Armstrong's Handbook of Management and Leadership for HR

Developing Effective People Skills for Better Leadership and Management

Michael Armstrong

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780749478155
• eBook ISBN: 9780749478162
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

To make an effective contribution, HR specialists have to be good at management, leadership and developing both themselves and others. They also need to be aware of the management and business considerations that affect their work. Armstrong's Handbook of Management and Leadership for HR provides guidance on the processes of management and leadership with particular reference to what HR managers and aspiring managers need to know and do to make a difference.

Written by renowned human resources expert and bestselling author Michael Armstrong, Armstrong's Handbook of Management and Leadership for HR covers in one volume the 'Leading, Managing and Developing People' and 'Developing Skills for Business Leadership' Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) modules. It includes numerous practical features such as case studies, practitioner interviews, exercises and clear learning objectives to aid learning. This is the essential book for HR students and professionals looking to broaden their skills and understanding relating to management and leadership. Online supporting resources include lecture slides, an instructor's manual, a student's manual and a literature review.

PART ONE
Leading, managing and developing people fundamentals

Leadership01

KEY CONCEPTS AND TERMS

Authentic leaders

Charismatic leaders

Contingent leadership

Distributed leadership

Emotional intelligence

Leader–member exchange theory

Leadership

Leadership development

Path-goal model

Situational leadership

Social exchange theory

Trait

Transactional leaders

Transformational leaders

Visionary leaders

LEARNING OUTCOMES

On completing this chapter you should be able to define these key concepts. You should also know about:

• The meaning of leadership

• The main leadership theories

• What leaders do

• The main leadership styles

• The qualities of a good leader

• The process of leadership development

• What makes an effective leader

Introduction

To lead people is to inspire, influence and guide. The significance of leadership in achieving results was established in research conducted by the consulting firm Hay/McBer as reported by Goleman (2000). This study of 3,871 executives, selected from a database of more than 20,000 executives worldwide, found that leadership had a direct impact on organizational climate, and that climate in turn accounted for nearly one third of the financial results of organizations. The conclusion from research conducted by Higgs (2006) was that leadership behaviour is responsible for almost 50 per cent of the difference between change success and failure. Research by Northouse (2006) into 167 US firms in 13 industries established that over a 20-year period leadership was the cause of more variations in performance than any other variable.

This chapter is concerned with the concept of leadership and starts with definitions of leadership. However, even if the essence of leadership can be defined quite simply it has to be recognized that in practice it is a complex affair that takes place in all sorts of ways. To understand it fully it is necessary to know more about:

• the underpinning theories that explain the process of leadership;

• what leaders do;

• how they do it;

• the different types of leaders;

• the various styles that leaders can adopt;

• the qualities that good leaders possess.

These aspects of leadership are considered in turn in this chapter. Leadership skills are dealt with in Chapter 15.

Leadership defined

Leadership is the process of getting people to do their best to achieve a desired result. It can be described as the ability to persuade others willingly to behave differently. Leadership involves developing and communicating a vision for the future, motivating people and securing their engagement to the task they are expected to do. Other definitions (there are many) include:

• Stodgill (1950: 3) Leadership is an ‘influencing process aimed at goal achievement’.

• Bennis and Nanus (1985: 17) Leadership is: ‘The capacity to translate intentions into reality and sustain it.’

• Dixon (1994: 214) ‘Leadership is no more than exercising such an influence upon others that they tend to act in concert towards achieving a goal which they might not have achieved so readily had they been left to their own devices.’

• Buchanan and Huczynski (2007: 696) Leadership is: ‘The process of influencing the activities of an organized group in its efforts toward goal-setting and goal-achievement.’

• Goleman (2000: 78) ‘A leader’s singular job is to get results.’

Leadership theories

Leadership is a complicated notion and a number of theories have been produced to explain it. These theories have developed over the years and explore a number of different facets of leadership and leadership behaviour. In many ways they complement one another and together they help to gain a comprehensive understanding of what the process of leadership is about.

The development of leadership theories

Trait theory, which explains leadership by reference to the qualities leaders have, is the basic and for many people the most familiar theory. But it has its limitations, as explained later, and pragmatic research was carried out to identify what types of behaviour characterized leadership rather than focusing on the personalities of leaders. The key leadership behaviour studies conducted by the Universities of Michigan and Ohio State led respectively to the identification of employee-centred as distinct from job-centred behaviour and the leadership processes of consideration and initiating structure.

The next step in the development of leadership theory was the recognition by researchers that what leaders did and how they did it was dependent or contingent on the situation they were in. Different traits became important; different behaviours or styles of leadership had to be used to achieve effectiveness in different situations. These studies resulted in the theories of contingent and situational leadership.

However, the evolution of thinking about leadership still had some way to go. Researchers began to dig more deeply into what went on when people exercised leadership. This led to the path-goal and leader–member exchange theories. At the same time it was recognized that leaders could not exist or succeed without followers and that the role of the latter therefore deserved consideration. Next, trait theory was in effect revived by Goleman (2001) in the notion of emotional intelligence as a necessary attribute of leaders. Most recently Ulrich put his oar in alongside his colleague Smallwood (2007) with the notion of the leadership brand as a comprehensive approach to leadership by organizations.

Trait theory

Trait theory, which defines leadership in terms of the traits (enduring characteristics of behaviour) all leaders are said to possess, was amongst the earliest approaches to describing leaders and leadership. In its initial form it provided an easy explanation for the complex set of individual characteristics that together form a leader. As a way of describing the qualities required of leaders it still persists in some quarters. However, its limitations were exposed long ago by Stogdill (1948: 64) whose research found that a person does not become a leader by virtue of the possession of some combination of traits.

Trait theorists have generated dozens of lists. The research by Stogdill (1948) revealed 79 unique traits but only four (extroversion, humour, intelligence and initiative) appeared in five or more studies. Research conducted by Perren and Burgoyne (2001) identified over 1,000 traits distilled to 83 more or less distinct attributes. The following list of qualities produced by Adair (1973) is fairly typical:

• enthusiasm – to get things done, which they can communicate to other people;

• confidence – belief in themselves, which again people can sense (but this must not be over-confidence, which leads to arrogance);

• toughness – resilient, tenacious and demanding high standards, seeking respect but not necessarily popularity;

• integrity – being true to oneself: personal wholeness, soundness and honesty, which inspire trust;

• warmth – in personal relationships, caring for people and being considerate;

• humility – willingness to listen and take the blame; not being arrogant and overbearing.

Yet, as Levine (2008: 165) observed: ‘It is clear that traits alone are not sufficient to explain or to give rise to successful leadership… More importantly, there is no agreement about what mix of traits really distinguishes leaders from others.’ Adair (1973: 13) argued that the study of leadership in terms of the qualities that one person has to a greater degree than his or her fellows is still relevant, but it is far from being the whole story. The later leadership theories discussed below showed this to be the case.

Leadership behaviour studies

The conclusion that trait theory was too vague, inconsistent and generalized to help in understanding the process of leadership (and therefore the identification, selection and training of leaders) led to a shift of focus by researchers to how leaders behaved and the leadership styles they adopted. The studies at the Survey Research Centre in Michigan (Katz et al, 1950) identified two dimensions of leadership behaviour: 1) employee-centred behaviour, focusing on relationships and employee needs, and 2) job-centred behaviour, focusing on getting the job done.

Similar results were obtained by the Ohio State University research (Stogdill, 1950), which revealed two categories of leadership behaviour: 1) consideration (concern for people) and 2) initiating structure (getting the job done). In both cases, the researchers stressed that the two types of behaviour did not represent the extremes of a continuum. A leader can emphasize one or other of them or both to different degrees.

The problem with the leadership behaviour approach is that it did not take sufficient account of the effect of the situation in which leadership took place. This gap was filled by the contingent and situational theories described below.

Contingent leadership

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Armstrong’s Handbook of Management and Leadership for HR
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Preface
• Alignment of text with CIPD modules
• PART ONE Leading, managing and developing people fundamentals
• PART TWO Human resource management and learning and development
• PART THREE People management processes
• PART FOUR Leadership, management and learning and development skills
• Index
• Copyright