For Chemers (2002), leadership can be defined as the 'process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task', whereas Ogbonnia (2007) argues that 'effective leadership is the ability to successfully integrate and maximize available resources within the internal and external environment for the attainment of organizational or societal goals.' Both definitions posit a slightly different understanding of leadership. For Chemers, the notion of a centralized figure exerting a gravitational pull on those around him or her is key, whereas for Ogbonnia, the role of the centralized leader is an increasingly marginalised presence, a figure that exists solely to render others more useful who decreases in presence as they progress in their leadership duties. Although both notions differ somewhat, particularly in terms of the specific role of the leader, they both highlight an important point: namely that the leader is a person who exists as a focal point for a group or society. In this sense, we are probably best to follow Ann Marie Swain's reckoning that leadership is about the leader, the group, and an implicit understanding between both parties that they must work together to achieve things: 'leadership is about capacity: the capacity of leaders to listen and observe, to use their expertise as a starting point to encourage dialogue between all levels of decision-making, to establish processes and transparency in decision-making, to articulate their own values and visions clearly but not impose them. Leadership is about setting and not just reacting to agendas, identifying problems, and initiating change that makes for substantive improvement rather than managing change.'
Perhaps the best way of understanding the different notions of leadership is by comparing and contrasting different leaders. Particularly useful is to compare a leader that is believed to be "good" and another that is believed to be less so. For Schein, the most important building block of leadership is the philosophy of an organizations founder. He notes that 'founder usually have a major impact on how the group initially defines and solves its external adaptation and internal integration problems. Because they had the original idea, they will typically have their own notion, based on their own cultural history and personality, of how to fulfil the idea.' (2004, p. 227) Furthermore, he adds that 'political groups are initiated by leaders who sell new visions and new solutions to problems.' (p. 226) Given this formulation, it seems interesting to tackle the case of the current US President Barack Obama. Before looking at the innovations he has made in modern political leadership, it is necessary to look at the what Schein calls the 'culture…created by shared experience' (p. 225) of the US political landscape, and in particular the Democratic party.
Barack Obama announced he was running for President on February 10, 2007, using the symbolic setting of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, the same location that Abraham Lincoln had delivered his seminal "House Divided" speech. As we can see, Obama was making a tacit link with the great Democrats of the past, and in so doing, was linking their mythology with his own. The Democratic party was at this time on the up, but only after having seen George W. Bush elected for a second term after beating John Kerry in the 2004 elections. In many ways, Obama standing for President changed the outlook for the Democratic party (coupled with a major Democratic swing in Congress and the House of Representatives following the disastrous association for George Bush and the Republicans with the Iraq war), galvanising them to unify around a central message of change: "Yes We Can'. Accordingly, his election showed powers of leadership as outlined by Chemers. His election made sense globally instead of just locally and he was fully able to 'enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task'. As Obama himself said in an article for 'Foreign Affairs', 'after Iraq, we may be tempted to turn inward. That would be a mistake. The American moment is not over, but it must be seized anew. We must bring the war to a responsible end and then renew our leadership -- military, diplomatic, moral -- to confront new threats and capitalize on new opportunities. America cannot meet this century's challenges alone; the world cannot meet them without America.' (Obama, 2007). Once again, the central message is made clear: the idea of leadership, both local and global, needs to be recalibrated. Moreover, this is not something that can be done in isolation to the world, but must be done in unison.
In this sense, it is hard to understand the actions of Barack Obama, and his leadership qualities as falling under the the trait theory. As Kirkpatrick and Locke (1991, p. 48) note, 'trait theories [do] not make assumptions about whether leadership traits were inherited or acquired. They simply asserted that leaders' characteristics are different from non-leaders. Traits such as height, weight, and physique are heavily dependent on heredity, whereas others such as knowledge of the industry are dependent on experience and learning.'
In terms of business organizations, the focus seems to have shifted in recent years. There has been a move away from older leadership styles that placed a premium on planning, problem-solving, and more administrative tasks, towards creating influence in the work space, inspiring staff, and articulating a mission or vision. (Bryman, 1993) For Sanders, Hopkins, and Leroy (2003), this new leadership can be broken down into three compact subdivisions, the transformational, the transcendental, and the transactional. This spiritual look at how leadership should be conducted within a business framework, empowering staff to achieve goals through inspiration, even eliciting a change of attitude in those staff, is one echoed by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner (2007). They note that '"Leaders are in love - in love with the people who do the work, with what their organizations produce and with their customers." This romanticised image of business leadership is one that can be backed up with profit driven results. For example, Kouzes and Posner note the case of Janel Aherns, a manager at National Semiconductor: 'Janel would make notes about important events in other people's lives and then follow up with them directly after or simply them luck prior to an important event. Every person was "genuinely touched that I cared enough to ask them about how things are going." She told us that in her organization "work relationships have been stronger since this undertaking."' (p.22) Recent leader scholarship has been based around five key notions. Taking liberally from the old leadership theories, the first point begins with planning. This is essential for team coordination. More importantly, planning should encompass planning for the unexpected. Good leadership should identify possible problems before they exist. Followed closely behind planning is the notion of vision, touched on briefly above. Given the need for foresight in planning, vision should be understood as the execution of good planning. A manager that puts in place a new computer software system at a business should envisage that the implementation of the scheme may hit unexpected problems. With suitable planning and contingencies, the vision of instigating the changes company-wide with the minimum amount of disruption would be understood as the vision. However, integral to any idea of vision is the ability to communicate to the team. Here, the sentimentalising of leadership seen above comes into full force. A leader's job is to lead and by extension, he needs people to lead, who more importantly are willing to be lead. Subsequently, a leader new to lead by example. A manager that works less than his staff, merely by dint of his superior position only inspires resentment. Accordingly, they must offer an example of how staff below them should operate. Finally, they need to take charge - to instigate change and provide the forward momentum necessary to enact such change. One example of this is the Strategic Contingencies Theory. The theory revolves around the idea good leadership is the notion of problem skills, actor centrality and uniqueness of skill. If a leader has experience managing a team, he has both actor centrality and uniqueness of skills. As such, he is in the position to articulate change if something goes wrong. Planning, vision and execution combine to overcome obstacles. For Hersey and Blanchard (2007), leadership needed to be understood along these lines but they made a subtle distinction. Leadership can only enact change when they tailor the changes they make according to employee maturity. In this sense, leadership can be held back by employee maturity (or vice versa), but their results are less on their own personal trait, but that of those below them.
As such, criticisms of trait theory are well known. Spillane (2004), Lewin et al (1939) and various others chose to move away from the orthodoxy of classical trait theory and look more closely at leadership systems. The study of Lewin et al is particularly poignant for any discussion of Barack Obama. For all the democratic posturing of the Bush regime, the decision making processes they outlined often bordered on the autocratic. For Lewin et, whose study looked at the various systems in place for leadership to come to the fore, a democratic system best fulfilled the need for a leader to lead, and to allow a group to achieve a common, group-based goal. They looked closely at authoritarian rule, laissez fair rule, and democratic rule. The comparison between laissez faire and democratic systems, the former being for a long period of time the singular common foreign policy of pre-war America, and the latter, a more recognisably post-war political ambience, is particularly interesting. This behavioural model found that laissez-faire leaders were less inclined to give praise or join in with group actions and strategies. Unsurprisingly, they concluded that the democratic behavioural model was the best for attaining group results.
In many ways, the case for President Obama being a good long-term leader is yet to be fully tested. Faced with myriad problems including a disintegrating domestic economy, a global economic crisis that is sending past streams of US income the way of China, a war in Afghanistan and Iraq, unemployment, budget deficits, a punishing health reform programme to push through, the headache of Guantanomo, and many more problems, his ability to counter them all so soon into his rule is almost impossible to imagine. Nonetheless, it seems clear that he is putting good steps into practice, and this is something the Nobel Committee were also keen to point out in awarding him the 2009 Peace Prize. Their Press Release acknowledges how early a juncture it is, but made its decision on encouraging signs. They state that 'The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.' They praise him for creating 'a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play.' Furthermore, they note that 'his diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.' (Nobel Press Release, 2009) As we can see, they praise him precisely for his skills as a leader, for allowing many to cooperate in the work of the whole, and for inspiring the whole to act as such. Whether or not we agree with the Nobel Comitte for granting the prize to Obama, we cannot dispute that they have decided to award it for the same reasons that he represents such a strong and powerful global leader.
As Yukl points out, 'Most researchers evaluate leadership effectiveness in terms of the consequences of the leader's actions for followers and other organization stakeholders' but that 'Criteria that are negatively correlated are especially troublesome because of the complex trade-offs among them. When evaluating leadership effectiveness, multiple criteria should be considered to deal with these complexities and the different preferences of various stakeholders.' (Yukl, 2009)
However, to understand what makes a bad leader, it is also necessary to understand what a bad follower is. As Kellerman notes, 'We know full well that bad leaders of various kinds abound and that their followers usually follow, even when they know that their leaders are misguided or malevolent. Why? The answer to this question matters, because we can't expect to reduce the number of bad leaders unless we reduce the number of bad followers.' (Kellerman, p. 26) IN the situation outlined above, the behavioural system is one suited towards good leadership. The elections are democratic, and there is a strong desire amongst the people to elect a solid and trustworthy leader. The problem lies in the fact that any leader voted into power amongst a society, 'with the support of the head of state comprising Islamic fundamentalists, liberals and left-wing extremists - he had to constantly fight to maintain a delicate glimmer of consensus under military rule. The needs of the group are so varied, and so violently opposed, that there is no setting for good rule to take place. It is important to point out that this is not the case for Barack Obama, and this is probably the unspoken truth behind Kellerman's point that the US has never had an explicitly "bad" leader. The conditions for ruling are such in America that the constitutional allowance made for removing a bad leader, say in the case of Nixon after the Watergate scandal, are such that bad leaders are rarely able to last long, or to even get to top positions of authority. Nonetheless, the case of Mauritania is worth bearing in mind for Barack Obama. He needs a united people who can believe in his reforms if he is to have any chance of remaining a "good" leader. As he may come to find, often, the only difference between a good and a bad leader is the public that elect them.
Returning once again to bad leadership in business organizations, the case is somewhat more complicated. For House and Mitchell (1974), the four types of leadership define how leadership should not be conducted. Firstly, leadership should be based around support. As human beings, both leaders and staff share certain key characteristics. An effective leader should keep this at the forefront of their mind, and plan accordingly. They should not expect people to undertake tasks that are unreasonable and not humanly possible, and they should be sensitive to their needs and desires. Secondly, their leadership should be directive. Staff need to know what is expected of them and when they need to achieve certain goals by. Accordingly, an effective leader will provide staff with time sheets, production schedules and so on, so the members of staff are clear over what is expected of them. It is a well-established norm that when staff are secure in their position, aware of what is expected of them, and content with meeting goals, their overall job satisfaction is much higher. Nonetheless, this directive leadership assume employee passivity, and another facet of path-goal theory is that leaders need to be receptive to ideas from those below them, taking into account their views, processing them, and choosing the best course of action. Finally, the leader's overall approach must be goal based. For both the leader, the employees and the organization, a goal needs to be identified and reached. Of course, certain problems stand out within this theory. Firstly, it tends to assume that staff are if not passive, then wholly rational. As such, they take on board what is told to them and act accordingly. Often the reality does not correspond with the theory, and we once again return to a point, witnessed earlier in the examples of political leadership, in which the role of the leader is to a large extent, codified by the actions (or inactions) of those he is supposed to lead.
For Bass (1985), one way round this conundrum was for leaders to focus their energies on the dynamic of the group or organization. Having already identifies a goal, the leader should set about readying staff for the completion of the goal. Thus, for Bass, a leader had to become transformational: to change not only an individual, but also a group into behaving as he wished in order to complete a set of goals. Thus, he identifies three key steps in which leaders are able to change their followers:
'Increasing their awareness of task importance and value, getting them to focus first on team or organizational goals, rather than their own interests, and activating their higher-order needs.' (Changing Minds)
More than this though, this ability to influence change was based on several key foundations, 'idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration, and three moral aspects: The moral character of the leader, the ethical values embedded in the leader's vision, articulation, and program (which followers either embrace or reject), and the morality of the processes of social ethical choice and action that leaders and followers engage in and collectively pursue.' (Changing Minds)
In this formulation, the leader is imagined as someone who contains enough within himself or herself that they appeal to those they are supposed to follow. As such, we overcome the issue of the leader being governed by those who follow him, and in this case, those that follow identify something in their leader that allows them to follow without hesitation. Thus for Bass, leaders such as Hitler and Jim Jones were excellent examples, because they articulated a belief of the group simply by containing within them certain traits the group deemed necessary. We may take issue with Bass' choices, but his theory of transformational leadership does offer a way round that power of the group, simply because the leader comes to be seen as some sort of singular definition of that group.
Having comes to this point in which we understand a leader as in some way transformative, and able to sum up the aims of his followers, it is necessary to draw some more personal conclusions. As identified above, the leader's role is a tough one. He needs to articulate a vision, communicate it, plan it, and watch it to fruition. It is not a job that he or she can do alone, so they must use the power of the group to give momentum to a project. For Christian Nevell Bovee, the following traits are important: 'Six traits of effective leaders: 1. Make others feel important; 2. Promote a vision; 3. Follow the golden rule; 4. Admit mistakes; 5. Criticize others only in private; 6. Stay close to the action. Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.' In many ways, this seems a suitable summation of leadership. For myself, leadership involves acknowledging those who work under you, and making them want to work for the beliefs that ideally, are communal in an organization. Articulating your vision, and how through cooperation that vision can become a reality is of paramount importance. Having witnessed the power of those who work under a leader and their ability to destabilise their position, it seems clear to me that a respect for followers is the most important thing a leader can possess. However, they need to impress upon them that they are in charge, and as real-life examples, prove, by combining the two, effective leadership can be maintained and built upon.
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http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/theories/bass_transformational.htm
