\nCan Leadership Traits Be Identified?
\nIn the past (especially from 1930 to 1950), the most common approach to the study of
\nleadership focused on traits; it sought to determine what makes the successful leader
\nfrom the leader?s own personal characteristics. These inherent characteristics?such as
\nintelligence, maturity, drive, friendliness?were felt to be transferable from one situation
\nto another. The list of traits grew and grew, but no clear-cut results appeared.
\nFinally, Eugene E. Jennings conducted a careful and extensive review of the literature
\non the trait approach to leadership and concluded: ?Fifty years of study have failed to
\nproduce one personality trait or set of qualities that can be used to discriminate leaders
\nand nonleaders.?3
\nJennings or no Jennings, the quest for traits?and the traits?continues. Richard E.
\nBoyatzis and the staff of McBer and Company in Boston studied more than 2000 managers
\nin 41 different management jobs.4 They found ten skills relating to managerial effectiveness
\nthat stood out:
\n1. Concern with impact (that is, concern with symbols of power that have an impact on
\nothers)
\n2. Diagnostic use of concepts (that is, a way of thinking that recognizes patterns in situations
\nthrough the use of concepts)
\n3. Efficiency orientation (that is, concern with doing something better)
\n4. Proactivity (that is, predisposition toward taking action to accomplish something)
\n5. Conceptualization (that is, ability to see and identify patterns as concepts when
\ngiven an assortment of information)
\n6. Self-confidence (that is, decisiveness or presence)
\n7. Use of oral presentations (that is, effective communication)
\n8. Managing group process (that is, stimulating others to work together effectively in
\ngroup settings)
\n9. Use of socialized power (that is, using forms of influence to build alliances, networks,
\ncoalitions, or teams)
\n10. Perceptual objectivity (that is, ability to be relatively objective; not limited by biases,
\nprejudices, or perspectives)
\nThis list focuses on middle-level managers. Management knowledge is not stressed because
\nBoyatzis found that such knowledge represents threshold competency and that the successful
\nmanagers selected were already well grounded.
\nIn a more recent study, Fred I. Greenstein, a political scientist at Princeton, rates
\nmodern presidents on six qualities that bear on their effectiveness as leaders: communication,
\norganization, political skill, vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence.5 No
\nsingle president scores high on all those attributes, but most successful American chief
\nexecutives have possessed the right combination of the ones that matter most. Greenstein
\nbelieves that the key presidential quality is emotional intelligence, which he defines as the
\nPROGRAM MANAGEMENT
\npresident?s ability to manage his emotions and turn them to constructive purposes, rather
\nthan being dominated by them and allowing them to diminish his leadership. Greenstein
\nsays that only 3 of the 12 presidents he studied stand out as fundamentally free of distracting
\nemotional perturbations?Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, and George H. W. Bush?
\nnone of whom was considered a particularly strong president. Four others?Franklin
\nD. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan?were marked by
\nemotional undercurrents that did not significantly impair their leadership. Those four
\npresidents?all great communicators except for Truman?would make most lists of the
\ntwentieth century?s dominant chief executives.
\nLeadership Styles
\nThe contingency approach has an important practical advantage over the trait approach.
\nBy emphasizing behavior and environment, encouragement is given to the possibility of
\ntraining individuals. In other words, people can increase their effectiveness in leadership
\nthrough training in adapting their leadership style to the situation and the followers.
\nNeedless to say, this approach does require that the administrators be good enough
\ndiagnosticians to identify clues in an environment and flexible enough to vary their
\nbehavior.
\nActually, the contingency approach to leadership fits nicely the ?textbook? definition
\ngiven at the start of this chapter. Leadership is, to repeat that definition, the process of
\ninfluencing the activities of the group in efforts toward goal attainment in a given situation.
\nThe key elements in this definition are leader, followers, and situation. Leadership, then,
\nis a function of three variables. Symbolically,
\nL = f(l, f, s)
\nYou can?t get any further from the definitions of Peyre and Follett than that!
\nArguably, all group objectives fall into one of two categories: (1) the achievement of
\nsome group goal or (2) the maintenance or strengthening of the group itself. The first,
\nwhich we shall call task behavior, refers to the extent to which the leader is task oriented
\nand directs the work of subordinates toward goal attainment. Leaders exhibiting this
\nbehavior typically give instructions, spend time planning, emphasize deadlines, and provide
\nexplicit schedules of work activities. The second dimension of leader behavior, relationship
\nbehavior, refers to the extent to which the leader is mindful of subordinates, respects
\ntheir ideas and feelings, and establishes mutual trust. Relationship-oriented leaders are
\nfriendly, provide open communication, develop teamwork, and are oriented toward their
\nsubordinates? welfare.
\nUsing only various combinations of these two types of behavior, we can plot an infinite
\nnumber of leadership styles (see Figure 8.2). This simple taxonomy of leadership behavior
\nhas proven popular, and numerous researchers have sought to advance it. One of the more
\nsuccessful efforts was that of the late William Reddin, a management guru.6 Using various
\ncombinations of the two kinds of behavior?task and relationship?Reddin developed four
\nbasic leadership styles:
\n1. Supporting, or human relations, style: This manager has below average task orientation
\nand above average relationship orientation.
\n2. Coaching, or participative, style: This manager has above average task orientation
\nand above average relationship orientation.
\n3. Delegating, or laissez-faire (?hands off?), style: This manager has below average task
\norientation and below average relationship orientation.
\n4. Directing, or autocratic, style: This manager has above average task orientation and
\nbelow average relationship orientation.
\nThe crucial point about these four styles is this: The effectiveness of managers depends on
\nwhether the style they use is appropriate for their situation. More specifically, to know what is
\nthe appropriate style, managers must look to the culture or climate of their organizations;
\nto the nature of the work performed (auditing, street repairs, research and development,
\nand so on); and to the styles, expectations, and maturity of their superiors, subordinates,
\nand coworkers. All these factors help determine which style is effective and which styles
\nare less so.
\nBecause effectiveness results from adopting a style appropriate to the situation in which
\nit is used, the same basic style can be perceived as being particularly effective or particularly
\nineffective. Stated differently, a style that works beautifully in one situation might cause a
\nlynch mob to form in another. What is the best management style? It all depends.
\nConsider the following two lists.7 Each pair of terms could refer to identical behavior.
\nWhen that behavior is exhibited in the appropriate situation, everyone nods and mutters
\nthe words on the left. But when a manager exhibits the very same pattern of behavior in a
\ndifferent situation, people might shake their heads and mutter the words on the right.
\nSupporting, or human relations, style Coaching, or participative, style Directing, or autocratic, style Delegating, or laissez-faire (?hands off?), style Concern for task Concern for people
\nPROGRAM MANAGEMENT
\nwarm-hearted sentimental
\nflexible weak-minded
\ndignified pompous
\nfirm rigid
\nbusinesslike brusque
\nconservative reactionary
\nprogressive left-wing
\nsensitive soft
\ndynamic overbearing
\nBased on your own experience, can you think of examples of how a situation has determined
\nthe appropriateness of a person?s actions?
\nBy now it should be clear that an administrator?s effectiveness depends to a large degree
\non her ability to size up a situation. To climb outside ourselves, so to speak, and see our
\nsituation and study our actions objectively is not easy. Many mechanisms make us insensitive
\nto our situation.
\nFirst, we tend to rationalize, or kid, ourselves. (?I didn?t complete the job because other
\nthings came up.? ?I wasn?t promoted because my boss is biased.?) Second, we see in others
\nwhat we do not want to see in ourselves. Freud called this tendency projection. So the slacker
\nsees others as lazy; the selfish person complains that others do not share; the administrator
\nwith low concern for people complains that no one seems to take an interest in him. To maintain
\nprojection, administrators must continue to distort reality. Third, we mistake symptoms
\nfor cause (this was discussed in Chapter 6). Fourth, we are consumed by a single value?all
\nproblems are human ones, all work must be satisfying, or all bigness is bad. Fifth, we may
\nhave a high stress level. This is likely to distort our perceptions and feelings about others.8
\nReddin?s theory can be summarized very briefly. There are four basic styles that an
\nadministrator can adopt: supporting, coaching, delegating, and directing. Each of these
\nstyles can be either effective or ineffective?depending on the situation. Thus, there are
\nreally eight management styles: executive and compromiser; bureaucrat and deserter;
\nbenevolent autocrat and autocrat; and developer and missionary (see Table 8.1).
\nLeader as Motivator
\nDuke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski writes, ?I once heard a high school coach tell a
\nkid that it was not his job to motivate players, but they should show up motivated. Well,
\nI shook my head. I could not disagree more with a statement like that. I believe the main
\njob of the coach is to motivate. The main job of the leader is to inspire.?9 (Coach K. is
\nprofiled on pages 360?61.)
\nWhat is meant by the output of administrators? Not the number of memos they write,
\nphone calls they answer, meetings they attend, or deals they cut. In a fundamental sense,
\ntheir output is the output of the people over whom they have influence. Management, never
\nforget, is a team activity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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