hard wired” as a result of their values, intelligence, and personality, so leaders would be better off trying to find jobs that leverage followers’ natural strengths rather than try to change their behaviors. Although this book has proved wildly popular over the past five years, some of the advice contained therein is simply wrong. First, there is in fact ample evidence to show that people can and do change. They may not change that much, but even subtle changes can have large payoffs for people in leadership positions. Second, many leaders simply do not have the luxury of changing jobs to fit their followers’ strengths. For example, a typical route manager at Waste Management may supervise 25 drivers of garbage trucks. It would be nice to find 25 different jobs that leveraged each of the drivers’ strengths, but at the end of the day the garbage still needs to get picked up. Third, and perhaps most importantly, what may at one time be seen as strengths can easily turn into fatal flaws. Someone who was very planful and detail oriented as an individual contributor could also be a micromanager as a mid-level manager. Leaders need to understand where and when to leverage their strengths and when these same behaviors can get them into trouble. On the positive side, Buckingham and Coffman are correct in pointing out that hiring the right people and putting them in the right jobs can go a long way towards achieving team goals. Sources: M. Buckingham and C. Coffman, First, Break All The Rules (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999); R. Kegan and L. Laskow Lahey, “The Real Reason People Won’t Change,” Harvard Business Review, November 2001, pp. 84–93; P. LaBarre, “Marcus Buckingham Thinks Your Boss Has an Attitude Problem,” Fast Company, August 2001, pp. 88–98. Managers seem to fall into the same categories; some managers change once they gain insight, others change with support, and others may not ever change. But do people just fall into one of these groups by accident? Is there any way to stack the odds in favor of driving behavioral change? Research by Hazucha, Hezlett, and Schneider (1993); McCauley, Ruderman, Ohlott, and Morrow (1994); Hezlett and Koonce (1995); Peterson and Hicks (1995, 1996); Dalton (1998); DeNisi and Kluger (2000); Behar, Arvidson, Omilusik, Ellsworth, and Morrow (2000); and Peterson (2001) provides several suggestions that leaders can take to accelerate the development of their own leadership skills. We can use the Development Pipeline described in Chapter 3 as a way to categorize these suggestions. As seen in Figure 8.6, the first step in changing behavior is knowing what to work on. Leaders need to have insight about their development needs, and 360-degree feedback can provide very useful information in this regard (Brett & Atwater, 2001; Curphy, 2002, 2003c,
Slide 144: 140 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 8 Leadership Behavior 225 FIGURE 8.6 The development pipeline. Copyright © 2000, Personnel Decisions International Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Initial Capabilities Insight Motivation New Knowledge and Skills Real World Application Accountability Increased Capabilities 2004h). Other sources of information about development needs can come from the results of an as- Nine out of 10 information sessment center, a performance appraisal, or direct technology workers said they would feel more loyal to their employer if feedback from others. The next step in developing one’s own leader- they had an individual development ship skills is working on development goals that plan, but only 30 percent reported having any kind of development plan. matter. No leader has all of the knowledge and Jeff Stoner skills necessary to be successful; as a result most leaders have multiple development needs. Leaders need to determine which new skills will have the highest personal and organizational payoffs and build development plans that address these needs. The development plan should be focused on only one or two needs; plans addressing more than this tend to be overwhelming and unachievable. If leaders have more than two development needs, then they should first work to acquire one or two skills before moving on to the next set of development needs. Figure 8.6 indicates that acquiring new knowledge and skills is the next step in the Development Pipeline. For leaders, this means creating a written development plan that capitalizes on available books, seminars, college courses, e-learning modules, and so forth, to acquire the knowledge underlying a particular de- The more you crash, the more you velopment need (see Figure 8.7). For example, you learn. David B. Peterson can either learn how to delegate through the school of hard knocks or take a seminar to learn the best practices of delegation skills. As we will see, knowledge alone is not enough to develop a new skill, but relevant books and courses can accelerate the learning process (Arthur Jr., Bennett Jr., Edens & Bell, 2003). In addition, it is important not to underestimate the power of having a written development plan. Leaders (and followers) who have a written plan seem more likely to keep development on their radar screens and take the actions necessary to acquire new skills. Taking courses and reading books are good ways for leaders to acquire foundational knowledge, but new skills will only be acquired when they are practiced on the job. Just as surgeons can read about and watch a surgery but will only perfect a surgical technique through repeated practice, so too will leaders only acquire needed skills if they practice them on the job. Therefore, good development plans
Slide 145: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 141 226 Part Two Focus on the Leader FIGURE 8.7 Sample individual development plan. Source: K. Louiselle, S. Bridges, and G. J. Curphy, “Talent Assessment Overview,” working paper, 2003. Name: Chris August, 2003 Date: ___________________________________________ Sample _____________________________________________ Career Objective: To get promoted to a director-level position. Development Objective: Build a stronger team and better teamwork in my group. Success Criteria: Consistently meet our quarterly team goals and increase ratings of “effective teamwork” by 20% on the employee survey. Liabilities: Lack agreement on and commitment to team goals. Lack clear accountability for results. Feedback or Other Resources Needed Full team Review/Completion Date 9/15/03 Assets: Highly capable/skilled team members. Action Steps Convene team meeting to discuss and reach agreement on team goals. Convene team meeting to begin establishing specific action plans for meeting team goals. Assign subgroups to develop plans for different goals. Review and get bosses buy-in to team goals and action plans. Meet with individual team members to identify things I should stop, start, or continue doing in order to create a stronger sense of teamwork. Hold space on the agenda of each monthly meeting for team reporting on progress against team goals. Solicit feedback from team at least quarterly to check my progress on the high-priority things I will commit to doing. Measures of Progress/Results Documented goals shared at department meeting. Formal plans prepared and shared at department meeting. Plans specify individual accountability for steps and results. Boss’s agreement and stated support. Create and share with full team a short list of high-priority things I am committed to doing in order to foster a stronger sense of teamwork. Minutes from each meeting reflect progress reports. Full team 1/15/03 Boss Individual team members 10/15/03 10/15/03 Admin. Asst. to circulate minutes. Monthly Team recognizes my progress (as reported informally in team meetings). Annual employee survey results related to team effectiveness increase by 20% for my group and remain at that level. Full team Quarterly beginning 12/1/04 Employee Survey Summer 2004 and annually thereafter
Slide 146: 142 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 8 Leadership Behavior 227 capitalize upon on-the-job experiences to hone needed leadership skills. Peterson (2001) wrote that most leadership positions offer ample opportunities to develop new skills, provided that leaders leverage all of the experiences available to them. These on-the-job activities are so important to development that 70 to 80 percent of the action steps in a development plan should be job related. The last step in acquiring new skills is accountability, and there are several ways to make this happen with a development plan. One way to build in accountability is to have different people provide ongoing feedback on the action steps taken to develop a skill. For example, leaders could ask for feedback from a peer or direct report on their listening skills immediately after staff meetings. Another way to build accountability is to periodically review progress on development plans with the boss. This way the boss can look for opportunities to help the leader further practice developing skills and determine when it is time to add new development needs to the plan. It is important to realize that development planning is more than a plan—it is really a process (Peterson & Hicks, 1995). Good development plans are constantly being revised as new skills are learned or new opportunities to develop skills become available. Leaders who take the time to write out and execute best-practice development plans usually report the most improvement in later 360-degree feedback ratings. Development planning provides a methodology for leaders to improve their behavior, and much of this development can occur as they go about their daily work activities. Coaching Development plans tend to be self-focused; leaders and followers use them as a road map for changing their own behaviors. When trying to change the be- Coaching is the quickest, most havior of followers, however, leaders can often do customized, and most powerful more than review a follower’s development plan, behavior change technique available provide ongoing feedback, or review plans periodi- to a leader. David B. Peterson cally with followers. The next step in followers’ development often involves coaching. Coaching is a key leadership skill, as it can help leaders to improve the bench strength of the group, which in turn should help the group to accomplish its goals. Because of its role in development, coaching can also help to retain high-quality followers (Wenzel, 2000). Because of these outcomes, coaching is a popular topic these days, but it is also a frequently misunderstood one. It is hoped that the material in this section will help to clarify what coaching is, and identify some best-coaching practices. Coaching is the “process of equipping people with the tools, knowledge, and opportunities they need to develop themselves and become more successful” (Peterson & Hicks, 1996, p. 14). In general, there are two types of coaching, informal and formal coaching. Informal coaching can occur anywhere in an organization, and occurs whenever a leader helps followers to change their behaviors. According to Peterson and Hicks (1996), the best informal coaching generally consists of five steps (see Table 8.4). In forging a partnership, leaders build a trusting relationship with their followers, identify followers’ career goals and motivators, and learn how their followers view the organization and their situation. The key question to be answered in this
Slide 147: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 143 228 Part Two Focus on the Leader first step of coaching is “development for what?” Where do the followers want to go with their careers? Why do they want to go there? The answers to these questions help to create a target or end goal as well as a personal payoff for development. Nevertheless, if a leader fails to build a relationship based on mutual trust with a follower, then chances are the follower will not heed the leader’s guidance and advice. Therefore, it is important that coaches also determine the level of mutual trust, and then improve the relationship if necessary before targeting development needs or providing feedback and advice. Too many inexperienced coaches either fail to build trust, or take the relationship for granted, with the long-term end result being little, if any, behavioral change, and a frustrated leader and follower. Once career goals have been identified and a solid, trusting relationship has been built, leaders then need to inspire commitment. In this step, leaders work closely with followers to gather and analyze data to determine development needs. A leader and a follower may review appraisals of past performance, feedback from peers or former bosses, project reports, 360-degree feedback reports, and any organizational standards that pertain to the follower’s career goals. By reviewing this data, the leader and the follower should be able to identify and prioritize those development needs most closely aligned with career goals. The next step in the coaching process involves growing skills. Followers use their prioritized development needs to create a development plan, and leaders in turn develop a coaching plan that spells out precisely what they will do to support the followers’ development plan. Leaders and followers then review and discuss the development and coaching plans, make necessary adjustments, and execute the plans. TABLE 8.4 The Five Steps of Informal Coaching Source: D. B. Peterson and M. D. Hicks, Leader as Coach: Strategies for Coaching and Developing Others (Minneapolis, MN: Personnel Decisions International, 1996). Forge a Partnership Coaching only works if there is a trusting relationship between the leader and his or her followers. In this step leaders also determine what drives their followers and where they want to go with their careers. Inspire Commitment In this step leaders help followers determine which skills or behaviors will have the biggest payoff if developed. Usually this step involves reviewing the results of performance appraisals, 360-degree feedback, values, and personality assessment reports, etc. Grow Skills Leaders work with followers to build development plans that capitalize on on-the-job experiences and create coaching plans to support their followers’ development. Promote Persistence Leaders meet periodically with followers in order to provide feedback, help followers keep development on their radar screens, and provide followers with new tasks or projects to develop needed skills. Shape the Environment Leaders need to periodically review how they are rolemodeling development and what they are doing to foster development in the workplace. Because most people want to be successful, doing this step well will help attract and retain followers to the work group.
Slide 148: 144 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 8 Leadership Behavior 229 Just because a plan is developed does not mean it will be executed flawlessly. Learning often is a series of fits and starts, and sometimes followers either get distracted by operational requirements or get into developmental ruts. In the step called promote persistence, leaders help followers to manage the mundane, day-today aspects of development. Leaders can help followers refocus on their development by capitalizing on opportunities to give followers relevant, on-the-spot feedback. Once the new behavior has been practiced a number of times and becomes part of the follower’s behavioral repertoire, then leaders help followers to transfer the skills to new environments by applying the skills in new settings and revising their development plans. In this step, leaders need to also ask themselves how they are role-modeling development and whether they are creating an environment that fosters individual development. There are several points about informal coaching worth additional comment. First, the five-step process identified by Peterson and Hicks (1996) can be used by leadership practitioners to diagnose why behavioral change is not occurring and what can be done about it. For example, followers may not be developing new skills because they do not trust their leader, the skills have not been clearly identified or are not important to them, or they do not have a plan in place to acquire these skills. Second, informal coaching can and does occur anywhere in the organization. Senior executives can use this model to develop their staffs, peers can use it to help each other, and so forth. Third, this process is just as effective for high-performing followers as it is for low-performing followers. Leadership practitioners have a tendency to forget to coach their solid or top followers, yet these individuals are often making the greatest contributions to team or organizational success. Moreover, research has shown that the top performers in a job often produce 20–50 percent more than the average performer, depending on the complexity of the job (Hunter, Schmidt, & Judiesch, 1990). So if leaders would focus on moving their solid performers into the highest-performing ranks and making their top performers even better, chances are their teams might be substantially more effective than if they only focused on coaching those doing most poorly (see Figure 8.8). Fourth, both “remote” coaching of people and coaching of individuals from other cultures can be particularly difficult (Curphy, 1996a; Peterson & Hicks, 1996, 1997). It is more difficult for leaders to build trusting relationships with followers when they are physically separated by great distances. The same may be true with followers from other cultures—what may be important to, say, a Kenyan follower and how this person views the world may be very different from what his or her Dutch or Singaporean leader believes. The kinds of behaviors that need to be developed can also vary considerably by culture. For example, one senior executive for a high-tech firm was coaching one of his Japanese direct reports on how to do better presentations to superiors. The follower’s style was formal, stiff, and somewhat wooden, and the leader wanted the follower to add some humor and informality to his presentations. However, the follower said that by doing so he would lose the respect of his Japanese colleagues, so his commitment to this change was understandably low. What was agreed upon was that his style was very effective in Japan, but that it needed to change when he was giving presentations in the United States.
Slide 149: Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 145 230 Part Two Focus on the Leader Handling organizational politics — 7% FIGURE 8.8 What were the most useful factors in the coaching you received? Source: “The Business Leader as Development Coach,” PDI Portfolio, Winter 1996, p. 6. Clear, direct feedback — 36% General encouragement — 7% Understanding organizational objectives — 7% Advice on handling situations — 20% A new perspective — 23% Informal coaching can help groups to be successful as well as to reduce turnover among employees, but what does it take to be a good informal coach? Research by Wenzel (2000) showed that the most effective informal coaches had a unique combination of leadership traits and skills. Leaders with higher levels of intelligence, surgency, and agreeableness were often more effective as coaches than those with lower scores. These leadership traits were the foundation for the relationship building, listening, assertiveness, and feedback skills associated with effective informal coaches. Good informal coaches use these traits and skills to build trusting relationships with their followers, build best-practice coaching and development plans, and deliver tough and honest feedback when necessary. Suggestions on how to improve relationship building, listening, assertiveness, feedback, and informal coaching skills can be found in Part V of this book. Most people are familiar with the idea of a personal fitness trainer, a person who helps design a fitness program tailored to a specific individual’s needs and goals. Formal coaching programs provide a similar kind of service for executives and managers in leadership positions (Curphy, 1996a, 2002; Peterson, 1996, 1999; Witherspoon & White, 1996, 1997; Peterson & Hicks, 1998; Kampa-Kokesch & Anderson, 2001; Frisch 2001; Berglas, 2002; Cashman & Forem, 2003; Wasylyshyn, 2003; Waldman, 2003; Smither, London, Flautt, Vargas, & Kucine, 2003). Approximately 65 percent of the Global 1000 companies use some form of formal coaching (Peterson & Hicks, 1998). Formal coaching programs are quite individualized by their very nature, but several common features deserve mention. There is a one-on-one relationship between the manager and the coach (i.e., an internal or external consultant) which lasts from six months to more than a year. The process usually begins with the manager’s completion of an extensive battery of personality, intelligence, interests, value, and 360-degree feedback instruments, as well as with interviews by the coach of other individuals in the manager’s world of work. As the result of the assessment phase of this process, both the manager and the coach have a clear picture of development needs and how the different components of
Slide 150: 146 Hughes−Ginnett−Curphy: Leadership, Fifth Edition II. Focus on the Leader 8. Leadership Behavior © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 Chapter 8 Leadership Behavior 231 the building-block model interact and affect these needs. The coach and the manager meet regularly (roughly monthly) to review the results of the feedback instruments and work on building skills and practicing target behaviors. Role plays and videotape are used extensively during these sessions, and coaches provide immediate feedback to clients practicing new behaviors in realistic work situations. Another valuable outcome of coaching programs can involve clarification of managers’ values, and identification of discrepancies between their espoused values and their actual behaviors and devising strategies to better align their behaviors with their values. Approximately 6,000 managers and executives have been through one of the coaching programs designed by Peterson and his associates (Peterson, 1993a, 1993b, 1996; Peterson & Hicks, 1996, 1998). Some were derailment candidates, but many were not. Some were high potentials with a few rough edges, and others were successful managers and executives who needed leadership or skill training in one or two key areas. This large sample and PDI’s commitment to research have produced some interesting findings (see Highlight 8.7). A formal coaching program can cost more than $30,000 (Smith, 1993; Curphy, 1996a), and it is reasonable to ask, Is it worth it? The answer seems to be an unqualified yes. A solid body of research shows that well-designed and well-executed coaching programs do in fact change behavior (Waldman, 2003; Smither et al., 2003; Kampa-Kokesch & Anderson, 2001; Curphy, 2002, 2003c, 2004h). Figure 8.9 reveals that some of this research shows that coaching may be even more effective at changing behavior than more traditional learning and training approaches (Peterson, 1993a, 1993b, 1996; Witherspoon & White, 1997). Moreover, the behavioral changes appear to be in place one year after the termination of a coaching program, indicating permanent behavioral change (Peterson, 1999). Such changes can be particularly important if the person making them—that is, the leader being coached—is in a highly placed or very responsible position. Most coaching candidates have hundreds, if not thousands, of subordinates, and usually oversee multimillion- or multibillion-dollar budgets. Thus, the money spent on a coaching program can be relatively small in comparison to the budgets and resources the candidates control. Many organizations believe if a coaching program helps a leader better utilize resources or get higher productivity from workers, then it is likely that they will see a high return on investment from a coaching program. Mentoring Mentoring is a personal relationship in which a more experienced mentor (usually someone two to four levels higher in an organization) acts as a guide, role model, and sponsor of a less experienced protégé. Mentors provide protégés with knowledge, advice, challenge, counsel, and support about career opportunities, organizational strategy and policy, office politics, and so forth (Murray & Owen, 1991; Lall, 1999; Ragins & Cotton, 1999; Ragins, Cotton, & Miller, 2000; Thomas, Parents are the first leadership 2001; Scandura & Lankau, 2002; De Janasz, Sulli- trainers in life. van, & Whiting, 2003; Menttium, 2004; Allen, Eby, Bruce Avolio Poteet, Lentz, & Lima, 2004). Although mentoring has a strong developmental component, it is not