LEADING FUNCTION

TOPIC 6: LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT

1. LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the end of the lectures and tutorial, you should be able to apply effective
leadership styles in different organisational contexts:

1.1. Describe key characteristics and skills of effective leaders in organisations.

1.2. Describe the impact of different leadership styles on employee motivation and
performance.
1.3. Explain how leaders use different communication and conflict resolution
techniques to motivate and foster collaboration in the workplace.
1.4. Describe the different types of organisational change and how organisational
culture impact these change initiatives.
1.5. Describe the strategies leaders can use to manage and overcome psychological
resistance to change.
1.6. Share leadership styles which incorporate human insights that drive organisation
change.

TOPIC 6: LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT

1.1. WHAT IS LEADING?

Leading is the ability to influence, motivate and direct people toward the attainment
of goals and objectives. Leading questions the status quo so that out-dated,
unproductive, or socially irresponsible norms can be replaced to meet new
challenges. Leading also means enabling and encouraging creativity in others, as
distinguished from "managing’. Leading builds the commitments and enthusiasm
needed for people to apply their talents fully to help accomplish plans.

Management and leadership reflect two different sets of qualities and skills that
frequently overlap within a single individual. A primary distinction between
management and leadership is that management promotes stability and order
within the existing organisational structure and systems. Leadership, on the other
hand, promotes vision and change. Given the challenges that exist in today’s
marketplace, organisations need both types of skills and need their employees to be
both good managers and good leaders as well.
ESSENTIAL SKILLS ASSOCIATED WITH EFFECTIVE LEADING

Visioning

Vision is identified as an essential ingredient of effective leadership. The term

describes someone who has a clear sense of the future and the actions needed to
get there successfully.

Visioning skills include

 Having ideas and a clear sense of direction
 Communicate visions to others
 Develop sense of excitement and commitment to accomplish shared “dreams”

A vision is expressed and explained through words and actions. First, a clear and
brief statement of the vision. Second, actions in the form of policies, programs must
be initiated to support the vision. The final factor is the leader must communicate the
vision in a way that reaches out to people, gripping them and making them want to
get involved in carrying out that vision.

Example: Martin Luther King: “I have a dream”

Managing Power and Influence

Power is the potential ability to influence the behaviour of others. Influence is the
effect that a person’s actions have on the attitudes, values, beliefs, or behaviour of
others. Whereas power is the capacity to cause a change in a person, influence may
be thought of as a degree of actual change.

Both followers and leaders use power and influence to get things done in
organisations. An effective leader must have power and know how to use it wisely.
Most discussions of power include five types that are available to leaders. The
effective leader leverages on the use of the appropriate type of power for the
achievement of goals and objectives.

The five types of power include:

Legitimate power comes from a formal management position in an organisation and

the authority granted to it.

Reward power stems from the authority to bestow rewards on other people.
Managers can use rewards to influence subordinates’ behaviour. They may have
access to formal rewards such as pay increases or promotions, and also have at
their disposal rewards such as praise, attention and recognition.
Coercive power refers to the authority to punish or recommend punishment, such as
the right to fire or demote employees, criticise them, or withhold pay increases.

Referent power comes from an individual’s personal characteristics that command

others’ identification, respect, and admiration, so that they wish to emulate that
individual. Referent power does not depend on a formal title or position.

Expert power results from a person’s special knowledge or skill regarding the tasks
being performed. When someone is a true expert, others go along with
recommendations because of his or her superior knowledge.

Empowering

Empowerment is power sharing, the delegation of power and authority to

subordinates in an organisation. Increasing employee power heightens motivation
for task accomplishment because people improve their own effectiveness, choosing
how to do a task and using their creativity. When employees have these positive
feelings about their work, the work itself becomes stimulating and interesting, and the
leader has done a good job.
Empowerment requires top management to support initiative; respect individual
judgements and share power at all levels of operations. Empowerment is giving
people at all levels of responsibility the opportunity to act and make relevant
decisions on their own.
Empowering employees involves giving them four elements that enable them to act
more freely to accomplish their jobs: information (access to company financial and
operational information), knowledge (skills to contribute to company goals e.g.
training programs and other development tools), power (to make substantive
decisions) and rewards (based on company performance).

1.2 MOTIVATING FOR PERFORMANCE

Motivating

Motivation may be defined as the psychological process that arouse and direct goal-
directed behaviour. Hence, motivation can be expressed as a simple model – namely
that people have certain needs that motivate them to perform specific behaviours for
which they receive rewards that feedback and satisfy the original needs.

Unfulfilled need Motivation Behaviours

Rewards
Desire is created to You search for You choose a type of
2 types- extrinsic
fulfill a need-food, ways to satisfy behaviour you think
and intrinsic
safety, recognition the need. might satisfy the need

Rewards are of two types – extrinsic and intrinsic. Managers can use both to
encourage better work performance.
 Extrinsic rewards – a reward given by others. An extrinsic reward is the payoff
such as money, a person receives from others for performing a particular task.
 Intrinsic rewards – a reward given to yourself. An intrinsic reward is the
satisfaction such as a feeling of accomplishment, a person recovers from
performing the particular task itself.

Motivation plays a role in influencing a number of outcomes including employee

engagement, organisational citizenship, absenteeism and service quality. As a
manager you would want to motivate people to:

a. Join your organisation. You need to instill in talented prospective workers the
desire to come to work for you.

b. Stay with your organisation. Whether in good economic times or bad, you always
want to retain good people.

c. Show up for work in your organisation. In many organisations, absenteeism and

lateness are tremendous problems.

d. Be engaged while at your organisation. Engaged employees produce higher

quality work and better customer service.

e. Do extra for your organisation. You hope your employees will perform extra tasks
beyond and above the call of duty (be organisationally good citizens)

Leaders must understand that the skill of motivating, which is the ability to influence
the willingness of staff to give off their best, is vital to every executive. To get
employees to perform minimum duties, one needs only drive them. To gain their top
performance, one must inspire them to drive themselves. Author James J. Cribben
reinforces the concept this way: "Better for the leader to have two people who work
with him than five who labour for him. The former will multiply his productivity; the
latter will merely drain his resources."

Effective leaders give heart by recognising contributions to common vision. With a

thank-you note, a smile, an award, and public praise, the leader lets others know how
much they mean to the organization. Leaders find ways to recognize contributions
and celebrate accomplishments - they link rewards with performance.

Motivation of employees is an on-going, crucial task for leaders.

He has to energize his employees to

 Initiate, direct,
 Intensify and
 sustain their desired behaviour

Contingency (or situational) Theory of Leadership

Contingency (or situational) leadership propose the idea that managers
influence others by adapting their style to the circumstances. A contingency
approach recognises that neither the democratic nor autocratic extreme is effective
in any given situation.

 Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s continuum of leader behaviour

The Tannenbaum-Schmidt Continuum is a model of leadership explaining the
different ways leaders interact with their followers, presented as a continuum of
styles, ranging from autocratic to democratic. At one end of the spectrum, a
leader can have total freedom to decide while, at the other end of the spectrum,
the team can have nearly total freedom to decide.

Between these two extremes, there are a number of leadership styles and the
particular style selected depends on the skills and willingness of the leader and the
demands of the situation.

Autocratic leaders centralise power and decision-making to themselves. They

structure work for their employees, who in turn are expected to do what they are told.
These leaders retain full authority and assume full responsibility.

Autocratic leadership is typically negative and is based on threats and punishments.

However, it can be positive as demonstrated by benevolent autocrats who choose to
give some rewards to employees.

The style is often satisfying for the leader and enables quick decision-making. It also
provides security to less competent staff as they are not expected to deviate from the
leader’s instructions. However, most employees dislike autocratic leaders especially
if their demands result in fear and frustration.

Democratic (participative) leaders decentralise authority. Decisions arise from

consultation and there is active participation from followers. This participative
approach tends to improve employee motivation, job satisfaction and result in high
productivity.

Researchers do not prescribe the best leadership behaviour for specific situations.
Instead, they advocate selecting the most suitable behaviour by examining
situational factors.