What Is Leadership As An Influence Process

If there are leaders there must be followers. It is often stated that we are all leaders, because we all have to take a leadership role at times. Equally, we are all followers at times. Even at the most senior levels in organizations, everyone is

One identified contributor to women's slower than expected assent into leadership is the persistence of assumptions and stereotypes that women are intrinsically "communal" or "dependent" and "passive", and therefore, lack the capacity to succeed as leaders. (National Academy of Sciences National Academy of Engineering Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, 2006 as cited by Isaac, Kaatz & Carnes, 2012).

In prior studies, leadership roles have been based off one’s sex instead of gender. According to Park, male gender qualities characterized as; aggressive, independent, objective, logical, rational,analytical, decisive, confident, assertive, ambitious, opportunistic and impersonal are distinguished from female gender qualities described as; emotional, sensitive, expressive, cooperative, intuitive, warm, tactful, receptive to ideas, talkative, gentle, empathetic, and submissive (p. 12). These characteristics brings up the notion of how women pursue being leaders because they are opposite of men who dominates the leadership

group effort and, therefore, leadership and followership” (p. 13). We must know how to follow before we can be effective leaders.

In cultures there are also ideas of how one decides what is a persons priority in life is. These ideas are individualism and collectivism. An individualist gives priority to ones own goals rather than the groups goals. A collectivist gives priority to the groups goals rather than their personal goals. In a culture of collectivists members may be more pressured or formed by the idea of what their roles are based on their gender, while individualists have more freedom to make decisions on what they personally desire. Despite this more gender competition is likely to exist in a group of individualists. People from the opposite gender while desire the same thing such as a job, or position. These two very different types of cultures affect how much and what type of gender competition exists.

Northouse (2016a) describes the development of female leadership. It was once a question if women could lead; yes, they can, but a gender gap exists. Differences between men and women that affect their job attainment. Although men and women may have equal access to entry and lower level positions, men hold more prestigious upper level jobs. Why does this occur? Generally, women have invested less than men in human capital: job history, training, and school. Women invest more time than men in taking care of family. As a result, men obtain jobs that require more responsibilities (Northouse, 2016a).

The articles this week examined leadership styles that rely not only on the leader but also on the followers driving organizational success and effectiveness. The following paragraphs will explore this idea of collective leadership as it relates to; leadership behavior (Druskat & Wheeler, 2003; Morgeson, 2005; Srivastava, Bartol, & Locke, 2006; Zhang & Bartol, 2010), problem solving and decision making (Brown & Finstuen, 1993; Klein, Ziegert, Knight, & Xiao, 2006; Zhang & Bartol, 2010), and overall team performance (Burke, DiaGranados, & Salas, 2011; Carson, Tesluk, & Marrone, 2007; Hiller, Day, & Vance, 2006).

In the formation of new groups, it has been found that gender functions primarily as a status cue (Eagly, et al., 1981). Gender informs people about status, because it is normally perceived in our society that men have higher status than women. Therefore, people enter into a group on unequal ground. Eagly, etc. also argue that men's nonconformity results in successful influence due to their higher status. In reference to occupational status, this study found that the perception of women as being more compliant in a job setting than men came from

In module 5, the concept that captivated me is leader influence. In my career, I been privilege to be surrounded by many influential leaders. Many of them are unaware that their leadership molded me into the type of leader I am today. I followed their lead because they took the time to develop me as a follower and leader. I need to enhance my leadership skills to inspire others the same way my supervisors and mentors had done to me.

Influence processes require some type of power to be effective. Leaders use power, both positional and personal, to influence the behavior and actions of others. The concept of influence processes is very much like leadership styles in the respect that there is not an exact number of the different types of influence processes. In this paper, six different influence processes will be discussed, with examples of the type of outcome a leader can achieve by using them. The seven influence processes discussed be Charisma, Legitimacy, Rewards, Expertise, Relationships, Empowering and positive

Everybody is Held Accountable - In a culture of responsibility the emphasis is on the self-awareness of your group and results.

This fact was analyzed by Heilman in 1983 by the theory of adjustment that he developed. The theory says that there is a certain role in the organization. Being administrator is associated in male, while women are seen as a person that is “not fit” in the role because they are perceived to bear lesser skills when it comes to performing certain skills compared to men( Godwin et al., 2006). As stated by Bird& Brush 2002 ,based on the social customs, women should be put at home and tasked to do housework and caring for both children and elderly, while men are responsible to support the family by going to work and bringing home with him a money to support the family. Wives should perform domestic and other labor on behalf of the male householder. (Labovitz,

In "Effects of gender and communication content on leadership emergence in small task-oriented groups" Hawkins discovers that it is the capability to master "task-relevant communication" which most often determines who will be selected as a small group's leader (Hawkins, 1995). Hawkins' research is supportive since it indicates that the roles of leadership are not determined by one's gender within small-group settings. Obviously, a greater level of cultural bias would most likely be apparent in larger social settings where the issue of actual power is more significantly featured. After 4 months of observing mixed-sex small-groups, Hawkins (1995) indicates that the only issue which could be used to guess the group's leader was an individual's ability to communicate effectively to the group what tasks needed to be done in order to resolve the problems given to them. This finding supports the fact that while there are obvious differences in the communication of men and women in their respective workplaces, not all styles of communication are dominated by one gender.

Leadership is a difficult word to define and according to the Miriam-Webster Dictionary leadership is the “office or position of a leader” (Miriam-Webster, 2010). This definition is definitely not one that I would ascribe to when discussing leadership. My definition of leadership is “the ability someone has to motivate and empower others to achieve a goal.” Some may add to this definition, others may discard it altogether and have a completely different definition. In the end, leadership takes on many different forms depending on who is doing the defining and we end up asking ourselves, what is leadership and why do we care?

Gender and leadership? Leadership and gender? A journey through the landscape of theories start off by giving a statistical summary of percentages of women in higher echelon position in the workforce. With this information in the intro, the article quickly highlights the limited representation of women in exclusive positions in Fortune 500 companies. Next, the paper examines multiple theories why this problem exists in the workforce. The four theories examined are biology and sex; gender role; causal factors; and attitudinal drivers (Appelbaum et al, 2003, p. 44).