LeaderShip

  

                                         LeaderShip (ability to influence people)

Someone has to direct, lead, supervise and motivate employees, determine course of action, giving orders and instruction.

Leaders are the people who:

• Lead the group or follower
• Influence the behavior of others
• Possess the leadership skill
• Attain the organizational goals through their influence.

According to Dessler, “Leadership means influencing others to work willingly towards achieving objectives”.

Nature of Leadership;

• Follower
• Common objective
• Situational
• Ability to influence
• Continuous process.

Function of Leadership:

1. Directing: Leadership inspires and influences others to give their maximum efforts and

cooperation for the attainment of group objectives. Thus, Leader share mission & goals, defining

and set performance standard, explain plans, and decision and motivate employees to bring out

the best of them.

2. Supervising and coaching: Supervision is concerned with the training, coaching and development

of the group members. It includes the checkups required to assure the proper and prompt

execution of orders, and thus it is also called controlling function.

3. Motivating: Motivating employees is another important function of leadership. It creates a good

work climate along with a personal sense of belonging to the organisation, which helps to

motivate employees toward their tasks.

4. Communicating: Communicating with employees is a necessary part of leadership function.

Communication helps to generate ideas, create mutual understanding and coordination, so

providing information and facilitating communication reduce conflict among group members.

5. Maintaining: Maintenance function is related to retaining the members in a group. It is concerned

with providing safe work condition, good working environment in the workplace and addressing

the grievances of employees and solving them in effective way.

6. Mediating

                                              Leadership Style

The behavior pattern of leaders in directing the behavior of members in order to achieve the

organizational goals is known as leadership style. Leadership styles vary widely among leaders at

different time and different situation. It mostly depends on the philosophy, attitude, personality and the

experience of the individual leaders.

The four main styles of leadership are as follows:

Figure from book….

1. Authoritarian Style (Leader centered) [dictatorial/Autocratic] Punishment base: Under this

leadership style power, authority and decision making are centralized in leaders. The leader rule

with unlimited authority. So he/she determines policies, make plans for the group with consulting

them. Every activity is direct by the leader and pressurized the employees to complete them at a

fixed time given by leader.

Advantages:-work can be done quickly, maintain discipline, maintain chain of command.

Disadvantages: - does not motivate group member, people work only by the fear of punishment,

no upward communication.

2. Paternalistic Style (leader centered) (benevolent-kind autocratic style): Under this style, leaders

make the decision, but deal more kindly with subordinates and allow them some flexibility. The

leaders guides, protects and treats subordinates like children.

Advantages: - some consideration/reward facility is provided.

Disadvantages: - do not take advantage of ideas from the group.

3. Participative/Democratic style (group centered) (consultative): Under this style, power and

authority is decentralized and takes decision in consultation with his/her subordinates.

Subordinates are encouraged to demonstrate ideas and creativity and take interest in setting plans

and policies.

Advantages: - let everybody feel involved in decision making process, people get the opportunity

to develop, grow with organisation.

Disadvantages:- time consuming in decision making , too much autonomy result indiscipline,

leaders may avoid responsibility.

4. Laissez-faire Style (Free rein Leadership): Under this style, a leader entrusts the decision making

authority to this subordinates. She/he avoids using power and leaves it to his subordinates to

establish the goals. The leaders only provide information, materials and facilities to his/her

subordinates. This type of style is only suitable for highly trained and professional staff who, are

creative, self motivated, required minimum guidance and control.

Advantages: - lets the group run by itself, complete freedom to work, potential of subordinates

are fully utilized.

Disadvantages: - group lacks focus towards goal, people may avoid responsibility, problems of

coordination are created.

Approaches of Leadership

“Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth”. There is not any

single theory to understand leader’s behavior. A number of approaches of leadership were developed in

the past. It is important to understand different approaches of leadership in order to evaluate to strength

and weaknesses in the leaderships practices in the organization.

Different approaches of leadership are as follows:

1. The behavioral approach: The theory concerned about what a leader actually does and how she/he

does it. The assumption under this theory was;

a. The behavior of effective leader would be different from the behavior of less effective leader.

b. The behavior of effective leaders would be the same across all situations.

There are three important research studies, which attempted to analyze the leadership behaviors.

They are:

a. Ohio State Studies: Famous studies were undertaken in the 40s and 50s at Ohio State University

to find what behaviors make leadership effective? From their study, two dimension of leadership

behavior were identified.

i.Consideration: They describe consideration behavior is people oriented leadership

dimension where leader are sensitive to make people happy at work. They try to provide

pleasant work environment and are highly employee centered.

ii.Structure: Leader who focus on initiation of structure are more concerned with defining

work and task, maintaining standards, meeting deadlines method of works and roles. The

finding of this study revealed the following:

• Higher structure behavior and lower consideration behavior result in higher performance

of employees, but lower level of their satisfaction and vice-versa.

• Higher structure and consideration behavior is the best all-round style which not only

increased the performance but also provides maximum satisfaction at work.

b. Michigan Studies: From this study the leaders behavior was categories as job centered and

employee centered.

Employee centered leader are more employee welfare oriented whereas job centered leader are

more concerned with getting work done. The conclusion of the study was, employee centered

leadership style is more productive for both organization and employee. However, effective

leader need to show different types of behavior, depending on the situation.

c. Managerial Gird: Robert R Blake and Jane S Mouton developed this concept on 1964. The

leadership grid states the leadership’s effectiveness behavior in terms of leaders’ orientation to

either people or production. Some leaders have people concerned orientation while other is

production oriented. However, a leader might show moderation of all these behavior and thus

equal in both dimension. According to this theory, there are five main perspectives of leadership.

i.Authority type (9, 1):- High degree of concerned for production, concentrate on work

efficiency and arranging work condition.

ii.Country Club (1, 9): - High degree of concerned for people. Try to satisfy the needs of people

and maintain good relation.

iii.Team management (9, 9): - High degree of concerned on people and production, maintain

good relationship of trust and respect through committing people to work for common goals.

iv.Improvised Management (1, 1): - Low degree of concern of both people and production,

putting minimum effort to get required work done with the need to sustain organization

membership.

v.Organisation Management (5, 5):- Optimum level of concerned for people and production,

balance between the work with need satisfaction of people.

3. Situational Approach: According to the situationist viewpoint, a specific situation determines the

effectiveness of the leader. i.e., if the situation changes the leadership role will also change. (E.g.

unskilled/uneducated- task oriented style whereas, after training and development and

experience- participative style.

a. Fiedler’s contingency approach: This approach assumed that , the effectiveness of the leader

is based on his ability to act in terms of situational requirements.Fiedler used Least preferred

scale(LPC) to measure leadership motivation- whether a manager is task oriented or

employee oriented. In addition, he suggested three important situations which affect the

leadership effectiveness.

i.Leader-member relation: A high degree of trust, confidence and respect of

subordinate toward the leaser.

Task structure: The extent to which the group task, goal, and performance are clearly

defined.

Position power: The extent to which the leader uses control, reward and punishment

for subordinates.