Influencing - Characteristics That Differentiate Leaders From Non-Leaders

There are three categories of leadership theories which highlight the key determinants of leadership effectiveness. They are Trait Theories, Behavioral Theories and Situational Theories.

Trait Theories:

There are six traits associated with effective leadership include drive, the desire to lead, honesty and integrity, self-confidence, intelligence and job-relevant knowledge.

Drive: Leaders exhibit a high effort level. They have a relatively high desire for achievement, they are ambitious, they have a lot of energy, they are tirelessly persistent in their activities and they show initiative.

Desire to lead: Leaders have a strong desire to influence and lead others. They demonstrate the willingness to take responsibility

Honesty and Integrity: Leaders build trusting relationship between themselves and followers by being truthful and non-deceitful and by showing high consistency between word and deed.

Self-confidence: Followers look to leaders for an absence of self-doubt. Leaders therefore need to show self-confidence in order to convince followers of the rightness of goals and decisions.

Intelligence: Leaders need to be intelligent enough to gather synthesize and interpret large amounts of information; and to be able to create vision, solve problems and make correct decision.

Job-relevant knowledge: Effective leaders have a high degree of knowledge about the company, the industry and technical matters. In-depth knowledge allows leaders to make well-informed decision and to understand the implications of those decisions.

Behavioral Theories:

They identified behaviors that differentiated effective leaders’ from ineffective leaders. Based on these people could be trained to be leaders. The following are three types of behavioral styles of leadership

i) Autocratic Style: A leader who tended to centralize authority, dictate work methods, make unilateral decision and limit employee participation

ii) Democratic Style: A leader who tended to involve employees in decision making to delegate authority, to encourage participation in deciding work methods and goals, and to use feedback as an opportunity for coaching employees

iii) Laissez-faire style: A leader who generally gave the group complete freedom to make decision and complete the work in whatever way it saw fit.

Research results revealed that employee-oriented leaders were associated with high group productivity and higher job satisfaction. Leaders who exhibited high level of consideration and high level of task orientation achieved high subordinate performance and satisfaction. Some studies reported that democratic style of leadership was most effective, although later studies showed mixed results

Situational Theories:

Situational theories of leadership studies revealed that choosing the appropriate style of leadership depends upon the situation will yield more effective results than following same type of leadership style across all the time. Among various situational theories of leadership Fiedler’s contingency model and Hersey and

Blanchard’s Life Cycle Model outlined the importance of situational factors while choosing the appropriate style of leadership.

Fiedler’s model highlighted that task-oriented style of leadership will be more effective in both the extreme situations such as highly favorable and highly unfavorable situations. If the situations are moderately favorable, relationship-oriented style will be more effective.

Hersey and Blanchard model reported that if the employees are highly matured Psychologically and possess job competency, the enforcing delegating style will be more effective. Similarly if the employees are not adequately possessing job competency and very low in psychological maturity, the enforcing directing style will be more effective.

Trait Approach - The Big Five

The Trait Approach

A trait is what we call a characteristic way in which an individual perceives, feels, believes, or acts.  When we casually describe someone, we are likely to use trait terms:  I am, for example, somewhat of an introvert, a pretty nervous person, strongly attached to my family, frequently depressed, and awesomely intelligent.  I have a good sense of humor, fond of languages, very fond of good food, not at all fond of exercise, and a little obsessive.  You see:  I have just given you ten traits that actually go a long way towards describing me!

Psychologists, especially personologists, are very interested in traits.  They are especially interested in finding which traits are broad and possibly genetically based, as opposed to ones that are rather peculiar and can change easily.  Over the years, we have had a number of theories that attempt to describe the key traits of human beings.

 Agreeableness refers to how you interact with other people, and it involves the level of intimacy you maintain in your personal relationships and how helpful and sympathetic you are. Characteristics of an agreeable personality include trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, and tender-mindedness.

Conscientiousness refers to your work style. It involves your general dedication to activities; how hard you work and how efficient and focused you are. Conscientious people are typically competent, orderly, dutiful, achievement striving, self-disciplined, and deliberate.

Extraversion refers to how you express yourself. This trait considers your sociability, positive emotionality, assertiveness, and activity or energy level. If you are extraverted, you're probably warm, gregarious, assertive, active, seek

excitement, and tend toward positive emotions.

 Neuroticism refers to your emotional style. It involves the extent to which you experience negative emotions such as worry, self-doubt, stress and tension. Most neurotic personalities display anxiety, angry hostility, depression, self-consciousness, impulsiveness, or vulnerability (or some combination of these characteristics).

 Openness describes your intellectual style - the extent to which you are open to new ideas and innovative approaches, and have an active imagination. Some characteristics of openness include fantasy, appreciation of art, the tendency to have a variety of emotions, action (not reaction), and individual ideas and values.

Test yourself by clicking the link below.

1.http://drphil.com/shows/bigfivepersonalityquiz

2.http://www.personalitytest.org.uk

3.https://www.123test.com/personality-test/

Memo Writing

Memorandum comes from the Latin noun memorandum and has the same root as memorare, memorare translates as to recount, to mention or call to mind.Memos are used within organizations to communicate everything from routine details to complete proposals and reports. Memos are often only a few short paragraphs, but they can be much longer, depending on their purpose. 

Here are some typical uses of memos:

• to inform others about new or changed policy, procedures, organizational details
• to announce meetings, events, changes
• to present decisions, directives, proposals, briefings
• to transmit documents (internal)

Memo Format

• Company and/or department name (without address)

Heading

• To (who gets it)
• From (who sent it)
• Subject (what it’s about)
• Date (when it was sent)  

Body (conveys message)

• Introduction
• Main points

Close

Memo Style

1. Concise: Make your sentences, paragraph, and overall memo as brief and as focused as possible.
2. Clear: Get your purpose straight before you start, then plan what you want to say and in what.
3. Order. Use your memo layout to help your reader (headings, bulleted lists, white space, as appropriate).
4. Direct: Speak directly to your reader, as you would in person or on the phone. Do not pad your ideas with unnecessary details. Think of what questions your reader wants answered, and then answer them.
5. Clean: Reread, revise, copyedit, and proofread.

Memo Structure

Subject Line: Summarizes the main idea; think of it as being preceded by the words "This memo is about."

Introductory paragraph: Quickly orients the reader to what the memo is about.

Give your purpose for writing.

Supply any relevant background information.

Identify any task the memo is related to.

Body: Conveys the information and supporting details relevant to the memo's purpose

Keep paragraphs short and focused; one main idea per paragraph.

Keep sentences tight and informative

Use bullets to list information

Close: End courteously (think of a phone call or face-to-face meeting), stating any expected outcome, action, or other information appropriate to your purpose. For example,

“Please send me your comments and suggestions by January __.”

"Let's meet next week to go over the next stage in the plan."

Mintzberg Management Roles

Management Roles

Mintzberg proposed ten managerial roles a typical manager has to perform in discharging his day-to-day activities. Mintzberg’s ten managerial roles can be grouped as those concerned with interpersonal relationships, those concerned with transfer of information, and those concerned with decision- making.

Interpersonal Roles:

This refers to those types’ of managerial roles that involve people and other duties that are ceremonial and symbolic in nature. There are three types of interpersonal roles:

. i)  Figure head Role: Manager performs a role as symbolic head and accordingly he is obliged to perform a number of routine duties of a legal or social nature. The typical activities include greeting visitors, signing legal documents etc. 

. ii)  Leader Role: As a leader of the department, manager gives direction to his employees and other subordinates to fulfill the assigned goals and objectives. He is responsible for the motivation and activation of subordinates. Also he is response for staffing, training and associated activities. Some of the typical activities include goals setting, providing guidance, review the progress of work etc. 

. iii)  Liaison Role: The manager is required to maintain contact with external sources that provide valuable information. These sources are individual or groups outside the managers unit and may be inside or outside the organization. For this he as to maintain self-developed network of outside contacts and informers who provide favors and information, for example, acknowledging mail, doing external board work etc. 

Informational Roles:

This refers to those types of managerial roles that involve receiving, collecting and disseminating information. There are three types of informational roles:

. iv)  Monitor: Typically, manager is spanning the boundaries of the organization and trying to get information from outside though various sources such as reading magazines, taking with other to learn current developments, movements of competitors planning, program etc. Manager seeks and receives variety of special information (much of it current) to develop thorough understanding of organization and environment. He emerges as nerve centre of internal and external information about the organization. 

. v)  Disseminator: M anager acts as conduits of information to organizational members. He is expected to transmit information received from outside or from subordinates to member of the organization. Some information is factual and some may involve interpretation and integrating of diverse value positions of organizational influencers. Some of the typical activities of this role include holding informational meetings, making phone calls to relay information etc.

vi) Spokesman: Manager represents the organization to outsiders by performing the role as spokesman. In this context, the manager transmits information to outsiders on organization’s plans, policies, results, achievements, serves as expert on the chosen field by giving value suggestion to the community etc. As mentioned earlier, he holds board meeting periodically and gives information to the media.

Decisional Roles:

This refers to those types of managerial roles that revolve around making decision. There are four types of decisional roles.

. vii)  Entrepreneur: As entrepreneur, manager initiates and oversees new projects that will improve their organization’s performance. He thoroughly analyses the strengths of the organization and the opportunities available in the environment and takes initiative to implement improvement projects to bring about worthwhile changes with in the organization and continuously supervise designing new developmental projects. Some of the typical activities include organizing strategy and review sessions to develop new programs, instrumental in venturing novel projects etc. 

. viii)  Disturbance Handler: As disturbance handler, managers take corrective action in response to unforeseen problems within as well as outside the organization. Whenever any conflicts occur among the subordinates regarding the sharing of resources, allocation of funds etc, and the manager intervene appropriately and resolve those issues. He is responsible for corrective action when organization faces important, unexpected disturbances. 

. ix)  Resources Allocator: Manager is responsible for the allocation of organizational resources – physical, human, monetary resources of all kind and in effect, the making or approval of all significant organizational decision. In order to perform this activity, he will be schedule meetings, requesting authorization, and performing any activity that involves budgeting and the programming of subordinates work. 

. x)  Negotiator: Manager also performs as negotiators when they discuss and bargain with other groups to gain advantage for their own units. Manager will negotiate with business partners in case the organization is seeking alliances to venture projects or extend their operation in new marketing. 

Famous Failures

Organisational Politics - Causes

According to Aristotle, politics stems from a diversity of interests. To fully understand the politics of the organization, it is necessary to explore the processes by which people engage in politics. Consistent with Aristotle's conceptualization, it is a given that, within the organization, all employees bring their own interests, wants, desires, and needs to the workplace.

To help us understand organizations, we might consider them as political systems. The political metaphor helps us understand power relationships in day-to-day organizational relationships. If we accept that power relations exist in organizations, then politics and politicking are an essential part of organizational life.

Politics is a means of recognizing and, ultimately, reconciling competing interests within the organization. Competing interests can be reconciled by any number of means. As mentioned, organizations need mechanisms whereby they reconcile conflicting interests. Hence, organizations, like governments, tend to "rule" by some sort of "system". This "system" is employed to create and maintain "order" among the organization's members.

Systems of rule within organizations range from autocratic to democratic at the extremes. Between these extremes we find bureaucratic and technocratic systems. Whatever the system, each represents a political orientation with respect to how power is applied and distributed throughout the organization. Each type of organizational "rule" simply draws on different principles of legitimacy.

According to Farrell and Peterson(Farrell and Peterson, 1982), the successful practice of organizational politics is perceived to lead to a higher level of power, and once a higher level of power is attained, there is more opportunity to engage in political behavior

For purposes of understanding organizational political behavior, Farrell and Peterson (1982) proposed a three-dimensional typology. The dimensions are:

•       where the political activity takes place -- inside or outside the organization,

•       the direction of the attempted influence -- vertically or laterally in the organization, and

•       the legitimacy of the political action.

Causes of Organisational Politics 

Change

Change is unsettling and often results in winners and losers. When this is the case, it is hardly surprising that more extreme – subtle, underhand, covert or just downright devious – behaviours surface. Individuals start to position themselves in advance of the change. Simply preserving the status quo can often generate such behaviour or even sabotage. It is little wonder that so many change initiatives fail.

Limited Resources

Not surprisingly, when businesses set budgets to drive down costs and end prices to the customer, there is enormous pressure to hold down expenditure and investment. Consequently, department heads have to compete with colleagues for a share of a pot that is rarely large enough. Finance Directors who make these allocations will find themselves on the receiving end of bribes, threats, propositions, sales pitches, gifts, violence and affection – except, of course, we don’t call it that, we call it politics. Relationships may become strained, perhaps even permanently damaged, within a group of people who are supposed to collaborate with each other to best effect on a daily basis.

Subjectivity of Evaluation

Cuts in the cost base often reduce opportunities for promotion. The result is more aggressive behaviour on the part of ambitious individuals, who are driven to get ahead of colleagues if they are to obtain the scarce senior roles they aspire to. Aggressive does not mean using fists, but it does entail competing against other members of staff who just happen to be in the same team.There is nothing underhand in this. Everyone ‘knows the score’, which only serves to perpetuate a climate of suspicion, rumour and gossip to the detriment of getting the job done. Unfortunately, staying out of the fray simply isn’t an option if you want to succeed.

Information

The very speed at which businesses move these days requires that roles are frequently amended and job descriptions often lag behind the new way of doing things. Matrix structures and an orientation to project teams often result in ambiguity over who is responsible for what. Objectives set at the start of the year quickly become overtaken by events, which leads to confusion and vagueness between colleagues. The outcome is often marked by a lack of trust, accusations of exceeding authority and territorial infighting. The rumour mill cranks up and soon individuals are swayed by all manner of perceptions and assumptions that have no basis in fact, but everything to do with the way we choose to interpret others’ behaviour.

Compliance or Commitment 

Following orders from positions above self may be in the nature of mere acceptance of directives or of internalization of the intent of the directive. In case of compliance, the change brought about is one that is easily reverted to null at the slightest instance. Although, compliance results due to position power of the directing figure, an internalization of the idea has not percolated down the hierarchical levels. This speaks volumes about the issues of employee involvement and empowerment not only as a part of enhancing acceptability of an initiative, but also towards preserving the power of the superior.