Leadership Theories Top 10

- We're going to look at 10 of the most respected leadership theories out there. This is like a free mini course. What I've done is taken a string of individual videos I've already posted, I'm patching them together to put these different models and theories in one place so that you can see the development, the arc in roughly chronological order. And here's what we'll cover. Number one, the traits approach to leadership two, leadership styles, which include the democratic, autocratic and laissez Faire styles. Three, the behavioral or skills-based approaches that look at both task and relationship behaviors Four, the situational approach to leadership. Five, transactional, six, transformational and seven, the charismatic approaches to leadership. Eight, the vertical dyad linkage model. Nine, leader member exchange theory, and 10, servant leadership. I won't cover all theories but these are 10 highly respected theories. Before we jump in, I have three free resources for you. The first is a PDF download that will help you become a more confident public speaker. The second is a PDF download on the top five essential communication skills for professionals, and third, you can take a look at any of my online classes at the Communication Coach Academy, there's always at least one free class on that website. I put links to those three resources in the description below. Now let's jump right in and talk about the first theory, the trait approach to leadership. We are going to talk about the traits theory of leadership. This is a valuable approach but it's not without its critics, so let's get into it. (energetic upbeat music) Hello there friends, I'm Alex Lyon, and we have almost 200 videos on communication and leadership on this channel. Virtually everything I'm going to share on this video comes from two excellent books, Johnson and Hackman's book on Leadership, A Communication Perspective and Peter Northouse's book on Leadership. I highly recommend both of these books and I will put those references and links in the description below this video. The study of leadership traits goes back to the early 1900s, it's the first systematic study of leadership and it continues to this day. The social scientific approach is a reflection of what was happening in the field of psychology at the time, that was looking at individuals various personality traits. A trait is a defining characteristic quality or enduring tendency of a person. Or according to this research traits are part of how we're born, they're woven into our DNA, just like eye color, heights and other physical traits. We also have various personality traits. The traits theory of leadership says that, "Leaders share a collection of distinguishing traits that the average person does not." Those traits make natural born leaders, this is what we call it the great man quote, or great person theory. Northouse lists well-known political and military leaders such as Catherine, the great Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Joan of Arc, Napoleon Bonaparte as examples of born leaders. There are certain traits that contribute to superior leadership performance and the thinking goes, everybody around these individuals recognizes or perceives certain traits as leadership qualities. There have been scores of these studies and it's important to mention that each study comes up with a different list of traits that leaders possess. So this can get a little confusing. So one way to overcome that is to do a meta analysis that looks across these different leadership studies to determine the most common traits that come up over and over again. So we are going to look at this distilled list of the five major leadership traits that Peter Northouse presents in his book. The first trait is intelligence, leaders have a higher intelligence than the average person. It's accurate to say, for example, that the founding fathers of the US for all their personal flaws were extremely intelligent leaders. They were well-educated and prolific writers. CEOs like Steve Jobs from Apple, Bill Gates from Microsoft, and Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook, all have reputations as extraordinarily intelligent people. Some people believe that extremely high levels of intelligence like this, make it a challenge for some individuals to communicate effectively with the average person, still high levels of intelligence consistently shows up as a trait among most leaders. The second trait is self-confidence, as Northouse explains self-confidence includes a certainty about our competencies and skills, high levels of self-esteem and self-assurance in our capacity to make a difference. Barack Obama is a great current day example of self-confidence. It's clear from everything I've seen and heard that he carries himself with a great deal of this self-confidence, when he walks in a room he communicates a sense of unwavering self assurance. Third is determination. This is a strong drive to move forward. It's initiative, persistence, perseverance to follow through despite the many obstacles. One of the most determined leaders I know of is Oprah Winfrey. She was born into poverty, started working in radio while in high school, she overcame both racial and gender barriers as she moved from local TV to the world of talk shows. And she built ultimately a media empire, and she's now believed to be the richest person in Hollywood. Her journey demonstrates incredible determination and the ability to overcome obstacles no matter what. The fourth trait is integrity. This means being honest, trustworthy, living by a clear set of principles and taking responsibility for our actions. We like these leaders because they are dependable and we know they're going to do and follow through on what they say. Two well-known leaders come to mind. First is Martin Luther King, Jr. He is seen by many as a great example of a leader with integrity. He lived by a set of principles and he held himself to a high standard. Another example is Abraham Lincoln, he is known as "Honest Abe," because people at the time saw him and thought he had a higher level of integrity than many of the other politicians at the time. Fifth is sociability, this is the tendency to engage in friendly, courteous, and pleasant, social relationships. Leaders like this are tactful, diplomatic and sensitive to other's needs and well-being. In other words they have good interpersonal skills. These leaders both recognize the importance of supportive communication and they are good at it. One great example is the late Princess Diana, she's compared to the other royals, she had the people's touch they say. She communicated comfortably with people from all backgrounds. Another example is Warren Buffet, he is the fourth richest person in the world, but he has a very comfortable, welcoming communication style and he frequently talks about the importance of communication. So those are the five key leadership traits. However, as mentioned, there are some important criticisms of the traits approach to leadership. These three criticisms represent a combination of what I have read and what I personally think. First, almost every study that looks at leadership traits comes up with a different list. So sure we talked about a list of five distilled traits but that doesn't explain why there's not more consistency between and among these studies. So how can we be sure we got it right. Second, I'm not convinced that these researchers are all really studying traits in the traditional sense. We see within these studies traits like the ability to influence others or engage in problem solving, some of these sound more like learnable behaviors than traits in our DNA in the classic sense. And third, some people say they can act as if they have the trait but they're really just behaving that way, they don't necessarily possess that trait. I know many people who admit privately that they're very nervous and have high anxiety, but publicly they act like they are very self-confident, that's one of the five key traits. Despite these criticisms, I'm sure that studies on leadership traits will continue. Many people would agree that top leaders do often seem to stand apart even from an early age. Some people really do come across as born leaders. So question of the day, how do you line up with these five key traits? As mentioned it seems at least some of these skills are learnable and there've been many historic and current day leaders who did not seem like born leaders but work their way up and achieved great things. So maybe it's a little more like Shakespeare said, some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. Hello, again, if you haven't subscribed yet to this channel, feel free to do so now and ring the bell so you get notifications whenever I post a video. And remember to also look at the free resources I mentioned in the description below this video. Now let's get back into this free mini course and look at the three dominant leadership styles. (soft upbeat music) Have you ever worked for an autocratic leader? Or even more importantly, do you have an autocratic leadership style yourself? Let's look at the ins and outs. Foundational leadership research started in the 1930s. Lewin Lippitt and White wrote an article in 1939 in the Journal of Social Psychology. That many researchers still cite as the big first study that kicked off this area of research. Lewin and his coauthors asked the question in their study, "Is not the democratic group life more pleasant, but authoritarianism more efficient?" People then and now have a lot of opinions about the different styles of leadership. Lewin and his coauthors set out to get some research driven answers to these questions. We'll look at more of their research in a moment. To help visualize it, there are some well-known autocratic leaders in movies like Darth Vader from Star Wars, Captain Sobel and the Band of Brothers and Miranda Priestly in the Devil Wears Prada played by Meryl Streep. These are obviously exaggerations, but they all have autocratic tendencies in common. A basic description of the autocratic style goes like this. It is an authoritarian, boss-centered approach to leadership and management. The term autocratic is perhaps more commonly used than the term authoritarianism but essentially they mean the same thing. These leaders assume full control of the group, the goals and the decisions. These leaders centralized decision-making and power. Some researchers describe this approach as an absolute control approach for the leader over the entire operation. When it comes to communication, it's no surprise that they have a top down approach and they dictate instructions, policies and activities to the group, and they expect followers to comply. It's a control compliance relationship. These leaders take little or no input from group members, they are not asking followers for their feedback. They make decisions based upon their own perspective of a situation. When it comes to decision-making, I picture the autocratic leader coming to a room and just people what to do. In terms of how they relate to followers, autocratic leaders establish a high power distance between themselves and everybody else, there are clear unequal power dynamics going on between the leader and the followers. And that's because these leaders rely heavily on their positions of authority. French and Raven call this legitimate authority. When you are an official manager, you have a job description that explains your official authority and responsibilities that come with that position. The autocratic leaders power in other words, comes from their job title. In contrast, autocratic leaders don't rely on their strong relationships and influence to lead. You don't usually see autocratic leaders socializing and connecting with their followers in warm ways. They don't eat meals together with subordinates for example. They don't get to know them personally, very much, they distance themselves relationally from others in ways that show that inequality. So let's talk more about the research by Lewin and his co-authors. These authors did experiments leading groups of ten-year-olds in fact. And to me, it's interesting that this research started with a teacher-student dynamic. If you think of the various teachers that you have had over your life, it's possible that some of them had an autocratic style. The children were put into a number of small groups and they were asked to perform various tasks like making theatrical masks, painting murals, carving soap and making model airplanes. The adults then acted as the teachers and used a variety of leadership styles with those groups, autocratic democratic and laissez-faire styles. The researchers then watched how the children responded to the different leadership styles. They also interviewed the children and the parents to get their perspective on how their experience was under each leader. So what exactly did they find? Well, this early research had mixed results but it laid the foundation for how we still to this day think about autocratic leaders. Under autocratic leaders, followers were more aggressive toward each other. And some versions of the experiments, the children were 30 to 40 times more aggressive than they were under a democratic leader. This was at times a general aggression among all the group members, but was sometimes focused on one particular group member were say four members of the group, ganged up on a person, a scapegoat to the point where that participant quit the group. Participants tended to be more productive when the autocratic leader was watching them and directly supervising them, but there was usually a sharp rise in aggression when the autocratic leader left the room. In other experiments participants were much more resigned and apathetic and they did get aggressive under an autocratic leader, they basically shut down. So in terms of strengths and weaknesses, let's start with the strengths. This style can be useful when a quick decision, a decisive decision is necessary. For example, when there's a crisis situation, there's not enough time to gather everybody together and get lots of feedback. Sometimes a delayed decision will be much worse than the leader just making a decision on their own. It's also useful when you have low skilled workers who essentially need to be told what to do. And this aligns with part of what Hersey and Blanchard's model of situational leadership says. When a follower has low skill and low motivation their model says you have to focus almost entirely on tasks and using directive communication. Also when there's a leadership void and people lack direction then it's better to have an autocratic leader. Also, if there's already lots of conflict and autocratic leader can basically suppress the conflict among participants in the short run. This doesn't solve the underlying problem that's causing the conflict but this style can be used to contain conflict in the short run. So autocratic leadership may not be your favorite style, but it is still a style that works under certain circumstances, at least in the short run. However, in the long run, many people believe that the drawbacks clearly outweigh the advantages. This is a very demanding and stressful style for both leader and follower. It requires constant hands-on attention because followers will wait to be told what to do. That's the norm this style establishes, the leader gives orders and subordinates comply with those orders. Most followers won't take initiative under an autocratic leader, and participants make more persistent demands for attention from autocratic leaders. So since followers are not taking action on their own, leading this way requires constant pressure for the leader and the followers. Also followers will work hard when the boss is watching, that's true, which is a positive aspect of this, but they act out when the leader leaves the room, when the leader literally steps out of the room. Another problem is turnover, which is very expensive, followers are more likely to exit a group or an organization when they are working under an autocratic leader. And this has been shown in a 2004 article by Van Vugt, Jepson and Hart in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. As we wrap up, my question is this, does this style sound like your leadership style? If so, clearly it can work under certain circumstances but only under limited circumstances. In general most followers do not thrive under autocratic leaders. Be sure to take a look at the next video in this three-part series on democratic leadership style. Have you ever worked for a democratic leader? After this lesson you might notice some characteristics that you have in common with this leadership style. This is the second lesson in a three-part series. Be sure to take a look at the other lessons on the autocratic leadership style and the laissez-faire style. To help us visualize it we see the democratic leadership style in characters like captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek. Dick Winters the commander of Easy Company in the Band of Brothers, and Nova Prime played by Glenn Close in Guardians of the Galaxy. These characters echo what we see in the democratic leadership style. Democratic leaders take a collaborative approach with their followers, even though democratic leaders still have a position of power, and still make many of the big decisions, they prefer to get feedback and input from followers to help leaders shape those decisions. They like to listen to a range of opinions to make sure they're hearing about all the good options, they have what you call, the two heads are better than one philosophy. A leader might even test ideas with followers and say, "Hey, here's what I was thinking of doing, what do you think?" Or I've been hearing negative feedback about this external vendor we've been using, what has been your experience with this vendor? In cases like these, the leader may still make the ultimate decision, but at other times, democratic leaders may delegate power to followers when they can, especially when those decisions directly influence the followers jobs. This is called a decentralized approach to power and authority, that contrasts with the centralized approach of autocratic leaders. In other words, as the official leader, a democratic leader still has the right to make decisions just like the autocratic leader, but instead delegates those decisions and provides the freedom to followers to make the best choices possible. So let's say a department or a team is about to purchase new computers, a democratic leader would likely give some basic criteria on cost or compatibility but then delegate the final decision and each follower would purchase their own computer. I'd like to make an important point about this, if a decision goes badly, the democratic leader is not off the hook. They are still responsible for the outcomes and for the team decisions. So they're not handing their power and responsibility over. They can't delegate their accountability, they just believe the best decisions will be made with lots of input from their followers. In terms of power distance democratic leaders tend to have more equal relationships between themselves and followers. So they establish a low power distance compared to autocratic leaders. The gap between the leader and the follower does not feel as obvious. To make that concrete, democratic leaders would be more approachable, and friendly in conversations, and make efforts to connect with followers. They have good communication and might ask followers about their projects and about their lives outside of work and react more spontaneously in conversations. To be clear democratic leaders still have what French and Raven call legitimate power that is tied to their position, but they don't emphasize that, they tend to rely more on mutually beneficial relationships with followers to have that influence. They trust their followers to provide helpful feedback and to make good decisions. In terms of outcomes, many followers prefer to work for this type of leader. I was recently looking at a 2019 study on the leadership styles of headmasters over the teachers they supervise, in the Journal of Education, Teaching and Learning. And these authors found that the headmasters with the democratic style of leadership had a clear, positive influence in handling discipline situations with teachers, it's important to note that the autocratic and laissez-faire headmasters did still address discipline and showed some effectiveness with followers, but the democratic style was the most effective. It was more effective than laissez Faire, and then lastly, autocratic leaders were the least effective. So those other styles still were effective,, just not as effective as democratic leaders. Let's look at the ups and downs of the style, we'll start with the strengths. Democratic leaders tend to make high quality informed decisions. They gather lots of inputs, so their decisions are very likely to be supported and executed by their followers. Followers of democratic leaders can get more creative and innovative because they are given room to practice problem solving. Democratic leaders get consistent, long-term productivity out of their followers. And this is a key difference between democratic and autocratic leaders. When an autocratic leader leaves the room, their followers do not work as hard, in contrast democratic leaders, followers work hard whether they are in the room observing or not. Followers are brought into the decisions, goals, and directions, these leaders have also good communication with followers and not surprisingly followers have a high satisfaction level when working under democratic leaders. In terms of drawbacks we see mainly weaknesses in certain situations, so first, when a situation is high pressure and time is short, like a crisis, maintaining the democratic style probably will not help much, if something suddenly happens to an organization, it might be the best response is the quickest response and sometimes that means a democratic leader is not going be able to take a lot of time to gather input and feedback. They're not going to have the luxury of collaborating in a situation like that, I like to use the metaphor of professional sports, when there are just a few seconds left on the clock, and your team is down by one point, that's not the time to have a long democratic collaborative discussion. A democratic style is not going to fit that situation. A second weakness shows up in the situations that sometimes require a judgment call on the part of a leader, because consensus is not possible. And you may have to make a decision that fractures the harmony of the group for awhile. A third weakness shows up when you have a follower who is not particularly trustworthy. So if the leader is a team player, but the follower is not the democratic leadership style may not be as suitable for that follower. Overall though, the democratic style is largely viewed as the most effective of the three styles we're looking at. Most research sees it that way and most people with practical experience see it that way too. It doesn't fit all situations equally, but it's a solid leadership style for most people most of the time. So my question for you is does this sound like your style of leadership? If so, you're probably off to a good start, most followers will do well under your style. Just recognize that some situations may call for another approach. As mentioned, this is the second video in a three-part series on leadership styles, be sure to take a look at the lesson on the autocratic and laissez-faire styles in those videos. At its core the laissez-faire leadership style is about giving your people space to work so they can be at their best, and many followers like this style, but this style does not have the best reputation and practice, so let's take a look. We are at the end of a three part series, the first two videos are about the autocratic and democratic leadership styles. And we're starting with some of the earliest research on this from the late 1930s, by Lewin, Lippitt and White. They did a series of studies on how adult leaders with one of these three styles interacted with groups of children to see how it worked out. A brief history of the term laissez Faire goes like this. It means let do, or let them do it, it's a French term that was originally about how to handle the economy. At its root, it's about the government not interfering with the economy, just let it go how it's going to go, don't interfere. People in leadership studies took the sentiment and imported the term to describe the hands-off leadership style. These leaders back off and give followers lots of room and space, and autonomy to make their own decisions and solve their own problems. Ronald Reagan, the president was often mentioned as a classic laissez-faire leader. He once said, in fact, "Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere as long as the policy you've decided upon is being carried out." In other words, let them do it. And because of this some critics call this style a zero leadership style. In other words, some people say, it's not really leadership at all, but I think there's more to this as we will see. To make it more concrete, some examples of laissez-faire leadership on TV and movies would be Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec. He's a classic hands-off leader, he even says he has a libertarian philosophy which is about less government. Michael Scott from the Office, he's at least some aspects of his style are giving people space to work or not work as the case may be. But my favorite example is Frigga she's Thor's mother in the Marvel universe. But you know, as I was looking into this, I noticed that there aren't a lot of clear cut examples of the laissez-faire leadership style and in TVs and movies. And I think it's because it's a hands-off style. So on screen, it doesn't look like much is happening, it doesn't translate to the viewer as leadership behaviors when you're looking at it, it's not obvious like that but you see a positive example in Frigga, so Thor's mother and we'll have a little science fiction moment here. She's the Queen of Asgard, but she doesn't have a top-down style even though she's a queen. In most instances, she stays out of the day-to-day operations of Asgard. She's not about pushing her authority, but she does have authority, she just comes in at key moments, for example to nudge Thor or to counsel the King or to encourage Loki. People come to her for guidance and she helps them figure it out without telling them what to do, she's a bit hands-off. But these examples give you a taste of what it looks like in daily life, compared to autocratic leaders and democratic styles, the laissez-faire leader will give some overall directions and deadlines and goals and resources but they will then encourage you to do it on your own. They will have fewer meetings, they're less likely to check in on you for progress updates, and they're not going to observe you or watch you very much. It's a philosophy of noninterference, so when they do interact with you they are more likely to listen and give some general advice and not as likely to micro manage you. They are not going to tell you how to do it. And this is because they have a lot of trust in their people. If you come to them for advice, in fact, they might tell you what they would do personally, but ultimately they expect that you'll take that conversation and go make your own decisions. And it can be a very empowering style in this way. Followers feel freedom, agency and responsibility for their project, and that's really the whole key, laissez-faire leaders believe that their followers are at their best, and are most motivated by autonomy. Followers will do great if you just let them do it. So let's begin to look at whether or not this is effective. Many followers prefer this style compared to working with autocratic leaders in Lewin study, 70% of participants preferred the laissez-faire style of leadership. Only 30% preferred autocratic leaders, and in practice some successful leaders use this style. Warren Buffet is currently the fourth wealthiest person in the world, he runs Berkshire Hathaway, and he's a laissez-faire leader and he's famous for only scheduling about three or four meetings per month. So he's not watching people very closely, but he can do this because he has a key feature in common with most effective laissez-faire leaders and it's a feature that Ronald Reagan mentioned. That best case scenario is that these leaders surround themselves with the very best people they can possibly find. If you're only dealing with followers who are the smartest, most educated, self-motivated and competent people, then you really don't need to supervise them very closely. They know how to do it, they're excited to do it. So giving them space to do their work makes sense, but this style is not generally effective. There are lots of studies that say this amount of freedom can cause stress for followers. In fact, in Lewin's original study, some participants preferred working under autocratic leaders. These participants said about their laissez-faire leaders, "He had too few things for us to do," and "He let us figure things out too much." The ambiguity and lack of clarity can be stressful for some followers, but still head to head, 70% of Lewin's participants preferred laissez-faire leaders over autocratic leaders. In the video on the democratic leadership style, I mentioned the 2019 study on leadership styles of headmasters, over the teachers they supervise. The author's note that all three styles were effective in dealing with discipline issues. And when they rank them, the democratic leadership style was the best, next was laissez Faire, and the last was the autocratic style. But they were still all effective to some degree, so yes, leadership in the laissez-faire style can be effective, but it may not be the most effective in most situations. Let's clarify a few misunderstandings about this style. In the real world, no effective leaders are completely hands off. That's really not leadership, no leader can avoid accountability. The leader is still on the hook for results, so laissez-faire leaders still expect results from their followers. At minimum, they establish goals, milestones and provide resources to help their followers move forward. What makes them different from the other styles is they leave almost all of the day to day execution up to their followers, another point of clarification is that this style sometimes has a bad reputation because people make a huge mistake and they think it means lazy which it doesn't, lazy is that common word, that means a person is unwilling to work hard. The words just sound similar, but laissez-faire again, which is French has an entirely different motivation, it's about providing autonomy to your followers, so they can work on their own. A summary of the pros and cons goes like this, on the positive side, and there are some positives, it works great in some situations, namely, when your followers are highly motivated, skilled, and educated. If you're leading high-end engineers, doctors, lawyers, professors, and other top flight professionals then it can work really well. It can work well in creative industries where people are driven. In these situations, the laissez-faire leadership style can be very satisfying for followers. It can be very motivating because followers can lead a more creative life and in the workplace and think of solutions that the leader might not think of. It also requires less top-down pressure and direct supervision. So it frees the leader to think about the bigger goals of the organization. On the negative side, it only works well in specific situations, so the big criticism is that it results in low productivity in most cases. For many situations, followers do not use the autonomy mainly as a way to be more productive. It's not useful when competence and motivation are low. Ambiguity is another big problem, followers can get really stressed out when they're confused and lack direction. And the laissez-faire style is not going to help much in that case. It also involves other risks, if your followers are not doing a good job, it might be that a hands-off approach doesn't help you notice the problem. It can also create more rooms for undesirable activities like bullying or conflict that you don't notice. Some people will take advantage of this freedom and autonomy in other words, to do things other than working hard. In some the laissez-faire leadership style can work in an ideal situation, but when real problems do come up, leaders should really adapt to the situation and take a more hands-on approach when needed. A little after the leadership styles researchers, in the 40s, 50s, and 60s and beyond, researchers started looking at the specific leadership skills, or behaviors that leaders performed. In general we break these down into task behaviors and communication and relationship behaviors and communication. I'm counting all of these as one approach, but really looking at a few variations studies that collectively form this school of thought, and it developed over time. The Michigan Leadership Studies, Ohio State Leadership Studies and then the managerial grid or leadership grid. Hey there, welcome back Alex Lyon here and today we are going to be looking at the Michigan Leadership Studies. We're just doing an overview, this is a introduction for beginners, we're working out of Johnson and Hackman's book on Leadership, A Communication Perspective, I'll put links to that in the description below, so let's get into it. So years ago, decades ago, the University of Michigan researchers looked at high and low-performing teams and found that leaders had one of two, what they thought were opposing leadership styles, they either had a production oriented or a people oriented leadership style, or they could have been somewhere in the middle where they were a little bit of both but on the low end of both, and at first researchers thought that this was a continuum. So it was essentially a one dimensional view of leadership, you could either be all the way over on the production oriented side, somewhere in the middle, or you could have been all the way over on the people or the employee oriented side. Further studies show that this really wasn't accurate and that leaders could be high or low in both production or people oriented employee oriented in their skills either way. So the key part or the key contribution to this Michigan Leadership Study was that at first they thought it was a continuum, you could either be one or the other, somewhere along that scale, but what they later realized it was not, you could be high or low in both and that really was a turning point in leadership studies where you could be high or low in both of these, they saw them as two separate variables. And the most effective variable they found a combination they found in later studies, was of course to be high in both orientations to be good, strong production oriented leaders and also have good people oriented skills as well. So question of the day, which one do you think you are? Do you think you lean more toward production personally, and that's your focus? Or do you tend to be more employee or people oriented in your style, your approach? Or do you happen to be strong or weak in both of them, I would love to hear evaluation of how you think you show up when you're in any kind of leadership position, I look forward to reading those comments in that section below the video. So thanks and I will see you soon. Hey, there, welcome back, I'm Alex Lyon and today we are looking at the Ohio State Leadership Studies. This is a set of studies from decades ago at Ohio State, and they found some results about leadership that build on some other leadership theories, so let's get into the details, so the researchers at Ohio State used a questionnaire called the LBDQ to evaluate military commanders and found that they had two primary dimensions of leadership, and these will look familiar if you've been looking at the other leadership studies that we have been talking about. The first is consideration and the next is initiating structure. So in the related video we talked about interpersonal or people-oriented skills and tasks-oriented skills. So I would say that consideration lines up pretty well with interpersonal related skills, and initiating structure is another way to talk about tasks, so let's dig down into consideration. They saw that these military commanders, some of them had really high consideration scores, they had interpersonal communication that was designed to express affection and liking for their followers. So they showed the people around them that they cared about them, they showed consideration for followers, feelings, opinions and ideas, and they maintained an amiable or a pleasant work environment. Some leaders however, were also inconsiderate, and these leaders would criticize followers in front of others, which is the most embarrassing kind of criticism. They would sometimes make threats and they would refuse to accept suggestions or explanations. So one of the variables is consideration and you could be high, or you could be low on this variable. The next main component is initiating structure and this is the second one. And this again, lines up with task oriented or production oriented activities like we've seen in some other studies, this is where you're initiating or sparking action. You're assigning task, you're letting followers know what is expected of them on those tasks, you're setting and holding others to clear-cut performance standards. And you could be high or low at this, maybe you're not doing any of these things and you're not initiating structure. So one of the contributions of this Ohio State Leadership Study is they took the next step from the Michigan studies and they said, this is a two dimensional model, they crossed these two dimensions in the center, they made the beginnings of a model and they said that you could be either high or low in consideration or high or low in initiating structure. So I asked him to pass video about which way do you lean on this? But now I would ask which box would you put yourself in? So if you're high or low depending upon which of these areas, where would you be? Would you be in that lower left box, that's low and structure and low and consideration or one of the other boxes, perhaps you're both high in your initiating structure in high and your consideration scores. I'm wondering what box and you can just describe it in the comment section below, so question of the day, which one are you, are you in the bottom left, top left, top right which is like the ideal one or bottom right? I look forward to hearing those comments in that section below, and I will see you soon. Hey, there, welcome back Alex Lyon today, we are going to look at Blake and Mccanse's Managerial Grid. We're going to just treat this as an introduction to this leadership model and I'm working out of Johnson and Hackman's leadership book, A Communication Perspective. I'll put a link to that in the description below this video. So let's get into those details. Blake and Mccanse's Managerial Grid is a really commonly cited leadership model for both task and interpersonal communication. It's connected to several others that focus on task and relationships, but this one has some added value that we'll see in a minute. It identifies the communication style using an X and Y axis and that shows the leaders emphasis. So the X axis is a concern for production, and the Y axis is a concern for people and you're going to see these kinds of variables, those dimensions in many other leadership theories from that era, the 40s, 50s, and 60s. So what this research did was create a grid, they created official four boxes and they gave them names and scores, so you could see where you or someone else as a leader might land based upon some kind of self-assessment or a questionnaire. So if you're high or low and concerned for production and high or low concern for people, you would end up with a score one through nine out of those variables, and depending upon your score, you would land in one of these four boxes. And the lowest box is called the impoverished management style. And it's hard to imagine calling this a style but it is, we have seen, and you've maybe worked for people who had impoverished management, this is where there's really no active attempt on the part of the leader to influence the outcomes of how you're going to as a follower enact these tasks, there's a very, the leader might assign you the work, but then the person will leave you to complete it one way or the other, there's just not a lot of hands-on attention in any way. And at the bottom right, we have what's called authority compliance, that's when you have a high score, that's a nine, but it's also very low on a concern for people. So here you basically see people as a resource. So there are people, but really it's just a resource to get the job done and there's not a lot of attention or concern for people. Right in the middle is called the middle of the road management style and here's where you show an adequate level of concern for both production and for people, and this is like the meaty, middle-of-the-road means you're gonna get middle-of the-road results or mediocre results. There's not a lot to stand out here about this leader. And the next we have what we call the country club manager, that's on the top left, that's where there's a high concern for people and lots of attention to building a positive work environment, creating a supportive and friendly atmosphere, but you're not really emphasizing tasks so much in a hands on way. Now the country club manager may want tasks accomplished but isn't going to be pushy on that. The country club management thinks that by investing in the relationships, that is one of the better ways to get beneficial production outcomes. And then we have the team management approach which is a high score you might have in this box, the highest score would be a nine on production and nine on people, and this is where the leader is really working with the team as a team member showing a high concern for people in production and a real collaborative kind of atmosphere. And the managerial grid became a foundation for some other leadership models that came after it, I think from for Hershey and Blanchard's situational management of leadership model as well. Now, some additional details about this model, is that leaders, according to the research tend to rely on one cell called a dominant communication style. So if you look at the grid, you might think to yourself, Oh, that's the way I usually am, but it also depends upon what's going on. That means that you have a dominant leadership style that's in one of those boxes. However, leaders sometimes have a backup or secondary orientation that comes out when a situation changes, let's say it gets more pressured or possibly less pressured then you would switch into things like you might feel a little bit more like a country club or a mediocre or middle-of-the-road leader, but then when a crisis happens, let's say something out of the blue, you might really get demanding and focus on results and to get out of that crisis that might be your secondary. Now, some people might not do that when a crisis happens, they might switch in the other direction and they might say, Oh, I need to be even more concerned about people because I wanna check in with how people are feeling. So if something changes, it doesn't necessarily mean we will automate default to more of a production focus. And then the most effective style is the team management style, of course, that approach is high end both concerns, so naturally that would end up in most cases resulting in the most beneficial results. So now that there is a name to this, I'm wondering question of the day, what is a name to put to your style? So what's your dominant leadership style according to the grid? And also when things change, when you get stressed or when something happens, what tends to be your fallback or your secondary leadership style? I would love to hear your comments in that section below this video. And as mentioned this grid laid the foundation for a lot of other thinking about leadership studies moving forward, so it's an important one to learn about and appreciate and the steps that took forward in the area of leadership studies. All right, so thanks take care and I will see you soon. Now we're going to take a brief look at the Hersey and Blanchard situational model of leadership. So what Hersey and Blanchard did essentially was to take these leadership behaviors both task and relationship behaviors and in the 60s, they branded it into what they call the situational model. They essentially tied the situation that the followers were in, to the type of approach the leader should use in response. So there's more guidance in Hersey and Blanchard's model, the 1960s, Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard developed their situation leadership model. The premise of the model is really simple, instead of leaders just having one style or one approach like democratic style, authoritarian style, these researchers said that leaders should adapt their approach depending upon the situation they face with their followers, so the two key variables that leaders must look at according to this model is their followers ability or skill to do the job and followers' willingness or motivation level to do the job you could call these skill and well, and followers could have high or low skill and well. These two variables combine in four different ways, four different situations that characterize followers overall readiness, that's the concept readiness, and that readiness tells the leader how they should respond and we'll look at the four situations in a second, but I would like to use the metaphor of how an athletic coach relates to his or her players to help explain this. To me a good coach will be able to respond in all four ways depending upon how ready and willing each athlete is in a given situation. So according to this model we have four readiness levels. Level one is when the follower has a low ability and also a low willingness level. So the athlete or employee lacks both skill and will. They lack motivation and their ability. So in this situation, Hersey and Blanchard say the leader should use high tasks directed communication, but low relationship communication. If a follower has low ability and low motivation, the situation essentially means a leader has to direct the follower or athlete, and exactly what to do piece by piece. Readiness level two is where the follower or athlete for example, has a low ability but a high willingness. So they don't have much skill, but they are very motivated and committed. If you've ever seen the movie, Rudy, this football player fits this description. He was really fired up, but he just wasn't very good, and that situation says that the leader should provide both high task communication and high relationship communication. The leader instructs the follower on their tasks and also keeps the person motivated, they want to keep the follower encourage so they will get better and see better results. Readiness level three is where the follower has a high ability, but low willingness, so they're skilled, but they don't have much motivation. You see this sometimes with athletes where they have an extreme amount of natural talent, but they're a little bit lazy in practice, they don't get motivated until it's a big game and when leaders face this situation Hersey and Blanchard say that the best course of action is to get the follower participating in decision-making. You want the follower to be involved, help them feel more ownership over the project. Hersey and Blanchard believed that will provide the extra motivation to get the follower pumped up. Task, communication isn't really necessary for readiness level three because they already know and have all the skills that they need. And readiness level four is where the follower has both ability and high willingness, so they have the skill and the will. In situations like this the leader would simply delegate projects to these followers and let them do it. They already know what they're doing and they don't need any extra guidance on the task and they also don't need much relationship communication either. Relationship communication from the leader doesn't really go down to zero though, the leader still needs to generally be supportive and offer recognition from time to time, that it's mostly though to maintain the followers already high level of motivation. So in summary, Hersey and Blanchard take these variables of task, communication and relationship communication that came from previous models and they added this aspect of the different situations their followers are in. So the model is meant to provide guidance to leaders and how they can adapt and handle the different situations they face. And by the way there's a really nice graphic that Hersey and Blanchard developed, but from what I understand, it's not a great idea to use the graphic without permission, and I don't have permission to use it in this video, but you can certainly look for it online because I have seen it elsewhere. So my question for you is what are your thoughts about this situational leadership model I would love to hear your comments in that section below the video. Just to reminder to subscribe and then click the bell so you get notifications for future videos, and again, feel free to look at those free resources I mentioned in the description below. We are almost halfway through this mini course, and we're gonna change gears now, and look at the transactional, transformational leadership styles and how these two are related. And we're getting now into the 1970s and beyond here. We're gonna talk about transactional leadership. To some people this is an old managerial approach that we should throw out of the window, but to others, it's an important leadership area to study because it teaches us a lot about all the new areas of leadership studies. So we're gonna be working out of Johnson, Hackman's book on leadership, I'll put a link to that in the description below this video, let's get into the details. (energetic upbeat music) As I understand it James MacGregor Burns, first wrote about transactional leadership in his book called Leadership and Burns basis thinking on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we have five levels of needs that people are all pursuing at different points, and the idea is transactional leaders are concerned mostly with satisfying the physiological safety and belonging needs of their followers. So it's an exchange, the leader exchanges rewards and privileges for desired outcomes. So if the follower's performing well, the leader tries to help the follower meet these three lower level needs. It's like a Marine drill Sergeant as the example goes in the Johnson book, the Marine drill Sergeant would trade a weekend pass for clean barracks. So there's an exchange, you do a good job you get rewarded. A little later Bernard Bass and his research associates talked about these different factors in ways that you can observe the transactional leader in action. And the first is contingent reward and here's where the leader provides rewards for good effort, they wanna recognize good performance. So you only gets contingent, you only get the reward if you perform well. There's also management by exception and here's where you step in when something's not going well, so the leader is trying to maintain the status quo and they intervene when subordinates don't meet the acceptable performance levels. That leader then initiates negative feedback, corrective action to improve performance, essentially punishment. Now, even though this sounds very old school and it's really a managerial approach as much as it is a leadership approach, some very successful leaders have had this style, you may know some of them and there are some very well-known people in the public for example, Vince Lombardi is a famous coach, a football coach considered one of the most successful coaches of all time, but he was known as being a very transactional leader. In fact, as many coaches are. So if you performed well did your job well on the field, you got rewarded, you got to continue to be a starter, you got to win games, everything went well. If you didn't perform, you didn't meet your goals, you were benched and you didn't get to play anymore, you were punished in another words. And it sounds very calculated and very cold and straightforward, but he was one of the best football coaches of all time, he won more games than almost anybody, if I'm remembering my stats correctly. So these are the kinds of transactional leaders that can become successful and it's not just coaches in sports, there are other types for example, in corporate settings, they say, Bill Gates is a transactional leader, he's all about setting clear goals and he sees clear goals as that national motivation to help followers see that they can succeed, he's known as being transactional. He's not a particularly inspirational figure when you hear him talk and in the way he leads, but he does help his followers reach their goals and they get rewarded. There's a fictitious one, but one that maybe you have seen in a movie called the Devil Wears Prada. Meryl Streep plays Miranda Priestly and she's the editor of the magazine. She's harsh, she's tough to work with, but she is a good example of the transactional leader. So she is very keen to see extremely high standards and punish people frequently if they don't meet those standards, but she also in the end does reward people when they meet those standards, is rare but she will reward them in the end. She is an exaggeration, of course, she's a character in the movie not a real person, but the whole movie essentially illustrates her transactional leadership style. In terms of what does this look like in the moment? Well, the beginning of the interaction, the situation that you'll see the leader establishing clearly defined criteria for good performance and anticipated rewards for successful followers, so they'll know how to get there. Then the leader will be monitoring to evaluate compliance, success or non-compliance of the followers. There'll be giving bonuses and recognition for accomplishing the goals and the leader will be punishing poor work or negative outcomes. So very straightforward, I'm not a huge fan of this, but it does have some strengths and some weaknesses So the advantages are, it provides a clear structure, it gives achievable goals, is a very straightforward and obvious motivation and it can be a very efficient way to lead. The disadvantages are that it's inflexible and rigid, it's uninspiring context to work under oftentimes, because you have to find your own motivation to push for these goals and it can be very limited in terms of the follower engagement. So question of the day, what do you think of this transactional leadership style? Do you think it's old fashioned, do you think we should leave it behind? Or do you think at least understanding it has some value, so if nothing else you can move forward from there? We are going to look at transformational leadership theory. We'll take a look at five key characteristics of transformational leaders and we'll see if you can relate to them, so let's get into it. There's been lots of interest lately in the transformational leadership approach, but it has its origins in the late 1970s, James MacGregor Burns wrote a book on Leadership where he contrasted transformational leaders with transactional leadership. He used Maslow's hierarchy of needs to explain these two approaches. Transactional leadership is where a leader is mainly concerned with helping followers meet their lower level needs on the bottom three tiers of Maslow's pyramid by satisfying followers psychological safety and belonging needs. It's a transaction, and exchange for followers hard work, transactional leaders help follow a secure these rewards. Transformational leaders take that to the next level and attempt to engage them entire person to satisfy followers lower level needs that I mentioned, and also their higher level needs on Maslow's hierarchy. Esteem and self-actualization. According to Burns, transformational leaders enhance followers level of motivation, commitment and ownership. Ultimately the thinking goes this transforms followers into leaders themselves. Johnson and Hackman describe the five key characteristics of transformational leaders, let's see if you can relate to any of these personally. First, transformational leaders are creative, they are always looking for new ideas and ways to do things. They challenge business as usual. Creative people come from all walks of life, what they have in common is that they are hardworking, non-conformist in their thinking and they're comfortable with ambiguity and complexity. A great example of this is Dave Kelly, he's the founder of IDEO, the most successful product design firm in the world. Kelly and IDEO were known for developing incredibly innovative products and services for clients. So a question for you do you see yourself as a creative person? The good news is Dave Kelly has been teaching professionals creativity skills for decades, and he's convinced that anybody can be more creative with practice. Second, transformational leaders are interactive. They communicate a lot with followers, they are engaged and through this communication, they become more aware of their followers needs and motivations as Johnson and Hackman say, "only when the leader is involved with followers can he or she find ways to do things better." A great current example is Barack Obama I've never met him, but they say that he is very interactive, socially engaged and a strong communicator. He connects with everyday people and world leaders equally well. Question for you would you describe yourself as interactive? Do you have strong people skills? Well, communication skills are learnable and we can all improve with guidance and practice. Third, transformational leaders are visionary. Some say this is their most important characteristic, they can explain in concise and clear language where they want to take the organization, they're able to explain the goal with a sense of purpose and ways that energized people and creates a standard of excellence that inspires followers. And I can think of no better person to illustrate this than Martin Luther King Jr., he articulated in compelling language, a vision for the future that was worth fighting for. His famous "I have a dream" speech is perhaps one of the most vision-based communication examples there is. So a question for you, are you able to articulate in goal and purpose clearly and in a compelling way? Well, like the other characteristics mentioned, you can get better with practice, I remember before King gave his famous speech, he was preaching and speaking multiple times a week in church and in the community for decades, he sharpened his message with lots and lots of practice. And practice is something that anybody can do. Fourth, transformational leaders are empowering as I said earlier Burns based his thinking about transformation leaders on the higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy, the top level is self-actualization. Transformation leaders in essence have to empower their leaders to become all they can be by delegating important jobs and then supporting and trusting followers to rise to the occasion. This also allows organizations to grow more quickly, I think Phil Knight the founder of Nike is great example of an empowering leader. In his book Shoe Dog he described the early years at Nike when he was hiring employees, and he quickly recognized that if he wanted Nike to grow, he had to empower his employees to build the business and sell more shoes without his day-to-day direct involvement in every decision. So question for you, are you able to delegate, encourage and trust others to take action. If we want to engage our followers on those highest levels and help them grow into leaders themselves then empowerment is the best way to get there. Fifth, transformational leaders are passionate, they are true believers in their cause, they demonstrate extraordinary commitment, even in the face of repeated failure, their passion, enthusiasm and motivation are contagious. Mother Theresa is a great example, her organization and mission was to minister to the sick and dying, the people on the streets that society had forgotten. She worked until she was 87 years old and was hospitalized several times as she got older. There were many stories about mother Teresa leaving the hospital early. She would say to doctors, "I have to go, I still have important work to do," her passion and commitment that electrified the people around her. So question for you, how would you rate your level of passion? If we can find something we truly care about, that's usually when we will see our level of passion go up We're going to look now at the charismatic leadership theory. Charismatic leaders are sometimes confused with transformational leaders, a theory we just talked about but as you'll see, charismatic leaders may not always have the best interest of their followers in mind. People have been writing about charisma for over a hundred years in the area of leaders studies, but it has more recently become an area of interest again for the past few decades, so here we go. We're going to talk about the theory behind charismatic leadership, are some people born with charisma? Or can you you personally learn to be more charismatic? And is this even a make or break leadership quality to begin with? Let's take a look at the details. But we're not so much going to teach you here how to turn on your charisma, we're going to unpack what this concept means and look at the positives and look at the dark side, and then I'll give you my point of view on whether or not charisma is learnable. The more definitions you look up, the more you'll see three common aspects that capture the word charisma. It means number one, appeal. Charismatic people have an attractiveness, charm, a special kind of magnetism. Number two gift, we think of charisma as a divine, magical or supernatural gift and power that sets them up apart from ordinary people. And number three, charismatic leaders have loyal followers, they inspire and excite then enthusiastic and loyal crowd, they usually have an influence over a large group of followers. Many writers start with Max Weber's explanation of charisma from 1922. "A certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities." Robert House use Weber's work when he wrote his article on charismatic leadership in 1976. He said, "Transcendence is attributed implicitly to both the qualities of a leader and the content of his mission," there's something about charismatic leaders and their mission that goes above and beyond what we're used to seeing. To me some quick examples of charismatic leaders are Arnold Schwartzenegger, the late Princess Diana and Will Smith. They're all different, but there's a special almost undefinable spark that sets them apart from the crowd. For all their individual uniqueness, Peter Northouse wrote about the commonalities that charismatic leaders shared in his book, he spells out the five qualities or typical behaviors we see in good charismatic leaders. First, they are strong roles models for the beliefs and values they want their followers to adopt. Gandhi was a great role model for the non-violent, civil disobedience that he was advocating for, he walked the talk in other words. Second charismatic leaders demonstrate competence to their followers, they at least appear as if they know what they're doing. Third, they communicate goals. These goals are usually driven by a clear ideological or moral position. Martin Luther King, Jr. for example, drove his message with a clear and moral position. Fourth, they communicate high expectations for their followers and believe their followers ability to meet those expectations, this gives followers the confidence that they can succeed and fifth, charismatic leaders arouse the motives of followers, we can see this in JFK's famous quotation, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." He aroused the motive of service that he wanted his followers to translate into action. You'll notice that a strong theme running through these five behaviors is the way leaders engage their followers. If they don't get their followers engaged, excited and motivated in a special way then leaders may not qualify as charismatic, another key issue is the role of context. Writers who study charisma point out that these leaders are more likely to find a place to lead followers when the situation or the context is putting pressure or stress on followers in some way. Sometimes there's a felt need and exigence for a powerful leader to come in and show followers the way. There is some problem, some unmet need in the followers lives and the charismatic leader comes along and offers a compelling solution. So far we've talked about positive examples of charisma, but there is a dark side too. One key criticism is that many charismatic leaders throughout history have used their influence for their own benefit, not for the benefit of their followers. Some charismatic leaders use the power of their influence to essentially gain more power and control for themselves but ultimately they have a destructive influence on society and even on the followers who supported them, typical unethical examples are Hitler, Charles Manson, Osama bin Laden and numerous cult leaders. In corporate America, we see examples like Enron's CEO, Jeff Skilling and Theranos CEO, Elizabeth Holmes. And the movie Wonder Woman 1984, the bad guy Max Lord is an example of a charismatic but ultimately unethical leader. Charisma and ethics do not come in a package. I also want to talk about a less obvious and less serious problem that I have seen in everyday life on campus and in professional settings but it still matters, and I'll call it the leadership skill deficiency. Sometimes I will see individuals with fairly charismatic personalities who can get by on it at least in the short run, they're outgoing and they stand out and they project a certain amount of confidence, many people view charisma as one in the same with leadership, but really it's not necessary at all to have charisma to be effective, in fact, some people turn up the volume on their charisma to cover over a lack of actual leadership skills. Some people might light up a room, command attention, but then they'll have trouble meeting simple deadlines or following through on their own work. Not everybody who has that special spark of charisma can back it up with actual competence. The downside of that is that if these individuals are given too much leadership too fast it will begin to expose their lack of competence in key areas and set them up for failure. Given that, let's talk about the issue that many people ask about, are people really born with a special set of gifts and talents that sets them apart from ordinary people? Or is charisma learnable over time? And I believe that the answer is both can be true with one exception, so on the one hand, there's no denying that people like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey really do seem to stand apart. To me certain people really do appear to be born with charisma, at the same time, many of the qualities that we talk about can be learned and improved with practice. Almost anybody, for example, can become a strong role model or communicate high expectations if they set their mind to it. So while we may not all be born with that special ingredient, that gift of charisma, we can all certainly learn to develop it to some extent. For example, there's an area of research above our willingness to communicate our WTC, and it shows that simply by communicating a little more than usual with the people around us, other people will almost instantly see us as more attractive, more credible and they're more likely to see us as opinion leaders. I know many people people who grew into compelling charismatic leaders over time by working at it. So the short answer is that people can be both born that way I suppose, and also learn to be more charismatic. But there's one exception, one complication to that answer and that is the issue of followers. For whatever reason, even people with the strongest collection of leadership skills do not rise to the level of exciting loyal followers. Some people can do all of the behaviors and still seem to be missing that special spark. So just acting more charismatically does not mean that people will respond to you in that way. Now the good news is there are many ways to be an effective leader that have nothing to do with charisma. In fact, many leaders have accomplished incredible things and we would not describe them at all as charismatic. Bill Belichick for example, is the coach of the New England Patriots and he's won six super bowls, he's incredibly effective at getting results. But few people would describe him as having charisma, he's almost completely unlikable even among his own players. So having charisma does not automatically mean leaders will be effective, it doesn't mean they are good and moral. Charisma is not in any way, a precondition for successful leadership. In other words, it might be helpful but it's not a make or break leadership quality not even close. Effective leaders come in all shapes, sizes and styles. We're going to switch gears again now and talk about two related relationship theories, or relational theories of leadership, the vertical dyad linkage model and the highly respected area of research called leader member exchange theory. Today, we're talking about the vertical dyad linkage model and we're working out of Johnson and Hackman's book on Leadership, A Communication Perspective. I'll put a link to that book in the description below this video. So feel free to check that out, now let's get into the details. So George Graen and Associates developed this model decades ago, it's an early relational model of leadership, there's lots of other skill based models and traits models, this is about how the leader relates to the followers, so it's a relational model. Now, before this, most researchers believed that leaders use about the same style of leadership with the overall group. So we thought that the leader led the group has an entire collective. What Graen and his associates found out is that leaders treated individual followers differently and followers then had their own individual perceptions of their leader, both positive and negative. So you might have one leader and some of the people thought the leader was really great and strong leader and had good connections with people and other people might've thought, no, you know, this person is not very connected with me, I don't feel close to them at all. So different perceptions, depending upon how the leader treated those individuals the results were in groups where some people were close to leader and out-groups where other people felt like they were not in that inner circle. So let's look more carefully at in-groups and out-groups which is a major feature of this theory. So in group members have close relationships with the leader, they typically play some specific types of roles, like they might be acting as an assistant to the leader or a quote Lieutenant, some kind of advisor, these are not necessarily official capacities but that's the role they play. In other words, they have they add some value to that relationship, there's a reason for them to be in contact and have close relationships. In group members enjoy high levels of trust, they have mutual influence and support between themselves and the leader, they are allowed more freedom, more latitude and more influence over decision-making. The expectations for them though are often higher, there's an expectation for them to have good achievement, take on more responsibilities and more loyalty to the leader than the out-group members. So there's a note here that I want to make sure we emphasize that these relationships must be reciprocal and they must be mutually maintained. So just like any relationship that you have ever been in, it takes both people to invest in the relationship to get this kind of in-group results. So let's move on to talk about the out-group members. Out-group members have a very different experience, they get treated by leaders in a typical authoritarian or task oriented style, just a standard managerial approach, you might say. They have mutually low levels of trust and support with each other. Now that doesn't mean that there's distrust, like I don't trust that person, it's just that they haven't developed that trust yet to look out for each other and to support each other, they're not granted as much freedom or influence over decisions and they don't have a lot of input with that leader. Out-group members are expected to meet the formal role requirements that are spelled out by the organization, they're supposed to meet deadlines and fulfill the organization's overall expectations. But they have lower expectations on how they perform than the in-group members. So they have a very different kind of experience depending upon whether you are in the in-group or the out-group. Now how do these in-groups and out-groups form to begin with? Well, the research shows that the leaders make a choice about who gets close to them or not. But obviously the follower also has to desire a closer relationship and in group relationship with the leader, but the leader is really in the driver's seat about who they let in or not, they have those boundary management decision making abilities, and it's based upon a lot of factors, just like your personal relationships, compatibility, liking, similarity, your work styles, lots of other factors will determine on whether naturally mesh or not. Now followers may move in and move out of these in-groups and out-groups depending upon a lot of factors as well and their ability to fit the supervisor's expectations and preferences and this is also true if the leader changes. So sometimes you'll get a new supervisor, a new manager and then your relationship might be different with the new person than it was with your original managers, you might've been on the in group, under one leader and then a new leader takes over and you find yourself on the out-group and that happens all the time. So it all depends upon that relationship and that's why we call this a relational model of leadership, so question of the day, have you ever found yourself an in-group and or out-group and in work situation? I would love to hear your comments and responses to that question below and I look forward to reading your comments there. Take care and I'll see you next time. Today we're gonna to talk about leader member exchange, and you know you've made it big when your theory has an abbreviation LMX. We are working out of Johnson and Hackman's book on Leadership, A Communication Perspective. I will put links to that in the description below this video, so let's get into it. So this model is an out-growth of the vertical dyad linkage model also by Graen and his associates, and like that model the LMX takes a relational approach to leadership. This is all about how the leader and the member relates to each other. It's about that exchange if you will, that relational exchange. Unlike vertical dyad linkage model, this model moves beyond the idea of in-groups and out-groups which is either you're in or you're out and this focuses more on the quality of relationship between individual leader and the specific followers. So that's the leader member part of the title. Using surveys to assess the leader member relationship can range from low LMX to high LMX, so there's a continuum here, you can be relatively close to your leader in a variety of ways, it's not an either or situation. So let's look more into the benefits because one of the great things about leader member exchange is the benefits that you get with high quality relationships with your followers. There is a clear link between the individual and the leaders and the benefits for high quality relationships with those followers are numerous. So first of all, more productivity both on quality and quantity for follower. The followers are more satisfied, less likely to quit, they have better mental health, they're more satisfied with the supervisor, more committed to the organization, more likely to go beyond their duties to help out, they're more successful in their careers overall. They're more likely to provide honest feedback unnecessarily they're highly motivated and they're more influential in their organizations among many other benefits. And the opposite is true for low LMX followers. So if I had a magic wand and I often do teach workshops and professional settings about communication leadership skills, and I'm telling you if I had a magic wand, like what's one approach we can take as leaders to make everything better? Develop high quality relationships with the people that are on your team. And when you do you will experience all of these benefits for that follower, and then they in turn will make the team stronger overall. So early on the research has changed their opinions early on, remember this came out of the vertical dyad linkage model. And initially researchers believe that leaders could only have a few good relationships with their followers, but then they changed their mind. And they said, you know, they really should make every effort to build high quality relationships with all of their followers. They saw this really as the leader's duty because of the incredible benefits that came along with high quality relationships. So if they're the leader, they're the supervisor working in an organization, it's part of their job to maximize performance, so they have to make that effort. Now high quality relationships are not assured by the leader's effort, but leaders must quote, make the offer as Johnson Hackman explained. So you can't make the follower also have a good relationship with you, but the leader has to do their part. They have to attempt to develop a high quality relationship over time. And relationship have phases according to the research, and they start just like any other relationship. First phase is a stranger, so when the leader and the follower meet, they're basically strangers who immediately occupy whatever roles they were hired to do in the first place, they have a leader member dynamic there according to their job descriptions. And the next phase over time is acquaintanceship. Just like you develop in your own personal life with other people, that's where both parties begin more productive task relationships, and then they also share more social information. So there might be a little bit of small talk about their lives outside of work, and what's been going on with them, so they have an acquaintanceship. And the third level which is all the way up the scale and the high quality upscale is the partnership, and that's where the two parties exert mutual influence. They share a variety of task and social information. They show mutual trust, respect, and a sense of obligation toward each other. And they are both empowered to share feedback openly in both directions, and the relationship has expanded beyond the mirror job description. So it's a well-rounded high quality relationship with lots of back and forth. Now, one of the criticisms of this theory is, well, how can you develop those? Or one of the early criticisms was we were telling us we're supposed to have high quality relationships, but how do we get there? So research that came a bit later by Liden and Maslyn talked about how we can develop this in a way. They said that, well, when we ask over time all of these leaders and members, they say that the high-quality relationships that they have and experienced and enjoy have three common qualities, liking, loyalty and professional respect. So if you want to develop high quality relationships with the people on your team here are the three ways that you can do it. The first one is to show liking and affect is just that positive expression when you see someone you light up a little bit. So these are the kinds of relationships where people like each other. The kinds of people you might describe as, Oh, I have this friend at work. And even if you don't hang out outside of work, when you get to work, you enjoy being around this person, you like them, they like you and it's a positive connection in that way. So that's the first quality of high-quality relationships. The second quality is loyalty, the leader in the member must feel a sense of loyalty and obligation to each other, a sense that they have your back, they're gonna look out for you. They're going to advocate for you, possibly defend you from criticism if it comes up publicly. So there's a sense that, okay, I'm looking out for you, you're looking out for me and maybe if I hear about an opportunity or something that connects you, I'll make sure I bring it your way. They're looking out for each other. And the third is professional respect. So when we get to know people over time, maybe you learn that, Oh they're a really high level soccer player outside of work. It could be something from their personal life that you respect or something on their resume like they've won some awards, some achievements. They used to work at a really high status place. And you have noticed that the way they handle themselves in and around your workplace is impressive, you may admire their character. There's a professional respect that you show and you may even tell them that directly and express that through communication. So the research shows that if you have these three mutual qualities in your relationship, then it would be much higher up on the LMX scale. If you're missing some of these or don't have any clearly that's gonna be a low quality relationship low LMX on that scale. So question of the day, can you describe any high-quality relationships that you may have with the people on your team, whether you're a supervisor or a follower? I would love to hear your answer to that question, in the comment section below this video. I look forward to reading your comments. So until next time I will see you soon. We're almost done with our free mini course on these various leadership theories and we're gonna finish up with one of my personal favorites, servant leadership. It's not necessarily the newest, but it does represent a different way of thinking compared to many of the earlier models, so we're saving it for last. This video we'll look at servant leadership. We'll look at its origins and also how it can be applicable today, so let's unpack the details. Most of the information we got for this video comes from Robert K. Greenleaf, he coined this term in the 1970s, and I will put a link to his website in the description below. The video I encourage you to look into the details a little bit more for that. So servant leadership is a philosophy, a leadership philosophy, a way of looking at leadership. And depending upon how you look at leadership it's going to influence how you act as a leader. So before we get into servant leadership it's the best strategy is to compare it to traditional leadership because it's really a counterpoint to traditional leadership. So traditional leadership sees the people lower in this pyramid of leadership, lower in this structure, serving the leaders in authority above them. So the people below serve the leaders, obviously, this is very different than servant leadership. It's a very boss centered approach, this traditional approach, where the person in authority typically is looking to amass more power and more control, and unfortunately this can devalue other people, people below the leaders often feel quote used and abused. And anytime I watch a movie or a show about the Victorian era in England, I start to think about this traditional view of leadership where there's the person in authority, the family that owns the mansion owns the estate and the servants literally live below them in the basement of the house often times and everything that happens in that house is there to serve the family. Now that's of course these are movies and I didn't live back then, but I always think about this traditional view of leadership and authority when I watched those movies. Servant leadership really flips this whole equation on its head. This servant leadership is grounded in many of the religions of course, in fact, Jesus said directly, "Whoever wants to be first must be the servant of all." So this is a classic servant leadership example. In fact, what he said also was you don't want to be like the other leaders, you don't wanna quote "Lord it over people." So that's definitely servant leadership. Obviously if people are still in charge they're still the leader, but they're leading by serving by thinking about how they can benefit the people that are under their care. That's why people like Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela are classic examples of servant leaders. They have a deep sense of responsibility for the people that they lead, in fact, a lot of people don't know this but Gandhi was trained as an attorney, as a lawyer. He had a high level of education, but he thought the best way to have influence was to serve and so he changed his whole lifestyle and approach to lead from that place of being a servant to other people. And today's organizations it really makes sense to be a servant leader, because the basic idea is that if you invest in other people then they will help you build a better organization. And that's why you see servant leaders developing other people, essentially bringing out the best in other people, getting them the best training, treating them well, making sure they're fully satisfied at work so that they can contribute and reach their full potential. Servant leaders are known for their good treatment of the people that are under their care. And they're known for cultivating collaboration, trust and empathy, so that's a brief look at servant leadership and how it contrasts to traditional leadership. So my question of the day to you is I would love to hear about your examples of servant leadership who have you worked for? Now you don't need to name names, but I would like to hear, "Oh, I work for a supervisor at this pizza place and he was a really good servant leader and here's why." I would love to hear your stories and examples below, and I can't wait to read them, I think it's really important to articulate these things to name them so that we know servant leadership when we see it, and we're much more able to do it ourselves as rising leaders. So thanks, God bless and I will see you in the next video. Well, you did it, you made it to the again and I hope you have enjoyed learning about these various leadership models as much as I've enjoyed making these videos. I look forward to reading your comments below and until next time, thanks, God bless. And I will see you in the next video.

Channel: Communication Coach Alexander Lyon

Views: 250,655

Keywords: communication training, leadership skills, communication skills, presentation skills, communication coach, Alex Lyon, leadership theories, theories of leadership, leadership theories in management, top leadership theories, communication training classes online, online communication training, leadership training, leadership theory, transformational leadership, leadership traits, leadership styles, leadership theory and practice

Id: -S7j2ZpwExc

Length: 94min 5sec (5645 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 29 2021