The following contingency questions must be answered to determine the appropriate leadership style in the leader-participation model.
P Quality Requirement: How important is the technical quality of this decision?
P Commitment Requirement: How important is subordinate commitment to the decision?
P Leader’s Information: Do you have sufficient information to make a high-quality decision?
P Problem Structure: Is the problem well structured?
P Commitment Probability: If you were to make the decision yourself, are you reasonably certain that your subordinates would be committed to the decision?
P Goal Congruence: Do subordinates share the organizational goals to be attained in solving this problem?
P Subordinate Conflict: Is conflict among subordinates over preferred solutions likely?
P Subordinate Information: Do subordinates have sufficient information to make a high-quality decision?
Transformational Leadership
Transformational leadership blends the behavioral theories with a little dab of trait theories. Transactional leaders, such as those identified in contingency theories, guide followers in the direction of established goals by clarifying role and task requirements. However, transformational leaders, who are charismatic and visionary, can inspire followers to transcend their own self-interest for the good of the organization. Transformational leaders appeal to followers’ ideals and moral values and inspire them to think about problems in new or different ways. Leader behaviors used to influence followers include vision, framing, and impression management. Vision is the ability of the leader to bind people together with an idea. Framing is the process whereby leaders define the purpose of their movement in highly meaningful terms. Impression management is a leader’s attempt to control the impressions that others form about the leader by practicing behaviors that make the leader more attractive and appealing to others. Research indicates that transformational, as compared to transactional, leadership is more strongly correlated with lower turnover rates, higher productivity, and higher employee satisfaction.
A transformational leader instills feelings of confidence, admiration and commitment in the followers. He or she is charismatic, creating a special bond with followers, articulating a vision with which the followers identify and for which they are willing to work. Each follower is coached, advised, and delegated some authority. The transformational leader stimulates followers intellectually, arousing them to develop new ways to think about problems. The leader uses contingent rewards to positively reinforce performances that are consistent with the leader’s wishes. Management is by exception. The leader takes initiative only when there are problems and is not actively involved when things are going well. The transformational leader commits people to action and converts followers into leaders.
Transformational leaders are relevant to today’s workplace because they are flexible and innovative. While it is important to have leaders with the appropriate orientation defining tasks and managing interrelationships, it is even more important to have leaders who can bring organizations into futures they have not yet imagined. Transformational leadership is the essence of creating and sustaining competitive advantage.
LEADERSHIP SKILLS PRODUCE BUSINESS SUCCESS
Leadership skills are not intellectual principles that are memorized or learned in a classroom setting. Leadership skills are a part of one’s higher character being reinforced within a group that values leadership behaviors. We teach leadership as an individual and group process. Not only individuals practice the process of leadership in our leadership seminars but the group practices leadership through the reinforcement of values and beliefs regarding appropriate behavior. We assign the group a real work task to accomplish efficiently and proficiently, which develops a set of values and practices compatible with leadership skills.
Employees rise to the highest level of customers’ needs when the work culture is total employee leadership. Management becomes a resource to support employee leadership.
Build leaderships skills in your employees and your business or law firm will exceed the goals of your business plan. If every employee doesn’t perceive himself/herself as a leader invest your training dollars in building leadership skills in your employees. Good leaders are made not born. The best leaders are continually working and studying to improve their leadership skills.
Management succeeds best when they model as leaders, which encourages employee leadership. There is a mistaken idea that all managers and professionals have leadership traits. They may or may not behave as leaders. Although their position as a partner, manager, supervisor, lead, etc. gives them the authority to accomplish certain tasks and objectives in the organization, this power does not make them a leader…it simply makes them the boss. Leadership makes people want to achieve high goals and objectives, while bosses tell people to accomplish a task or objective.
What makes a person want to follow a leader? People want to be guided by those they respect and who have a clear sense of direction. To gain respect, they must be ethical. A sense of direction is achieved by conveying a strong vision of the future. These traits shouldn’t be limited to management. These traits are desirable in all employees.
Principles of Leadership
h Leadership begins with character. Honesty, ethical behavior, recognition of others’ good deeds and care for others, identification with the larger goals of the business and a maturity all contribute to your impact in the organization.
h Know yourself and seek self-improvement. What makes up your character? What are your interests and passions? How accountable are you? How do you manage time and meet goals? Seeking self-improvement means continually strengthening your attributes. This can be accomplished through being coached, reading, self-study, classes, etc
h Be technically proficient. As a leader, you must know your job and have a solid familiarity with other employees’ jobs.
h Seek responsibility and be accountable for your actions. Search for ways to guide your organization to new heights. Collaborate with others wanting success for the organization. And when things go wrong, they will sooner or later, do not blame others. Analyze the situation, take corrective action, and move on to the next challenge.
h Make sound and timely decisions. Use good problem solving, decision making, and planning tools.
h Set the example. Be a good role model for other employees but not in the manner of criticalness or righteousness. Everyone rises to a higher level when they witness good character and competence in alignment with the company’s business plan.
h Know other employees and look out for their well-being. Know human nature and the importance of sincerely caring for your workers. Praise, reinforce, and offer to be a resource.
h Communicate with other employees. Know how to communicate with others working with you. Individuals have different communication styles. Don’t assume there was communication when you can ask for feedback to confirm what was heard. When institutional communication is inaccurate or inadequate initiate changes. Poor communication exists when employees permit it.
h When assigned a task understand it and commit to its completion. Renegotiate the task if necessary or seek other team members’ assistance if necessary, but retain accountability for it.
h Use the full capabilities of your organization. By developing a team spirit, you will be able to use your organization, department, section, etc. as a resource, and at the same time offer yourself as a resource.
Businesses and law firms need three elements to succeed: (1) a plan, (2) an effective well coordinated execution of the plan, and (3) employees with leadership skills. These three elements are dynamic in interaction and rise together in a sound organization. Too often this consultant sees law firm partners or entrepreneurs form the business plan without employee participation, and then not communicate the plan (or the reasoning behind the plan), and in the end complain that employees aren’t making an adequate contribution.
Employees report in employee surveys that they want more participation and more responsibility in their work lives. Seldom do they report that they work too hard. Often they report that they have too little influence over their work, which makes it less challenging. Almost always they report too little communication from management about mission, objectives, and goals for the organization. Ronald Riffel’s belief is that people want to make as large a contribution to the organization as possible. Their morale is highest when they are working hard with a common goal shared by everyone. They work most effectively when recognized as valued contributing team members with unique and needed talents for the team’s success. They soar when they feel their leadership qualities are operating fully.
The surest way to strengthen your company or law firm is to build leadership skills in your employees. When everyone considers himself a team member, and feels accountable to the team, your company or firm will be operating with the synergism that teams can create.
Substitute for Leadership
What happens as patients, seriously ill, arrive at the emergency room of urban hospitals? As the ER personnel spring into action, who is in charge? Similarly, what about the situation of a team of air traffic controllers bringing a jet into an airport during an air traffic crisis; where is the leader?
Whereas each member of the emergency room staff appears to have specific tasks to do, they generally accomplish these without any apparent supervision. In terms of leadership, what is happening here?
The work of Steven Kerr and John Jermier looked at those situations in which leadership is not needed. They examined situations where existing leadership models could not account for what was observed; work situations where it is difficult to tell who is really in charge.
The literature is replete with references to numerous contingency models; Fiedler’s Contingency Theory, Yukl’s Multiple Linkage Model, House’s Path-Goal Theory, Vroom-Yetton Model of decision making, and Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Theory. All these models assume that some type of hierarchical leadership is needed and important in formal organizations. Ineffective leadership was assumed to be the result of leader behaviors which were inappropriate to the situation.
Kerr and Jermier questioned these assumptions and suggested an alternative — that certain aspects of the individual, the task or the organization reduced the importance of formal leadership by “neutralizing” the effects of leader behaviors. Further, other situational variables not only “neutralize” leader behaviors, but also “substitute” for them. These leadership substitutes have a direct impact on the subordinate.
By focusing attention on nonleader sources of influence, the leadership substitute model recognized that many factors in the worker’s environment could provide the guidance needed on the job.
Characteristics Of Subordinates
Several characteristics of subordinates may neutralize a leader’s behaviors. These characteristics include the subordinates’ abilities and experiences, their needs for independence, their professional orientation and their indifference towards organizational rewards.
Competence
Highly competent subordinates may not need nor want to be told what to do. Because of their abilities, experiences, training, or job knowledge, subordinates very often have the competence to act independently, without immediate supervision, as they perform their day-to-day duties. In effect, they know what needs to be done and how to do it. Leadership by some “superior” would be redundant.
Need For Independence
The workplace of the new millennium will be a workplace of greater worker autonomy; employees are demanding it. Subordinates want more control over how work is performed and how their workday is structured. In many firms, work teams which assign specific tasks to their members, monitor and control performance and generally have considerable autonomy over work scheduling, have become the norm. Thus, leadership comes not from a “leader”, but rather, from the team itself. .
Professional Orientation
Accountants, engineers, doctors, or software developers may show greater allegiance to their disciplines or their professional associations than to their employing organizations. Often, they have greater concern for the peer review process than hierarchical, organizational evaluation. Such employees may develop important referents, external to the employing organization. As these employees place their discipline above the best interests of the organization, organizational leadership may become irrelevant.
Indifference Towards Rewards . As is described by the Expectancy Theory of Motivation, motivation is linked with perception. The degree to which a specific reward will motivate an individual will depend upon whether:
1. The compensation is important to the person.
2. Additional compensation depends upon performance.
3. The employee is sure that more effort will result in higher performance.
Organizational leadership, if unable to provide rewards as stipulated by this theory, will fail to incite subordinates to follow.
Characteristics Of Tasks
Generally, leadership is defined as an ability to get followers to engage in activities beneficial to the organization. However, where is the need for leadership if the job is so intrinsically satisfying that subordinates will take it up voluntarily, or if it is so routine as to make any leadership superfluous? .
Routineness
For routine tasks, unnecessary and redundant leader directions will have an impact upon subordinate satisfaction, morale, motivation, performance and acceptance of the leader. In effect, if a job is routine and simple, the subordinate may not either need nor want directions.
Feedback and Intrinsic Satisfaction
Motivational research indicates that employees desire a leader’s support and feedback for ambiguous tasks. However, for clearly defined assignments they may not need nor want support or feedback from a leader. Often, performance feedback from the work itself is another characteristic of the task which acts as a leader substitute.
Extrinsic rewards are extraneous to the tasks, bestowed by someone else — promotions, pay raises, awards, titles or even compliments. Intrinsic rewards, on the other hand, come directly from performing a task. Intrinsic rewards are a form of internal reinforcement such as feelings of accomplishment and self-worth, or having a sense of achievement. When a job is challenging and intrinsically satisfying, the employee may not need feedback or rewards from a leader.
Characteristics Of Organization
The formalization of norms and rules, group cohesion, inflexible or rigid reward structures may serve as organizational substitutes for leadership. .
Formalization
Clear job descriptions or specific task objectives can substitute for leadership. A highly structured organization with explicit norms, rules, policies, procedures, plans, goals and areas of responsibility may be defined as being highly formalized.
Clear job descriptions or specific task objectives can substitute for leadership. In effect, the specificity of the objectives and job descriptions leaves no room for misunderstanding the organization’s expectations of the subordinates.
Group Cohesion
In cohesive groups, the team members’ desires to stay in the team outweigh their desires to leave. The team serves as an important source for satisfying the individual members’ social needs. Further, the desire to maintain those social relations, and not alienate the other team members causes team members to adhere rigidly to team norms. This adherence to team norms will very often outweigh any leadership dictates. .
Organizational Inflexibility .
An organization that is either incapable of, or resistant to, being changed may be said to be inflexible. This may be a result of very rigid organizational control structures, clear lines of authority, or unbending rules and procedures. In such an organization, employees are expected to adhere to clearly defined policies. Further, given strict adherence to organizational policies, leaders are given virtually no discretion over the enforcement of the rules. If the employees are aware of this lack of supervisory discretion, then they are likely to disregard supervisory leadership. .
Rigid Reward Structure . In order for rewards to be effective, employees must place a high value on the rewards — pay raises, promotions and high visibility work assignments — under the leader’s control. If a supervisor is able to exercise control over pay raises, can make recommendations regarding promotions and has considerable discretion in task assignments, he or she has a high level of reward power. However, if the rewards are not within the supervisor’s control, he or she will have little or no influence. This lack of control then diminishes the effectiveness of the leader.