Review of the Article, Consequences of Differentiated Leadership In Groups

Leadership in an organization often plays a critical role, and is frequently, though not always, one of the major drivers of the success or failure of a company. (Bass, 1990) Effective leadership helps a company through times of peril and brings a future of brightness. It makes a corporation successful. However, what is leadership? According to Kouzes and Posner, it is the art of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations. (1995, p.30) Leaders set a clear direction for us; they help us realize what is ahead; they support us to achieve and win; they encourage and inspire us when we feel depressed. Without leadership, an organization will degenerate into chaos and unstructured because people view things in different ways.

According to the leadership theory by Kurt Lewin (1939), there are different leadership styles that affect group dynamics such as decision-making, effectiveness of group work, communication, collaboration, and etc. The two of leadership styles, authoritarian and participative, are highly related to the concept of groupthink. Groups with autocratic leaders who promote their preferred solutions are more likely to fall into groupthink than groups with non-promotional leaders (i.e. democratic and impartial) (Ahlfinger & Esser, 2001). In other words, groups led by controlling leaders who fail to encourage participation of group members in decision-making process would produce symptoms of groupthink and poor quality of decisions. On the other hand, groups with democratic leaders who make decisions by consulting with the group members while still maintaining control of the group are guarded against groupthink (Kearney & Gebert, 2009). So allowing greater input from group members protects groups from making faulty irrational decisions and encourages open discussion and critical appraisal.

Leadership, team diversity and managing conflict resolution is just some of the high points for having a successful team or group. In this paper we will explain what leadership is and the different behavioral styles it represents. It will also touch base on setting higher expectations, creating a vision for the group, as well as stimulating the group to come up with challenging ways of doing things to help avoid burnout.

In leadership, leaders get his power from his group members. He proceeds in this position at the pleasure of members in his group collectively. The position of leadership exists in most settings regardless of group size. For instance, a leader of national or universal standing has vast influence over an expansive number of individuals while the influence of small group in a company is extremely constrained. Both are leaders in their own right and satisfy our definition of

Every person has a different definition of what makes a leader. Some feel a leader is inspirational, while others regard leadership as someone who can give criticism and make the tough decisions. Each definition is unique, and each is vague. This is why the definitions of leadership people use aren’t always accurate. Bolman and Deal, however, do an excellent job of presenting four frames of leadership people use to successfully—or unsuccessfully—support and lead a group of people. The four frames presented by the authors are: human resource, symbolic, structural, and political. The human resource frame is used by leaders to empathize with their followers, the symbolic frame is used to inspire and unite followers around a vision, the structural frame is used to emphasize the importance of a process, and the political frame establishes competition and focuses on creating allies.

Leadership theories in and of themselves carry negative and positives characteristics. Within the various theories lie strengths and weaknesses that when applied to complex problems can highlight each one respectively. As I examine a few theories, I will look at the strengths and weaknesses of each and determine when and with which situation would these theories best be utilized. Collective leadership or distributive leadership, and leader-member exchange are both theories that incorporate specific team or group mentalities.

Leadership has been described 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”...

Describe and explain how one leadership model (a model deemed valid by today’s research standards, as discussed in the module material) interacts with the most important performance outcomes with regard to teams.

In the 1930’s Kurt Lewin argued three major styles of leadership Autocratic, Democratic and Laissez-fair (Manktelow, n.d.). Kurt’s simple but effective categorized leadership models provided a foundation to many different leadership theories. An Autocratic leader is one who makes decisions without the help or input of others. Because this leader doesn’t consult with the team, team members may feel as though their opinion doesn’t matter thus losing a team oriented atmosphere. This type of leadership may be seem as demoralizing and lead to high turn over rates and absenteeism (Manktelow, n.d.). Team members may feel unimportant and therefore take less ownership of team outcomes. A Democratic leadership style however is the almost the exact opposite of

Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and practice (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

In today’s competitive world, leadership skills are crucial for both personal and professional development. Leadership is an important function of management which helps an individual or a business to maximize efficiency and to achieve goals. Leadership has different meanings to various authors.Most commonly, leadership is defined as influence, that is, the art of influencing people so that they will strive willingly and enthusiastically toward the achievement of group goals. (Koontz). Leadership is the process of influencing the activities of either formal or informal group in the task of goal setting and goal achievement. A leader is one whose magnetic personality innervates people for some cause. Not by words, but by their actions is

Throughout this study we have identified that leadership develops through size different stages that go from awareness to implementation. Since every person is different there the impact of each of these stages can affect the views towards themselves and also others. The process within each stage engaged developing self with group influences, which in turn influenced the changing view of self with others from dependence to interdependence and shaped the broadening view of leadership, shifting from an external view of leadership to leadership as a process (Komives, Owen, Longerbeam, Mainella,

Transformational leadership are classified into four components which are pointed out by Bass (1990, p. 28), ‘charisma, idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration’. Apart from these basic roles, charisma leadership, a collection of personal characteristics, has its own role of literature since it has similarity with transformational leadership and they are contribution to each other (Bertocci, 2009, p. 43; Judge & Piccolo, 2004, p. 755). Leaders’ behaviour reflects them being role models for their followers. Followers respect, admire and trust their leaders who have charismatic effect on their followers to an extremely high grade are willing to take risks

Leadership is the key issue in the development and advancement of groups, organizations, society and nations. The study of leadership plays a vital role in the behavioral and management sciences. It has also received a lot of attention, as well as is intensively explored even up to this day. This paper will be covering leadership proposed by Robert House which describes four styles of leadership, namely: (1) supportive leadership, (2) directive leadership, (3) participative leadership, and (4) achievement oriented leadership. This paper will be portraying the situations wherein each style would be appropriate, with the specific reference to the characteristics of the follower group and the nature of the

Leadership has been a topic that has been researched for a long time in many disciplines. Leadership as a personality focuses on the characteristics of an individual that gives them power to act as leaders. There is leadership as an attribution this approach views leadership as phenomenon that causes group of followers to have outcomes.(Wu et al, 2010, 90).Researchers have used the following approaches to study leadership; they are mainly trait, behavior, power influence, situation and integrative approaches. Trait approaches focuses on the characteristics, values, skill and personality of leaders. Behavior approaches is focused on the leaders behaviors, differentiating between the behavior of ineffective and effective leaders. Integrative approach combines all the approaches to have a holistic picture of the process, outcomes and determinants of leadership. The approach that this paper uses is situational approach that is not leader centered but more on the significance of the context as an influence of leadership. Leaders should be able to choose the leadership quality appropriate to a particular situation.