3.1 Leading People and Organizations
What’s in it for Me?
Reading this chapter will help you do the following:
- Define what leadership is and identify traits of effective leaders.
- Describe behaviors that effective leaders demonstrate.
- Specify the contexts in which various leadership styles are effective.
- Explain the concepts of transformational, transactional, charismatic, servant, and authentic leadership.
- Develop your own leadership skills.
What is Leadership?
Leadership may be defined as the act of influencing others to work toward a goal. Leaders exist at all levels of an organization. Some leaders hold a position of authority and may use the power that comes from their position, as well as their personal power, to influence others; they are called formal leaders. In contrast, informal leaders are without a formal position of authority within the organization but demonstrate leadership by influencing others through personal forms of power. One caveat is important here: Leaders do not rely on the use of force to influence people. Instead, people willingly adopt the leader’s goal as their own goal. If a person is relying on force and punishment, the person is a dictator, not a leader. Leaders give their followers direction. Leaders are key players in determining the success or failure of coordinated tasks and organizational initiatives.
What makes leaders effective? What distinguishes people who are perceived as leaders from those who are not perceived as leaders? More importantly, how do we train future leaders and improve their leadership ability? These are important questions that have attracted scholarly attention in the past several decades.
In this chapter, we will review the history of leadership studies and summarize the major findings relating to these important questions. Around the world, we view leaders as at least partly responsible for their team’s or company’s success and failure. Company chief executive officers (CEOs) are paid millions of dollars in salaries and stock options with the assumption that they hold their company’s future in their hands. In politics, education, sports, and profit and nonprofit sectors, the influence of leaders over the behaviors of individuals and organizations is rarely questioned. When people and organizations fail, managers and CEOs are often viewed as responsible. Some people criticize the assumption that leadership always matters and call this belief “the romance of leadership.” However, research evidence pointing to the importance of leaders for organizational success is accumulating (Hogan et al., 1994).
Example: Springfield Sea Lions Manager
John Arroyo is thrilled with his new position as general manager of the Springfield Sea Lions, a minor league baseball team. Arroyo has been a baseball fan all of his life, and now his diligent work and his degree in sports management are paying off.
Arroyo knew he had a hard act to follow. The general manager whom John replaced, “T.J.” Grevin, was a much-loved old-timer who had been with the Sea Lions since their inception 14 years ago. John knew it would be difficult for whoever followed T.J., but he didn’t realize how ostracized and powerless he would feel. He tried a pep talk: “I’m the general manager—the CEO of this ball club! In time, the staff will respect me.” [Not a very good pep talk!]
After his first season ends, Arroyo is discouraged. Ticket and concession sales are down, and some long-time employees are rumored to be thinking about leaving. If John doesn’t turn things around, he knows his tenure with the Sea Lions will be short.
Question: Is John correct in assuming that the staff will learn to respect him in time? What can John do to earn the loyalty of his staff and improve the ball club’s performance?
Outcomes: During the winter, John thinks long and hard about how he can earn the respect of the Sea Lions staff. Before the next season opener, John announces his plan: “So I can better understand what your day is like, I’m going to spend one day in each of your shoes. I’m trading places with each of you. I will be a ticket taker, a roving hot dog vendor, and a janitor. And I will be a marketer, and an accountant—for a day. You in turn will have the day off so you can enjoy the game from the general manager’s box.” The staff laughs and whistles appreciatively. Then the Springfield mascot, Sparky the Sea Lion, speaks up: “Hey Mr. Arroyo, are you going to spend a day in my flippers?” “You bet!” says John, laughing. The entire staff cheers.
John continues. “At the close of the season, we will honor a staff member with the T.J. Grevin Award for outstanding contributions to the Sea Lions organization. T.J. was such a great guy, it’s only right that we honor him.” The meeting ends, but John’s staff linger to tell him how excited they are about his ideas. Amidst the handshakes, he hopes that this year may be the best year yet for the Sea Lions.
According to Louise Axon, director of content strategy, and her colleagues at Harvard Business Publishing, in seeking management talent, leadership is an urgently needed quality in all managerial roles (Axon et al., n.d.). Good leaders and good leadership are rare. Harvard management professor John P. Kotter notes that “there is a leadership crisis in the U.S. today” (Labich, 1988) and the late USC Professor Warren Bennis states that many of our organizations are overmanaged and underled (Bennis, 1989).
“Leading People and Organizations” in Principles of Management by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
Section on Springfield Sea Lions Manager adapted from: Introduction in “Principles of Management” by Open Stax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
