A41LS A41LE A41LD Leadership - Full Text

A41LS / A41LE / A41LD – Leadership

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School of Life Sciences

Heriot-Watt University

Edinburgh EH14 4AS, United Kingdom


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Heriot-Watt University

Edinburgh

Scotland

United Kingdom

EH14 4AS

Telephone +44(0) 131 451 8239

Fax +44(0) 131 451 3735

E-Mail [email protected]

http://web.sls.hw.ac.uk/alp.html

mailto:[email protected]

http://web.sls.hw.ac.uk/alp.html


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Contents

A49LS / A41LE / A41LD – Leadership .......................................................................... 1

Line Manager Guide ......................................................................................................... 6

Module Overview .............................................................................................................. 8

Module Aims.................................................................................................................... 10

Unit 1 - Introducing Leadership .................................................................................... 11

Unit Summary ................................................................................................................. 11

Unit Aims ......................................................................................................................... 11 1.1 Introducing Leadership ...................................................................................... 11

Learning Checkpoint ..................................................................................................... 14

Essential Reading .......................................................................................................... 15

Unit 2 - Leadership and Social Identity ........................................................................ 42

Unit Summary ................................................................................................................. 42

Unit Aims ......................................................................................................................... 42 2.1 Social Identity .................................................................................................... 42

2.2 Social Identity and Leadership ........................................................................... 44



Recommended Reading ................................................................................................ 47

Unit 3 - Leadership as a Group Phenomenon .............................................................. 75

Unit Summary ................................................................................................................. 75

Unit Aims ......................................................................................................................... 75 3.1 Leadership as a Group Phenomenon .................................................................. 75

3.2 Social Cognitive Factors .................................................................................... 76

3.3 Advantages of Groups: Additive, Disjunctive, and Conjunctive Tasks ............. 77



Recommended Reading ................................................................................................ 80

Unit 4 - Leadership and Power .................................................................................... 112

Unit Summary ............................................................................................................... 112

Unit Aims ....................................................................................................................... 112 4.1 What is Power?................................................................................................. 112

4.2 Exercising Power.............................................................................................. 113

4.3 Power and Organisational Culture ................................................................... 115

4.4 Changing Minds ............................................................................................... 116

Learning Checkpoint ................................................................................................... 117

Essential Reading ........................................................................................................ 118


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Recommended Reading .............................................................................................. 118

Unit 5 - Diversity and Leadership ............................................................................... 150

Unit Summary ............................................................................................................... 150

Unit Aims ....................................................................................................................... 150 5.1 Working Conditions ......................................................................................... 150

5.2 Gender Role Stereotyping ................................................................................ 151

5.3 Cross-Cultural Perspectives ............................................................................. 152




Unit 6 - Leading Change............................................................................................... 173

Unit Summary ............................................................................................................... 183

Unit Aims ....................................................................................................................... 183 6.1 Overcoming Resistance to Change .................................................................. 183

6.2 Effecting Change .............................................................................................. 184

6.3 Leading Organisational Change ....................................................................... 186




Unit 7 - Putting Theory into Practice .......................................................................... 192

Unit Summary ............................................................................................................... 208

Unit Aims ....................................................................................................................... 208 7.1 Leaders are „Heroes‟ ........................................................................................ 208

7.2 Emotional Intelligence ..................................................................................... 209

7.3 Competencies and Changing Strategies ........................................................... 211




Unit 8 - Leadership Development ................................................................................ 228

Unit Summary ............................................................................................................... 228

Unit Aims ....................................................................................................................... 228 8.1 Can Leaders Be Developed? ............................................................................ 228

8.2 The Centre for Creative Leadership (CCL) ...................................................... 229

8.3 Action-Centred Leadership .............................................................................. 230

8.4 Boyatzis‟s Approach ........................................................................................ 231

8.5 Leadership Development in Organisations ...................................................... 232




Coursework Submission Sheet..................................................................................... 271


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Sample Exam Questions ............................................................................................... 273

Module Feedback Form ............................................................................................... 274


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Line Manager Guide

Line Manager‟s Guide to the Module

Note to student: Please pass this information to your employer. It explains how your

employability skills will be enhanced by this module. You can also use the information

here in future job applications.

Dear Employer,

The person who has given you this sheet is completing the PG Certificate / PG Diploma /

MSc Business Psychology programme at Heriot Watt University.

The course materials that the student has learned from were prepared by the

Applied Psychology Programme at Heriot Watt University. Heriot Watt is the eighth

oldest higher education institution in the UK. It originated as the School of Arts of

Edinburgh in 1821 and, in 1966, became a University by Royal Charter. More than a

quarter of our 7000 on-campus students in Scotland are from outside the UK, and are

complemented by the 10,000 students worldwide studying on our international

programmes. Heriot-Watt University is one of the UK‟s leading research institutions,

having been rated at the highest level by our national review body, the RAE. You can

learn more about Heriot-Watt University by visiting www.hw.ac.uk In 2009, the Applied

Psychology programme at the University came 15th in a survey of teaching quality of all

100+ university psychology departments in the United Kingdom. The course itself was

written by two professors and a senior lecturer (equivalent to full professors and an

associate professor respectively in the USA education system), who have extensive

experience of carrying out consultancy work in a wide range of business settings. In

writing the course, they worked in conjunction with an advisory panel of senior British

business executives.

For each module that the student takes, he / she will be able to give you

information, similar to that here, explaining how the material covered will make him / her

a better employee. In the light of this, please be advised that the student may be working

during the evening or weekend on coursework or other assignments, and the course team

would be grateful if you could make any appropriate allowances for this.

As a result of having completed this module, your employee will have considered

how theories and research concerning the psychology of leadership can be applied to

actual business practice. The ability to apply the findings to actual business practice

comprises part of the assessment, such that passing the module means that the student has

demonstrated an ability to use the material in the module to enhance the profitability of a

http://www.hw.ac.uk/


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range of businesses. Your employee will have the following subject specific skills and

knowledge;

• Understanding of the development of thinking concerning leadership over the past

century

• Understanding of the implications of social identity theory for leadership

• Understanding of the implications of a leader‟s followers being organised into a group;

and how different groups are better suited for differing tasks

• Understanding of the differing sources of power available to a leader and how their

exercise is contingent on organisational culture

• Understanding of two diversity-related issues in leadership, namely the low proportion

of female leaders, and the culture-bound limitations of research on leadership carried

out in North America and western Europe

• Understanding of why employees might resist organisational change and some

strategies for leading through change

• Understanding of the limits of the „leader as hero‟ model; and why positive psychology

provides a leadership framework that has an inspirational, transformative effect

• Understanding of the main approaches by which organisations can develop leadership

skills


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Module Overview

This module addresses what constitutes effective leadership and how leadership skills can

be improved. Each of the eight Units introduces a key reading in the area of concern, and

the introductory text and key reading complement one another in forming the core

teaching materials.

Unit 1 introduces leadership in the context of how thinking on the subject has developed

over the last century. We consider autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire approaches;

contingency theories; and transactional and transformational approaches.

Unit 2 considers leadership in the context of social identity theory. We consider the

implications of the degree of correspondence between the leader and his / her followers.

Unit 3 considers leadership as a group phenomenon. A leader is responsible for a group

of individuals, with implications for perceptions of that leader; and we see how different

types of groups are more suited to different types of task.

Unit 4 considers a leader's power. After distinguishing power from prestige and

leadership, we consider the power levers available to a particular leader; and how the

exercise of power should be contingent on the culture of the organisation in question.

Unit 5 addresses diversity issues in leadership. The Unit argues that the low proportion of

female managers is attributable to an inaccurate stereotype that females lack core

leadership competencies; and explains the origin of this stereotype. The module also

addresses cross-cultural limitations to existing theories of leadership.

Unit 6 deals with leadership in times of organisational change. It considers why

employees might resist change; and some of the strategies that can be used to lead

effectively through organisational change.

Unit 7 deals with several practical issues in leadership. It considers the limitations of the

notion of the leader as a 'hero', and argues that positive psychology, and particularly

emotional intelligence, provides a better framework for inspirational, transformative

leadership that also tends to be more successful than approaches to leadership based on

conventional cognitive intelligence.

Unit 8 considers the main approaches that have been taken by organisations to

developing leadership abilities. The approach espoused by the Centre for Creative

Leadership emphasises the self-knowledge of the leader in question; Adair's action-


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centred leadership focusses on the functional elements (e.g., planning) in relation to the

essential components of leadership (i.e., task, team, and individual); and Boyatzis's

approach concerns cognitive abilities and also emotional intelligence.


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Module Aims

By the end of the module, students will be able to;

• Understand the development of thinking concerning leadership over the past century

• Understand the implications of social identity theory for leadership

• Understand the implications of a leader‟s followers being organised into a group

• Understand the differing sources of power available to a leader and how their exercise

is contingent on organisational culture

• Understand two diversity-related issues in leadership, namely the low proportion of

female leaders, and the culture-bound limitations of research on leadership carried out

in North America and western Europe

• Understand why employees might resist organisational change and some strategies for

leading through change

• Understand the limits of the „leader as hero‟ model; and why positive psychology

provides a leadership framework that has an inspirational, transformative effect

• Understand the main approaches by which organisations can develop leadership skills


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Unit 1 - Introducing Leadership

Unit Summary

This Unit introduces the main historical approaches to leadership. Early approaches

regarded leadership as a personality trait that some possessed and others did not. Work in

the 1930s and 1940s addressed different leadership styles, focussing on autocratic,

democratic, and laissez-faire approaches. In the 1960s the focus switched to contingency

theories, which stress how a person- or a task-orientation will become more important in

different leadership contexts. In more recent years, attention has switched again to

transactional and transformational approaches to leadership.

Unit Aims

By the end of the unit, students should;

• Understand the changing focus of interests of research on leadership

1.1 Introducing Leadership

Most societies of the world have expended considerable practical and intellectual effort in

promoting leadership as the key to successful organisation. There are probably more

studies of leadership than any other single area of social science. Stogdill (1974)

summarised over 3,000 published works; and Bass and Stogdill’s Handbook of

Leadership Research (Bass, 1990) contained over 9,000. Yet little agreement on

operational definitions of leadership merged from these efforts.

Early studies, such as those by Bernard (1926) and Jenkins (1947) saw leadership as

being a personality trait. Here the term „trait‟ seems to be used to imply a characteristic,

rather than following the usage of the term in general psychology which implies

physiological and statistical properties. Under the general view of leadership traits,

people with the appropriate personality are able to influence others; whereas those

without the appropriate traits simply follow. Underlying this approach was the

assumption that some people are somehow „natural leaders‟, endowed with certain traits

not possessed by others. As such, early leadership theories attributed success to

extraordinary abilities such as tireless energy, penetrating intuition, uncanny foresight,

and irresistible persuasive powers.


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Dissatisfaction with trait theories led to an increasing interest in the styles of leader

behaviour. In other words, instead of trying to discover who the best leaders are the

emphasis switched to an examination of what the best leaders do. The earliest study was

by Lewin, Lippitt and White (1939), whose experimental participants were 11-year-old

members of a boys club who were divided into three groups and asked to make

Halloween masks. Each group had an adult leader who behaved adopted one of three

different styles;

• Autocratic - the leader decided what should be done, when, how, and by whom

• Democratic - the work of the group was organised via group discussions which were

facilitated by the leader

• Laissez-faire - the leaders‟ input was minimal, limited to supplying materials and

information

The boys with the democratic leader were happiest and most productive; and these boys

continued to work effectively when the leader left the room.

The Lewin studies were conducted during the early stages of the Second World War

when „democratic‟ countries were engaged in conflict with „autocratic‟ countries, with

considerable debate over which approach to governance was the most effective, and so it

is not surprising that the research received a considerable amount of attention. In a

thorough review of leadership research, David Guest (1996) argues that the studies

concentrated on one main dimension of leadership style whilst ignoring others. The

research is also correlational, and does not enable us to infer the direction of cause and

effect in the relationship between leadership style and productivity: it is possible that

leaders who have high performing groups can afford to be more participative, so that

performance influences style rather than the other way about.

Approaches that focussed on leadership style were followed by contingency theories

which focussed on the most effective leadership strategies in the differing situations that

leaders find themselves in. The question that was asked was what kind of leadership

behaviour would produce the most effective response from people in a given situation.

Fredrick Fiedler (1967) is probably the best known proponent of contingency theories of

leadership. Fiedler was concerned with matching the most appropriate form of leadership

with a particular context, and to do so he combined aspects of trait- and style-based

approaches to leadership. He assumed that leadership styles would be oriented towards

one of two positions, being concerned mainly with the task in hand or with interpersonal

relationships among people trying to perform the task. In order to assess where a given

leader‟s position was on this dimension, Fiedler developed a questionnaire to measure the


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leader‟s least preferred co-worker (LPC). The LPC measure contained sixteen scales with

descriptive adjectives like „friendly-unfriendly‟ or „boring-interesting‟. The leader would

be asked to rate the co-worker they least preferred to work with along each of these

scales, from which a single LPC score was calculated. Leaders with a high LPC score had

a positive view of even their least desirable colleagues and Fiedler interpreted this to

mean that they were particularly considerate and concerned with maintaining harmonious

relationships. On the other hand, a low LPC score implied a greater concern with the task.

If we ask which of these two styles is more likely to be effective, Fiedler‟s answer is that

it depends on three situational factors and the degree to which their combined effect is

favourable to the particular leader. The three factors are;

1) Relations between leader and group members (the extent to which the leader has

the members‟ support and trust)

2) Task structure (the extent to which the group‟s task is clearly defined)

3) Leader‟s position power (the extent to which the leader has the power to enforce

the compliance of group members by controlling rewards and punishments).

Fiedler‟s model has resulted in a great deal of research and commentary, and the results

from direct tests of it have been mixed. Most of the critical comments have centred on the

LPC measure. There is concern about the reliability and validity of the measure as well as

the assumption that it measures a stable aspect of personality. In addition to this, it has

been shown that changes in group performance can affect relations between leader and

group members, again implying that the role of the leader is not as stable as Fiedler‟s

model implies.

Burns (1978) conceptualised leadership as being either transactional or transformational.

Transactional leaders are those who lead through social exchange. Politicians lead by

exchanging one thing for another: jobs for vote, or subsidies for campaign contributions.

Transactional business leaders offer financial rewards for productivity or deny rewards

for lack of productivity. Transactional leadership occurs when the leader rewards or

disciplines the follower, depending on the adequacy of the follower‟s performance. In

contrast, transformational leaders are those who stimulate and inspire followers to

achieve extraordinary outcomes, and in the process, develop their own leadership

capacity. Transformational leaders‟ help followers grow and develop into leaders by

responding to individual followers‟ needs with measures that help to empower them; and

by aligning the objectives and goals of the individual followers with those of the leader,

the group and the larger organisation. According to Bass and Riggo (2006) there is a

large and growing body of evidence that supports the effectiveness of transformational

over transactional leadership, since transformational leadership results in more


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committed, loyal and satisfied followers. However, there has not been enough research

conducted to fully understand the effects of transformational leadership, and even fewer

studies have been conducted to address its longer term effects on employees.

In general, most studies of leadership have addressed the issues of leaders being task-

oriented and / or people-oriented. Schein (1988) believes that there two important

differences between the various theories. First, the theories differ from one another in

terms of whether the notion of task-orientation and people-orientation constitutes a single

continuum, such a given leader is more inclined toward one rather than the other, or

instead regard task-orientation and people-orientation as two independent dimensions,

such that a given leader can be high or low on each? Second, the various theories differ

from one another in terms of whether they regard these dimensions as tapping deep into

underlying attitudes and values or are instead simply conscious, observable behaviours

that leaders engage in for no deeper reason than their practicality. Schein himself believes

that, given a reasonable level of task competence, being oriented towards people becomes

increasingly important the higher one goes in the organisational hierarchy.

Learning Checkpoint

You may wish to think about the following questions to determine how well you have

understood the topics in this Unit and their business application.

• Compile a list of the factors that make a good leader? Keep your list safe and return to

it at the end of Unit 8. Similarly, what is the relationship between lay theories of

leadership that you have been exposed to and those general approaches outlined in this

Unit?

• How have theories of leadership changed since the early 20th

century?

• Fiedler‟s concept of LPC has been criticised because it may not be constant over time.

What factors might cause an individual leader‟s degree of LPC change? Does it seem

credible that LPC should remain constant?

• How would the effectiveness of a leader with high or low LPC be mediated by;

1) Relations between leader and group members (the extent to which the leader has

the members‟ support and trust)

2) Task structure (the extent to which the group‟s task is clearly defined)

3) Leader‟s position power (the extent to which the leader has the power to enforce

the compliance of group members by controlling rewards and punishments)

• Think of leaders that you have worked under. Think of some aspects of their leadership

that were transactional and some aspects of their leadership that were transformational


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Essential Reading

Alimo-Metcalfe, B. and Nyfield, G. (2002). Leadership and organizational effectiveness.

in I. T. Robertson, M. Callinan, and D. Bartram (eds.), Organizational effectiveness (pp.

201-226). Bognor Regis: Wiley Interscience.

Students are reminded that the HWU Library provides full-text access to numerous

journals which contain several articles of relevance to the material covered in this Unit;

and are strongly advised to use PsycINFO and similar databases. Information on how to

use PsycINFO can be found in the Study Skills Pack.


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Unit 2 - Leadership and Social Identity

Unit Summary

This Unit describes the relevance of social identity to leadership. Social identity is a

definition of the self in terms of those groups to which one belongs. Research carried out

from the late 1970s onwards has highlighted how social identity has implications for

perceptions and evaluations of oneself and others, which extend into the field of

leadership. Specifically, if the leader represents the prototype of the group he / she is

leading then group members will accept that leader; are more motivated to perceive the

leader positively; and are more motivated to tolerate failure on the part of that leader. The

Unit ends by considering the extent to which a theory based on lab-based research applies

to business-related contexts.

Unit Aims


• Understand the theoretical bases of social identity theory

• Understand the implications of social identity theory for leadership

• Have begun to question the extent to which the existing research findings apply to

business practice in the real world

2.1 Social Identity

In short, social identity theorists argue that group members have greater chances of

acceptance as leaders, and are perceived as more effective leaders, if they are particularly

well able to represent the social identity of group members. The present Unit unpacks this

idea in more detail.

To understand the social psychological processes that underlie the relationship between

the social identity of group members and leadership we need to explore some of the

fundamental premises on which these points rest. An individual‟s social identity is his /

her sense of self when it is defined in terms of the social groups to which he / she

belongs. These groups can exist on several levels (e.g., groups defined by friendship,

groups defined by support for a particular sports team, groups defined in terms of

nationality or culture). Furthermore, they can take almost any form: indeed,

groundbreaking research in the field showed that arbitrarily assigning experimental


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participants to one of two groups was sufficient for group members to begin

discriminating against non-group members.

The idea that social identity derives from group membership has a long history (e.g.,

Mead, 1934) but it is much more recently that social identity processes have been

considered to have implications for how members of one group behave towards members

of another, with the latter idea dating back to the landmark work by Tajfel (1978; Tajfel

and Turner, 1979). The potential for the social identity to influence inter-group behaviour

arises if we assume, along with Tajfel and Turner that people prefer to have a positive

self-concept rather than a negative one. Since part of our self-concept is defined in terms

of group affiliations (e.g., “I am a fan of Leicester City Football Club”), it follows that

there will also be a preference to view in-groups positively rather than negatively (e.g.,

“Fans of Leicester City Football Club are better people than are fans of Nottingham

Forest Football Club”).

Tajfel and Turner suggest that our group evaluations are relative in nature: we assess our

own group‟s worth or prestige by comparing it with other groups. The outcome of these

inter-group comparisons is critical for us because it contributes to our own self-esteem. If

our own group can be perceived as superior on some dimension of value (such as skills or

sociability) then we too can gain feelings of prestige (e.g., “If I am a fan of Leicester City

Football Club and fans of Leicester City Football Club are better than fans of other

football clubs then it follows that I am a better person”). Because of our presumed need

for a positive self-concept it follows that there will be a bias in these comparisons to look

for ways in which the in-group can indeed be distinguished favourably from out-groups.

Hogg and Terry (2001) tell us that self-conception can vary from being based entirely on

personal attributes and unique properties of a specific interpersonal relationship right the

way through to being based entirely on a shared representation of „us‟ defined in terms of

an in-group prototype (i.e., self-concept defined in terms of the prototype of a member of

the group in question). In other words, the more that membership of a particular group is

itself the salient basis for self-definition, the more strongly that the prototype of the

„typical‟ group member influences our perceptions, thought processes, emotions and

behaviours. Self-categorisation depersonalises the self, so that it strongly resembles that

of the in-group prototype, and also depersonalises perceptions of others, so that they are

perceived as being very similar to the prototypical members of their own group even if

they are, in actuality, quite discrepant from this prototype.


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2.2 Social Identity and Leadership

The importance of this process for leadership is that as group membership becomes

increasingly salient, evaluations of a leader‟s effectiveness are increasingly based on how

prototypical the leader is perceived to be of the group of people he / she is leading. So,

group members are more likely to accept leaders if the latter are particularly well able to

represent the social identity of group members. Moreover, if the leader represents the

prototype of the group he / she is leading, then the group are motivated to perceive the

leader positively. The group gain self-esteem by being able to say to themselves that,

“My leader is just like me and he / she is doing a good job”.

In a series of experiments conducted by Hains, Hogg, and Duck (1997), it was found that

making group membership more salient increased the perceived effectiveness of

prototypical leaders and diminished the perceived effectiveness of non-prototypical

leaders. Participants were provided with a) information about the group prototype (in the

form of the group‟s position on a single attitude dimension) and information about where

a randomly appointed leader‟s attitude fell on the same dimension, and b) information

about how well the leader matched a very general schema of effective leadership. In this

way it was possible to manipulate the group prototypicality and „leadership schema

congruence‟ of the leader and investigate how much influence these two factors had on

perceptions of leadership effectiveness. Making group membership salient increased the

perceived effectiveness of prototypical leaders and diminished the effectiveness of non-

prototypical leaders, but had either no effect or reduced the effectiveness of schema

congruent leaders.

So leaders are more likely to be accepted and perceived as effective by their group if they

represent the social identity of the group members, providing that the individual group

members define themselves in terms of their group membership. Moreover, in cases

where individuals are highly-invested in their group membership (i.e., particularly likely

to define their social identity in terms of membership of that group) a leader who is

prototypical of the group can make more mistakes without losing credibility: his / her

actions will be interpreted more generously, since the group members wish to believe that

the leader is successful (since this reflects more upon the self-esteem of the group

members).

Moreover, social identity theorists (e.g., Hogg, 2001) say that social categorisation affects

not only our perceptions but also our feelings about other people. Social identification

transforms the basis of liking for others from a process based on idiosyncratic preference

and evaluations of previous encounters of that person (personal attraction) to one based

on the extent to which the people concerned are prototypical of their respective social


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groups (social attraction). That is, in-group members are liked more than are out-group

members; and more prototypical in-groupers are liked more than less prototypical in-

groupers. Where there is a relatively consensual in-group prototype, social categorisation

renders more prototypical members socially popular: liking for prototypical in-group

members is consensual, even if this liking is unilateral and unreciprocated. Another

implication of this approach is that more prototypical out-groupers are disliked more than

are less prototypical out-groupers. This depersonalised social attraction hypothesis is well

supported in the literature.

From the point of view of leadership, the person occupying the most prototypical position

may acquire in new groups, or possess in established groups, the ability to actively

influence because he or she is socially attractive and therefore able to secure compliance

with suggestions and requests. In this way, the most prototypical person can actively

exercise leadership by having his or her own ideas accepted more readily and widely than

are ideas that are suggested by others. This empowers the leader and publicly confirms

his or her ability to influence. Over time, it is interesting to consider whether leaders can

control the extent to which they can maintain their prototypicality or whether this reduces

as social change impacts on them or other members of the group. Does what we

understand of social categorisation and proto-typicality in social identity experiments

hold up in real live situations, such as the organisational or political world, where (i) the

make-up of groups‟ shifts over time; and (ii) any given leader automatically becomes less

prototypical over time as a consequence of being the leader?

Although it is obviously important to answer these „real life‟ questions concerning the

applicability of social identity theory, the use of experimental research, no matter how

artificial, brings with it important opportunities to control the data collection scenario.

The leadership situations encountered in the real world of business and politics are

immensely complicated compared with the simple scenarios employed in experimental

work. Reproducing real world issues in laboratory settings is difficult if not entirely

impossible, particularly in a manner that allows the degree of control required to carry

out scientific research. External validity is always an issue for all psychological research

but it is probably greater in social psychology than in other areas.

Haslam and Platow (2001) identify three behaviours upon which organisational success

depends. These are; (i) initiation of structure, which reflects a leader‟s ability to move

towards key organisational outcomes by clarifying subordinates‟ goals, roles, and tasks;

(ii) change responsiveness, which reflect the extent to which employees embrace

organisational change; and (iii) organisational citizenship, which reflects employees‟

willingness to do more than they are contractually required to. Popular lay explanations

of how these three behaviours can be encouraged typically back to the personality of the


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leader. For instance, the inspirational capacity of people such as Nelson Mandela is seen

to be important as a means of achieving a fundamental redefinition of his followers‟

goals, values, and aspirations. However, Haslam points out that although this approach to

the basic questions of leadership has appeal it lacks predictive power. Great leaders do

appear to transform the psychology of their followers and to be perceived by them as

being very charismatic, but these phenomenon appear to be correlates rather than causes

of the leadership process. It is arguable that social identity theory can explain what makes

a leader so inspirational and able to bring about an initiation of structure, change

responsiveness, and organisational citizenship.

Learning Checkpoint



• What are the prototypical characteristics of the group you work in? How well does the

current leader of your group possess these prototypical characteristics? How should you

change in order to become more prototypical and therefore „leadership material‟? What

can a leader do to remain (being perceived as) prototypical even though occupying the

role of leader makes him / her less prototypical every day?

• What are the implications of social identity theory for relationships between the team

members that you work with, and for relationships between the differing teams that you

interact with regularly?

• Think about the research scenarios that have been used in the existing research on

social identity theory. How might these be adapted so that they have greater relevance

to business while maintaining proper scientific control?

• How might social identity theory explain the phenomenon of organisational

citizenship? How will attempts to increase change responsiveness be influenced by

whether employees identify themselves more with the „new‟ version of the organisation

than with the „old‟ version?

Essential Reading

Hogg, M. A. (1993). Group cohesiveness: a critical review and some new directions.

European Review of Social Psychology, 4, 85-111.


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Recommended Reading

Hains, S. C., Hogg, M. A., and Duck, J. M. (1997). Self-categorization and leadership:

effects of group prototypically and leader stereotypicality. Personality and Social

Psychology Bulletin, 23, 1087-1099.

Haslam, S. A. and Platow, M. J. (2001). The link between leadership and followership:

how affirming social identity translates vision into action. Personality and Social

Psychology Bulletin, 27, 1469-1479.

Hogg, M. A., Fielding, K., Johnson, D. M., Masser, B. M., Russell, E. and Svensson, A.

(2006). Demographic category membership and leadership in small groups: a social

identity analysis. Leadership Quarterly, 17, 335-350.

van Knippenberg, B., van Knippenberg, D., de Cremer, D., and Hogg, M. A. (2005).

Research in leadership, self, and identity: a sample of the present and a glimpse of the

future. Leadership Quarterly, 16, 495-499.






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Unit 3 - Leadership as a Group Phenomenon

Unit Summary

This Unit considers leadership in the context of groups of employees, since inherent to

the concept of leadership is that the leader must exert influence over groups of people.

We begin by establishing that research in the modern day has a different conception

compared to the mid-20th century on the nature of the relationship between a leader and

the group that he / she leads. This leads to a consideration of social cognitive factors in

leadership, and notably the notion of the prototypical leader of different groups. After this

we consider three different types of groups, namely additive, disjunctive and conjunctive,

and some of the advantages and disadvantages inherent to each.

Unit Aims


• Understand that, in the modern day, research on leadership has shifted to a greater

consideration of role of the group

• Understand that groups have a notion of the prototypical leader in various fields, and

that this influences their perception of the leader

• Understand the characteristics of additive, disjunctive, and conjunctive groups

3.1 Leadership as a Group Phenomenon

One definition of leadership is that it is a process of social influence in which the leader

enlists the talents and efforts of other group members in order to accomplish the group‟s

chosen tasks. For some groups, such as recreational clubs, the only goal might be the

happiness and satisfaction of the group members. However, such groups are rare, and

most groups in organisations exist for the purpose of accomplishing an assigned task. We

might regard „successful‟ leadership among task-focussed groups as the demonstration of

a necessary level of task performance over the appropriate time period. This definition of

success reflects the recognition that longer-term factors, such as sustained commitment

and motivation of group members, are essential to group success on the majority of tasks

that organisational groups work on. In relation to the group, effective leadership must

have at least three components. First, the would-be-leader must induce the other members

to regard that person as a credible and legitimate source of influence; that is, as having a

„special‟ status and responsibility in the activities of the group. Once a person has gained


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the legitimacy of leadership status, she or he must develop relationships with followers

that motivate and enable them to act to attain collective goals. Finally, the leader must

mobilise and direct the efforts of the group to make the most effective use of the

combined resources of the group in task accomplishment.

Kakabadse and Kakabadse (1999) tell us that during the period 1940-1970 the leadership

literature focussed on the idea that the key features of management and leadership were

thinking through the options, making the decisions that would be optimal within a given

set of circumstances, and then implementing that decision in a disciplined manner. For

instance, at that time, Vroom and Yetton (e.g., 1973) argued that leaders should modify

their behaviour according to the requirements of the given situation. Their underlying

assumption was that leaders make decisions in an orderly and rational manner by drawing

on the required sources of information; assess the degree of acceptance of a particular

decision by subordinates; and evaluate the degree of commitment of subordinates to

implementing that decision. So if the leader requires further information, or if the

involvement of others is necessary for effective implementation then the manager should

adopt a more consultative or participative approach. As such, we have the notion that

„one size does not fit all‟, and that different tasks require different types of leadership.

However, the focus is still nonetheless on the manager, whereas the work that has been

carried out since the 1970s shows instead that a focus on the group implementing the

leader‟s decisions provides arguably better guidance as to the leadership style that a

manager should adopt.

More generally, Kakabadse and Kakabadse tell us that undoubtedly in this century and

even in the last, a preoccupation in management and leadership literature has been the

question, „What do managers do?‟ The modern day picture is one of fragmentation.

Several studies of top managers have showed that senior managers have the opportunity

of devoting around only 5-10 minutes to themselves every two weeks; and that they

spend only 7-12 minutes on any one task. The ability to delegate work to groups of other

people, and to lead those groups effectively, is clearly an important skill.

3.2 Social Cognitive Factors

The work of Lord and his colleagues provides a rich and comprehensive examination of

the social cognitive factors that affect the perceptions of leadership among groups of

employees. Lord (1984) established that observers possess implicit theories about what a

„good leader‟ is and does; and these theories give rise to a set of stereotypical traits and

behaviours which leaders are expected to exhibit. The required traits and behaviours

differ across different domains; and individuals displaying the characteristics appropriate

to a particular category of leader (e.g., military, politics, business, religion) are


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„recognised‟ as leaders by people in those domains. Effective leaders are aware of this

process and seek to present an image of themselves that is consistent with the

expectations of followers. For instance, the stereotypical characteristics associated with

the task-focused leader focus on task- or goal-relevant competences, such as

decisiveness, insight, or coolness under pressure. Lord and Maher (1991) also suggest

that judgements made by the group of an individual‟s leadership ability and likelihood of

success are strongly influenced by the extent to which that person demonstrates the

prototypical traits and behaviours of a leader in that particular field; that these factors

influence the leader‟s ability to foster and promote the group‟s effective goal attainment;

that this in turn influences whether the leader in question is able to take credit for positive

outcomes, such as an increase in company profits, and avoid responsibility for failures;

and that this of course has implications in turn for his / her likelihood of gaining status

and influence.

3.3 Advantages of Groups: Additive, Disjunctive, and Conjunctive Tasks

Groups are frequently used to solve problems and make decisions in organisations. Using

a group to make a decision has several potential advantages to an individual leader.

Groups may have more relevant knowledge and ideas that can be pooled to improve the

quality of any decisions; and active participation will increase member‟s understanding

of decisions and commitment to implementing them. However, group decisions can take

longer, and the members may not be able to reach agreement if they have incompatible

objectives or different understandings of the problem; and these process problems may

undermine the quality of the resulting work.

Many tasks, however, might be difficult to perform without groups. Group working can

take three forms, namely additive tasks, disjunctive tasks, and conjunctive tasks. In an

additive task, group members separate performances are added to produce a combined

effect. Group members who perform an additive task try to combine their skills, talents,

and activities in a coordinated performance. Examples of additive tasks include

production of postgraduate teaching materials by a team of academics, in which different

individuals have different specialism‟s; tugs-of-war, in which the group members

combine their separate rope-pulling efforts; or construction of NASA‟s space shuttle, in

which a group of scientists and engineers combine their separate talents. Common sense

implies that the greater the number of individuals who combine their efforts in an

additive task, the better or greater the result. However, in reality, the group product in

additive tasks is usually less than the total of what the individuals concerned could have

produced on their own. This is due to the phenomenon of „social loafing‟, in which each

individual expends less effort when working collectively with other people than when


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working alone. Why should individuals working in a group expend less effort than when

working alone? The answer is diffusion of responsibility: when an individual works as

part of a group, his / her own contribution to the resulting product is less apparent and so

most people take the chance to „slack off‟; whereas when working alone the individual

has clear responsibility for the outcome, and so makes more effort. As such, individuals

working on additive tasks should be given clear, measurable goals that reflect solely their

own performance. When other people watch us perform individually then this raises the

stakes, and makes the positive consequences of our success even more positive and the

negative effects of failure even more negative. Conversely, when other people work

collectively with us as part of a team effort, they lower the stakes. They make the positive

consequences of our successful behaviour less easily attributable to us; and the negative

consequences of any behaviour of ours that fails are also less negative.

In a disjunctive task, the group‟s accomplishment is measured in terms of the most

effective group member‟s performance. A one-hundred person group composed of 99

non-swimmers can rescue a drowning person so long as one of the group is a trained

lifeguard. Similarly, a group playing a quiz would know the answer to the question, „Who

starred in the film Twelve Angry Men?‟ as long as just one of them happened to be a film

fan. As these examples make clear, in a disjunctive task, it is an advantage for group

members to have diverse areas of expertise. There are numerous business-related

examples of disjunctive tasks. For example, any business involved in trouble-shooting is

effectively involved in a disjunctive task. A consultancy firm regularly faces disjunctive

tasks, as clients come to it looking for help with a range of problems: as long as one

member of the consultancy firm has the answer then the latter will be paid. This indicates

clearly that it is also an advantage in disjunctive tasks to have a large group, because the

more members that a group has so the more likely it is that at least one member will have

the skills necessary to get the job done. For instance, many electricians, plumbers, or

carpenters lose business or otherwise operate inefficiently because they fail to recognise

that they are working as trouble-shooters who would benefit by being organised into a

disjunctive group. Many of us have had the experience of a particular electrician,

plumber, or carpenter saying that a particular job we would like doing is not possible,

only for another electrician, plumber, or carpenter to subsequently come to our home and

complete the job satisfactorily: the job was done, but it required two separate visits to our

house. In contrast, if a large number of electricians, plumbers, or carpenters joined

together in a single company there would be very few jobs that the company could not

take on with just a single visit from the appropriately-qualified member.

In a conjunctive task, by contrast, the group‟s accomplishment is limited by the least

effective group members‟ performance, and successful completion requires the

performance of all group members. It only takes one lax prison officer for a convicted


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mass murderer to escape: even if all the other group members performed well, the failure

of just one led to the failure of the group. As this illustrates, it is particularly important

for a leader to recognise when his / her group is working conjunctively because a failure

to manage them well brings with it a high degree of risk for the entire group. As such,

conjunctive tasks, unlike additive and disjunctive tasks, mean that having more group

members is a distinct disadvantage, since there are more opportunities for an individual to

fail to perform adequately and bring about the failure of the group. Moreover, groups

working on a conjunctive task require that the leader checks the qualifications of group

members to carry out the work, and constantly monitors (and maintains) the degree of

motivation of each group member.

Learning Checkpoint



• What are traits and behaviors of a leader in your particular area of professional interest?

To what extent does your current „leader‟ in the workplace display the traits and

interests of a leader? What are the stereotypical traits and behaviors of task-oriented

leaders and person-oriented leaders; to what extent does your current „leader‟

demonstrate these; and to what extent should your leader be task - or person-oriented in

order to achieve the principal tasks currently facing your workplace group? How would

your current traits and behaviors change if you were to be perceived as possessing the

traits and behaviors of a leader in your particular field?

• Think of some examples of additive, disjunctive and conjunctive tasks from within your

own business experience? How would you lead groups of employees carrying out each

of these? What specific steps would you take to minimise the possibility of social

loafing?

• In the Unit we saw how people in trouble-shooting businesses might best regard

themselves as involved with a disjunctive group task. Are there any other occupational

groups that typically carry out additive, disjunctive and conjunctive tasks; and what are

the implications of this for the ways that they should be organised?

• What might be the prototype of a leader in the military, politics, business, and religion;

and how do these prototypes differ from one another?

• Elsewhere in this module we saw how social identity theory predicts that a group of

employees should be able to see something of themselves in their manager. In the

present Unit we have seen that groups of employees will have a prototype of a leader in

their particular domain. What can a leader do if these two notions of „what a leader is‟

clash with one another?


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• Should a leader „be his own man‟ by acting in a manner that he / she feels comfortable

with, even if this means that he / she is not acting in a manner consistent with the

group‟s prototype of a leader in the particular field in question?

Essential Reading

Brotherton, C. J. (1999). Social psychology and management: issues for a changing

society. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. (Chapter 4)

Recommended Reading

Lord, R. G., Foti, R. J., and de Vader, C. L. (1984). A test of leadership categorization

theory: internal structure, information processing, and leadership perceptions.

Organizational Behaviour and Human Performance, 34, 343-378.

Kakabadse, A. and Kakabadse, N. (1999). The essence of leadership. London:

Thompson.

Vroom, V. and Sternberg, R. J. (2002). Theoretical letters: the person versus the situation

in leadership. Leadership Quarterly, 13, 301–323.






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Unit 4 - Leadership and Power

Unit Summary

This Unit considers power. We begin by distinguishing power from mere status and

leadership. We next consider six 'power levers' or means of attaining and exercising

power that can used by the individual who wishes to have a transformational leadership

technique. These are role power, personal impact power, reverence power, context power,

access power, and experience power. We next consider how an organisation's culture will

mediate which type of power should be used; and explore the role of social identity

processes in powerful leadership within organisations. Finally, we consider Gardner's

arguments about how powerful leaders can change the opinions of subordinates.

Unit Aims


• Understand what power is

• Understand role power, personal impact power, reverence power, context power, access

power, and experience power

• Understand the exercise of power in the context of organisational culture; and how

social identity processes relate to the exercise of power in organisations

• Have an initial understanding of Gardner‟s arguments concerning changing opinions

4.1 What is Power?

So far, we have considered leadership in the context of social identity theory and groups.

Both these processes involve the concept of social influence, in which the thoughts and

behaviours of one person are influenced by those of another. Perhaps the strongest form

of social influence in the context of leadership is power. The concept of power is slippery

and elusive, and confounded easily with related phenomena such as prestige and status.

Thibaut and Kelley (1959) define social power as having an asymmetric control over

another person‟s desired outcomes: the outcomes in question could be tangible (e.g.,

financial reward) or intangible (e.g., approval). As such, this definition emphasises the

relational aspect of power; and the concept of controlling another person‟s desired

outcomes distinguishes „power‟ from concepts such as „prestige‟ and „status‟ which

imply mere admiration of one person by another. Indeed, we can perhaps understand

power better by looking at another less adequate definition of it that was produced at the


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same time as from the time as Thibaut and Kelley‟s. French and Raven (1959) defined

power explicitly in terms of social influence, namely that it is the ability to alter the

beliefs or behaviours of others. However, this broad definition of power seems not to

distinguish „power‟ from „leadership‟ in that, although it describes the ability to control

another person‟s thoughts and behaviours, it does not include Thibaut and Kelley‟s

(1959) notion of being able to also control that person‟s motivations. Power is different

from mere leadership because it leads to the person who power is being exercised over

„buying into‟ the rewards offered by the person exercising power. As such, power is more

than having a position of control over another person‟s actions and thoughts, but instead

also includes having control over their wishes, ideals, and anything else that will lead to

them feeling satisfied and fulfilled.

Kakabadse and Kakabadse (1999) tell us that power has several other features, and can be

viewed in several ways, namely;

• As a basis from which to act

• As driven by individuals, even though its exercise can be made to look as if it emanates

from an organisation or team

• The application of power can be an exciting, aphrodisiac-type experience

• As something that must be applied with subtlety in order to be effective

To these points, we can add that power involves the use of particular resources in order to

achieve particular ends; and that the resources that can be deployed by the powerful

individual include their authority, their contacts, and their money.

4.2 Exercising Power

We saw in Unit 1 how transactional leaders influence others by exchange (e.g., rewards

for compliance and punishment for lack of compliance); whereas transformational leaders

help employees grow into leaders by aligning the goals of the individual with those of the

organisation. The Kakabadses argue that power interlinked with vision is

transformational, as it helps employees to change their goals and motivations to those that

correspond with those of the organisation.

The Kakabadses argue that there are various „power levers‟ that can be deployed to

achieve this transformational outcome. The first power lever is role power, in which

power is assigned to an individual as a consequence of him / her occupying a particular

role in an organisation. This concept is sometimes referred to in the literature as

„legitimate power‟. Someone exercising role power is using power that has been granted

by the organisation, in a manner that was approved by the organisation. (Of course, some


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people will use their role power in a way that is not legitimated by the organisation.)

There are a great many power resources associated with such a leader‟s role, such as their

title and moral authority; ability to distribute rewards; control of resources such as

technology, finance, people, and information; the power to dismiss, promote, or

reconfigure other people‟s roles; the power to frighten or threaten; and the power to act as

arbiter of decisions made earlier or by others.

A second power lever is personal impact power. This depends on the individual

exercising the power presenting themselves as attractive to others over whom they wish

to exert power. Personal impact power may result from the holder being charismatic,

popular, or having flair or panache. Personal impact power here contrasts with other

forms of power in that it does not use the role to distribute rewards, or use coercion or

knowledge, but rather the person influences others simply by being charming, attractive,

and „nice-to-be-with‟. Kakabadse points out that relying solely on personal impact power

in order to influence is unwise because someone who effectively uses personal impact

power with one group of employees on one particular task may be much less effective

when working with other employees or on another task under different circumstances.

Reverence power comes about because of the powerful image of the individual in the

minds of others. A leader should of course manage their image carefully in order to

maintain this form of power; and while politicians and CEOs may use specialist image

consultants, others can manage their own image by diligence, hard work, acting in a

friendly manner or any of an almost limitless range of other actions. Although both

reverence power and role power involve the leader being perceived as powerful, in the

case of the latter this perception comes about because of the role that the person holds,

whereas in the case of reverence power it comes about through perceptions of the person

per se.

Context power is when the individual takes advantage of the context by being responsive.

In this case, it is important for the leader to possess intellect at a technical, functional and

analytic level together with the ability to understand and read contexts. Here the leader

gains power by capitalising on other people‟s uncertainty and presenting a solution to a

problem that those working under him / her are prepared to buy into.

Access power is the ability to access various groups and individuals within and without

the organisation. One important aspect of access power is having the authority and status

in one‟s own office to be able gain access to another influential person and develop a

network of personal, professional and social people who themselves have influence and

power.


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Experience power results from having spent time in an industry, organisation, or

particular role. As such, experience power can be seen as a longer-term version of role

power that remains effective even when the leader in question no longer actually

occupies the particular role in question. The individual who wields experience power will

have some expertise of a functional or professional nature, and have gained insights into

how to apply their expertise to a wide range of issues. It goes without saying that

organisations value and pay high salaries to those who demonstrate relevant experience

power.

4.3 Power and Organisational Culture

Exercising power does not always guarantee that the targets of that power will be

motivated to think and behave as required. Rather, power has to be used in a manner that

is appropriate to the context in which it is applied; and sensitive towards the attitudes and

feelings of others in a given situation. At the most general level, there are significant

cross-cultural differences in the extent to which individuals react to a powerful individual

attempting to exercise this. As described in more detail in A41EP / A41EZ / A41EY

Consumer and Economic Psychology, some cultures such as Scandinavia or Australia are

organised horizontally and emphasise the equality and interdependence of people within

an organisation; whereas others, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, are

organised vertically, and stress a person‟s position in an organisation‟s hierarchy. People

working in vertically-organised cultures will be much more susceptible to the influence

of a powerful leader than will be those working in horizontally-organised cultures.

Moreover, the values and traditions of the organisation in question are also crucial in

effectively applying power. Put simply, organisations will have their own accepted way

of allowing influence. To give an obvious example of this, contrast the authoritarian

approach to power employed by the military‟s management style with the more

consultative approach that you might expect to see in a typical business. Indeed, where an

organisation has a consultative culture it is often difficult to distinguish between role

power and personal impact power, because in a supportive environment employees

readily feel able to raise issues with their line manager and, by virtue of their involvement

in the decision-making process, are more likely to have a good personal relationship with

this person and a sense of investment in his / her decisions. In other organisational

cultures, however, the differing leadership styles might be more distinctive. For example,

in a divisive culture the focus will be on coercion of employees and so role power,

reverence power, and experience power are particularly important. In a dynamic

organisation (or fast-changing business conditions) access power and context power

become more important. In a development culture the focus is on performance, effort and

success through application, and so the leader‟s status as a role model becomes

important, leading to reverence power and experience power becoming important. As is


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clear from this, there are of course a very large possible number of organisational

cultures, and a successful leader will be able to identify which forms of power are most

relevant to the specific culture in which he / she is operating.

Perhaps the most interesting psychological implications of power concern the role it plays

in social identity processes of the type outlined earlier in this module. A powerful leader

is by definition separate from the group of employees that he / she leads. In terms of

social identity theory this means that the leader is no longer part of the same social group

as the employees. This has two consequences. First, in order to remain „acceptable‟ to his

/ her employees the leader has to take steps to otherwise seem somehow similar to the

employees and therefore not too socially remote. Some of the more obvious strategies for

achieving this include the leader mimicking employees‟ clothing, vocabulary or leisure

interests. A second implication is perhaps more subtle yet just as important. We noted in

Unit 2 that any given person deindividuates members of an out-group, or regards them as

being more similar to the prototypical out-group member than they might actually be. In

practical terms, this means that a powerful manager, by virtue of the social distance

created by that power, may be particularly prone to deindividuating the employees he /

she leads; and therefore perceive any individual employee as being more like the group

than he / she actually is. Instead, the powerful leader, under these circumstances, is left to

judge individual employees on the basis of prior expectations and stereotypes, a process

that is defined as stereotyping by default. Information about the employee goes unnoticed

if it does not confirm the expectations of the powerful leader.

Moreover, we saw in Unit 3 that employees have expectations of the prototypical

attributes of leaders in certain domains; and that employee‟ perceptions of the

effectiveness of the leader are influenced by the extent to which the latter corresponds

with those prototypical attributes. As such, this introduces another potential bias into the

decision-making process of the powerful leader. In short, in order to maintain the

impression of being powerful the leader will sometimes be expected to make certain

decisions and act in certain ways; or must instead accept that his / her reputation among

employees as „effective‟ and „powerful‟ will be diminished.

4.4 Changing Minds

Before concluding we should draw out one other aspect of power. At the beginning of

this Unit we saw how power can be distinguished from leadership because the former

implies that subordinates „buy into‟ the leader‟s goals, motivations, and aspirations.

Being powerful by definition therefore involves changing people‟s minds. Howard

Gardner (2004) made a special study of world leaders in politics such as Margaret

Thatcher, Bill Clinton, George Bush Snr, Tony Blair and others, with particular reference


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to how they went about changing people‟s minds. He claims that powerful leaders must

stand out in terms of three intelligences. First, as storytellers, powerful leaders must be

gifted linguistically. Powerful leaders must know how to create a story, how to

communicate it effectively, and how to alter it if changes prove to warrant it. Second,

leaders also require interpersonal intelligence. They need to understand other people, be

able to motivate them, listen to them and respond to their needs and aspirations. Third,

powerful leaders also require what Gardner calls existential intelligence: they need to be

comfortable with posing fundamental questions. Leaders should not be reluctant to share

their visions, putting their own answers to questions of life and death and the meaning of

the past, and the prospects for the future.

Being able to address what Gardner calls „the unschooled mind‟ is a particular gift of the

most powerful leaders, representing an ability to engage and convince those with no

interest or specialist knowledge in the topic in question. Bill and Hilary Clinton,

according to Gardner, could shift effortlessly from a broadcast television audience to a

group of experts in economics or health care and back again. Even more impressively

they could signal to each audience that they were capable of the other kind of

communication as well, hinting to the unschooled that they were knowledgeable,

revealing to the cognoscenti that they were also capable of communicating with a general

audience. Gardner tells us that Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair also possessed this

combination of capacities, in contrast to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, who were

seen as having the popular touch without a corresponding sophisticated expertise.

Changing minds, according to Gardner‟s argument, entails the alteration of mental

representations. All of us develop mental representations quite readily from the beginning

of life. Mental representations have content that can be expressed in a variety of forms.

What leaders have to do, if they need or wish to change people‟s minds, is to work

closely with the representations people have and move them closer to those they hold

themselves - they have to articulate ways of seeing issues and problems in a way that

makes sense to everyone.

Learning Checkpoint



What specific strategies might a leader in your own organisation deploy to exercise

power rather than just leadership?

1. Think about the people both above and below you in your own organisation‟s

hierarchy. Which of these relationships involve the exercise of role power and


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which involve the exercise of personal impact power? Are there any instances

where the relationship involves someone trying to exert role power when instead

they should be trying to exert personal impact power (or vice versa)? Can you

think of any instances in your own organisation of individuals exercising

reverence power, context power, access power, or experience power (and in doing

this make sure that you are not confusing these types of power with the more

general concept of role power or personal impact power)?

2. Think of different challenges that you face in your own professional life. Which

of the power levers would be most useful in addressing each of these challenges,

and how specifically would you deploy each?

3. More gifted students may wish to consider the relationship between three topics

addressed in the present Unit and three topics addressed in A41EP / A41EZ /

A41EY Consumer and Economic Psychology. First, what is the relationship

between the material covered in A41EP / A41EZ / A41EY Consumer and

Economic Psychology on attitude change and that covered here in section 4.4 on

changing minds? Second, what is the relationship between the material covered in

sections 1.2.6 and 2.1.2 of A41EP / A41EZ / A41EY Consumer and Economic

Psychology and Gardner‟s argument that a powerful leader can change minds

specifically by working closely with the existing mental representations that

people have already, and progressively shifting these closer to opinions that the

powerful leader him / herself holds? Third, what is the relationship between the

material covered in A41EP / A41EZ / A41EY Consumer and Economic

Psychology on cross-cultural psychology and that covered here in section 4.3 on

power and organisational culture?

Essential Reading

Leyens, J. P., Yzerbyt, V. Y., and Schadron, G. (1992). The social judgeability approach

to stereotypes. in W. Streobe and M. Hewston (eds.), European Review of Social

Psychology Vol 3, pp. 91-120. New York: John Wiley.

Recommended Reading

Goodwin, S. A., Gubin, A., Fiske, S. T., and Yzerbyt, V. Y. (2000) Power can bias

impression processes: stereotyping subordinates by default and by design. Group

Processes and Intergroup Relations, 3, 227-256.


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Gardner, H. (2004). Changing minds: the art and science of changing our own and other

people’s minds. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing.






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Unit 5 - Diversity and Leadership

Unit Summary

This Unit addresses leadership from the perspective of gender stereotyping and cross-

cultural considerations. We begin by noting the very small numbers of women in

leadership roles and then suggest that this may exist because of gender-role stereotyping:

we consider the origin of the stereotype that females are poorly-suited for leadership

roles. We then consider the cross-cultural perspective on what leadership is, briefly

addressing the limitations that this places on our existing understanding of leadership.

Unit Aims


• Understand the origin of stereotype that females are poorly-suited for leadership roles

• Understand that there are cross-cultural limitations to attempts to apply findings

concerning leadership derived from the USA and western Europe to leadership practice

in other cultures

5.1 Working Conditions

Gary Yukl (2002, pp. 410-411) wrote in his book, Leadership in Organisations that,

“Widespread discrimination is clearly evident in the small number of women who hold

important, high-level leadership positions in most types of organisations. The strong

tendency to favour men over women in promoting people to high-level leadership

positions has been referred to as the „glass ceiling‟. According to Adler (1996), in 1995,

around 5% of nations had a female head of state (e.g. prime minister, president). The

number of women in top executive positions is also very small (3 per cent), although it is

gradually increasing (Raggins, Townsend, and Mattis, 1998). In the complete absence of

sex-based discrimination, the number of women in chief executive positions in business

and government should be close to 50% … Throughout the twentieth century, gender-

based discrimination was supported by age-old beliefs that men are more qualified than

women on leadership roles. These beliefs involved assumptions about the traits and skills

required for effective leadership in organisations (implicit theories), assumptions about

inherent differences between men and women (gender stereotypes) and assumptions

about appropriate behaviour for men and women (role expectations). There is no

empirical support for these beliefs, and laws now exist in the United States to stop sex-


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based discrimination in the selection of leaders. The anti-discrimination laws are based

on the premise that men and women are equally qualified to hold leadership positions in

business organisations. Nevertheless, the belief that men are more qualified to be leaders

persists in a segment of the population”.

Although Yukl is writing about the United States, there is similar equal opportunities

legislation in many other countries, including those of the European Community. But

despite this, in Marilyn Davidson‟s 1997 book The Black and Ethnic Woman Manager

was reporting that the percentage of women in chief executive positions in the United

Kingdom had not gone above 5%. Moreover, there are no strong grounds for believing

that this situation has changed more than marginally since Davidson and Yukl were

writing.

5.2 Gender Role Stereotyping

Biased beliefs about the skills and behaviours necessary for effective leadership are one

reason for sex-based discrimination. For a long time it was assumed that effective leaders

must be competent, task-oriented, competitive, objective, decisive, and assertive, all of

which are traditionally viewed as masculine attributes (Schein, 1975; Stogdill, 1974). The

basis of discrimination against women in gender stereotypes is ironic, given that effective

leadership also requires strong interpersonal skills and concern for building cooperative,

trusting relationships, both of which are viewed traditionally as feminine skills.

Moreover, these more stereotypically feminine aspects of leadership are particularly

important in the present day, since changes in working practices (in the western world at

least) place greater emphasis than ever before on working in teams.

What is the origin of these gender role stereotypes concerning the particular capabilities

of males and females? People derive their beliefs about social groups from observing

their typical behaviours within the social roles they occupy (Eagly, 1987). The

descriptive aspect of gender role stereotypes originates in perceivers making inferences

from their observations of men‟s and women‟s behaviour about men‟s and women‟s

personal qualities: that is, we watch the activities that men and women commonly

perform in their social roles and from this infer the personal qualities that are apparently

required to undertake these activities. Gender stereotypes follow from the observations of

men‟s more common occupancy of breadwinner, high-status roles and women‟s more

common occupancy of homemaker, lower status roles.

Prejudice against women as specifically leaders is said to arise because of the incongruity

between the predominantly communal qualities that perceivers associate with women and

the predominantly agentic qualities that they believe are required to succeed as a leader


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(Conway, Pizzamiglio, & Mount, 1996). Schein (2001) provided empirical evidence of

this process in the United States and his findings have been replicated in many other

countries. In short, it seems that beliefs about that nature of „leaders‟ and the nature of

„women‟ tend to be dissimilar. This dissimilarity of beliefs about leaders and women

would not be important in the context of employment if expectations based on gender

faded away in organisational settings, but despite the attempts of legislators these

dissimilar beliefs still seem to be strong in business settings (Ridgeway, 1997).

Moreover, they may prove to be persistent: gender role stereotypes are so prevalent in

society that they continue to reinforce the false belief that males are better suited to

certain tasks, including leadership.

5.3 Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Different cultural groups may have differing conceptions of what leadership should entail

(Hofstede, 1993). Following these different conceptions, the evaluation and meaning of

many of a leader‟s behaviours and characteristics may also vary strongly in different

cultures. For example, in a culture which endorses an authoritarian style, a leader

demonstrating sensitivity may be interpreted as weak, whereas a culture endorsing a more

nurturing style would regard sensitivity as a prerequisite to being seen as a leader (Den

Hartog, House, Hanges, and Ruiz-Quintanilla, 1999). This of course has obvious

implications for the opportunity for women to be perceived as leaders within these

cultures.

However, it is not just the issue of sexual discrimination that highlights the need to

recognise cross-cultural variations in leadership. Most research on leadership during the

past half-century has been conducted in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe;

and when research has been conducted elsewhere, leadership questionnaires developed in

North America and western Europe are often been translated and used without much

adaptation for the local culture. However, it is dangerous to assume the applicability

outside North America and Western Europe of certain concepts and ways of measuring

these that are devised within North America and Western Europe. Hofstede (1993), for

instance, argues that management theories devised in the USA contain a number of

idiosyncrasies not necessarily shared by management elsewhere. Three such

idiosyncrasies are the degree of emphasis and trust placed on market processes, a focus

on the individual, and a focus on managers rather than on workers. It would therefore be

inadvisable to apply without further thought research on leadership from the USA to

cultures which place less trust in the free market, more focus on people‟s interdependence

on one another, and which emphasise the challenges faced by workers rather than

managers.


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Because of arguments such as these there has been a move away from a position

dominated by research from the USA. While a summary of this could fill several books,

it is worth briefly mentioning a few studies to give a flavour of the work that has been

carried out. Students are encouraged to familiarise themselves with other examples.

Kanungo and Mendoca (1996), for example, describe how demands on leaders in

developing countries differ from those placed on leaders in the USA. They examine the

„culture fit‟ of four distinctive leadership roles – task-related, social, participative, and

charismatic – relative to the socio-cultural characteristics of developing countries and

their internal work culture. They argue that organisational change is needed in such

countries, and as a result of this they see particularly the charismatic role of the leader as

being critical for organisations in these developing countries.

However, one significant limitation of much of the cross-cultural leadership research is

that it examines leadership effectiveness in just two or three countries. As such, work of

this nature may extend our understanding of leadership a little, but does little to achieve

the large steps forward that is required if we are to understand this from a truly cross-

cultural perspective. As a consequence of this, a more elaborate project is that reported by

Smith and Peterson‟s (1988) Leadership, organisations and culture, which involved no

fewer than 25 countries in research on leadership in managing particular events and

problems as they arise. Smith and Peterson‟s model of event management is presented as

an analysis of role relationships, putting the role of leaders in the context of other sources

of information and meaning. In addressing and resolving events, managers can use

different sources of information (such as rules, national norms, superiors, peers,

subordinates); but Smith and Peterson show that in countries where a high degree of

inequality is considered normal by the local people there is much more use of rules and

procedures in addressing events than in countries where managers are socially closer to

people.

Similarly, House et al (1999) has conducted a longstanding project of leadership in about

60 countries from all major regions of the world in what is termed the GLOBE project.

The main objectives of the GLOBE project are to answer such questions as whether there

are leader behaviours that are universally accepted and effective across cultures, and

whether there are behaviours that are differentially accepted and effective across cultures.

The GLOBE results show a „universal‟ preference for certain leadership attributes.

However, this does not mean that such attributes will be enacted in the same manner

across all cultures. For example, Indonesian inspirational leaders need to persuade their

followers about their own competence, a behaviour that would appear unseemly in Japan.

Similarly, leaders in Mexico and China can demonstrate compassion and support for

subordinates by behaviours that would be regarded as intrusive of personal privacy in the

United Kingdom. In Mexico, for example, it is usual for a leader to call a doctor when the


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family member of an employee was in hospital to ensure that an operation was legitimate;

and in China, it is a requirement of a leader that they visit an employee when one of his /

her relatives is taken to a hospital.

Hofstede tells us that leadership behaviours and leadership theories have to take into

account the collective expectations of subordinates otherwise they are dysfunctional. The

US leadership style has been found to be dysfunctional in Greece; and the Greek

leadership style to be dysfunctional in the US. When theories are thought to be foreign

they become things that are preached and not practised. Wise local managers carefully

adapt the positive aspects of foreign ideas in order to fit the values of their subordinates.

Cultural sensitivity in leadership practice and theory is vital in a globalised world.

Learning Checkpoint



• How can females be perceived by colleagues as „good leaders‟?

• Given what we know about the origins of anti-female stereotypes, what can

governments and businesses do to eradicate these root causes of bias against female

leaders?

• What use is UK-based education in leadership for students who work outside the UK?

Could we say the same about education based around Scotland, Edinburgh, or any one

particular organisation? How culture-specific does leadership education have to be in

order to be useful, or should it focus on more universal principles; and does this mean

that an approach focussing on underlying psychological principles is more useful than

one focussing on very specific business-related situations, or can the two complement

one another? Why should people working in North America or Europe be interested in

whether their theories apply elsewhere?

• For those students who have taken A41EY / A41EP / A41EZ Consumer and Economic

Psychology. What is the relationship between the dimensions along which cultures

differ (detailed in Unit 7 of A41EY / A41EP / A41EZ Consumer and Economic

Psychology) and those leadership styles that are likely to be most effective in differing

cultures?


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Essential Reading

Eagly, A. H. and Karau, S. J. (2002). Role congruity theory of prejudice towards female

leaders. Psychological Review, 109, 543-588.

Recommended Reading

Conway, M., Pizzamiglio, M. T., and Mount, L. (1996) Status, communality, and agency

: Implications for stereotypes of gender and other groups. Journal of Personality and

Social Psychology, 71, 25-38.

Den Hartog, D. N., House, R. J., Hanges, P. J., and Ruiz-Quintanilla, S. A. (1999).

Culture specific and cross-culturally endorsed implicit leadership theories: are attributes

of charismatic / transformational leadership universally endorsed? Leadership Quarterly,

10, 219-256.

Eagly, A. H. and Carli, L. L. (2003). The female leadership advantage: an evaluation of

the evidence. Leadership Quarterly, 14, 807-834.

Eagly, A. H. and Karau, S. J. (1991). Gender and the emergence of leaders: a meta-

analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 685-710.

Eagly, A. H., Makhjani, M. G., and Klonsky, B. G. (1992). Gender and the evaluation of

leaders. Psychological Bulletin, 111, 3-22.

Eagly, A. H., Karau, S. J., and Makhijani, M. G. (1995). Gender and the effectiveness of

leaders. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 125-145.

Hofstede, G. (1993). Cultural constraints in management theories. Academy of

Management Executive, 7, 81-94.

House, R .J. et al (1999). Cultural influences on leadership and organisations : project

GLOBE. In W.H. Mobley, M.J. Gessner and V. Arnold (eds.), Advances in global

leadership (pp. 171-223). Stamford, CN: JAI Press.

Kanungo, R.N. and Mendonca, M. (1996). Cultural contingencies and leadership in

developing countries. Research in the Sociology of Organisations, 14, 263-295.


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Unit 6 - Leading Change

Unit Summary

The modern era is associated with rapid changes in technological, financial, and a host of

other factors; and the present Unit addresses leadership in times of change. It begins by

summarising the reasons why employees may resist change. Next it summarises some of

the processes associated with effecting change. Finally the Unit considers some of the

issues associated specifically with leading organisational cultures through change.

Unit Aims


• Appreciate some of the reasons why employees might resist change

• Have an initial understanding of the processes associated with effecting change

• Appreciate why organisational cultures might be resistant to change; and some of the

unintended ways in which a leader can signal what he / she feels the organisation‟s

culture should be

6.1 Overcoming Resistance to Change

Rosen (1998) argues that the modern era is chaotic, associated with fast technological

change, considerable shifts in culture and politics, and massive international competition;

the workforce in most western countries continues to grow increasingly diverse; and

attitudes to work are shifting also. At the same time, customers demand better service and

high quality goods. The net effect of these factors are that everything has to be better,

cheaper, and faster. Such rapid innovation cannot be addressed by technological

improvements; and instead requires human creativity and commitment from employees

who give their best at all levels of the organisation. In short, success during a period of

change requires people and people depend on leaders.

Gary Yukl (2002) wrote in his book, Leadership in Organisations that leading change is

one of the most important and difficult leadership responsibilities; and that efforts to

implement change in organisations are more likely to be successful if a leader

understands the reasons for resistance to change, the sequential phases in the change

processes, and different strategies for change. There are several reasons why people resist

change in organisations. Yukl lists;


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• Lack of trust. A basic reason for resistance to change is distrust of the people who

propose it. Distrust can magnify the effect of other sources of resistance. Even when

there is no obvious threat, a change may be resisted if people imagine there are hidden,

ominous implications that will only become obvious at a later time. Mutual mistrust

may encourage a leader to be secretive about the reasons for change and this increases

suspicion and resistance.

• Belief that change is unnecessary. Change will be resisted if the current way of doing

things has been successful in the past and there is no clear evidence of serious

problems. The signs of a developing problem are usually ambiguous at the early stage,

and it is easy for people to ignore or discount them. Even when the problem is finally

recognised the usual response is to make incremental adjustments in the existing

strategy, and so do more of the same rather than do something different.

• Belief that change is not feasible. Even when problems are acknowledged, a proposed

change may be resisted because it seems unlikely to succeed. Failure of earlier

changing systems creates cynicism and makes people doubtful the next one will be any

better.

Yukl adds several other factors to this list, such as economic threat; relatively high cost

associated with change; fear of personal failure; loss of status and power; threats to

values and ideals; and resentment of interference. Yukl does not cite evidence in support

of the items in his list, however. Instead, they are generally distilled issues that have been

drawn from a range of studies, and there is a varying amount of supportive evidence for

each item on the list.

Also interesting is that Yukl does not include in his list that people simply do not like

uncertainty and instead prefer to feel in control. Change brings with it uncertainty and

often a feeling of lack of volition. It is frequently the case that people will move out of an

organisation altogether and into a new job rather than wait for a change to be

implemented, because that move is at their own choice and in their control whereas an

organisational change may not be.

6.2 Effecting Change

Given that there are several reasons why someone might resist change, it clearly makes

sense for leaders to understand the process of change. Lewin‟s (1951) force-field model

of change remains one of the best known models of this. Lewin proposed that the change

process can be divided into three phases: unfreezing, changing and refreezing. In the

unfreezing phase, people come to realise that the old ways of doing things are no longer

adequate. In the changing phase, people look for new ways of doing things and select a


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more promising approach. In the refreezing phase, a new approach is implemented and

becomes established. An attempt at moving directly into the changing phase without first

unfreezing attitudes will result in a weak change plan. Lack of attention to consensus

building and neglecting to maintain enthusiasm in the third stage may result in the change

being reversed soon after it was implemented.

Attempting to effect change may involve persuasive appeals to employees of the

necessity of change, team building activities, or a cultural change programme. In addition

to these, training may be used to improve the technical skills that employees will need to

implement the change together with tuition concerning those interpersonal skills that will

be needed by key individuals. The underlying assumption is that new attitudes and skills

will cause behaviour to change in a beneficial way.

Alternately, a different approach is to change work roles, patterns of interaction,

performance criteria, and rewards. This role-based approach involves changing work-

roles by redesigning jobs to include different activities and responsibilities; by

reorganising the work flow; by modifying authority relationships; by changing the

criteria and procedures for evaluating work; and by changing the reward system. The

assumption is that when work roles require people to act in different ways, they will

change their attitudes to be consistent with their new behaviour.

Technological developments in particular can be and often are used to provide a clear

opportunity to introduce a change programme, and in particular to provide a means of

changing the power base in an organisation. For example, when unions have grown too

strong in their bargaining power, leaders have regularly introduced new technology to

bring in new roles and new groups of workers. The printing industry and the car

manufacturing industry in Britain have been notable in using technology to change the

organisation of work in a profound way. Nonetheless, a mistake often made by leaders

using technology to introduce change is to focus too much on the technological issues at

hand and place relatively little emphasis on managing the changes in working

relationships and practices that result. Technology can undoubtedly trigger change in the

workplace, but the human implications of this technology-led change cannot be ignored,

and instead require careful management. Otherwise, as the British printing and car

industries found, the result can be continuing unrest among employees.


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6.3 Leading Organisational Change

Introducing new products or services, entering new markets, using new forms of

marketing, and forming new alliances with other organisations are all major changes that

require changes in people and in technology. Yukl (2002) however draws attention to the

fact that different skills, roles and attitudes are required at each stage of change as

companies downsize, delayer, reorganise, reengineer, and outsource. There are no generic

programmes that cover all aspects involved in change.

Nonetheless large scale change in an organisation usually requires some change in an

organisation‟s culture as well as direct influence over the individual‟s working in the

organisation. Edgar Schein in his 1985 book Organisational Culture and Leadership

defines the culture of a group or organisation as those shared assumptions and beliefs

about the world and their place in it, the nature of time and space, human nature and

human relationships. The power of these cultures should not be under-estimated. Schein

believes that major organisations have cultures that are strong enough to override or at

least to modify national cultures. Indeed, Schein argues that an organisation‟s culture

develops originally around the external and internal problems that groups within it face,

and it is only over time that this gradually becomes abstracted and distilled into general

and basic assumptions about the nature of reality. As such, an organisation‟s culture can

be thought of as the stable solutions to the type of problems it typically experiences. The

organisational culture solves problems for the group or organisation, and contains and

reduces anxiety. The taken-for-granted assumptions that influence the ways in which the

group members perceive, think, and feel about the world help to stabilise that world, give

meaning to it, and thereby reduce the anxiety that would have arisen if they did not know

how to categorise and respond to the environment.

Schein then asks how, faced with such a powerful existing organisational culture that

must be changed if that organisation is to work differently, can a leader implement his /

her proposed solution to a particular problem; and in particular, how does a leader cause

the assumptions underlying those solutions to become communicated and embedded in

the thinking, feeling, and behaviour of the group? One element of this is that mysterious

quality called „charisma‟, a leader‟s ability to get across major assumptions and values in

a vivid, clear manner and to have employees buy into these by force of personal charm

alone. When leadership theorists discuss the importance of a leader „articulating a vision‟

for a group, they are essentially talking about the nebulous quality of charisma (Bennis,

1983). As we shall see in Unit 7, one more concrete way of thinking about „charisma‟ is

that it might correlate highly with emotional intelligence.


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In the meantime, it is noteworthy that although some of the mechanisms that leaders use

to communicate to their followers are conscious, deliberate actions, others are

unconscious and unintended. Some examples of the latter include;

• Those factors that the leader pays attention to, measures and controls (which highlights

what the leader perceives as key factors); and by implication those factors that the

leader does not pay attention to, measure and control

• The leader‟s reactions to critical incidents and organisational crises

• Deliberate role modelling, teaching and coaching by leaders

• The criteria used by the leader for the allocation of rewards, promotions and status

• The criteria used by the leader for recruitment and selection, as well are more general

creeds and charters

It goes without saying that any leader attempting to effect organisational change will give

plenty of consideration to these issues and the implicit messages that they convey to

employees about the leader‟s vision for what the organisation‟s culture should be. For

example, a leader who wishes to emphasise that results are the basis for success would be

undermined badly by the decision to promote someone based on longevity of service.

Similarly, a leader may espouse equal opportunities for all employees but run an

organisation that employs few women in prominent positions.

Furthermore, as groups and organisations develop their culture, important emotional

issues may often arise concerning dependence on the leader (which must not be allowed

to develop), relationships between peers (which must be positive and productive), and

with methods of effective working (which, during the process of change, can often lead to

heated debate within the organisation). At each of these stages of organisational

development, leadership is needed to help the organisation identify and deal with these

issues. For instance, leaders will often absorb and contain the anxiety that is unleashed

when things do not work as they should: the leader may not have the answer to the

problem, but must provide temporary stability and emotional reassurance while the

answer is being worked out.

Learning Checkpoint



1. Think of the last time that there was change in an organisation of which you have

experience. Which of Yukl‟s reasons for resisting change did you experience? If

you had been leading at the time, how would you have gone about addressing


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each of these reasons for resisting change? Following Lewin‟s arguments, what

practical steps would you follow in order to go about unfreezing attitudes

associated with the old organisational culture?

2. Section 6.3 above listed some of the unintended means by which a leader will

communicate his / her vision of organisational culture to employees (e.g., those

factors that the leader pays attention to, measures and controls). Drawing on your

own experience of organisations, think of some examples of each of these

unintended forms of communication that you have experienced. Did they help or

hinder attempts to instigate the desired organisational culture; and if not how

should they have been carried out differently in order to achieve the desired

effect? Can you think of any other unintended ways that a leader may

unintentionally communicate his / her vision to colleagues?

3. Section 6.3 noted that leading organisational change leads to emotional

implications for the organisation‟s employees. How would you ensure that

employees and an organisation‟s culture do not become dependent on a successful

leader? And is it a good idea for a leader to absorb the anxiety that results when a

change fails to bring about the desired change, or should he / she pass this on to

the team?

Essential Reading

Kevin S. Groves, K. S. (2006). Leader emotional expressivity, visionary leadership, and

organizational change. Leadership and Organizational Development Journal, 27, 565-

582.

Recommended Reading

Kotter, J. P. (1996). Leading change. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Rosen. R. (1998). Leadership in the new organisation. in M. K. Gowing, J. D. Kraft, and

J. C. Quick (eds.), The new organisational reality: downsizing, restructuring, and

revitalisation (Chapter 11). Washington: American Psychological Association.

Tsui, A. S., Zhang, Z. X., Wang, H., Xin, K. R. and Wu, J. B. (2006). Unpacking the

relationship between CEO leadership behaviour and organisational culture. Leadership

Quarterly, 17, 113-137.

Yukl, G. (2002). Leadership in organizations (5th edition). New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

(Chapter 10. Leading Change)


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Unit 7 - Putting Theory into Practice

Unit Summary

This Unit addresses several practical issues in leadership. It begins by considering the

'leader as hero' model, and argues that this comes about largely because of the difficulty

of otherwise understanding how major organisational changes come about. We next

consider emotional intelligence and how this is associated with effective leadership skills.

Finally, we consider a broader approach to effective leadership, which focusses on

developing competencies and shifting strategies.

Unit Aims


• Appreciate the limitations of the „leader as hero‟ model

• Understand how emotional intelligence can improve the effectiveness of leaders

• Understand a competence-based approach to leadership within an organisation

7.1 Leaders are ‘Heroes’

Yukl (2002) notes that most of the existing work concerning leadership has tended to

define it in a manner that places particular emphasis on the principle importance of a

single, heroic person. The most recent theories concerning charismatic or

transformational leadership hold as a basic tenet that an effective leader can motivate his /

her team to make considerable self-sacrifices and go to great efforts to ensure success.

Implicit to this is the notion that the influence of the leader is unidirectional, flowing

from the leader to his / her followers. When a leader is good and the team performs well

this is interpreted as demonstrating that the leader has influenced his / her followers in a

positive manner.

This emphasis on the key role of an individual leader can be explained in terms of human

cognition. Organisations are complex social situations of patterned interaction among

people. In their efforts to understand the causes and outcomes of organisational processes

people find it difficult to cope with this degree of complexity and instead tend to interpret

events in simple, human terms. Stereotypes, implicit theories, and simplified assumptions

about causality help people to make sense out of events that would otherwise be


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incomprehensible. As such, it is easier to assume that a positive outcome is the result of

the actions of a single, great person rather than being the product of an interaction

between the leader, his / her team, and the prevailing organisational conditions.

Beliefs about heroic leadership may help to justify large salaries for chief executives, but

they also foster unrealistic expectations. The heroic leader is expected to be wiser and

more courageous than anyone else in the organisation and to know everything that is

happening in it. Leaders are seldom able to live up to these expectations. Just as they are

given too much credit for success, the emphasis on the leader as hero means that they are

also blamed too much for failure. According to Bradford and Cohen (1984), shared

responsibility for leadership functions and the empowerment of subordinates is more

effective than heroic leadership, but it is unlikely to occur as long as people expect an

individual leader to take full responsibility for the fate of an organisation.

The alternative to the notion of the leader as hero is to de-emphasise the role of key

individuals by using shared leadership. However, managing shared leadership raises its

own problems of authority and responsibility for decisions. For instance, it is difficult

sometimes for people from outside an organisation that operates collectively to appreciate

that locating a specific person to act on a particular issue is not always quite as direct as it

might be. Similarly, groups sometimes feel liberated by collective decision making but

then fail to keep communication lines active, and so responsibility for individual tasks

becomes unclear.

7.2 Emotional Intelligence

Positive psychology is however beginning to open up a more balanced alternative

perspective. Turner et al (2005) for instance argue that leaders display inspirational

motivation when they ask employees to perform to the full extent of their capabilities and

are able to convince individual employees and whole teams that they can perform at a

level that exceeds the organisation‟s expectations. This intellectual stimulation requires

that the leader gives every encouragement to employees to think for themselves, to

challenge any cherished assumptions about how a particular task should be carried out,

and to consider new solutions to long-standing issues and problems. As such, a leader‟s

ability to inspire and motivate his / her followers via this kind of leadership will increase

the latter‟s degree of self-confidence and self-efficacy, and encourage them to develop

their personal and task-related abilities in the workplace. To paraphrase a comment

attributed to Ralph Nadir in 1976, the function of leadership is to produce more leaders,

not followers.


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Turner and his colleagues continue by examining transformational leadership. They cite

work by Barling (1996) who hypothesised that the effect of transformational leadership

on performance is indirect, being mediated by different aspects of employee morale.

They show how transformational leadership is also associated with higher levels of trust

in management and also group cohesion, both of which predicted affective commitment

to the organisation: in other words, transformational leadership leads to trust in

management and group cohesion, which in turn leads to employees feeling an emotional

affiliation to the organisation.

Turner et al then discuss what they describe as being one of the most fascinating

developments within psychology in general – the development of the theory of emotional

intelligence. They conceptualise emotional intelligence as consisting of self-awareness

and the ability to control one‟s own emotions; empathy for others; and willingness to

delay gratification. Success within organisations may be more a function of emotional

intelligence than of classical cognitive intelligence. For instance, Barling et al (2001)

have shown that there is considerable overlap between emotional intelligence and three of

the components of transformational leadership (namely, idealised influence, inspirational

motivation, and individualised consideration) but not with the fourth (intellectual

stimulation). The clear differentiating factor is that the first three components of

transformational leadership are more emotive than cognitive, whereas intellectual

stimulation is more cognitive than emotive (Barling, et al 2001). Turner concludes by

saying that transformational leaders put people first and this results in a workforce that is

more likely to display higher levels of psychological well-being.

George (2000) has linked emotional intelligence and leadership in a more thorough way.

Emotional intelligence, she reminds us, entails not just being able to manage one‟s own

feelings, but also to manage the moods and emotions of others. George argues that

effective leadership includes appraisal and expression of emotion; use of emotion to

enhance cognitive processing and decision making; knowledge about emotions; and

management of emotions. Being able to excite and enthuse followers or to make them

feel cautious or wary is an important interpersonal skill and a vehicle for social influence

within the leader‟s team.

Indeed, George draws on the work of Yukl and of Conger and Kanugo, in setting out the

main elements of effective leadership as;

• Development of a collective sense of goals and objectives and how to go about

achieving them

• Instilling in others knowledge and appreciation of the importance of work activities and

behaviours


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• Generating and maintaining excitement, enthusiasm, confidence, and optimism in an

organisation as well as cooperation and trust

• Encouraging flexibility in decision making and change

• Establishing and maintaining a meaningful identity for an organisation

George then goes on to consider how emotional intelligence may help leaders carry out

these activities and contribute to leader effectiveness. In considering the development of

a collective sense of goals and objectives she makes it clear that overarching goals are

commonly referred to as the leader‟s vision for the organisation. Emotional intelligence

may contribute to leaders developing a compelling vision for their groups or organisation

in a number of ways. For instance, leaders are often faced with a large amount of

information characterised by uncertainty and ambiguity; and out of this information they

need to chart a course for their groups or organisations: a leader may use their emotions

to enhance their information processing of the challenges, threats, issues and

opportunities facing their organisation. Similarly, in order for leaders to generate and

maintain excitement and enthusiasm, they must be able to appraise how followers feel,

and be knowledgeable about how to influence these feelings. They must also be able to

anticipate how followers will react to different circumstances and changes, and

effectively manage these reactions. Of course, some people find it difficult to respond to

how others feel in an optimal way. Such people would be poor choices to spearhead

major changes in an organisation. On the other hand, a leader who can accurately assess

how followers feel, and then respond to, and sometimes alter, these feelings in a

productive way is much more likely to be able to effectively overcome resistance to

change and transform an organisation in effective ways.

7.3 Competencies and Changing Strategies

Many organisations instead base leadership around the identification of knowledge- and

behaviourally-based competencies in employees. A core competency usually involves a

combination of technical expertise and application skills; and Yukl (2002) provides

several examples of a core competency for organisations. For instance, for the company

Gore, their expertise centres around a special type of material (Goretex) and their

capability to discover and exploit new uses for this material. Core competencies provide a

source of continuing competitive advantage if they are used to provide innovative, high-

quality products and services that cannot be easily copied or duplicated by competitors.

However, the potential advantage may not be realised unless top management identifies

employee‟s core competencies and builds a strategy around them. The strategy needs to

be developed at a deep level in the organisation, so that more specific competencies are

identified at an individual level which align personal skills and knowledge with the

activities of the organisation in the short- and long-term. Following from this emphasis,


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performance appraisal needs to operate in a way that reviews and rewards key individual

competencies; and that highlights those training programmes needed to support

competencies of key strategic importance for the organisation.

As this approach implies, an organisation‟s strategy is therefore better regarded as

something that is highly flexible, contingent upon the competencies of employees. Yukl

points out that it is important to make a distinction between incremental improvements in

the existing strategies and a major change in strategy. A new strategy may be needed

when there is a crisis of performance in the organisation and established practices are not

sufficient to deal with it. Major changes may not be needed if disappointing performance

seems to be caused by a temporary worsening of conditions or by problems in

implementing the current strategy. One of the most important responsibilities of the

organisation‟s leaders is to help interpret events and determine how much change is

necessary. When a serious crisis is imminent, it is appropriate to be pragmatic and

flexible rather than defensive and tradition-bound in deciding how to respond. In this

situation, a leader who attempts to defend the old, obsolete strategy rather than proposing

necessary changes is likely to be replaced. However, proposing a different strategy when

the current strategy can easily be fixed is also dangerous for both the organisation and the

leader.

In this context, Whipp and Pettigrew (1993) make a useful distinction between

continuous and discontinuous change. There is a long series of implications of this

distinction for corporate organisations. A single example of the distinction in practice

may serve as an explanation. The UK emergency services (fire, police, ambulance, and

paramedical services) have made considerable efforts to have people concerned with the

delivery of these service empowered to make decisions and use their own leadership

skills at a local level. We can see this as part of a programme of continuous change aimed

at the ongoing improvement of the service. In these cases, leadership becomes dispersed

and flexibility is the key, because it is necessary for the service to adapt to local

conditions as they arise. It may mean workers adopting broader roles than they would

perhaps normally take, so that, for example, members of more than one service have the

capability of resuscitating an injured person, rather than everyone having to wait for a

single service with the appropriate skills to arrive on the accident scene. In contrast, the

London bombings of July 2005 gave rise to a discontinuous change, in which the

emergency services immediately adopted a command and control model of leadership

that represented an immediate and dramatic break with existing practice. In this case,

individuals have very specifically-defined roles and communicated progress concerning

these rapidly with the centre of the operation. In these circumstances of discontinuous

change there is little real scope for discretion or flexibility; and it is vital instead that

everyone involved knows what is demanded of themselves and others.


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Learning Checkpoint



1. Are there any circumstances in which the „leader as hero‟ model is useful to an

organisation?

2. How could emotional intelligence help leaders to address each of the elements of

effective leadership set out by George (2000)?

3. Why might emotional intelligence be more useful to a leader than conventional

cognitive intelligence? What does this tell us about the nature of leadership?

4. Think of some individual roles within an organisation with which you are

familiar. How specifically could an emotionally-intelligent leader encourage

individuals working within those roles to function at the best of their ability?

5. What are the key competencies in your organisation, and what can leaders in that

organisation do to develop these? Are new competencies needed, would

introduction of these require a major change in strategy or an incremental

improvement to the existing strategy, and what would be the organisational

implications of adopting a new strategy or changing the existing strategy?

Essential Reading

Turner, N., Barling, J., and Zacharatos, A. (2005). Positive psychology at work. in C. R.

Snyder and S. J. Lopez (eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (Chapter 52). Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

Recommended Reading

Barling, J., Slater, F. and Kelloway, E. K. (2000). Transformational leadership and

emotional intelligence: an exploratory study. Leadership and Organisational

Development Journal, 21, 157-161.

George, J. (2000). Emotions and leadership: the role of emotional intelligence. Human

Relations, 53, 1027-1055.

Whipp, R. and Pettigrew, A. (1993). Leading change and the management of

competition. in J. Hendry and G. Johnson with J. Newtown (eds.), Strategic thinking:

leadership and the management of change (pp. 199-228). Chichester: John Wiley.


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Unit 8 - Leadership Development

Unit Summary

This module considers the means by which leaders might be improved or developed. We

begin by briefly considering the popular view that leadership is a fixed ability. The bulk

of the Unit comprises an overview of the main leadership training approaches. The

approach endorsed by the Centre for Creative Leadership emphasises the self-knowledge

of the leader, and how this can be improved. Adair's action-centred leadership

development focusses on the functional elements (e.g., planning) that are most relevant

for each of the essential components of leadership (i.e., task, team, and individual).

Boyatzis's approach concerns developing not just cognitive abilities, but also

competencies relating to emotional intelligence (i.e., self-management skills and social

skills). The Unit ends by considering the practice of leadership development in the

context of organisations.

Unit Aims


• Appreciate that not all would share the view that leadership skills can be developed at

all

• Understand the approach to leadership development espoused by the Centre for

Creative Leadership

• Understand Adair‟s action-centred approach to leadership development

• Understand Boyatzis‟s approach to leadership development

• Understand the typical practice of leadership development in organisations

8.1 Can Leaders Be Developed?

We have seen at several points in this module how businesses have typically adopted a

„fixed trait‟ approach to leadership, which stipulates that „true‟ leaders have special

characteristics that are fixed more or less from birth and which are probably genetically

determined. This view received encouragement from biographical sources in which great

people are described as demonstrating leadership skills despite a lack of appropriate

training. For instance, it is pointed out regularly that Thomas Edison is described as being

expelled from school because he was regarded as unteachable. Similarly, Florence


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Nightingale is often seen by biographers to being an outstanding leader who achieved

much despite little evidence of education to prepare her for life. This view of leadership

undoubtedly follows from a more general strand of work from the 19th

century which

argued that „great people‟ are born as such, drawing on evidence such as Mozart‟s

precociousness and the compositional ability of the Bach family.

An opposing view of leadership ability is implicit in the worldwide existence of

leadership development programmes. Officer training is in principle a process which both

identifies and develops military leaders. Business education implicitly, and sometimes

explicitly, has a similar objective. Moreover, like „Great Person Theory‟, the notion that

leaders can be developed also has a strong pedigree, and has been handed down since the

days of Ancient Greece. One of Socrates‟ students, Xenophon, believed that „the right

stuff‟ (whatever that is) is not universally distributed, and so leaders must be trained.

8.2 The Centre for Creative Leadership (CCL)

The Centre for Creative Leadership (CCL) is regarded as the foremost and most

experienced global leadership development organisation in the world. An estimated

400,000 professionals participated in its programmes in its first 30 years of operations.

CCL considers self-knowledge to be the single most important factor in the practice of

leadership. Its role is to provide an environment in which self-knowledge and discovery

flourishes and permits personal development. This philosophy explains the emphasis

placed on feedback, and the efforts exerted in developing practically powerful

instruments such as 360-Degree Assessment, which has probably contributed to its wide

interest and application. More specifically, the objectives of the leadership development

programme include increased self-awareness; increased ability to learn from experience;

valuing differences; building and maintaining relationships; giving and receiving

developmental feedback; setting and achieving goals; communicating effectively;

developing others; building effective teams; and developing strategies for life balance.

There have been a number of evaluations of the CCL programmes. Self-report data one

month and four months after the programme gave similar patterns of response.

Approximately 75% of the sample reported learning gains around self-awareness; by far

the most frequently reported learning gain. Between 19% and 24% reported learning

gains in understanding and valuing others, increased awareness of development goals,

communicating in a more open fashion and acquiring a more positive view of leadership

capabilities. Other learning gains were mentioned at between 1% and 13%. Only a

minority of respondents (around 11%) reported no (perceived) change in their leadership

capacity after one month, with a slightly lower proportion reporting the same after four

months (8%) In contrast, 34% reported significant change and 54% partial enhancement


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of leadership capabilities after one month. These results changed marginally (47% and

44% respectively) after four months.

Nonetheless, much of CCL‟s programme reveals its 1970‟s origins, when leadership was

still studied according to the contingency theories that we considered in Unit 1; although

in the interest of balance we should note that CCL also addresses much more recent

notions of transformational and relational leadership, as well as project leadership,

diversity, and ethical issues. The CCL suggests that its leadership programmes have value

in terms of assessment, challenge, and support. This emphasis on assessment is

potentially problematic from one perspective: it implies the notion of „traits‟ of good

leaders; and we saw in Unit 3 how a trait-based approach can create problems by creating

expectations among followers concerning those traits that a „good leader‟ in a particular

field should possess. On a much more positive note, however, an emphasis on assessment

has the advantage of implying the potential for development, since it suggests those

aspects of an individual that can be „worked upon‟ to make them a better leader.

Similarly, the CCL programme‟s emphasis on challenge and support also highlights their

potential for the development of leadership skills, and acts as another means for

identifying „real‟ leadership talent.

8.3 Action-Centred Leadership

John Adair has been a prolific and influential leadership educator. He was based at

Sandhurst Military College in southern England during the 1960s, and this gave him

unrivalled access to the military commanders and heroes of the Second World War. He

had an unusual career having served as an as adjutant to a Bedouin regiment in the Arab

Legion, deckhand on an Arctic Trawler, and a military historian. It is estimated that there

have been around one million participants on his action-centred leadership training

programme.

As a historian, Adair regards modern-day leadership as drawing on three main historical

traditions concerning the phenomenon. The first of these is a tribal tradition of treating

the leader as being „first among equals‟, anticipating a more egalitarian and democratic

approach to leading. The second is an eastern tradition which views the leader as the

cultural transmitter of moral values. According to this tradition, the leader has to avoid

the trait of arrogance and take steps to avoid becoming tyrannical. The third belief is the

western tradition which derives from Socrates and his Athenian group which states that

authority flows from knowledge. Furthermore, this tradition has become associated with

democratic beliefs that knowledge is not an inherited gift, but rather something that may


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be cultivated through education. Adair‟s approach regards these values as requiring active

leadership for their preservation.

At Sandhurst, Adair worked on an approach to military leadership development which he

saw as drawing on the motivational theories of Abraham Maslow and Frederick

Herzberg, and the classical managerial theories of Henri Fayol. Adair described his work

as a functional model, containing several functional elements, namely planning,

initiating, controlling, supporting, informing and evaluating; and the functional elements

of Adair‟s ideas have been modified only marginally over their many years of use in and

beyond their military setting.

Adair captured the essential components of leadership in a model comprising three

regions, represented as three overlapping circles, each containing a single word, namely

„task‟, „team‟, and „individual‟. The leadership functions (planning, initiating,

controlling, supporting, informing and evaluating) were enacted across these three

interacting regions of completing the task, building and maintaining the team, and

developing the individual.

Adair moved to the Industrial Society (later called The Work Foundation) and this took

his Action-Centered Leadership (ACL) model away from the earlier military context and

course content. Participants in the courses at the Industrial Society shifted towards those

working in a supervisory, organisational context. Despite this change in context, Adair

continued to think of his three overlapping circles as a powerful learning and

communications device, retaining what he called the „qualities approach‟, which had

diminished in popularity with the decline of trait theories of leadership. Instead, Adair

remained constant to the view that leaders had exceptional qualities (even if they had not

been easy to pin down in rigorous research). He suspected that ideas about the

exceptional leader had become unfashionable simply because they were in some way

anti-democratic and elitist. He did not consider the qualities of the leader in what we

consider essentialist terms, but instead considered them qualities expected of the leader

by their colleagues and work groups (the leaders „specialness‟ derives from the

perceptions of the social group). As such his views are not so dissimilar from those we

saw in Unit 3 in terms of the social cognition approach to leadership.

8.4 Boyatzis’s Approach

One of the strongest advocates of leadership development is Richard Boyatzis. He

enjoyed a long and fruitful collaboration with David Kolb on the nature of experiential

learning (learning through doing) and then became interested in personal competencies.


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This led to work with David Goleman on emotional intelligence and a formal leadership

development programme based at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case

Western Research University in Cleveland, Ohio. Within their approach, competencies

are defined capabilities of individuals for effective action. According to Boyatzis, there

are three clusters of competencies germane to leadership, namely cognitive abilities, self-

management skills and social skills. Most management programmes (particularly MBA

programmes) are mostly concerned with the first cluster of competencies, namely

cognitive abilities (such as the use of concepts, quantitative analysis, written

communications, and so on). The other two clusters of competencies are, however, seen

much less commonly on MBA programmes, and are more closely associated with

emotional intelligence. Boyatzis based his work on careful measures of performance of

executives undertaking executive education programmes; and offers evidence that

performance on emotional intelligence factors can be increased through appropriate

training, as his programme is geared more towards overt training in social skills and self-

management.

One strong element of Boyatzis‟s approach has been Intentional Change Theory. This

proposes that leadership development programmes can support personal change by

offering ways to organise intentional change strategies. This model encourages those who

wish to achieve leadership goals to focus on perceptions of actual and ideal self-images.

This focus is facilitated by experimentation in a climate of trust, augmented by coaching.

This coaching is usually conducted on a one to one basis, in which the individual seeks

out (and is more likely to find) the gaps between actual and ideal self image; and also

acknowledges their strengths, which are regarded as areas of competence for which the

person‟s ideal self and actual self are similar. As self-directed, intentional change

develops, the individual is better able to cope with unexpected changes, regarding them

as less threatening and disorienting. As such, a benign personal development process has

then been established.

8.5 Leadership Development in Organisations

Formal training programmes are widely used to improve leadership in organisations.

Leadership training usually takes the form of a series of short workshops that last only a

few hours and focus on a narrow set of skills, but can in some cases involve

comprehensive programmes that last for a year or more, and cover a wide range of skills.

There is a different theoretical underpinning to each method and a variable amount of

evidence supporting the effectiveness of each method. A number of training programmes

are based in the application of particular leadership theories such as least preferred co-

worker contingency theory (associated with Fiedler), the normative decision model

(associated with Vroom), transformational leadership (associated with Bass) and so on.


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Reviews of these theory-based training programmes find evidence that they sometimes

improve leadership effectiveness but that the source of the improvement is not always so

clear, particularly when the training events undertaken are quite distinct from any real

change in the participants‟ working context.

As described in more detail in A41CP / A41CH / A41CG Psychology of Coaching,

another common approach to leadership development is coaching. This is where a leader

will receive business-related counseling from another person via a model that owes much

to conventional psychotherapy. Coaching may be provided by an employee of the

organisation in question or an external consultant who is typically a successful former

executive or a behavioural scientist with extensive experience of management

consultancy or counseling. Among the benefits of coaching by someone from outside the

organisation are a wider range of experience, greater objectivity, and the assurance of

complete confidentiality. An internal coach, however, has other advantages such as easy

availability, more knowledge of the culture and politics of the organisation, and a better

understanding of its strategic challenges and core competencies.

An executive coach is not a permanent mentor, and is usually employed for a short period

of time ranging from a few months to a few years. Coaching may be provided on a

weekly or biweekly basis, and in extreme cases the coach can be „on call‟ to provide

advice whenever it is needed. Executive coaching has several advantages over formal

training courses, including convenience, confidentiality, flexibility, and personal

attention. However, coaching is expensive, often costing several thousand pounds per

session if purchased from an external source.

Coaches argue that it is important that they establish a good rapport and be able to form a

good working relationship with the leader they are helping. The coach must not have a

personal agenda, such as an excessive bias for a particular theory or the wish to sell more

coaching time to the client. Leaders being coached seem to value honest, accurate

feedback about their strengths and weaknesses, as well as clear relevant advice about how

to become more effective.

Hall, Otazo, and Hollenbeck (1999) interviewed a sample of 75 executives who had

experienced executive coaching. Most of the respondents evaluated the coaching as being

very satisfactory; and reported that it helped them to acquire new skills, attitudes or

perspectives. As a result of coaching, they were able to solve problems more effectively

and accomplish things that they could not do previously. In addition to this self-report

evidence, a quasi-experimental study by Olivero (1997) also found positive evidence

concerning the consequences of coaching. Managers received a three-day workshop,

followed by eight weeks of coaching related to individual projects. Although the training


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itself resulted in higher productivity for the managers, personal coaching added to this

increase; and coaching had a stronger positive effect than did the training.

Learning Checkpoint



• Think about the approaches to leadership development implied by „Great Person

Theory‟, the Centre for Creative Leadership (CCL), the Action-Centred approach, and

Boyatzis‟s approach in the context of any of the other material in this module. What is

the implication of this „other material‟ for the validity and utility of approaches to

leadership development implied by „Great Person Theory‟, the Centre for Creative

Leadership (CCL), the Action-Centred approach, and Boyatzis‟s approach? For

instance, does the use and validity of the approaches to leadership development

described in this Unit vary as a function of social identity processes; social cognition;

whether the group being led are additive, disjunctive or conjunctive; the power levers

that are available to the leader; whether the leader in question is female or from a non-

western culture; and whether the organisation being led is in a process of change?

• How do any of these four approaches to leadership development need to change in the

light of the material elsewhere in this module? How would you go about explaining this

necessity of change to the proponents of the approaches to leadership development

espoused by „Great Person Theory‟, the Centre for Creative Leadership (CCL), the

Action-Centred approach, and Boyatzis‟s approach?

Essential Reading

Day, D. V. (2001). Leadership development: a review in context. Leadership Quarterly,

11, 581-613.

Recommended Reading

Boyatzis, R. E., Stubbs, E., and Taylor, S. N. (2002). Learning cognitive and emotional

competencies through graduate management education. Academy of Management

Learning and Education, 1, 150-162.

Hall, D. T., Otazo,K. T., and Hollenbeck, G. P. (1999). Behind closed doors: what really

happens in executive coaching? Organisational Dynamics, 20, 183-203.


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Module Assessment

This module is assessed 40% by coursework and 60% by examination. Details of the

module assessment can be found in your Handbook.

Coursework Title: What are the elements of „good leadership‟? Your answer should be

between 1800 and 2200 words.

Students taking this module via an Approved Learning Partner of the University should

consult their teaching staff concerning how to submit the work. Students taking this

module on a distance learning basis should post a hard copy of their work to The School

Office, School of Life Sciences, Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, United

Kingdom

Please note that the pass mark is 50%.

In assigning marks, the following criteria will be used.

Relevance

Does the submission (e.g. essay, report or presentation) deal with the question, topic or

problem set? Does it select material that is relevant to it?

Organisation and Coherence

Is the submission well constructed, with a clear and logically organised argument?

Understanding and Accuracy

Does the submission present the relevant evidence thoroughly and accurately, and does it

show a good understanding of this evidence?

Critical Evaluation

Does the submission show independent thought about the topic, and critical evaluation of

evidence and theory?

References and Citations

Is the submission referenced appropriately throughout?

Marks are awarded according to the following criteria;

70-100 An answer in this class will be relevant to the question, well constructed, show a

thorough knowledge of the issues, and indicate independence of thought. How high a


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mark is awarded in this range will depend upon: the level of understanding of the topic;

the organisation and strength of the argument presented; the breadth of sources used

accurately in its support; and the degree of independent thought demonstrated. A mark at

the top of the range would be awarded to an outstanding answer that could not be

improved at undergraduate level in the time available.

60-69 An answer in this class will show at least: a good understanding of the topic, with

a well organised argument accurately supported by a range of sources; some evidence of

a critical approach to the topic; and no fundamental errors. How high a mark is awarded

in this range will depend upon: the level of understanding of the topic; the accuracy and

breadth of evidence used; and the clarity of the argument presented.

50-59 An answer in this class will show a satisfactory understanding of the main issues

and familiarity with basic reading. There will be minor errors, omissions of essential

aspects of the topic, and limited evidence of critical thinking. The organisation of the

answer will show weaknesses, with relationships between statements sometimes hard to

follow. Some claims will be made without supporting evidence. How high a mark is

awarded in this range will depend upon the extent of these faults. A low mark in the

range will be awarded to an answer with numerous errors and/or the inclusion of

irrelevant material.

40-49 An answer in this class will show a minimal understanding of some issues raised

by the question. There will be substantial omissions and/or irrelevant material. The

argument will be poorly structured, there will be little or no evidence of critical thinking

and the organisation and exposition of the answer may be poor. How high a mark is

awarded in this range will depend upon the extent of these faults.

30-39 An answer in this class will show some evidence of knowledge relevant to the

question, and of skill in using it, but not enough to justify progression to further study or

award of an Honours degree. The mark awarded will depend on the amount of such

evidence demonstrated.

0-29 An answer in this class will show little or no evidence of knowledge relevant to

the question. Material included may be irrelevant, fundamentally wrong, plagiarised

(which may well have further consequences), or any combination of these. The mark

awarded will depend on the amount of accurate and relevant knowledge shown.


271

Coursework Submission Sheet

Please attach this sheet to all coursework submitted

Module code………………………. Student ID/ Matric……………………......

Marker…………………………….. Overall Mark……………………………...

Attempt number: 1 / 2* / 3* (please circle i.e., circle 1 if this is your first attempt, 2 if this

is your first re-submission, and 3 if this is your second re-submission)

*The cost of a student‟s first submission of coursework for a module is contained within

the course fee. Subsequent submissions of coursework for a particular module (i.e.,

second or third attempts) incur a re-submission fee of £65 (per re-submission per

module). Students should ensure that the relevant payment (e.g., credit card) details are

provided on a separate sheet, or that a cheque (made payable to „Heriot-Watt University‟)

is attached to this Coursework Submission form.

Relevance

Does the submission (e.g. essay, report or presentation) deal with the question, topic or

problem set? Does it select material that is relevant to it?

Organisation and Coherence

Is the submission well constructed, with a clear and logically organised argument?

Understanding and Accuracy

Does the submission present the relevant evidence thoroughly and accurately, and does it

show a good understanding of this evidence?

Critical Evaluation

Does the submission show independent thought about the topic, and critical evaluation of

evidence and theory?


272

References and Citations

Is the submission referenced appropriately throughout?


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Sample Exam Questions

The following sample questions may provide some guidance to students preparing for the

exam;

How have theories of leadership developed over the past 100 years? Discuss with

reference to autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire leadership; contingency theories;

and transactional and transformational approaches.

What are the implications of social identity theory for leadership?

How should leadership practice be modified in the light of the consideration that a leader

must exert influence over specifically a group of employees?

What are the power levers available to a leader, and how should these be used in the

context of a particular organisational culture?

Do current theories of leadership apply only to male leaders in the western world? What

can be done to improve leadership opportunities for women and to adapt existing

leadership theories so that they can be applied outside North America and Western

Europe?

Why might employees resist change, and what strategies can a leader use to guide

employees through times of organisational change?

How can emotional intelligence improve the effectiveness of a leader?

Critically describe the main approaches to leadership development.


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Module Feedback Form

MSc Business Psychology - A41LS / A41LE / A41LD Leadership

Please use the following form to provide feedback on this module. Please respond to each

statement below by giving a number from 1-5, where1 represents „strongly disagree‟ and

5 represents „strongly agree‟. You can give any number between 1 and 5. To ensure

anonymity, please post a hard copy of this form to;

The School Office


Heriot Watt University

Edinburgh EH14 4AS

United Kingdom

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materials have made the subject interesting, staff I have contacted have been enthusiastic

and are good at explaining things). Your rating: _____

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encourages wider, independent reading). Your rating: _____

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coursework assignment for the module has helped me to understand how well I am

learning, and the criteria used in assessment were made clear to me in advance). Your

rating: _____

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Documents

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