Leadership for Organizations
eBook - ePub

Leadership for Organizations

David Waldman, Charles A. O′Reilly

Share book
  1. 256 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Leadership for Organizations

David Waldman, Charles A. O′Reilly

Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations

About This Book

The need to develop better business leaders has never been greater. Leadership for Organizations provides a brief overview of leadership at the individual, team, and organizational levels. Authors David A. Waldman and Charles O'Reilly expertly cover the foundational leadership approaches with a special emphasis on contemporary issues as well as visionary and strategic leadership. The text is accompanied by more than 40 video cases from Stanford Graduate School of Business's Leadership in Focus video collection. Students learn through role-modeling as they watch real-world leaders, ranging from first-time managers to CEOs, share stories of their leadership challenges and successes. A Complete Teaching & Learning Package SAGE Premium Video
Included in the interactive eBook! SAGE Premium Video tools and resources boost comprehension and bolster analysis and include videos from Stanford's Leadership in Focus video collection. Learn more. Interactive eBook
Includes access to SAGE Premium Video, multimedia tools, and much more! Save when you bundle the interactive eBook with the print version. Order using bundle ISBN: 978-1-5443-6582-4. Learn more. SAGE coursepacks
FREE! Easily import our quality instructor and student resource content into your school's learning management system (LMS) and save time. Learn more. SAGE edge
FREE online resources for students that make learning easier. See how your students benefit.

Frequently asked questions

How do I cancel my subscription?
Simply head over to the account section in settings and click on “Cancel Subscription” - it’s as simple as that. After you cancel, your membership will stay active for the remainder of the time you’ve paid for. Learn more here.
Can/how do I download books?
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
What is the difference between the pricing plans?
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlego’s features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan you’ll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
What is Perlego?
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Do you support text-to-speech?
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Is Leadership for Organizations an online PDF/ePUB?
Yes, you can access Leadership for Organizations by David Waldman, Charles A. O′Reilly in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Business & Management. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Year
2018
ISBN
9781544360539
Subtopic
Management
Edition
1

Part One Foundations for Effective Leadership

Chapter One Introduction

Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.
—Jack Welch, former CEO of GE
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
—President and General Dwight D. Eisenhower

Learning Objectives

  • 1.1 Define organizational leadership
  • 1.2 Describe the difference between leadership and management
  • 1.3 Summarize the ways leaders are both born and made
  • 1.4 Explain how organizations benefit from leadership
  • 1.5 Discuss the importance of context to leadership
  • 1.6 Describe how leadership can be learned based on science and as an art
Various writers, pundits, and executives have argued that leadership is the key to sustained competitive advantage on the part of organizations—both in the United States as well as internationally. On the other hand, many people have grown cynical about existing people who are in leadership positions in both public and private sectors. Such cynicism is not surprising given alarming corporate scandals in recent years, a lack of accountability on the part of individuals in leadership roles, and stories of unethical or abusive management practices by supervisors, mid-level managers, and executives. Nevertheless, it is clear from research that, increasingly, the possession of leadership qualities and the display of effective leader behaviors are requirements for organizational effectiveness, as well as for individuals attempting to progress in managerial positions in their careers.1 As such, it is important for aspiring managers to learn about the nature of effective leadership practices and how they can develop their own competencies in this area. In short, leadership qualities represent a source of competitive advantage for both you and the organizations with which you will be associated. But what is effective leadership all about?

Defining Organizational Leadership

Various definitions of leadership can be found in the literature. For example, Gary Yukl, a renowned leadership scholar, defined leadership as “a process whereby intentional influence is exerted over other people to guide, structure, and facilitate activities and relationships in a group or organization.”2 Our own definition is more specific in terms of what that influence is all about: the process of exerting intentional influence toward the ideas, beliefs/values, capabilities, and behaviors of others, willingly on their part, toward an organizational goal(s) or vision.
Several things should be noted regarding our definition. First, although the term leadership has been applied to inanimate organizations (e.g., XYZ firm is a technological leader in the computer industry), we view leadership as pertaining to individuals rather than organizations as a whole. Second, leadership is a process rather than simply referring to people in formal leadership roles. So although common parlance might refer to particular individuals as “leaders” in their respective organizations, we argue in this book that just because an individual occupies a formal leadership role (e.g., supervisor or manager) does not necessarily mean that the person demonstrates leadership. Third, beyond people in formal leadership roles, leadership could involve other individuals, or what might be termed informal leaders. You have probably known such people who, although they had no official leadership title, routinely influenced their coworkers. We will consider informal leadership in some detail in chapter 8. Fourth, organizations have various levels at which leadership might be exhibited. These include supervisory, middle level management, and executive levels. Although there are commonalities in terms of effective leadership behavior at each of these levels, there are also differences. For example, visionary leadership, a topic that we address in chapter 11, is most relevant at executive or strategic levels.

Some Important Introductory Questions

There are some classic questions that often arise when people consider leadership and leaders, including these:
  1. Is there a difference between leadership and management?
  2. Are leaders born, or are they made?
  3. Why exactly is leadership so important for organizations?
  4. How does context affect leadership?

Leadership Versus Management: How Are They Different?

There is an age-old, ongoing discourse as to whether management is really different from leadership. Some might claim that it’s just a matter of semantics. But we believe that there are some key differences, which we outline below.

Managers do things right. Leaders do the right thing.

Management is largely all about efficiency in terms of dealing with people, costs, equipment, and various systems in order to accomplish organizational goals. So managers attempt to perfect procedures or processes that will accomplish such efficiencies. On the other hand, leaders continually question whether procedures, processes, and even goals are even appropriate. Moreover, they continually monitor the ethics of what they and others are doing.

Managers deal with the status quo. Leaders change the status quo.

Managers largely accept things, or the status quo, as they are. So, for example, if a procedure or a policy is in place to deal with customer complaints, a manager will simply find the most effective way to implement the procedure or policy and then ensure that others (e.g., subordinates) carry it out. However, leaders do not merely accept the status quo; instead, they continually seek ways to change it for the purpose of continuous improvement. So if existing ways for dealing with customer complaints might be improved, leaders will attempt to do so—even if it means changing formal procedures or policies.
Perhaps you have heard the expression “it is what it is.” Individuals who use this expression a lot are more in the mode of what management is all about. They believe that they are simply being pragmatic by resigning themselves to dealing with the status quo. However, leaders might acknowledge that “it is what it is,” but then, they quickly add “it’s not what it could or should be.” In other words, leaders do not simply resign themselves to the status quo; instead, they think more in terms of possibilities and changing the status quo.
Another distinction can be made by contrasting politicians and leaders. Politicians often postpone making decisions out of fear of losing popularity among their constituents. In contrast, leaders make decisions, even if those decisions are risky and unpopular. Perhaps this is why so many politicians are not seen as leaders.
We had a student once who was a veteran of the Iraq war. He said that a superior officer (i.e., manager) could get soldiers into a Humvee with all of the equipment that they needed for a fight. However, only a leader could get them out of the Humvee and fully engaged in a fight. Two of the leaders who are featured in the videos associated with this book echo these sentiments. Bill Campbell, the former CEO and chairman of the software company Intuit, used to say, “Your title makes you a manager. Your people make you a leader.” Kent Thiry, CEO of the health care company DaVita, makes the same point by noting that “just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, leadership is in the eyes of the led. You’re not a leader unless people decide you are.”3
In his classic book, Good to Great,4 Jim Collins used the metaphor of a bus in describing effective leadership. He said that the truly exceptional leaders are able to first get the appropriate people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and then the appropriate people in the seats most suited for them. Further, such leaders then figure out where to drive the bus. One interesting thing about this metaphor is that it actually involves both good management and leadership. Management, especially human resource management, is partially about finding the right people and placing them in the right jobs and teams. However, determining goals and vision is the prerogative of leaders. The bottom line is that the distinction between management and leadership is largely for didactic purposes, and in reality, both are necessary for effective organizations. Further, both leadership and management can potentially be shown by the same individual, although some individuals may gravitate toward showing one versus the other in their day-to-day actions in organizations.

Are Leaders Born, or Are They Made?

This question is truly classic, and it has been raised time and again in the media and in popular culture. Proponents of the leaders are born argument would suggest that leadership qualities are genetically predetermined. In chapter 2, we deal with leader characteristics, some of which are trait-oriented, suggesting a predisposition toward leadership that only some individuals might possess. Indeed, an interesting stream of research involving sets of identical twins who are separated at birth would suggest a tendency for both twins in a given set to either gravitate to leadership positions in later life or for both to not gravitate.5 In other words, there is more of a tendency for both twins to end up in similar roles (i.e., both as leaders, or both as non-leaders) rather than to end up in diverse leadership roles, whereby one is in a leadership role, but the other is not. Since only the nature portion of the nature-nurture dichotomy is constant for such identical twins who are separated at birth, the logical conclusion is that leaders are born rather than made. However, we must again stress that this research identified only who would end up in leadership roles rather than whether a twin would practice effective leadership as defined in this book.
Contradicting the nature argument, literally billions of dollars are spent every year under the premise that leaders, and leadership, can be made. In other words, the idea is that under the right circumstances (e.g., the right approach to training or development), better leaders will result. A plethora of techniques have been used in recent years in order to try to develop leaders. These techniques include more traditional approaches, such as having individuals in leadership positions receive counseling or executive coaching or listen to motivational speakers about the nature and importance of leadership. But they can also include more extreme approaches such as having executives go through eye-opening, consciousness-raising experiences, such as spending significant amounts of time living in impoverished or developing economies (i.e., for the purpose of enhancing one’s perspective on the need for more ethical or socially responsible organizations).6
So which way is it; are leaders born, or are they made? If you guess that both options are correct, you are probably accurate. In other words, leaders are both born and made. A compromise answer would suggest that people are born with some leadership qualities, although those qualities can be molded to take shape based on early life experiences. Then by the time an individual reaches adulthood, his or her trajectory in terms of leadership tendencies is pretty much set.
Consider the following example. Research has shown that there are intrinsic and somewhat stable brain structures that manifest themselves as ongoing electrical energy patterns in the brain. Indeed, identifiable brain structures have been linked to various forms of leader qualities and behaviors, such as visionary and ethical leadership.7 These brain structures may be somewhat genetic in their origin, although based on the principle of neuroplasticity, they can be shaped through life experiences and systematic interventions, such as neurofeedback. Neurofeedback is a technique that is designed to guide an individual to alter neurological pathways in the brain toward a more healthy or peak performance state.8 Can a technique like neurofeedback be used to help develop better leadership abilities? The answer is not clear at this point, although perhaps neurofeedback might eventually be used in combination with other, more traditional techniques for developing leadership, such as executive coaching.9
We conclude that although some individuals are born with certain predispositions that might be favorable to the eventual demonstration of effective leadership in their lives, leadership capabilities are nevertheless largely malleable. In other words, leadership qualities a...

Table of contents