Developing Potential Across a Full Range of Leadership TM
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Developing Potential Across a Full Range of Leadership TM

Cases on Transactional and Transformational Leadership

Bruce J. Avolio, Bernard M. Bass, Bruce J. Avolio, Bernard M. Bass

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eBook - ePub

Developing Potential Across a Full Range of Leadership TM

Cases on Transactional and Transformational Leadership

Bruce J. Avolio, Bernard M. Bass, Bruce J. Avolio, Bernard M. Bass

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About This Book

This case book focuses on the leadership style of the key players. The 29 cases were chosen to present all facets of a model of leadership, stating that the most effective leaders are both transformational and transactional in their leadership style. Cases were selected for inclusion and/or developed to provide examples of leaders from across the spectrum of public and private sectors. Specific emphasis was placed on selecting male and female leaders from a broad array of cultures. A great deal has been written about a model of leadership that is referred to as a "full range" of leadership potential. This book adds to the literature, by highlighting specific people who exemplify the various styles and orientations regarding a full range of leadership potential. The book begins with an overview of what constitutes transactional and transformational leadership. This discussion is then expanded to include a Full Range of Leadership Potential TM. Discussion of the cases highlight how to build balance in one's leadership profile to optimize the potential of leaders, followers, and their organizations. The presence or absence of styles in a wide variety of contexts will be discussed in terms of the effects on individuals, groups, or organizations. Questions are posed for discussion of each case. Practitioners who conduct or facilitate the training of leadership will find this book quite useful to their work. In addition, managers interested in developing their own leadership potential will be enabled to learn by example how different styles affect leadership performance. This book can also be used as a supplement to other books on leadership for undergraduate, graduate, and executive education courses in management.

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Information

Year
2001
ISBN
9781135646325

I
ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR OF INDIVIDUAL LEADERS

Although there are many similarities among successful and effective leaders, there are also wide differences in attitudes, beliefs, and behavior. Successful leaders get their followers to follow them; effective leaders motivate and enable their followers to reach shared goals. Such leaders create a sense of alignment and direction that is shared by colleagues and followers.
See if you can determine what attitudes and behavior made for successful and effective leaders in the first nine cases. Read Part I looking for the attitudes, actions, and behavior that characterize successful and effective leaders. Try to examine the leadership of these individuals as if you were a follower. The cases in Part I are as follows:
  • 1. Still Flying High After All These Years at Southwest Airlines
  • 2. Colin Powell’s Thoughts on Leadership
  • 3. In the Land of Cornflakes and Car Assembly
  • 4. Can You Name America’s Seven Best Bosses?
  • 5. Leading by Listening
  • 6. Patricia Gallup, CEO, PC Connection (Excerpts)
  • 7. Global Leadership
  • 8. Turnaround Drama Instills Leadership
  • 9. Leading Ladies
  • 10. The Many Facets of Tina’s Leadership

CHAPTER 1
Still Flying High After All These Years at Southwest Airlines*

Over the past 20 years, Southwest Airlines has shown the best results in the U.S. airline industry. Their success may be attributed to several things. The CEO and founder Herb Kelleher has placed emphasis on humor in the organization. He would like to build relationships with passengers and give them “an experience.” The business strategy is based on simplicity, efficiency, and effectiveness. Employees are helpful to one another. Most important is the CEO’s commitment to maintaining a quality workforce.
Although other airlines report record profits, the obvious question is what is so different about this airline versus all the rest, who limped through the 1980s barely surviving, if in fact they did survive. The big airlines like Eastern that were far better positioned to take advantage of the deregulation mania in the 1980s and early 1990s found themselves out of business, whereas little old Southwest chugged along toward increasing levels of profitability.
Some may attribute Southwest’s success to its dynamic CEO and founder Herb Kelleher, who has been honored as the most admired CEO in the USA by his employees. Herb would attribute it to other factors, such as the people who work for Southwest Airlines. Both seem to admire each other, as evidenced perhaps by Southwest Airlines’ turnover rate, which is the lowest in the U.S. airline industry.
When Southwest first began operations, Kelleher established several basic tenets to run the business. First, he focused on building relationships with customers and making flying “an experience.” Southwest was one of the first companies in the world to highlight the importance of having a sense of humor in terms of developing its customer relationships. Similar to Ben and Jerry’s ice cream company and Sun Microsystems, humor was considered a key corporate value, and in fact was measured as one of the core components in Southwest Airlines’ job interviews. For example, Southwest is one of the few airlines where a flight attendant will sing the preflight instructions as a rap song. They also have a CEO who recently settled a large legal suit with a competitor by challenging the other CEO to arm wrestle with a winner-take-all outcome. Herb lost, but as he said at the arm wrestling event, so did all of the lawyers!
A second component of the business strategy is to keep things simple. All Southwest pilots currently fly 737s. With this strategy, they are able to cut maintenance and training expenses. Also, there are only a few job classifications and everyone is expected to join in and help each other to keep the planes flying. The sole restriction is that only the pilot is allowed to fly the plane, at least most of the time.
Related to simplicity, Southwest Airlines uses a very simple ticketing and reservation system. There are no frills. Also, due to the lack of boundaries in the company regarding this being “your” job versus “mine,” Southwest is able to turn planes around 25% faster than competitors, thus keeping more planes in the air at any point in time. There are more planes in the air at less cost. Southwest achieves high levels of efficiency because all employees are willing to help clean the planes to get them off the gate, even Herb Kelleher, who often can be found down with the maintenance crew cleaning planes, and/or helping the baggage handlers.
Herb initially defined Southwest Airlines as being a competitor with buses, trains, and cars instead of other airlines. Specifically, he wanted it to be cheaper to fly Southwest than it would be to drive or take public transportation. Consequently, the choice becomes a “no brainer” for the customer. Would you rather drive 500 miles or take a plane in less time and for less money?
Finally, and perhaps one of the more important components in retaining a high-quality workforce, is the intense commitment that this CEO continually demonstrates to people. He frequently becomes involved in helping out employees personally. He reaches down and gets to know the people who work in his company, so they will understand what he truly values and believes in. And when asked what he feels toward his employees, he said, “I really love these people.” He didn’t say like, respect, trust, care, and so forth, he said he loved them. And for most people working for his airline, they seem to believe what Herb said is true, because they apparently love him too.

Discussion Questions

  1. What aspects of this CEO’s style relate to the full range of leadership model?
  2. How does his style affect the culture of this organization?
  3. Do you see any problems with what will happen to Southwest after Herb retires?
  4. How can we take what Herb does well and apply it to expanding your full range of leadership potential?
  5. If you were one of Herb’s followers, how would you describe Herb to a prospective employee?

*An original case written by the editors.

CHAPTER 2
Colin Powell’s Thoughts on Leadership*

As part of Industry Week’s (IW) series on the world’s 100 best managed companies, Secretary of State General Colin L.Powell, at that time former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and White House national security advisor, was asked about his views on leadership. According to Powell, leadership in the 21st century will not be much different from the leadership shown by Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and their colleagues 200 years ago. Leadership will always require people who have a vision and the ability to motivate others.
Perhaps no one in the U.S. is more respected for his views on leadership than Gen. Colin L.Powell, USA (Ret.), former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, White House national security advisor, Secretary of State, and muchcourted (he kept saying “no” in the 2000 election) candidate for President or Vice President. Author of the best-selling My American Journey (1995, Random House) Powell recently shared his views on leadership in this excerpted interview with IW.
IW: Will skills required by effective leaders in the 21st century differ from those of the 20th century?
Powell: I don’t know that leadership in the 21st century will be essentially different from the leadership shown by Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and their colleagues 200 years ago. Leadership will always require people who have a vision of where they wish to take “the led.” Leadership will always require people who are able to organize the effort of [others] to accomplish the objectives that flow from the vision. And leadership will always put a demand on leaders to pick the right people….
Leadership also requires motivating people. And that means pushing the vision down to every level of the organization. What will make things different in the 21st century, however, is that the world is going through a transformation—a transformation that affects the industrial world as well as the political and economic world. We’re moving from the Cold War era—when there was the “democratic world” and the “communist world”—to essentially “one world.” At the same time, the world is being fundamentally reshaped by the information and technology revolution, which is supplanting the industrial revolution…. The leaders of this new industrial-information era have to bfe able use these tools and understand the power of information and technology—and how that gives them new opportunities. For example, our old enemies are now our competitors. They did what we told them to—they stopped building guns and facing us across borders. Instead they are competing with us in democratic systems and open markets. But even more than as competitors, we should see our old enemies as markets. Information and technology allows you to do more “niching.” Industry is discovering that the power of the computer allows you to appeal to smaller and smaller markets because you are able to manufacture for smaller and smaller markets in an efficient and profitable way.
IW: Industry has entered what might be called the age of empowerment. Does this change the requisites for a company leader?
Powell: I’m always nervous about buzzwords that come along and try to capture complex ideas. But certainly any organization that is able to generate the interest of “the led” so that they contribute to the work of the organization and offer suggestions and want to be a part of what’s going on—will benefit. In that sense empowerment is a good thing; companies need to do more of it…. We’ve seen [empowerment] in American industry. We’ve moved away from the mass [production] industrial era of Henry Ford where everyone sat on a line somewhere and did his one selected task. But I don’t think empowerment is a new and revolutionary concept.
IW: Is leadership different in the military than in industry?
Powell: We [the military] are a hierarchical environment and always will be. We have the power of coercion, because we ask people to give their lives. But at the same time we are quite similar to industry. We are big on empowerment, and are big on communicating vision down to the last soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine. The fundamental principles of leadership and qualities we look for in our leaders are very parallel to what industry needs to look for.
IW: But hasn’t the military changed in recent years?
Powell: We’ve gone for a much higher quality soldier and for much more education and training. We’ve sought every aspect of technology we can to make the task of the soldier easier and safer—precision weapons, for instance. We are on the cutting edge of the digital world—the information world—in order to do our terrible job of coercing people in war. Even though we are taking advantage of the new tools available, however…we also try to teach the same kind of leadership we derive from our heroes of the past. There will always be a need for a George Washington at Valley Forge.
IW: What are the qualities of that leadership?
Powell: Beyond the qualities I talked about earlier, there are the personal qualities of courage and shared sacrifice. We teach our youngsters, for example, “If the troops are cold, you’re cold. But make sure you don’t look cold or act cold.” Corporate leaders ought to learn that. Too often those at high levels don’t quite understand the sacrifices and hardships of those at the bottom.
IW: Can leadership be learned? Or is it instinctive?
Powell: People have been talking about that for a couple thousand years. I think leadership can be shaped. You have to have some fundamental instincts for working with people. But that instinct can be improved upon through training and education, so that you understand what works for you. In my career I’ve come across people who were terrible leaders because they had no gut instinct for leadership and no amount of training helped them. I’ve also come across brilliant natural leaders who became even better when they developed their skills.
IW: Is leadership recognizable? Can it be so effective that you’re not aware of it?
Powell: You recognize it in the performance of the unit. Leadership doesn’t mean you have to be a “character,” or wear two pistols and scream and yell a lot. Some of the most effective leaders I’ve seen have been quiet and unassuming, but you saw the results of their presence. The performance of the organization is the ultimate measure of a leader.

Discussion Questions

  1. How would you describe General Powell’s philosophy of leadership?
  2. What aspects of Powell’s style do you feel generalizes to all types of organizations?
  3. In your opinion, which component of Powell’s style differentiates him from other world-class leaders?
  4. How would you relate to Powell’s leadership as one of his followers? Peers? Supervisors?

*Anonymous (1996, August 19). Colin Powell’s thoughts on leadership. Industry Week, 245(15), pp. 56–57. (Adapted)

CHAPTER 3
In the Land of Cornflakes and Car Assembly*

Lee Howser, President of Jackson Community College in Jackson, Michigan, wanted to create a faculty-driven institution that was customer friendly. This required a focus both inside and outside the college. Initially more comfortable as a hands-on leader, Howser had to learn that others could take on much of the internal implementation challenges. He had to trust his intuition on how to proceed, and had to be open to new ways of operating. Howser viewed the college as part of a system. He realized early on thatJCC’s success would depend on the efforts of others, so he had to “stop being an implementor and work on inspiring others with the vision for change.”

One Leader Takes Seriously the Need to Produce Innovative Work Systems for the Future

Lee Howser, once a television personality, is now the president of Jackson Community College (JCC) in Jackson, Michigan. While not exactly reporting the news as he once did, now he’s making it at JCC. JCC is a well- known innovator among community colleges, and though he would never take the credit, Howser’s leadership is undoubtedly one reason why. JCC’s transformation began in the early 90s, when, as Howser puts it, “we needed to get the sand out of our gears and reach new markets.” Along with others at JCC, he saw businesses facing accountability and service pressures and realized that academic settings would soon face similar challenges. Howser saw that JCC’s facilities were out of date and the faculty was not prepared for the demands that lay ahead. “We knew JCC and other academic institutions were going to be dragged through the keyhole, and we wanted Jackson to be the first one through. That was the only way we could influence the process.”

Making the Move…

Howser, however, was not the visionary behind the original change process but considers Clyde Letarte, his predecessor, to be the leader who initiated the shift to a new direction. Howser recognized that his role was to implement the change. “It was my job to take it to the next level,” he says. “I’m a mover, not a shaker. It never occurred to me not to go forward. I was interested in how.”
Another person Howser credits with the vision for change is Carole Schwinn, a pioneer in the community quality movement and a staff member at JCC. Schwinn introduced some of the country’s leading systems thinkers and experts in quality management to the Jackson community. But her goal was not simply education. Schwinn wanted JCC to redesign itself as a college for the future.
“She needled and nagged Clyde and me about it,” Howser admits. “Her approach is a bit like Chinese water torture, and inevitably, both Clyde and I paid attention.” Howser vividly remembers the moment he found the right lever for change. Along with Schwinn and others from JCC, Howser attended a workshop giv...

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