Leadership Dynamics: A practical guide to effective relationships - Softcover

Hollander, Edwin P.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0029148308 ISBN 13: 9780029148303

Verlag: Free Press, 1984

Inhaltsangabe

Leadership Dynamics is for leaders and aspiring leaders who want to learn more about the practicalities of the leader-follower relationship and the concepts of effective leadership. Emphasizing the transactional view of leadership as a two-way process of influence, it covers recent research findings (with more than 300 citations) and highlights such crucial topics as attaining and maintaining the leader role and making needed changes.

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Edwin P. Hollander has written extensively on leadership and related topics in social psychology. He is Professor of Psychology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he has also served as Provost of Social Sciences. A Columbia Ph.D., he began his leadership research while on duty as a navel aviation psychologist, and has taught at Carnegie-Mellon, Washington (St. Louis), and American universities, with visiting appointments at Istanbul, Wisconsin, Harvard, and Oxford universities. A Fellow of the American Psychological Association, Hollander is former president of its Division of General Psychology.

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"Leadership Dynamics" is for leaders and aspiring leaders who want to learn more about the practicalities of the leader-follower relationship and the concepts of effective leadership. Emphasizing the transactional view of leadership as a two-way process of influence, it covers recent research findings (with more than 300 citations) and highlights such crucial topics as as attaining and maintaining the leader role and making needed changes.

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Chapter 1

Leadership: What Is It?

Mention the term leadership and to most people it is likely to suggest an image of action and power. Leaders of social movements, political leaders, military commanders, and corporate and union heads may readily spring to mind. They usually are highly visible and often have compelling personalities. Not all leaders are like that, of course, nor does leadership require it.

Compared to the high-intensity extreme, a good deal of leadership is not especially noted for power or drama. However, its effects are generally felt more directly. This is leadership in which managers and supervisors direct activities within organizations and groups. Their mode of operation involves personal influence, often from a base of organizational authority.

Whether in the affairs of nations or in the many components of a society, the quality of leadership does matter. Leaders who can guide ventures successfully clearly have an impact. But in order to know about effective leadership it is necessary to look at the leader -- follower relationship, and not just at the leader alone. A fuller view of leadership needs to include followers and their responses to the leader.

Leadership Is An Influence Process

The theme of this book is that leadership is a process of influence between a leader and those who are followers. While the leader may have power, influence depends more on persuasion than on coercion. A leadership process usually involves a two-way influence relationship aimed primarily at attaining mutual goals, such as those of a group, organization, or society. Therefore, leadership is not just the job of the leader but also requires the cooperative efforts of others.

Followers need to be alert to leaders, and leaders to followers, if goals are to be gained effectively and with satisfaction. Furthermore, in many organizational activities being a leader can also mean being a follower. When a person is not a leader, he or she can still be a good follower.

Leaders are usually initiators of action. However, their initiatives can be accepted or not by followers. Much depends upon the qualities of the leader, including the power of office, personal appeal to followers, and the meshing of the leader's ideas and programs with group and organizational needs.

The essential point is that followers are responsive to leaders and what they say and do. In other words, leaders usually hold the attention of followers, and the leader's behavior often is taken as a positive or negative sign by followers. Similarly, the successful leader is alert to the positive or negative reactions of followers.

Background

Leadership affects all of us. It generates a great deal of interest due to the day-to-day experiences we have in situations where we may serve as leaders or be faced with others who are leaders. Because leaders usually are at the center of activity, their qualities are often the focus of attention. But looking at leadership as a process means that many questions must be considered about how and why some people become leaders, who they are, and how well they perform relative to followers' expectations. All of these questions will be dealt with here in some way.

There are many traditional ideas about leadership that have proved questionable. Perhaps the most common one is the notion that "leaders are born, not made" -- which is a concept that few organizations could live with in practice. In actuality, the behaviors recognized as "leadership" must include the reactions of followers. Therefore, leadership is not confined to a single person in a group but depends upon other members as well. Yet, the terms leadership and leader are still used as if they were the same. For instance, the statement "We need new leadership" usually means that another leader, with different characteristics, is needed.

Although leadership is not just one person, it is easier, of course, to see it embodied in an individual. This is because leaders are usually more active, and their actions command attention and make things happen. In general, the leader is often the most influential member of his or her group. History is full of accounts of the attainments of leaders and of their personal qualities. The game of "might have been" is loaded with this element: Would the American Colonies have successfully won their freedom without George Washington? Would the British have been able to rally as quickly and enthusiastically, against great odds in the 1940 Battle of Britain, without Winston Churchill? It is not entirely possible to say, but the conventional wisdom is that these leaders mattered a great deal.

Varieties of Leadership

* The Scope of Leadership Is Very Wide. Almost any task related to organized activity involves leadership, or at least is associated with it. There is nothing so central to the functioning of groups or organizations, whether in government, industry, or any other place in society.

Leadership exists as authority over others in the case of organizations and nations, and as dominance among less organized groups such as animals and children. The presence of some form of leadership is widespread, however, whether it depends upon tradition or the changing demands of new circumstances.

The various functions of leadership include organizing, directing, and coordinating efforts. There are also such functions as maintaining the group, defining the situation, and setting goals. Leadership also involves internal and external relationships, including conflicts. This means negotiating and settling disputes with other social units, in organizations, and with other agencies and nations in the government and world arenas.

* Ideas about Leadership Come from both the Giving and the Receiving End. Anyone who has had the experience of chairing a meeting, organizing a group effort, or observing a political figure in action has developed some sense of what leadership is about. That sense is a mental picture of factors making for effective, or ineffective, leadership. It is one's own ideas about how leaders act and get things done. For instance, some leaders have the idea that they must "lean on people" or "be remote," if they are to be successful. The basis for these ideas comes from subjective impressions, and there are many impressions that give an opposite view.

Not only can we be leaders ourselves, we cannot avoid being affected by those who are leaders. Because it compels interest, people are never entirely neutral about leadership, and there are wide variations in how leadership is viewed. Different aspects of leadership may be given major attention, but almost always there is attention to the qualities of "the leader."

Leadership and the Leader

* Leadership Is a Process, Not a Person, Although It Depends on a Leader's Legitimacy. Certainly, the leader is the central and often the vital part of the leadership process. However, the followers are also important in the picture. Without responsive followers there is no leadership, because the concept of leadership is relational. It involves someone who exerts influence, and those who are influenced. However, influence can flow both ways. People other than the leader, and the nature of the social setting in which they relate to one another, are also necessary parts of leadership.

Being a leader is not a fixed condition. As with many roles in life, who the leader is can be a changeable matter. Furthermore, the route by which the leader achieved that role can vary considerably among leaders.

Some leaders are "put in charge" by outside authority. The leader's "legitimacy" in this case comes from appointment. This is a typical condition in...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Free Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1984
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0029148308
• ISBN 13: 9780029148303
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 228
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande