With Leadership, There Comes Power

With Leadership There Comes Power

Robert Townsend once said “true leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not the enrichment of the leaders.” In return, the way a follower benefits helps determine whether or not an organization will succeed or fail. The final outcome of an organization is not only determined by how well a leader leads, but also how well the followers follow (Bateman 396). Great followers help create great leaders. From an organizational point of view, leadership is vital because it has such a powerful influence on individual and group behavior. It’s through a leader’s power and how they exercise it that creates this influence.

Leadership can be divided into three traditional approaches: the trait approach, the behavioral approach, and the situational approach. The oldest of theses approaches is the trait approach. Here, the focus lies the leaders as individuals, and which characteristics the have in common with other great leaders, such as Martin Luther King and Winston Churchill. This approach follows the concept that “leaders are born, not made” (Bateman 399). It is believed that there are a few key characteristics that set great leaders apart from others; characteristics such as a person’s drive, their motivation to lead, their integrity, self-confidence, their actual knowledge of the business, and most importantly, they must be able to adjust to the needs and goals of others (400).

The next approach to leadership is the situational approach. This approach believes that leaders don’t have specific traits or behaviors that initiate their leadership style. Instead, there is the idea that behaviors change according to the situation. One model of this approach is Vroom’s model of leadership which assesses a situation in order to determine the best leadership style to employ (Bateman 405).

The final approach is the behavioral approach. It examines the behaviors that leaders actually exhibit, instead of their characteristics (401). One theory, the leader-member exchange (LMX) expands the focus from a leader’s organizational group relationship, to also the relationship they have personally with individual employees (Bateman 402). However, these personal relationships with individual employees can create a divide amongst followers. In each individual relationship, treatment is never consistent across the board, resulting in two groups (Krishnan 15). The first group, the in-group, is the “trusted followers” with whom the leader generally forms a higher quality relationship with. The followers in the second group, the out-group, have a more formal relationship with the leader (15). Depending on which group an employee falls under can affect their entire work experience.

There have been many concepts on leadership styles over the years. One, recognized by James MacGregor Burns’ (1978), believes that leadership is based on two concepts, transformational leadership and transactional leadership (Krishnan 14). The difference between the two lies in what one offers one another. Through transformational leadership people “engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality” (Burns 20). Burns explained that transformational leadership resulted in “a relationship of mutual stimulation and elevation that converts followers into leaders and may convert leaders into moral agents” (Krishnan 14). Transformational leadership can create excitement that can revitalize an organization, unlike transactional leadership which uses the leader’s ability to negotiate for a desired level of performance (Ferrell 134). As leaders, they accept the existing structure of an organization, including their goals. Unlike transformational leadership, transactional leadership is unable to bring about a significant amount of change to an organization.

In 1990, Bass and Avolio developed an assessment tool for transformational and transactional leadership called the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ), which was revised in 1995 (Krishnan 14). This questionnaire measures four dimensions of transformational leadership. The first dimension is idealized influence, or charisma, which is the degree to which the leader behaves in order for followers to identify with them (Griffin 348). Charismatic leaders display their convictions, and follow their own set of values, creating a role model for their employees to follow. The second dimension, inspirational motivation, is the degree to which a vision is articulated to inspire and appeal to followers (Krishnan 14). Through this, leaders challenge employees, communicate objectives and give meaning to the organization’s current goal. The next dimension, intellectual stimulation, is the degree to which a leader arouses awareness of an organization’s problems and provides possible solutions (Bateman 411). A leader stimulates the imagination through challenging employees and taking risks, which generates new thoughts and ideas. Finally, the last dimension, individualized consideration, is the amount of attention a leader gives to their followers, including mentoring them and listening to their needs (411).

For transactional leadership, the MLQ covers contingent reward and management by exception, both in active and passive forms (Brymer n.p.). The contingent reward consists of a positive exchange where a leader only rewards followers who complete a task up to satisfactory. The next dimension the MLQ covers in transaction leadership is the active form of management by exception. Through this form a leader continuously monitors employees’ performance, correcting mistakes as they occur. A set of standards are already set and monitoring employees begins at the beginning of a task. This allows immediate action by the leader to correct any problems or mistakes that may emerge during the process. However, during passive management by exception it isn’t until a problem or mistake has been identified, that a leader steps in, and only then standards are made clear (Williams n.p.). According to Williams, transactional leaders are mainly motivated to fulfill their own self-interest (n.p.).

Daniel Goleman introduced another major concept on leadership styles. In his 2000 article “Leadership That Gets Results” in the Harvard Business Review, he identified six styles that are based on a person’s emotional intelligence (Ferrell 133-134). Goleman’s six different leadership styles are the coercive leader, the pacesetting leader, the affiliative leader, the democratic leader, the coaching leader and