Management function: Leadership

Leadership - the process of inspiring others to accomplish important tasks

Leader and Manager are not equivalent terms b/c of varying personal power.

Power: Personal vs Position power
Personal - Expert or Referent - dev by expertise or likable personality
Position - Reward or Coercion or Legitimacy

Empowerment: the process through which managers enable others to gain power and achieve influence within the org

3 Historical historical approaches to studying Leadership:

1. Trait theory - "leadership traits" - but they're only a precondition. Understanding how they behave is the best determinant of their leadership success.

2. Behavioural

3. Contingency - understand how conditions for leadership success vary with the situation
Fiedler's contingency model looks at:
Leadership style:
task/goal-oriented vs relationship-oriented (measured on LPC scale), where LPC stands for least preferred co-worker
Diagnosing situational control, (or situational favourableness):
member relations, task structure, positional power (high or low)
Hersey-Blanchard situational leadership model:
- Leaders adjust their styles depending on followers' readiness
- 4 leaderships styles: delegating, participating, selling, and telling. Each varies in required relationship and task behaviour.
- Followers may either be high or low in able-ness, willingness, (secure vs insecure), high or low -> mature or immature
- Leaders become Delegating when he has mature followers
- Leaders must become Tellers when he has immature followers
House's path-goal theory:
Establish clear path for followers to goal achievement.
Leadership styles should contribute to missing/weak in situation. They include:
Directive - giving specific advice, clarifying expectations, assigning tasks
Supportive - fosters good relations between managers & employees
Participative - shares information
Achievement-oriented - set high goals, high expectations, and have high confidence in employee's ability to achieve goals

Critique in approaches:
The good - Moving beyond trait and behavioural approaches to consider the role of context/situation in leader effectiveness.
The bad - Endless contingencies

Type of Contemporary Leaders:
Charismatic - unify and motivate people around a grand vision; inspire people toward change
Transformational - they have the visionary power of charismatic leaders but also have the staying power and energy to see change through to completion
Transactional - they are methodical and keeps others focused and progressing towards goal accomplishment