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Leadership: Influencing Behavior for Excellence

Explain leadership and behavioral relationships in organizations.

     Relationships between leaders and subordinates are critical for explaining how leaders behave. Leadership implies a system of inequalities in which superiors influence subordinates and direct behavior in groups to satisfy a wide variety of individual, organizational, and social objectives. Leadership behavior must account for human relationships as well as for task relationships.

Identify and discuss traits and characteristics of effective leaders.

     Individuals become successful leaders by demonstrating their  capability for eliciting results&-oriented actions from subordinates. Effective leaders tend to be achievement&-oriented and confident of their ability to perform well, solve problems, and influence others to perform well. They are relatively intelligent and capable of making effective judgments, have strong reasoning skills, and are often creative. The most effective leaders also skillfully apply management techniques to plan, organize, and control work.

Describe and contrast major theories on leadership. Discuss the Blake and Mouton Managerial Grid.

     The Ohio State University and University of Michigan model consists of a two&-dimensional grid&-"concern for people" and "concern for tasks"&-and four primary approaches to leadership "abdicative," "directive," "supportive," and "participative." Likert's refinement of the model, System 4  Management identifies similar behavioral sets ranging from "autocratic" to participative."

      Blake and Mouton's Managerial Grid combines the Ohio State ad University of Michigan model and Likert's four systems of behavior into a nine&-by&-nine matrix encompassing a broad range of leadership behavior.

     Fiedler's contingency  theory suggests that successful leadership results from matching managers' styles which are grounded in personality and thus hard to change, with situations. There is no one best approach to leadership, but rather an optimal approach in each situation. Robert House's path&-goal theory links this contingency approach to expectancy theory by specifying that a leader's responsibility is to increase subordinates' motivation to perform work by providing a path, or a direction, for accomplishing tasks that leads to expected rewards The path&-goal model adds to participation or team building a dimension called "achievement&-oriented leadership."

     The Vroom&-Yetton model incorporates expectancy theory of motivation into a formal decision&-tree analysis. Managers adapt their behavior according to a systematic analysis of the task environment and leader&-subordinate relationships. This model proposes that it is the type of decision that influences leadership style rather than the other way around.

     The Hersey and Blanchard life cycle theory is conceptually similar to Fiedler's theory. However, Fiedler based his theory on personality characteristics and situational variables, while the life cycle model focuses on the "maturity" of subordinates, defined as the experience, skill, and ability to perform a task combined with the psychological willingness to assume responsibility. Managers adopt one of four approaches to leadership, ranging from delegating to telling, according to both the nature of the task and a group profile of the maturity of subordinates.

     The Blake and Mouton Managerial Grid has two dimensions, each with nine points that create a matrix of coordinates. One dimension is the manager's degree of "concern for people," and the other is his or her degree of "concern for production." In each dimension, a scale value of 1 implies least concern and a scale value of 9 implies maximum concern. Therefore a 1.1  orientation, suggests little concern for either people or production (impoverished management). At the opposite extreme, a 9,9 orientation indicates a fully participative approach to leadership that seeks to attain both maximum satisfaction for employees and maximum work, results (team management). Other benchmarks on the grid are a 1,9 orientation, which implies a low concern for tasks and a high concern for employees (country club management); and a 9,1 orientation, which suggests a high concern for production with little regard for subordinates (authority&-obedience management).

Discuss how motivation and leadership are interrelated and explain the role of decision making in effective leadership.

     The common assumption of leadership models is that leadership is a process of influencing subordinates to perform well in exchange for something they value. Likert's System 4 model assumes there is "one best way" to lead&-through participation&-implying that, in general, subordinates want to be involved in decisions and will be more productive when they have a voice in directing their work, Blake and Mouton propose that leadership behavior must be matched to subordinates' expectations.

     Both the Vroom&-Yetton model and the path&-goal theory are explicitly based on the expectancy theory of motivation. According to Vroom&-Yetton, leaders model their behavior in concert with organizational expectations for performance and employees' expectations for rewards, whereas the path&-goal theory proposes that leaders clarify a direction of effort for work, that leads to rewards subordinates perceive as important.

     Contingency theories encompass a wide range of motivational elements including content needs of employees, perceptions of job satisfaction, perceptions of task requirements, and the interaction required between superiors and subordinates. These theories take a situational approach, incorporating both human,and, task elements of the organizational environment, Leadership consists of motivating employees to fulfill organizational goals while satisfying their personal expectations for participation.

Describe  the multicultural environment and transformational leadership as critical management issues.

     As organizations become more culturally diversified, managers must acclimate themselves to changes taking place in their work groups. Cultural diversity is explained by the profile of individuals working for the organization, including their sex, race, ethic, age, and religious characteristics. Within this framework, organizational leaders are concerned with providing appropriate opportunities  for minorities, reconciling differences in behavior among their employees, and, most important, transforming their organization into multicultural enterprises devoid of stereotypes and unproductive biases.

     Transformational leadership addresses the human resource issues of managing a multicultural organization, but it also encompasses a philosophy of leadership whereby leaders are able to make profound changes, introduce new visions for their organizations, and inspire people to work toward achieving those visions. In contrast to transactional leadership, which focuses on incremental changes or adjustments in relatively stable environments, transformational leadership is the process of making fundamental changes in where an organization is headed.