Chapter 11 - Leadership:
Communication Approaches
THIS CHAPTER WILL
DISCUSS:
1. How all group members can perform leadership functions.
2. The ways in which leaders emerge from previously leaderless groups.
3. The importance of group members' perceptions about leadership.
4. How charismatic leaders affect group performance.
5. Gender differences in leadership.
INTRODUCTION
In the last chapter, we
described the trait, style, situational, and contingency approaches to
leadership. All four have been very influential, and have lead to expansions of
our knowledge about such issues as what types of personality leads to people
becoming leaders, what type of method leaders should use, and in what
situations are particular types of personalities and particular types of
leadership methods best.
However, none of the
perspectives described in the last chapter take communication into serious
consideration. Yet, in the context of group discussion, leadership occurs
through the process of communication. Therefore, to have a complete
understanding of how leadership works, we also need approaches that tell us
what role communication plays in the leadership process. In this chapter, we
will consider four approaches to leadership in which communication performs a
critical role. We will also talk about whether there are gender differences in
leadership.
THE FUNCTIONAL
APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP
The functional approach
to leadership first appeared at about the same period of time (the late 1940s
and early 1950s) that scientists began questioning the
trait and style approaches. As we discussed last chapter, some scientists
responded to the problems with the trait and style approaches by adopting the
situational and contingency perspectives.
As you recall, each of
these approaches has a unique perspective on leadership. For instance, the
trait approach is concerned with the permanent characteristics of a leader. The
style point of view maintains that the method a leader uses is most important.
The situational perspective looks for differences in leadership style across
different circumstances. Finally, the contingency approach examines leadership
by looking at the association of trait and situation. These four points of view
all have one thing in common, however. All of them, in the end, are concerned
with a particular person in
a leadership role.
The functional
perspective, in contrast, in concerned with the behaviors of a group. Specifically, the functional
approach examines the behaviors that allow the group to reach its goals. In
Chapter 8, we discussed how behaviors serve functions that help a group solve
its task and maintenance problems. Certain behaviors serve as leadership functions. For instance,
leadership functions include actions that serve to help the group perform its
task and clarify the group's goals. They also include behaviors that help the
group interact effectively and give members social support.
The functional approach
maintains that a group need not have only one particular member who performs
these leadership functions. Any group member can perform them. This means that
any member can lead. If we accept the functional perspective, we have the
potential to uncover which behaviors help lead a group toward its goals. These
behaviors help the group if at least one member performs them.
For example, a group of
mechanics volunteers time to help low-income families repair their cars. They
call themselves the Saturday Morning Car-Tuners. For the group to perform their
task, members must ensure that the group is organized. Everyone has to know
what they are supposed to do to get the cars repaired. In addition, for the
group to maintain itself, members must ensure that everyone in the group feels
appreciated for their efforts. If not, members may leave the group, and it
might not survive.
Bales: The
"Equilibrium Problem"
All functionalists make
a distinction between task and maintenance behaviors. Some functionalists go
even further with the idea. These theorists claim that the demands of task and
maintenance leadership are so unique that different people must assume
leadership of each. These researchers might say, for example, that one person
in the Saturday Morning Car-Tuners should lead the group in repairing cars.
However, another person should lead in handling good communication and
morale-building within the group. The group should not ask one person to be
responsible for both areas.
In Chapter 8, we
described the "equilibrium problem." This hypothesis ties in with our
present discussion. As you recall, Bales proposed the idea of the equilibrium
problem in 1953. He believed that the requirements of the task and maintenance
functions in a group are opposed and that too much attention to either causes
problems for the other. What the group needs to do is create equilibrium, or
balance, between task and maintenance functions.
Also in Chapter 8, we
noted one property that could help groups maintain their equilibrium: alternate
group discussion between task and maintenance statements. A second property
that can help is a division of the major leadership responsibilities. A group
with this property will have one person responsible for performing the task
leadership functions and another person responsible for the maintenance
leadership behaviors. In such a group, one person will assume the role of task
leader and will be responsible for making the group work on its task.
Unfortunately, because the requirements of the task often conflict with the
members' personal goals, this leader will cause resentment to build up among
group members. For example, Fred, a member of the Saturday Morning Car-Tuners,
has the personal aim of working only on challenging repair problems. He wants
to sharpen his skills. The group goal, however, is to work on any car problem,
even if it is minor. The task leader must ensure that Fred works on all types
of car problems. Fred may become resentful, however, if he rarely gets to work
on challenging jobs and instead has to work on any job in order to satisfy the
group's task of helping everyone.
The group responds to
this tension and resentment by generating a maintenance leader. The maintenance
leader has the responsibility of draining the tension from the group. For
instance, someone in Fred's group may come up to Fred and praise his work and
pass on a compliment from someone Fred has helped. This person would be the
maintenance leader of the Saturday Morning Car-Tuners.
Research
In Chapter 8, we
discussed Bales's research, in which his groups
solved "human relations" problems. After their discussion, the group
members rank-ordered one another on five questions:
1 - The extent to which
each contributed the best ideas for solving the problem.
2 - The extent to which
each did the most to guide the discussion.
3 - The extent to which
they liked each other.
4 - The extent to which
they disliked each other.
5 - The extent to which
each was the group leader.
This allowed Bales to
determine for each group which member was the "idea person," which
member was the "guidance person," and so on.
Part of the results of
this research was reported in Bales (1953), with the rest to be found in Bales
and Slater (1955). It revealed that in about half of the cases, members judged
their group as having one member leading in "ideas" and a different
member doing the most "guidance." In the other half of the groups,
the same person was evaluated as performing the most of both task functions.
Further, the person judged to be the "group leader" was the same
person as the "guidance" specialist 78.6% of the time and the
"idea" specialist 59.3% of the time. In either case, these task
leaders tended to be the most talkative members of the group.
However, in more than 70
percent of the cases, the "best liked" group member was someone other
than the "idea" or "guidance" leader. This member was
usually the second of third most talkative member. Further, the "group
leader" was also chosen as "best liked" only 14.3% of the time.
Bales believed that
there was a clear distinction in his groups between the task leader or leaders (the
idea and guidance specialists) and the maintenance leader (the best liked
member). This distinction between leaders was not necessarily apparent during a
group's first meeting. After the first meeting, members chose the same member
as both the "best liked" and as the "idea" leader 64.4% of
the time. Thus, in their view, both task and maintenance leadership functions
were performed by the same person. However, in subsequent meetings, the
functions of task and maintenance became progressively more divided. By the
fourth meeting, the same person was evaluated as both "best liked"
and best on "ideas" only 10.7% of the time. Similarly, the odds that
a group member was chosen as both the "best liked" and as the
"guidance" leader fell from 40.6% after the first meeting to 17.9%
after the fourth.
Bales thought this
occurred because of the tension brought about by the task leader's actions.
Remember that according to the equilibrium hypothesis, task work causes tension
among members. For Bales, it follows that the person who is believed to be most
responsible for that tension, the task leader, would be blamed for that tension
and disliked by the other members. In fact, the most talkative member of Bales's groups, who was usually rated either the
"idea" or "guidance" leader or both, received the most
votes for "disliked
member." The group tended to like a different member the most. This person
was usually either the second or third most verbally active and tended to be
rated low on "ideas." We can consider this liked person the
maintenance leader. Thus, Bales found that groups tend to distinguish between
the two leaders.
Criticisms
of research. Bales concluded from this research that different group members
perform different functions. One person behaves as a task leader, and another
takes over as the maintenance leader. As described earlier, Bales felt this
occurs because the task leader's actions cause tension that can only be
relieved by the actions of another person, the maintenance leader. There are
however some problems with these conclusions. First, Bales's
conclusions about leadership were based on members' ratings of one another.
However, Bales did not examine the actual communication that occurred in his
groups' discussions to see if, for example, the person judged as the
"guidance" leader actually did the most guidance during the
discussions. This failure leads to some ambiguity concerning the results. For
example, Bales showed that the correlation between the person the group liked
best and the person or persons the group considered idea or guidance leaders
declined across meetings. But we do not know why. One interpretation of these
results is that the group's most well-liked member did less task work as time
progressed. A second idea is that the group's most well-liked person did very
little task work all along, and as time went on the group liked its task leader
less and less. Without an examination of who in the group performed which
functions, we have no way of knowing which of these possibilities is correct.
In addition, certain
theorists believe that the results of Bales's
research were due to his participants being uninterested in the discussion and
wanting to leave as quickly as possible. Why would this change Bales's results? By nature, decision-making tasks usually
take a long time when members are interested in making a good decision. If we
accept the idea that Bales's students did not want to
spend time on the discussion, it makes sense that they would resent members who
appeared interested in the task. Interested members would make the group take
longer to complete the discussion. Thus, the groups did not like the
task-oriented members very much.
This idea has led to a
more general claim. Researchers have proposed the idea that the more task-oriented
group members are, the more they like task-oriented people. Thus, it is not
difficult for a task-oriented leader to also become the maintenance leader when
the group is interested in its task. Turk (1961) conducted a study that
supported this claim. In the study, nursing students participated in
decision-making groups considering issues in which they were interested. After
the discussion, they rated one another. In this case, the students liked their
task leader.
It follows from this
idea that it is more likely that people will split up the task and maintenance
functions in low task-oriented groups, rather than highly task-oriented ones.
For example, it may be that Fred's group of volunteer mechanics is not very
interested in repairing cars. Perhaps they simply enjoy getting together to
watch television in the garage. If this is true, the task leader may not be
popular. The group may not like the head mechanic very much if he or she pushes
the group to work on cars. Hence, the group needs another person to make
membership enjoyable for the mechanics and handle the maintenance side of group
activity.
The resulting corollary
to the idea above is that highly task-oriented groups do not require two people
to handle task and group maintenance behaviors. This, however, does not
invalidate the distinction we make between task and maintenance functions. It
also does not discredit the further distinction between two types of task
functions, substantive (generating and evaluating ideas) and procedural (moving
the group along the decision-making process). Each still has quite different
requirements. For instance, it may be true that the head mechanic in Fred's
group is the leader for both task and maintenance behaviors. However, he or she
cannot lead both behaviors the same way. The head mechanic might need to be
tough and organized when it comes to the task of repairing cars but joking and
kind when it comes to giving praise to the members.
Benne and Sheats: Functional Roles
Back in Chapter 8, we
discussed Benne and Sheats's (1948) essay listing the
functional roles that group members can perform during discussion. This is
perhaps the clearest statement of the functional approach to leadership. At
that time, as described earlier, most researchers concentrated on the position
of "group leader." In contrast, the authors argued that
"leadership" consists of a set of functions helping groups perform
their tasks satisfactorily and getting along well with one another. Members
share leadership to the extent that they perform these functions. A group
member is performing task leadership when she or he is performing either
substantive roles, such as the initator, opinion
giver, and elaborator, or procedural roles such as the coordinator, orienter, and procedural technician. Similarly, a group
member is performing maintenance leadership when he or she performs roles such
as the encourager, harmonizer, and compromiser.
As we discussed at that
time, Benne and Sheats did not make any claims about
which roles are the most important or when in the discussion process particular
roles need to performed. We believe that there is
perhaps a presumption that the more that members perform task and maintenance
roles, the more successful the group will be. Other functional theorists would dispute
this presumption. Rauch and Behling (1984) argued
that when a group's task is very clear, the group does not need very much task
leadership and gets upset if their leader is too task-oriented. Task
performance suffers as a result. Further, they felt that while a moderate
amount of maintenance leadership encourages group members and helps them perform their tasks better, a lot of maintenance
leadership can be too much of a good thing. When group members perceive
continued task leadership to be redundant, they can become dissatisfied.
No functional theorist
doubts that we must make a distinction between task and maintenance functions
in groups. Some functional theorists however believe there are other types of functions
that are as important as task and maintenance.
Based on extensive
interviews with members of organizational groups,
1 - Scout activities. These are involved
in bringing into the group both the information and resources that the group
needs to perform its task. Scout functions include learning about the
environment in which the group does its work, getting information that is
relevant either to the group's current task or possible later tasks, and
getting feedback about the group's performance.
2 - Ambassador activities. These are
involved in getting information and resources from the group out to other
groups or individuals. Ambassador functions include opening up channels with
these outside parties, informing them about the group's progress on its tasks,
coordinating with the outside parties when a task is being performed together
with them, and persuading or motivating the other parties to do what the group
wants them to do.
3 - Sentry activities. These are involved
in controlling the amount or type of information and resources that come into
the group. The group can either let information and resources enter the group
as is, modify it in some way, or keep all or part of it out of the group.
4 - Guard activities. These are involved
in controlling the amount or type of information and resources that leave the
group. The group can either deliver it immediately,
decide to wait to deliver it until some later time, or refuse to deliver it at
all.
General
Conclusions: Functional Approach
As described earlier,
the functional approach to leadership provides a unique view of the leadership
process. Other approaches view leadership in terms of a person taking on the
leadership role. In contrast, the functional perspective accounts for
leadership in terms of the behaviors that help a group perform its task,
maintain its cohesiveness, and interact with its environment. As anyone can
perform those behaviors, every member can participate in its group's
leadership.
Having said that, it
should be clear from the research findings we have discussed that the majority
of leadership functions are usually performed by a minority of the members of
the group. In fact, in a lot of cases, one member does the bulk of both the
task and maintenance leadership functions. Sometimes that member has been
assigned or elected to the leadership role, and so it is not surprising to find
that member actually leading the group. However, in many cases, groups operate
without an assigned or elected leader. When one member comes to perform the
leadership functions in a previously "leaderless" group, we call that
member the group's emergent
leader. Bales's groups were an example of leaderless
groups in which task and maintenance leaders emerged over time.
Research about the
process by which leaders emerge from previously leaderless groups can be said
to comprise its own perspective toward leadership. We will turn to an
examination of this approach next.
THE EMERGENT
APPROACH
The "Zeitgeist Theory"
Earlier, we described
the philosophical view of history called the "Great Man Theory of Leadership."
It implied that gifted people determine history. The emergent approach to
leadership is a descendant of a proposal that conflicted with the "Great
Man" point of view. It has come to be known as the "Zeitgeist Theory
of Leadership." Zeitgeist
is a German word meaning "the spirit of the time." This competing
theory was that history determines leadership, not vice versa. Different places
and times have unique requirements for their leaders. People can assume
leadership positions only if their talents meet the requirements of a
particular time period. If conditions change, there will be different
requirements, and other people will become leaders.
According to the
Zeitgeist Theory, Julius Caesar and Napoleon were not inherently great men.
Instead, they were fortunate. Fate placed them in circumstances in which they
had relevant talent to offer. Place them somewhere else in history, and they
would not have been leaders. For instance, place them in early
twentieth-century
Advance in
Leadership Theory
As with the functional
point of view, the emergent approach came to prominence in the late 1940s and
early 1950s when the problems with the trait and style approaches became
evident. As with the situational approach, advocates of the emergent
perspective claim that the group's situation determines the group's leadership.
However, whereas the situational approach is concerned with the style elected
and assigned leaders should adopt in different situations, the emergent
approach is concerned with predicting who will emerge as leader in a previously
leaderless group and explaining why some people emerge rather than others.
Advocates of both the
situational and emergent approaches understood that a situation consists of two
parts. One part is the task that the group must perform. The other part includes
the needs and desires of the
group members themselves. Hence, they realized that group members themselves
help to determine who their leader is. This concept was a significant advance
over earlier approaches to the study of leadership. Both the trait and style
approaches did see that leaders influence group members. However, both ignored
the possibility that members may influence their leader in return. Scientists
who held the emergent point of view came to an even further realization. They
saw that even leaders with strong claims for power must receive their groups'
approval in order to be effective. These claims for power include expertise,
legitimacy, and the like. These realizations on the part of scientists who held
the emergent viewpoint opened three new avenues of thought.
1. Leader emergence. The trait and style
approaches limited their inquiries to the ways in which appointed leaders
affected group behavior. In contrast, the emergent methodology shifted
attention to the manner in which leaders emerge
from previously leaderless groups. In other words, the researchers wanted to
know the ways in which leaders gain influence over other group members.
2. Method for assuming leadership.
Research was performed to discover any differences between the behavior of
groups with assigned leaders, elected leaders, and emergent leaders.
3. Deviance and leader acceptance.
Theorists attempted to describe how a leader can still be accepted by a group
after he or she has performed deviant actions.
The research using the
emergent approach involved all three of these issues.
Leader Emergence
As we have noted, the
first research issue involved the ways in which leaders emerge from groups. To
begin, it is clear that amount of communication is the most important factor in
determining which group member will emerge. Most simply, the more a person
communicates, the more likely it is that the person will emerge as leader.
Reviews of literature by Stein and Heller (1983) and Mullen, Salas, and Driskell (1989) found that the amount that a person talks
in a group correlates with group member judgments of task leadership in the
range of .5 to .7. It should be noted that the correlation between amount of
talk and maintenance leadership is far lower, at about .15. In the Bales groups
discussed under the functional approach (Bales & Slater, 1955), the biggest
talker was judged as "group leader" 50% of the time.
However, it stands to
reason that what a person
says should have as much impact on other group members' judgments of that
person's leadership as how
much that person talks. Surprisingly, many studies have found that the content
of a person's talk has no effect on whether the person is judged to be a
leader. However, most of these studies were performed in groups of students
that were just formed into groups and were performing tasks that did not affect
them, such as "Lost on the Moon" or a "human relations"
problem. Other studies have been performed using groups that had existed for
many weeks or months and were performing tasks that did affect them, such as
groups of students who were working on a class project for which they would get
graded. In these studies, not only how
much a member talked but also the
content of their talk was related to whether or not they emerged as
a leader.
There is reason to
believe that members are particularly likely to be viewed as leaders if they
perform procedural functions during group discussion. Recall that in the Bales
groups, the member judged as "guidance" specialist was also judged as
"group leader" 78.6% of the time. Two other studies support this
idea.
Baker
study.
Baker (1990) studied the first hour of discussion of eight groups of students
in the process of performing two class assignments. She related the content of
those discussions to judgments made by group members of who emerged as group
leaders, who did not emerge as leaders but maintained high status within the
groups, and who did not emerge as either leaders or high-status members.
Baker concluded that
emergent leaders tended to be concerned with procedural matters during
discussion. Sometimes they also contributed ideas to the group, but they tended
to not offer their opinions
very often. In contrast, those who had high status but were not considered the
group's leader concentrated on substantive issues; they contributed ideas and
opinions. Finally, members who were neither leaders nor high in status
concentrated on opinion giving.
Ketrow study. Ketrow
(1991) videotaped a three-member "group" trying to solve a problem
about white-collar crime. Each member of the "group" had a
pre-assigned role in performing their task. One member specialized in
procedural work, one in substantive, and the third in maintenance. One hundred
fifty research participants watched the videotape and then made judgments about
the members of the "group." Of these participants, 128 chose the
procedural specialist as the group leader. Although the substantive specialist
was chosen as the most influential member by 95 participants, only 17 chose
that person as the group leader.
Thus there is good
reason to believe that verbal activity is related with emergent leadership. Of
course, not every talkative person becomes a leader. As just described, the
content of talk also has an impact on group member's judgments of one another's
leadership. However, other factors may be involved. If verbal activity is
associated with emergent leadership, perhaps nonverbal
participation is too.
Baird
study.
Baird (1977) showed the plausibility of this proposal. He videotaped the
interaction of 10 five-person groups. In doing so, he discovered that members'
perceptions of leadership correlated with various nonverbal signals. With arm
and shoulder gestures, the correlation coefficient was .45. In addition, the
coefficient with vertical head movements was .27. There was a smaller
correlation of .15 with shifts in posture, absence of horizontal or
"no" head movements, and absence of frowns. Eye contact, smiles, and
absence of hand or finger movement were also slightly related to leadership.
These had a correlation of .09. Taken as a whole, it appears that groups judge
people as leaders when their movement styles are active but not nervous. Also,
group members believe that leaders give nonverbal signals that imply positive
evaluations of the other group members.
Relevant Input Variables
The research we have
discussed thus far shows that process (verbal and nonverbal communication) is
related with output (leadership emergence). However, as we have discussed
throughout this book, a valid theory of group discussion also needs to consider
relevant input variables that affect group process. There are several input
variables that can have an impact on the amount of leadership-relevant
communication that occurs during group discussion. Next, we will consider three
of these input variables; seating position, approval, and task-relevant
knowledge.
Seating Position
Several studies have
shown that seating position has an effect on emergent group leadership. For
example, Strodtbeck and Hook (1961) performed
research using 69 twelve-person mock juries. Those sitting at the ends of the
jury table were the most talkative members of the groups, and were most likely
to be chosen to lead the mock juries. Research has shown that people sitting in
those positions also receive
the most communication from other group members. It is clear that the ends or
the "head" of a table are considered to be the "leadership
seats" for a group discussion.
Seating position also
has effects on the order in
which group members speak. Steinzor (1950) examined
the order in which members of two 10-member groups sitting in a circle spoke to
one another. He found that, when a particular group member made a statement,
the next statement tended to come from a group member sitting on the opposite
side of the circle. Thus, comments are likely to go back and forth across
opposite seating positions in the group.
Howells and
Becker study.
Howells and Becker used this idea in a study published in 1962. They reasoned
that they could set up a "power differential" by placing fewer people
on one side of a table than on the other side. They reasoned, as Steinzor had found, that comments go back and forth across
a table. If this happens, the people on the less populated side proportionally
receive and make more comments than those on the other side. The scientists
formed 20 five-person groups. Two members, or 40 percent of the group, sat on
one side of the table. Three participants, or 60 percent, sat on the other
side.
If all else is equal in
such a situation, we would logically expect that the number of leaders from
each side should match their percentage in the group. Thus, among the 20
groups, 8 leaders should emerge from the less populated side of the table,
matching the 40 percent. Similarly, 12 leaders, or 60 percent, should emerge
from the more populated side. Did.this occur? No. Instead, only 6 leaders emerged from the more populated side. This was only 30
percent. In contrast, 14 leaders came from the less populated side. This was 70 percent, a great deal
more than a logical prediction would have calculated.
Thus, the results
supported the contention of Howells and Becker. They had been able to create a
power differential. The less populated side did have participants who spoke
more often than the other members. Consequently, the less populated side
produced more leaders than a logical outcome would have predicted.
Thus, research has shown
that certain seating positions can make it more likely that a group member will
become a leader. Other studies, however, have shown that this effect is weak
and can be canceled by more powerful factors. For example, Bass and Klubeck (1952) found that seating position had no effect on
leadership judgments in discussion groups with preexisting status differences
among members.
Approval
A second factor that can
affect emergent group leadership is whether or not a member receives approval
for what she or he says. A study by Pepinsky,
Hemphill, and Shevitz (1958) shows this impact.
Pepinsky, Hemphill, and Shevitz study. Pepinsky, Hemphill, and Shevitz conducted a study with four-person groups. The
groups task was to build "products" out of tinkertoys
that could be sold at a "buyer's table." The group had to purchase
the tinkertoys, build the products and sell them at a
profit at the buyer's table.
Each group included two
confederates who acted in either of two different ways. In one condition, the
confederates waited until the real participants had taken some leadership
actions and then disapproved of what they had done. For example, they would say
that they did not like bossy people who told them what to do. In the second
condition, the confederates showed approval of the real participants' actions.
For example they would say that they liked people who could get things going
and come up with a good plan. The researchers found that the participants whose
actions had received approval from the confederates performed many more
subsequent leadership actions than the participants whose actions who had been rejected.
Task-Relevant
Knowledge A
third factor that affects emergent leadership is whether group members have
knowledge relevant to the group's task. Hemphill (1961) reported an unpublished
study by Shevitz that demonstrated this effect. Shevitz organized three-member groups with two
"experts" and a third, non-expert member. One of the experts was a
member of the local Amateur Radio Association, and the other had experience in
statistics courses. The group had two tasks; assembling the components of a
circuit from a schematic diagram, and a statistics problem. The
"radio" expert performed the most leadership acts during the first
task, while the "statistics" expert did the most during the second.
Method for Assuming
Leadership
Emergent leadership
researchers studied a second issue. They wanted to know whether there are
differences between groups whose leaders get their position in different ways.
Does it matter whether leaders are assigned from the outside, elected by the
members, or allowed to emerge from group discussion? Contrasting hypotheses
could be proposed concerning this issue. It could be that groups with assigned
or elected leaders perform better than groups with emergent leaders because
emergent-led groups begin discussion without knowing who is in charge. It also
could be that groups with emergent or elected leaders perform better than
groups with assigned leaders because assigned-leader groups are not involved in
the choice of leader and as a consequence are less satisfied with their
leadership. Several studies have been performed that are relevant to this
issue.
Mortensen
study.
Mortensen (1966) analyzed the leadership emergence process in six groups that
met three times. Three of the groups had assigned leaders, and three did not.
The three assigned
leaders performed the most leadership actions during the first group meeting.
However, by the third meeting, only one on the three was still leading his or
her group. In the other two, the assigned leader had been supplanted by another
member to whom the group had responded more positively.
Mortensen concluded that
the group's approval of an assigned leader is important. Assigned leadership
can help a person quickly assume the leadership role, but only if the group
approves of him or her. In contrast, assigning a leader can slow down a group
and make it difficult for a leader to emerge if the group disapproves of the
assignment. In this case, leadership emergence would have been faster if there
had been no leadership assignment.
Goldman and Fraas study. Goldman and Fraas (1965) found
that the way in which a group acquires its leaders is important to the group's
performance. They assigned leaders to groups through four methods. One way was
that the group elected a leader by vote. The second method was that the
experimenters selected a leader based on the person's ability. The third way
was that the scientists arbitrarily chose a leader, and the last method
involved groups that had no assigned leader.
The researchers then had
the groups play "Twenty Questions." They compared the success rates
of each group. The researchers found that groups with elected leaders performed
the best. The performance of groups that had leaders appointed based on ability
was close to the best success rate. Leaderless groups were a distant third. The
groups with the worst scores were the ones with arbitrarily appointed leaders.
Hollander and
Julian study.
Hollander and Julian (1970) decided to compare the performance of elected and
appointed leaders. The researchers told groups and the leaders of the groups
that one of two criteria had determined leadership. They led their participants
to believe that either the group had elected the leader or the experimenters
had appointed him or her. In either case, the leader supposedly had important
abilities for the position.
Hollander and Julian
found that "elected" leaders had slightly more influence on their
group's opinions than "appointed" leaders. They also were far more
willing to deviate from their group's ideas. However, their position was far
more precarious. Members lost confidence in "elected" leaders if they
failed or if the group
considered them incompetent at their task. In contrast, "appointed"
leaders had to both fail and
have the group consider them incompetent before the group would reject them.
Larson
study.
Larson (1971) compared nine groups whose members agreed on whom they felt had
emerged as leader with five other groups whose members did not agree on who led
the groups. Larson called the first nine groups "stable leadership"
groups and the other five "unstable leadership" groups. The stable
leadership groups spent more time on substantive issues and less time on
procedural and irrelevant topics than the unstable groups. Further, the leader
initiated the most substantive ideas in the stable groups. In addition, the
stable groups spent more discussion time, per idea, on the topic that the
leader had initiated, in comparison with topics the other members initiated.
Thus, it appears that groups with stable leadership were more prepared to take
on the their task than groups with unstable
leadership.
Looking at these studies
as a whole, it appears that competence and group acceptance are the most
important factors in how a group will behave with a certain leader. It does not
necessarily matter whether a leader is elected, emergent, or appointed. A group
can behave well and be successful under any of these conditions. As long as the
group accepts the leader and he or she is competent,
the group can function well with the leader.
Deviance and Leader
Acceptance
As we have seen, the
emergent approach emphasized the importance of a group's acceptance of their
leader. Emergent leadership researchers studied a third issue. They attempted
to describe how a leader can still be accepted by a group when he or she has
performed deviant actions.
One of the most
important influences on how much a group accepts any member of a group,
including their leader, is the amount of conformity the member displays. When a
group member regularly conforms to the group's norms, the other members come to
think that the member has the group's best interests in mind. Therefore, the
other group members will highly trust and accept the conforming member.
When a group is making a
decision, however, an important part of its leader's job is to propose creative
solutions.
Creativity and Deviance
Any act of creativity in
a group setting goes against the norms of the group. As a consequence, by
definition, creativity is deviant. Simply proposing a new course of action, for
instance, is a deviant act. How can a group member be creative without having
the group dislike his or her deviant ideas?
Researchers have long
known that group members that create new proposals are highly respected by
others in the group. However, the group respects these creative people only if
they have shown enough respect for group norms in the past to have gained the
group's trust. Experimenters have found that successful group leaders are both
the greatest conformers and the most significant deviators when it comes to
group norms. Hollander (1958) created a banking metaphor in an attempt to
explain why this is so.
According to Hollander,
a group member's positive status is a result of an accumulation of acts that
the other members look upon highly. Most important among these valuable acts
are those that conform with group standards. As a
member conforms, he or she builds up a kind of "bank account" of
status and trustworthiness in the eyes of the other group members. The account
contains what Hollander calls "idiosyncrasy credits." The credits
correspond to the amount of deviant behavior that the group will accept from a
given member. A person "cashes in" the account when he or she wants to
be deviant. The more credits in the account, the more a person can deviate
without losing the group's trust.
For example, Jane is in
a group of singers. She goes along with the group norms, singing what the
leaders pick out and rehearsing as she should, for years. One year she wants to
sing a certain song during a festival. The song does not appeal to the group,
and they think that it would be strange to have it on their program. Jane very
much wants to include it, and she stands her ground. Luckily, Jane has a lot of
idiosyncrasy credits in the group. She has been a loyal and true member for a
long time. People listen to what she has to say, even though she is being very
deviant in her behavior. In the end, they decide that Jane must have a good
reason for wanting the song so badly, and they do let her include it. Jane may
have cashed in all her "credits," but the group listened to her and
still trusted her when she was finished.
Thus, a person's
conformity leads group members to trust him or her. They perceive that any deviance
on the part of this person is sincerely intended to be in the group's best
interest. However, a group can apply pressure on a deviant to conform if his or
her account becomes "overdrawn." This can happen when the group
members begin to doubt whether the deviant has allegiance to the group. For
instance, Jane's "account" with her group may very well be overdrawn
after her request for the song she likes. If she were to soon ask for another
"odd" song, the group might reject her proposal and also pressure her
to be a "good" member again. The successful leader is someone whose
normal conformity is great enough to allow occasional but significant deviance.
This leader is able to deviate when the situation calls for it and still keep
the group's trust.
General
Conclusions: Emergent Approach
As the research we
described earlier shows, the emergent approach has had some success. It did
leave behind some valuable insights into the process of leadership emergence.
In addition, it was able to show how important it is that groups approve a
leader. Rejected leaders have little legitimacy. The approach further revealed
what can happen when leaders receive their positions in different manners. They
can be elected, emergent, or appointed. The emergent research has shown how
different circumstances can affect the success of leaders, based on how they
have become leaders.
THE PERCEPTUAL
APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP
One of the most
important legacies of the emergent approach is the idea that a leader has
successfully emerged from a group when the members of the group believe that
person to be the group's leader. Thus, the emergent approach emphasizes the
notion that group members' perceptions
about leadership are critical to the process of leader emergence.
The perceptual approach
to leadership grows out of that notion. It is an attempt to understand how the
average group member judges the leadership abilities of other members. Hence,
it focuses on an important aspect of the leader emergence process
The perspectives we have
discussed differ mainly in only one point. This is in regard to which factors
they claim are important. Respectively, we have seen approaches toward
leadership that maintain that a leader's success is due to his or her traits,
his or her style, or the situation of the group. Further, we have discussed
viewpoints that claim that the most important factors affecting leadership are
the behaviors of all group members or the interaction between a leader's traits
and the situation of the group. Despite these differences, scientists who
advocate these approaches are united in their belief that they can objectively
define "leadership" as a variable.
Advocates of the
perceptual approach do not share this belief. They believe that leadership
exists primarily within the mind of each group member. Thus they believe that
the way to study leadership is to examine what group members think leadership
is. It is consistent with the perceptual perspective toward groups that we
discussed in Chapter 1.
Impression
Formation Process
The perceptual approach
views leadership as an "impression formation process." We discussed
the process by which personality impressions are formed in Chapter 3. Let's
review it now. For example, Sue wants to form an impression of Charlie; so she
watches how he behaves. Sue particularly notices attention-grabbing,
or salient behavior, on
Charlie's part. Sue then decides whether his character is responsible for his
behavior or if he is just reacting to the situation. If she decides that
Charlie is responsible for the way he acts, she forms an impression of him.
This impression starts with a trait that describes the behavior she has
observed. The impression then builds, by adding other traits that Sue believes
are associated with Charlie's first trait.
"Halo" and "Horns" Effects
If Sue observes
something she believes is a "good" trait, she will tend to believe
that Charlie has more "good" traits. Scientists call this tendency
the "halo effect." If, on the other hand, Sue thinks Charlie has a
"bad" initial trait, she will build up her impression by assigning
more "bad" traits to him. This is the "horns effect."
Finally, Sue will judge whether she likes Charlie based on her impression.
Biases enter into our
impressions because of the halo and horns effects. As we have discussed, once
we assign a trait to a person, we tend to further assign related traits. We can
do this because we have a preexisting idea of which traits are associated. Such
a process of judgment often can be wrong. It is not always true that clumsy
people are stupid, for example. For instance, in Chapter 3 we described how the
halo effect often causes people to make "good" judgments about
persons who are physically attractive. People tend to say that attractive
people are intelligent, mentally stable, and so on, without seeing any relevant
evidence that this is true. Clearly, attractive people are not always
"good" in all ways.
Impression
Formation Process and Leadership
The
way in which we form impressions and make judgments about the leadership
ability of our fellow group members works in the same way as any impression
formation process.
First, we watch the other members of our group to see which leadership
behaviors they generally exhibit. We are particularly attentive to the most
salient of those behaviors. Next, we decide whether each person's character is
responsible for any leadership behaviors or whether the situation is
responsible. If we decide that a person is responsible for his or her actions,
we form an impression of the person as a leader. Our impression will include
not only the behaviors we have actually observed but also the traits that we
believe are associated with leadership.
For example, we see that
Joan speaks her mind readily. We think that is what a leader should do. We then
may come to believe that Joan also has integrity, spirit, organizational
skills, and other traits that we think leaders should have, even if we do not
see her exhibiting them. We may then decide that Joan is truly the leader of
the group.
Behavioral Salience
We have noted that
impression formation begins when an observer notices a particularly salient
behavior. Behavioral salience is an important part of the process by which
group members come to judge one another's leadership. In fact, some of the variables
involved in leader emergence work the way they do because they make a person's
behavior particularly salient.
Amount
of communication. When someone is talking, we are likely to pay attention
to them. Thus, the more a person talks during group discussion, the more
attention they receive from the other members. Given this, it should not be
surprising that talkative members are more likely to emerge as leaders than
non-talkative members.
Further, anything that
increases a talkative member's salience would increase the likelihood of that
member emerging as group leader. For example, consistently with the material on
deviance and minority influence we discussed in Chapter 6, a small subgroup
within the larger group is likely to gain the attention of the entire group if
they are deviating from the group consensus. Thus, the behavior of a talkative
member of that subgroup would be particularly salient to the rest of the group,
and especially likely to emerge as a leader. In their review of literature about
the relationship between amount of talk and leader emergence, Mullen et al.
(1989) found research evidence for this effect.
Seating
position.
One of the reasons that the ends or head of a table are the "leadership
seats" is that a person who sits at one of those positions becomes
perceptually salient to the other members of the group. Perceptual salience can
increase the odds that a member will become group leader for two reasons.
First, they are more likely to be in the normal line of sight of other group
members. The other group members are then more likely to direct their attention
to them. Second, placing group members where they will receive the comments of
other members is likely to lead them to talk frequently. As discussed, frequent
talking will likely result in other group members judging them to be leaders.
Implicit Leadership Theories
As we have described, if
an observer decides that a person is responsible for their behavior, the
observer begins to form an impression of the person. This impression begins
with a trait that describes the observed behavior, and then grows through the
addition of other traits that the observer believes are associated with the
first trait.
But where do these
beliefs about the association among traits come from? They come from what
researchers call implicit personality
theories. An implicit personality theory is a person's beliefs
about what traits and behaviors go together. For example, people's implicit
personality theories usually associate "good" traits, such as
intelligence and attractiveness, together. This is the reason why "halo
effects" occur in impression formation. Similarly, implicit personality
theories normally link "bad" traits, such as clumsiness and
stupidity, with one another. This is the source of "horns effects" in
impressions.
Research has shown that
people have beliefs about the attributes that the "ideal leader"
should possess. We can call these beliefs implicit
leadership theories. Our own research (Pavitt
& Sackaroff, 1990) has shown that implicit
leadership theories tend to include traits such as "forceful" and
"enthusiastic." These theories also include behaviors such as
"states the group's procedure" and "encourages group member
participation." Thus, these are included in the list of attributes that
most people feel that the "ideal leader" should exhibit.
Group members use these
implicit leadership theories when they form impressions of one another's
leadership. For example, a group consists of Leon, Marvin, and Bram.
Further, group members
use their implicit leadership theories as a basis for evaluating one another's
leadership skills. If we form an impression of a group member that is similar
to our preconceptions of the "ideal leader," then we would judge that
group member to be a good leader. Analogously, if our impression is very
different from our implicit leadership theory, then we would evaluate that
member to be a poor leader.
We can use our example
of Leon, Marvin, and Bram again to show this.
Research Showing
Impression Formation Process
There has been some
research exploring the impact of the impression formation process on group
members' perceptions about their group's leadership. Our own research is an
example.
Pavitt et al. study. This research has been described
in two different reports (Pavitt & Sackaroff, 1990; Pavitt, Whitchurch, McClurg, &
Petersen, 1995).
In the study, we
presented the participants with a list of eight behaviors and eight traits that
are part of most people's implicit theories of leadership. The participants
then judged the extent to which the "ideal leader" would exhibit the
behaviors and have the traits on the list. A month later, we put the
participants into groups of three to five members. The groups then performed a
decision-making task. After they made their decision, the members rated one
another using the list of attributes they had used one month earlier. They also
evaluated one another's leadership skill.
The results showed
evidence that the participants' preconceptions about the "ideal
leader" carried over into other areas. One area involved the impressions
that the group members had of one another. The research looked at which traits
and behavioral attributes the participants saw as "going together."
There was a strong relationship between what they judged as "going
together" in one another and what they saw as "going together"
in an ideal leader. The correlation was about .7. In other words, if a
participant believed that "stating the group's procedure" and being
"organized" go together for the "ideal leader," they are
likely to think the two attributes "go together" for other members of
their group. This finding suggests that the members used their preconceptions
as a basis for forming their impressions. Further, the study results showed
that the participants' preconceptions about the "ideal leader" also
influenced their evaluations of leadership skill. There was a strong
relationship between how similarly they judged the "ideal leader" and
one another and how good a leader they evaluated one another to be. The
correlation was once again about .7. In other words, the more they thought a group
member's attributes were similar to the attributes of the "ideal
leader," the better a leader they judged that member to be. This result
implies that the group members used their implicit leadership theory as a basis
for evaluating one another's leadership skills.
It is important to note
that these were groups that were just formed the study. The same study was also
performed with groups that had existed for several weeks before the members
made their decisions and judged one another. Researchers found these groups
different from the shorter-lived ones. They looked again at what attributes
members saw as "going together" in ideal leaders and which attributes
they put together when they judged one another. Researchers found that the
relationship between these two judgments was not as strong in these groups as
it had been in the shorter-lived groups. In the longer-lived groups, the
correlation measurement for these two judgments was only about .3.
Therefore, in
newly-formed groups, members' judgments of one another are strongly influenced
by their implicit leadership theories, leading to halo and horns effects in
these judgments. In longer-lived groups, members come to know one another as
individuals, and their preconceptions have less effect on how they judge one
another. Instead, they gain knowledge about one another's unique personalities,
and this knowledge starts to influence their judgments more than their
preconceptions.
In other words, over
time
Judgmental Biases
The same processes that
result in halo and horns effects also cause biases in judgments about
leadership. As we have just discussed, halo and horns effects occur because
people have ideas about which traits go together. People who work in groups
similarly have ideas of which behaviors are associated with leadership. These
ideas bias their ratings of specific leaders. The halo and horns effects can be
very strong. Studies have even shown that people can rate imaginary
"leaders" the same way they rate real leaders.
Rush, Thomas and
Lord study. For example, recall our discussion of the Leader
Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ) from the previous chapter. Rush,
Thomas, and Lord (1977) asked a group of participants to imagine a department
supervisor of a "large Midwestern corporation." They then asked them
to judge this imaginary person and fill out the LBDQ. The results showed that
their "imaginary" judgments closely approximated the types of ratings
that people make when they fill out the LBDQ for real leaders. The general
leadership styles of consideration and initiating structure were clearly
distinguished in the "imaginary" ratings. This result occurred even
though the participants had seen no real behaviors on which they could base
their judgments.
This finding implies
that imaginary judgments are based on our ideas of which attributes are
associated with leadership. Therefore, judgments of actual leaders are similar
to fictional ones. This could well mean that the way we judge a leader is, in
great part, a result of how we think a leader "should" act. For
example, we may see Jack do certain things that we think a leader should do. We
fill out the LBDQ about him. The LBDQ asks questions regarding behaviors that
we have not seen Jack perform. For instance, he has never encouraged teamwork.
However, we believe that Jack would encourage teamwork if it were appropriate,
so we fill out the LBDQ accordingly. Thus, the halo effect has made Jack into
perhaps more of a leader than he really is.
Implications for Leader Emergence
All this research leads to the conclusion that we judge people as good or poor
leaders to the extent to which their actions are and are not similar to our
preconceptions of how leaders should lead. There are other implications of
these studies as well. Earlier we described how behavioral salience helped to
explain how some of the variables involved in leader emergence work the way
they do. The same applies for implicit leadership theories.
Content
of communication. At that time, we discussed how behavioral salience is an
important reason why a group member's amount
of talk is associated with their odds of emerging as a leader. However, content of talk is also associated
with these odds, and the effect of implicit leadership theory is important
here. Although a person who talks a lot will gain other group members'
attention, if the content of that person's talk is irrelevant to the task, then
the group members' impression of that person will not be similar to their beliefs about the "ideal
leader," and they will judge the person as a poor leader. In contrast, a
big talker whose discussion content is task-relevant should lead the other
group members to form an impression close to the "ideal" and evaluate
that member's leadership highly.
Seating
position.
We have noted that the ends or the head of the table are the "leadership
seats" for group discussion. We have said that one of the reasons for this
is that these positions are visually salient and thus provide for those sitting
in them the attention of the rest of the group. Another reason is that people
have developed expectations of where
leaders are supposed to sit during group discussions. The ends or the
"head" of a table are believed to be the "leadership seats"
for a group discussion. These expectations work just like implicit theories in
influencing people's judgments about group leadership. A study by Pellegrini (1971) shows this effect.
Pellegrini study. Pellegrini
took five photographs of a group of five women sitting around a table. The
members of the group rotated like a volleyball team, so that each woman sat in
each of the five positions at the table for the different photographs. Next, Pellegrini showed research participants one of the five
photographs and asked them to make judgments of each of the five women. If
seating position had no effect on these judgments, they would be similar among
the women sitting in each position. However, Pellegrini
found that the women sitting at the head of the table was consistently rated
highest in persuasiveness, dominance, and leadership.
General
Conclusions: Perceptual Approach
It might seem that
because the perceptual approach is not involved with recommendations for who
should lead a group or how a leader should lead, that it has no practical
implications for group discussion. This is false; the practical applications of
the research using the perceptual approach are clear. Remember that if we see a
person as a group leader, for whatever reason, we will treat him or her as a
leader. Thus our perceptions about one another determine who emerges a leader
in our group.
The process of
impression formation leads to predictable biases as people judge one another.
There are certain behaviors we associate with leadership. We expect a group
leader to show these behaviors, regardless of whether they are correct in a
particular situation.
In addition, we are
biased toward perceiving a group member's leadership behavior as something that
indicates a permanent leadership character in that person. Thus, if a member
acts as a leader in one circumstance, we expect him or her to do so again in a
different situation. If the leader does not act as we expect, according to our
bias, we may unjustly become unhappy with his or her performance. It is
important that we are conscious of the biases that are inherent in forming
impressions of one another. We must constantly remind ourselves that these
biases lead us to have expectations about our group leaders that nobody could
realistically fulfill.
THE CHARISMATIC
APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP
As you recall from the
previous chapter, the trait approach to leadership began with the premise of
the "Great Man Theory of Leadership." This theory claimed that there
are certain people who appear to have special leadership skills that have
seemed to set them apart from the average person. As discussed there,
researchers' attempts to find traits that distinguished "born
leaders" from everyone else were unsuccessful.
However, history is full
of political and religious leaders such as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther
King Jr. who seem to fit the "Great Man" idea. They have called forth
extraordinary levels of dedication and effort from their followers. Back in
Chapter 5 we described the work of Max Weber, a founding father of sociology,
in defining the concept of "power." Weber also worked on
understanding the process by which some leaders can inspire such devotion and
commitment from followers. Weber proposed the idea that some leaders are
perceived by their followers to possess a trait he called "charisma."
The term "charisma" was originally defined as the ability to perform
religious miracles. Weber used the term to refer to leaders who appear to have
exceptional, almost superhuman abilities to perform difficult feats and succeed
in seemingly impossible situations.
In the past few decades,
some theorists have extended the idea of "charismatic" leadership to
the context of organizations. There have been well-publicized examples of
organizational leaders who seem to arouse the same type of response in their
followers as Gandhi and King did in theirs. Examples include Steven Jobs of
Apple Computers, Lee Iacocca of Chrysler, and Mary Kay Ash of Mary Kay
Cosmetics. Although there are differences among these and other cases, a few
similarities are clear. In each case, the leader was able to inspire unusual
effort and performance from their subordinates. Because of this inspiration,
Jobs and Ash turned their ideas into corporations worth hundreds of millions of
dollars, and Iacocca took a large corporation on the bring
of insolvency and converted it into a large profit maker.
Many reports have been
published listing the strategies and tactics of successful charismatic leaders.
Sometimes these reports have implied that charismatic leadership is the key to
organizational success. However, it should be clear from everything we have
written about leadership that such sweeping generalizations are likely to be
wrong. In many if not most cases, the success of charismatic leadership is
short-lived. In fact, as we shall describe, the characteristics that can help
make a person a charismatic leader often include the seeds of their eventual
downfall. Lee Iacocca, for example, eventually became more concerned with
improving his public image nationally than with the operations of Chrysler. As
a result, Chrysler once again began struggling. Although Iacocca (and Chrysler)
eventually righted themselves, there are many cases in which charismatic
leaders have led once-successful corporations to ruin.
Having said this,
research suggests that charismatic leadership can lead to organizational
success. Bryman (1992) reported that measures of
charismatic leadership tend to correlate with job performance at about .3.
Although this is not a very high correlation, it must be considered that the
success of charismatic leadership depends on the situation in which the leader
and the members of the leader's group of subordinates are in.
In fact, a number of
theorists have proposed very similar theories of charismatic leadership (see Bryman, 1992, for a good review). These theories are
comparable to Fiedler's contingency theory of leadership in some ways. They
propose that certain traits lead some people to adopt what could be called a
"charismatic" style of leadership. There are certain situations in
which this style leads to successful performance and some in which it
backfires. However, this theory differs from Fiedler's in that communication is
specifically described as part of the leadership process. Thus charismatic
leadership theory fits the input-process-output model.
A Theory of
Charismatic Leadership
Leader
characteristics. According to most theorists, charismatic leaders have a
number of traits in common. First, they are high in the "Nepo," or "need for power" characteristic we
defined in Chapters 1 and 4. Second, they have great self-confidence. Third,
they are unusually willing to take risks. Fourth, they have a strong conviction
in the correctness of their beliefs.
Of course, having
relevant traits is not enough. Advocates of the trait approach ignored the fact
that leaders are most successful when performing tasks they are skilled in or
knowledgeable about. Successful charismatic leaders generally have a great deal
of experience in the organizational area in which they are managing. Lee
Iacocca had many years of experience in the automobile industry before he took
charge of Chrysler.
Finally, charismatic
leaders have developed a "vision" of what their group or organization
should stand for. This vision is often abstract, but must be simple enough for
subordinates to understand. For example, Steven Jobs had a quest to improve
education through making computers available to the average person. Mary Kay
Ash wanted to help women learn to become independent and empower themselves.
Thus, charismatic
leaders have particular traits, relevant experience, and a vision.
Leader
style.
Charismatic leaders perform a number of characteristic behaviors that we can
call a "charismatic" style of leadership. First, they are able to
successfully communicate the content of their vision and confidence in their
subordinates' ability to attain it. They do this through both verbally and
nonverbally. Verbally, charismatic leaders tend to use a number of different
strategies when addressing subordinates. Shamir,
House, and Arthur (1993) have listed some of the strategies.
1. They often refer to
shared values and moral justifications. As discussed, Jobs described Apple's
goal as bringing computers to schools and the average person. He also referred
to Apple as if it were David taking on IBM as an evil Goliath. Thus the
competition between the two multimillion dollar corporations was represented as
a fight between good and evil.
2. They tend to refer to
distant goals rather than near ones. For example, Jobs was more likely to
discuss what Apple Computer could eventually do rather than what would occur
tomorrow.
3. They tend to
emphasize the collective identity of the subordinates. The needs of the
corporation are always more important than the desires of its individual
members for the charismatic leader.
4. They tend to express
high expectations for the subordinates. Their task is described as very
difficult, and success as requiring great effort.
5. They tend to show
great confidence in the ability of their subordinates. No matter how hard the
task as they have described, the subordinates have the "right stuff"
to succeed.
Second, charismatic
leaders deliver this content in an animated nonverbal style. They have great
variety and dynamism in their voice, and use gestures, movements and eye gaze
actively when talking.
In addition, the
charismatic leader must "live" their vision. They must seem to
practice exactly what they preach. If a charismatic leader expects their
subordinates to put in sixty hour weeks, the leader should put in seventy. If
the charismatic leader wants subordinates to look upon the organization as
their family, they must take on the role of maintenance leader. If a
charismatic leader wants the subordinates to trust their own abilities and
judgments, the leader must trust the decisions and actions that the
subordinates take.
Situational
factors.
This style of communicating and behaving appears to be successful only in the
right situations. First, the circumstance should be particularly stressful or
uncertain. This would occur either in a newly-formed organization or in an
older organization that is having problems that threaten its survival. Second, the
subordinates need to be creative and dedicated. What can happen is that
subordinates of this type who have become apathetic under other leadership
styles are inspired when a charismatic leader takes over. Third, the leader
must have the power to actually follow through on their vision. For example, if
a middle-level manager has certain goals that those higher up in the
organization do not value, then the manager will not be able to see their ideas
through.
Results. When a charismatic leader is able
to communicate their vision and their confidence in their subordinates' ability
to attain it, and when the situation is as we have described, the result in
subordinates is
1. unusual
confidence in and loyalty to leadership
2
strong identification with the organization and the leader's vision
3. high
motivation and commitment
4 increased
self-confidence.
This can result in
tremendous effort on the part of the subordinates and great success for the
organization.
However, when the
situation does not meet the requirements we listed above, the charismatic
leader will not be successful. Further, although many of the traits of the
charismatic leader are important in helping the leader succeed, they can and
often do lead to eventual failure. Their high self-confidence and need for
power can lead them to be extremely autocratic and self-serving. They can have
little tolerance for subordinates disagreeing with them, and often blame others
for their own errors. In the long-run, subordinates often tire of the charismatic
leader, lose their dedication, and may even work to undermine the leader's
authority. Further, if the charismatic leader has superiors in the
organization, they often tire of the leader's style and become unwilling to
tolerate any mistakes on the leader's part. There have been many reported
examples of charismatic leaders who were not
at the top of their organization being forced to leave the organization after
only three or four years.
Explanation for the Effect
In attempting to explain
why charismatic leaders succeed or fail, theorists have been influenced by the
contingency view that leader characteristics and situational factors are input
variables affecting the outcome of job performance. They also have also
considered the process variables of communication and behavior linking the
input and output. In addition, they have described the importance of the
subordinates' perception of the charismatic leader in a way reminiscent of the
perceptual approach. In fact, they have used the same psychological factors in
their explanations as the perceptual theorists.
Salience
effects.
As we have discussed, perceptual theorists stress the impact of the salience of
a group member's behavior on the odds that they will emerge as a group leader.
Analogously, charismatic advocates talk about the importance of salience in the
process by which a leader becomes viewed by followers as charismatic. The
charismatic leader's animated communication style and inspirational
communication content serve to catch the subordinates' attention, as does their
attempts to behave consistently with their vision.
Implicit
theory effects. We have also described the role of implicit theories in the process
by which group member form leadership-relevant impressions of one another. One
theorist, Conger (1989), has particularly emphasized the importance of the
impression formation process on subordinates' evaluations of their leader as
charismatic. After viewing the leader's salient behavior, subordinates may then
use their implicit leadership theories to develop a particularly strong and
positive impression of the charismatic leader. Like the "ideal
organizational leader," the charismatic leader may be viewed as confident,
visionary, trustworthy, and expert. Analogously, if things start going bad, the
subordinates might change their impression of the leader to include
characteristics the "ideal leader" does not have. The charismatic leader might now be viewed as
stubborn, dictatorial, and back-stabbing.
Although there is great
agreement among scientists about this theory, much of it is speculative, and
little of it has received research examination. A welcome addition to the work
on charismatic leadership has come from two experiments testing it.
Howell and Frost
study.
Howell and Frost (1989) gave business students an individual task to perform in
which each acted like a business executive making a decision. Two other
confederates also "worked" on the same individual task side-by-side
with the real participant. The task was described by a "leader"
displaying one of the following leadership styles:
1 - Task-oriented. The
leader described the task and told the participants to follow the instructions,
show good judgment, and be methodical in their work. The task-oriented leader
sat behind a desk to distance themselves from the participants, used a
"moderate" tone of voice, intermittent eye gaze, and
"neutral" facial expressions (no smiling or nodding).
2 -
Maintenance-oriented. The leader described the task and told the participants
to relax, work at their own pace, and not to worry about the outcomes. They sat
at the front edge of the desk to lessen interpersonal distance, used a
"warm" tone of voice, direct eye gaze, and "friendly"
facial expressions (smiling and nodding).
3 - Charismatic. The
leader described the task, emphasized the importance of the results to the
future of the students' coursework, encouraged them to be creative, and
expressed confidence in their ability. They alternated between sitting at the front edge of the desk and pacing around the
room, used a "captivating" tone of voice, direct eye gaze and
"animated" facial expressions.
Then the leader left and
the task began. At one point, the leader returned and spoke again. The
task-oriented leader reminded the participants to focus on the task, the
maintenance-oriented leader thanked the participants for performing it, and the
charismatic leader reiterated confidence in the participants' abilities to
perform the task. At the end of the task, the participants reported their feelings
about their experience on a questionnaire.
The findings showed
support for the value of charismatic leadership. The charismatic leader
condition was highest on task performance, with the maintenance leader
condition lowest. Turning to the questionnaire measures, the charismatic and
task-oriented leader conditions were highest on participants' satisfaction with
their own performance and the charismatic and maintenance-oriented leader were
highest on participants' satisfaction with the leader.
Kirkpatrick and
Locke study.
Kirkpatrick and Locke (1996) noted a weakness with the Howell and Frost study.
Howell and Frost had the charismatic leader both exhibit a certain style of
nonverbal behavior and express a particular type of communication content. The
results showed that this combination led to more satisfactory results for the
charismatic leader conditions than for the task-oriented or
maintenance-oriented. However, there is no way of knowing whether it was
nonverbal style or verbal content that led to these findings.
Kirkpatrick and Locke
then performed a study to distinguish between these two possible factors. They
asked participants to perform a routine assembly task, in which they inserted
pages into notebook binders according to a set of instructions. Before the task
began, a leader either expressed a "vision" (commitment to quality)
and confidence in the participants' abilities, or merely gave factual
information about how paper is made. Half of the "vision" and half of
the "factual" leaders used the charismatic nonverbal style as Howell
and Frost had defined them. The other half used Howell and
Frost's task-oriented nonverbal style. Kirkpatrick and Locke found that
of the two possible factors, only the verbal expression of vision had an effect
on quality of performance. This effect was indirect, working through changes in
participants' goals and self-confidence.
General
Conclusions: Charismatic Approach
A lot has been written
about the effect of charismatic leadership in organizations. Much of what has
been written has been uniformly positive and overly optimistic about its
effects on subordinates' attitudes, self-confidence, and performance. There is
a danger that this attention will lead to charismatic leadership becoming the
newest "fad" in organizations. Organizations are already advertising
for "charismatic leaders" and trying to get their present managers to
act more charismatically.
All this activity
ignores the fact that charismatic leadership, like any other style, is only
successful in certain situations. It also ignores the fact that
"naturally" charismatic leaders only too often alienate both their
subordinates and their superiors, and any gains in organizational performance
are often short-lived. Further, there is no reason to believe that charismatic
leaders have the best interests of everyone in mind. As much as Mohandas Gandhi
and Martin Luther King Jr. fit the definition of charismatic leader, so did
Adolph Hitler and Mao Tse Tung.
Having
said that, it is clear that in the right circumstance, charismatic leadership
can be a very successful method of management. As with the style and
contingency approaches, the trick is for the organization to determine the
situation they are in and to choose the right type and style of leadership for
that circumstance.
PUTTING THEORY INTO
PRACTICE
In this and in the
previous chapter, we covered a lot of ground concerning leadership. We have
described many theories, some of which are contradictory with others. The
reader might imagine that it may be difficult to come up with practical
suggestions from this confusion. It is true that one cannot provide a specific
"How To Lead" guide. However, there are a
few general recommendations that the leader should keep in mind.
First, leadership is behavioral. To lead a group is to
perform certain leadership behaviors or to act in a particular leadership
style. There are certain things that a person must do to be a procedural
leader, a substantive leader, or a maintenance leader. Benne and Sheats (1948) have told us what those behaviors are. There
are certain things a person must do to help their group interact successfully
with outside groups and individuals.
Second, leadership is situational. There is no one best way
to lead. But there are ways to lead that are best for particular types of tasks
and for particular types of groups. Hersey and
Blanchard (1969) and Vroom and Yetton (1973) have
provided guides for helping us choose the right style for particular
circumstances. The charismatic leadership theorists have told us when the
charismatic style will help and when it will hurt the group.
Third, we must keep in
the back of our minds the thoughts of those who have doubts about these ideas.
For example, if the legacy of Bales's (1953) work is
correct, then task-oriented leaders will be rejected by groups who do not care
about their task. If Fiedler (1978) is right, then it may be very difficult for
a person to learn how to perform a leadership style that is inconsistent with their
personality. As the failure of the trait approach tells us, nobody is born to
lead. It takes hard work, good sense, and sensitivity to be successful at
leadership.
Before moving on to
other topics, there is one more important issue about leadership to discuss.
GENDER DIFFERENCES
IN GROUP LEADERSHIP
Gender and Power in Groups
In Chapter 5, we
discussed ideas about power in groups. We outlined conceptions of how our
society defines power and stated that, according to those conceptions, men tend
to have more power in groups than women do.
Further, we described
two reasons for this power inequity. These explanations are also useful as we
approach the topic of gender differences in group leadership. Before we move on
to that topic, let us review what we said about power and gender.
Perceptual
One reason for the power inequity in groups is perceptual. It involves how our
society perceives men and women. Cultural stereotypes often cause both men and
women to believe that women are, overall, less competent than men. Competency
influences who gains power in groups. Hence, as expectation states theory
explains, the common belief that women are less competent than men affects the
power structure of groups. Members often give men power over their groups'
decisions.
An exception often
occurs when a group is performing a "female sex-typed" task, a task
about which people believe that women have more relevant knowledge than men.
For example, if a group is discussing how to sew a dress, the members often
give power to women.
Behavioral
The second
reason that women often have less power than men in groups is behavioral. As we
discussed, our society has overall conceptions of a "powerful style"
of communication. Women tend to act in a less "powerful style" than
men in group settings. They tend to make fewer proposals, and interrupt less
often than men do. They also tend to look at men more than men look at women
when they communicate. In general, society judges that these behaviors are
relatively low in power.
Hypothesis of Gender Differences in Leadership
How does power
relate to leadership? We can assume that power and leadership often go
together. We have seen gender differences when it comes to power in groups.
Hence, it stands to reason that gender differences might also influence group
leadership.
We shall discuss two
overall hypotheses concerning gender and leadership in groups. With each, we
will again focus on related perceptual and behavioral reasons.
Overall Preference for Male Leaders
First, it makes
sense to hypothesize that, generally, women are less likely than men to emerge
as group leaders. Again, there are both perceptual and behavioral reasons for
this hypothesis.
The first reason is
perceptual and follows from what we discussed under the "perceptual"
approach to leadership. We described how people have beliefs about the traits
and behaviors of the "ideal leader." We further showed that those
beliefs influence how group members judge one another's leadership abilities.
Let us support that people
have beliefs about how men and women are "supposed" to act in groups.
People may believe that men are supposed to act the way that ideal leaders act.
In contrast, they may feel that women are not "supposed" to act that
way. If this were true, they would probably judge men to be better leaders than
women. For example, someone believes that an ideal leader should act
"competently." Further, this person feels that, overall, men act more
"competently" than women. Thus, this person will look for a man to
head the group rather than a woman.
Further, there is reason
to believe that people do not expect women to assume leadership positions.
Earlier in this chapter we discussed Pellegrini's
(1971) study, in which participants were shown photographs of five women sitting
around the table. The participants consistently rated the women sitting at the
"head" of the table as higher in leadership than the other four
women. Porter and Geis (1981) performed an
instructive variation of Pellegrini's study.
Porter and Geis study. Whereas Pellegrini showed
participants photographs of five-women groups, Porter and Geis
showed their participants pictures of groups including either five women, five
men, three women and two men, or three men and two women. In the groups with
three women and two men, a women was sitting at the
head and the men were next to her; the groups with three men and two women had
a man at the head and the women next to him. Porter and Geis
asked the participants to rate the members as Pellegrini
had.
The results showed a
strong tendency for sexual stereotyping. In the all-male, all-female, and majority-male groups, the person at the head
received the highest ratings for leadership. However, in the majority-female
groups, the men next to the women at the head received just as high ratings for
leadership as did she. The most glaring results were found in the answers to
the question of "who contributed the most to the group." In this
case, the men in the female-majority groups were rated far higher than the woman
at the "head." It is important to note that there were no differences
in ratings between male and female participants. In other words, women were
just as likely to rate the men higher than the woman at the "head"
than were men.
These findings suggest that
our implicit leadership theories include "male" as one of the
attributes of the "ideal leader." This effect can overcome the
tendency for us to see a person at the head of a table as the leader of their
group.
The second reason that
women are less likely to emerge as group leaders than men is behavioral and
follows very clearly from issues we have discussed. The issue is how talkative
group members are. Earlier in this chapter, we reported a strong association
between how talkative group members are and whether they emerge as group
leaders. The more a person talks, the more likely the person is to become a
leader. In Chapter 5 we mentioned that women may talk less than men in groups.
If this is true, it implies that women are less likely to emerge as group
leaders than are men.
Types of Leadership
Our second
overall hypothesis is in contrast to the first. We have proposed that, for both
perceptual and behavioral reasons, people may believe that women act less like
leaders than men do. Consequently, men most often emerge as group leaders.
There are other possibilities, however.
People may believe that
women and men act as different types of leaders. In this case, groups would not
necessarily prefer to give men leadership roles. Instead, groups would decide
which type of leader they need most and then perhaps search for a leader from
one gender or the other, depending on their needs.
What is the reasoning
behind this second hypothesis?
On a perceptual level,
people tend to have stereotypes about men and women. Researchers have performed
many studies of "gender-role stereotypes." In one case, Broverman et al. (1972) found that people generally believe
that men possess traits such as being "objective" and
"logical" and that men exhibit behaviors
such as "separates feelings from ideas." In contrast, people feel
that women's traits include being "sensitive" and "warm"
and that female behaviors include such acts as "expresses tender
feelings."
Looking at these
beliefs, we can hypothesize that people would expect women to be maintenance
leaders and men to be task leaders. We can carry this idea even further and say
that group members look for different leadership styles from men and women. For
instance, if both men and women were task leaders, people might expect men to
lead in an autocratic style and women to lead in a democratic style.
Men and women could also
exhibit behavioral differences in leadership roles, and group members could
notice these differences. In Chapter 5 we mentioned that, proportionally, in
groups women tend to be more maintenance oriented and men tend to be more task
oriented. This does not necessarily mean that these differences continue to
exist when men and women take on leadership roles; however, the possibility
does exist.
Hence, as a result of
both perceptions and behaviors, group members may believe that women and men
act differently as leaders.
Research on Gender
Difference in Group Leadership
Does research support
either or both of these general hypotheses? Scientists have performed many
studies concerning gender differences in group leadership. Eagly
and her associates have reviewed these studies for overall trends.
Research on Gender and Leadership Styles
In the first review, Eagly and Johnson (1990)
examined the question of leadership style. They looked at studies that
investigated differences between the styles that women and men use in
leadership positions.
Their findings were
consistent with our second overall hypothesis. They discovered a tendency for
female leaders to exhibit maintenance behaviors and for male leaders to exhibit
task behaviors. In addition, Eagly and Johnson found
that female task leaders are more likely to use a democratic style and that
male task leaders are more likely to employ an autocratic style.
Research on Gender and Leader Emergence
In a second
review, Eagly and Karau
(1991) analyzed studies of gender and leader emergence. Their findings
supported aspects of both our overall hypotheses.
In general, they found
that men are more likely than women to emerge as overall group leaders and as
task leaders. In contrast, women are more likely than men to become maintenance
leaders.
Eagly and Karau
discovered, however, that leader emergence depended on specifics beyond the
question of maintenance and task needs. Although men are more likely to emerge
as overall leaders, groups will consider several aspects before making their
final decisions.
One aspect involves the
"sex-type" of the task a group performs. Men more often than women
become overall group leaders when their group performs male sex-typed tasks or
non-sex-typed tasks. When the group performs female sex-typed tasks, however,
women and men are equally likely to emerge as leaders. These findings are
consistent with results for power that we discussed in Chapter 5.
Another aspect concerns
whether tasks have objectively correct answers. Men are particularly likely to
become overall leaders when their groups are performing problem-solving or
judgment tasks.
Women, in contrast, are
more likely to take on leadership roles when their groups face decision-making
or negotiation tasks. We can find the reason for this discovery by looking at
considerations we discussed in Chapter 9.
As we stated,
problem-solving and judgment tasks have objectively correct answers. With these
kinds of tasks, maintenance activities do not seem to help groups find answers.
We have outlined the finding that women tend to be "maintenance"
specialists. Therefore, groups could judge that women's contributions to these
tasks are not particularly important, and they will not see women as potential
leaders. In contrast, decision-making and negotiation tasks do not have
objectively correct answers. For these tasks, groups must reach consensus.
Maintenance behaviors are very helpful as a group works to achieve consensus.
Thus, such groups will value women's maintenance contributions highly and will
be somewhat more likely to judge women as leaders.
Finally, Eagly and Karau found that the
longer the group meets, the less effect gender has on leader emergence. This
finding follows from what we have learned about leadership from the perceptual
approach. When a group is new, members are strongly influenced by their
implicit leadership theories, which imply that a group's leader ought to be
male. However, as the group develops, each member's actual behaviors come to
have a greater effect on the member's impressions of one another's leadership.
Therefore, who actually performs the leadership behaviors is more and more
judged to be the group's leader.
Gender and Group Members' Evaluations of Leadership
Performance
In a third
review, Eagly, Makhijani,
and Klonsky (1992) looked at studies of the ways that
gender affects how group members evaluate leader performance. As earlier, their
findings support aspects of both our overall hypotheses.
The review included two
types of studies. In one type, male and female confederates used predetermined
styles to lead groups. In the other, participants read scenarios that described
women and men as leading groups in particular ways. In both cases the male and
female leaders behaved in the same way. Thus, any differences in the ways in
which participants reacted to the leaders would be due to gender.
Overall, the
participants evaluated the women as slightly less competent leaders than the
men. This judgment, however, depended on the leader's style. Evaluations of men
and women were no different when both used democratic leadership styles.
Participants assessed them as equally competent. When the leaders used
autocratic styles, however, the participants judged the women as considerably
less competent leaders than the men.
Why? As you can recall,
earlier we discussed how leaders are "supposed" to act. People
probably believe that men are "supposed" to lead autocratically and
that women are "supposed" to lead democratically. This finding
suggests that the participants were more rigid in their judgments of women than
of men. It appears that men can "get away" with leading the way that
women are "supposed" to lead but that women cannot "get
away" with using the leadership style that men are "supposed" to
use. In other words, male leaders can be more flexible than women without
alienating the group members. In contrast, women have to "act like"
women.
Gender and Leadership Performance
In the last
review, Eagly, Karau, &
Makhijani (1995) compared the actual performance of
men and women as leaders. No overall difference for gender was found. However,
there were many more subtle differences that imply sexual stereotyping. For
example, men tend to be more successful as leaders when their subordinates were
men, whereas women are more successful leading women. Women tend to be more
successful in stereotypically "female" situations, such as leading in
social service or educational organizations, while men excel in
"male" circumstances such as the military. Finally, women are more
successful when their job is seen as requiring primarily maintenance abilities, and men when task abilities are believed more
important.
SUMMARY
The functional approach to leadership does
not consider the leader as a particular "person." Instead, it is
concerned with the types of leadership "behaviors" that must take
place within a group for the group to reach its goals. Any group member can perform
these behaviors, or "functions." However, only one or two people tend
to do them. Traditionally, these functions have been distinguished into task
and maintenance categories. Bales believed that task functions and maintenance
behaviors are so diverse that different group members generally perform them
separately. Other researchers disagree with Bales's
idea. In addition, there is good reason to add a third type of function,
relating with groups and individuals outside of the group.
Researchers worked to
discover how leaders emerge from previously leaderless groups. This is the emergent approach to leadership. They
discovered that a group's emergent leader is usually its most verbally and
nonverbally active member. It has also become clear that different methods of
choosing leaders can be equally successful. A group can acquire a leader
through election or appointment or by allowing the leader to emerge. All of
these methods can work well if the group accepts the leader, and the leader is
competent. Acceptance of a group leader is partly based on the extent to which
the leader has conformed to group norms in the past. Past conformity allows the
leader to deviate, in an innovative way, on occasion without losing the group's
trust.
The perceptual perspective is a unique
approach toward leadership. It claims that leadership exists mainly in the
minds of each individual group member. Studies have shown that people tend to
rate both imaginary and real leaders in a similar fashion. Each group member
has his or her own personal view of what traits a leader should have. Every
member, in turn, attributes these traits to a person he or she considers a
leader.
The charismatic approach has developed
due to the observation that some leaders have the ability to inspire followers
to unusually high levels of effort. It appears that these leaders have a set of
traits that lead them to perform in a distinctive style. When in the right
situation, this style can result in very dedicated subordinates and huge
success. However, the style will backfire in other situations, and the effects
of charismatic leadership often disappear over time.
Researchers have
performed many studies concerning gender and group leadership. The findings
suggest that women are more likely than men to emerge as maintenance leaders
and that men are more likely than women to become task
leaders and overall leaders. As task leaders, men tend to be autocratic and
women tend to be democratic. The leadership styles that men use do not affect
how people evaluate their competence as leaders; however, group members often
evaluate women's competence negatively when women use an autocratic style.
Finally, while there is no overall gender difference in actual leadership
ability, men and women tend to be more successful leaders in different
situations.