Leadership in Organizations (Gary Yukl, ed 8) 1

Author Introduction:

Gary Yukl is a Professor of Management and Leadership at the State University of New York
in Albany, and a board member of the Leadership Quarterly journal. He is a well-known
scholar and author on leadership.
Leadership in Organizations (Gary Yukl, ed 8) 2

Chapter 1: The Nature of Leadership

Introduction

Learning objectives:

 Understand the different ways leadership has been defined.

 Understand the controversy about differences between leadership and management.
 Understand why it is so difficult to assess leadership effectiveness.
 Understand the different indicators used to assess leadership effectiveness.
 Understand what aspects of leadership have been studied the most during the past 50
years.
 Understand the organization of this book.

Definitions of Leadership:

 An observation by Bennis (1959) is a true today as when he made it many years ago.

“Always, it seems, the concept of leadership eludes us or turns up in another form to taunt us
again with its slipperiness and complexity. So we have invented an endless proliferation of
terms to deal with it…and still the concept is not sufficiently defined” (Bennis, 1959).

 Leadership has been defined in terms of traits, behaviors, influence, interaction

patterns, role relationships, and occupation of an administrative position. Following
shows the definitions presented over the past 50 years.
 Leadership is “the behavior of an individual . . . directing the activities of a
group toward a shared goal” (Hemphill & Coons, 1957, p. 7).
 Leadership is “the influential increment over and above mechanical
compliance with the routine directives of the organization” (Katz & Kahn,
1978, p. 528).
 Leadership is “the process of influencing the activities of an organized group
toward goal achievement” (Rauch & Behling, 1984, p. 46).
 “Leadership is about articulating visions, embodying values, and creating the
environment within which things can be accomplished” (Richards & Engle,
1986, p. 206).
Leadership in Organizations (Gary Yukl, ed 8) 3

 “Leadership is a process of giving purpose (meaningful direction) to collective

effort, and causing willing effort to be expended to achieve purpose” (Jacobs
& Jaques, 1990, p. 281).
 Leadership “is the ability to step outside the culture . . . to start evolutionary
change processes that are more adaptive” (Schein, 1992, p. 2).
 “Leadership is the process of making sense of what people are doing together
so that people will understand and be committed” (Drath & Palus, 1994, p. 4).
 Leadership is “the ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable
others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organization . .
.” (House et al., 1999, p. 184).

Controversies over Leadership Definitions:

1. Specialized role or shared influence process:

 A major controversy involves the issue of whether leadership should be
viewed as a specialized role or as a shared influence process.
 One view is that organizations have role specialization. A person with primary
responsibility for performing a specific leadership role is known as a “leader”.
Other members are referred to as “followers”. A person can perform both
leader and follower roles at the same time. E.g. a department manager is a
leader of department and also a follower of higher-level managers.
 Another View is in terms of an influence process that occurs naturally within
a social system and is diffused among the members. According to this view,
different leadership roles may be performed by different people who control
what the group does, how it is achieved, and how people in the group relate to
each other.
2. Type of influence process:
 Controversy over the definition of leadership involves not only who exercises
influence, but also what kind of influence and outcome is exercised.
 An opposite view is that this concept is too narrow, as it excludes other
mechanisms of control that are necessary to understand the effectiveness or
ineffectiveness of a leader.
Leadership in Organizations (Gary Yukl, ed 8) 4

 The same outcome can be achieved with different influence methods, and the
same type of influence attempt can result in different outcomes depending on
the nature of the situation.
3. Purpose of influence attempts:
 Another controversy that influence attempts are part of the leadership involves
their purpose and outcome.
 One view is that leadership takes place only when individuals are motivated to
do what is ethical and beneficial to the company and to them.
 The opposing view may include any effort to manipulate the attitudes and
actions of followers in an organizational sense, irrespective of the intended
intent or actual beneficiary.
4. Influence based on reason or emotions:
 Over several years, leadership has been seen as a mechanism in which leaders
persuade followers to conclude that it is in their best interest to work together
to accomplish a common mission objective.
 At the other hand, some recent interpretations of leadership put far more
importance on the emotional dimensions of power than on justification.
Leaders encourage followers to voluntarily surrender their own interests to a
greater cause.
5. Direct versus indirect leadership:
 Some scholars differentiate between direct and indirect modes of leadership to
better understand how a leader can influence people when there is no direct
contact with them (Hunt, 1991; Lord & Maher, 1991; Yammarino, 1994).
 Direct forms of leadership involve attempts to influence followers when they
interact or use communication media to send them messages. Examples
involve writing notes or reports to staff, receiving e-mail updates, appearing
on television, having meetings with small groups of staff, and engaging in
events involving employees (e.g. attending orientation or training sessions,
business picnics)
 Indirect leadership forms:
i. Cascading: It happens when the direct control of the CEO is moved
from the CEO to the middle managers, to lower-level managers, to
Leadership in Organizations (Gary Yukl, ed 8) 5

daily employees. Influence can include changes in employee attitudes,

beliefs, values, or behaviors.
ii. Influence: Another form of indirect leadership involves influence over
formal programs, management systems, and structural forms. Many
large organizations have programs or management systems intended to
influence the attitudes, skills, behavior, and performance of employees
(such as recruitment, selection, and promotion of employees).
Structural forms and various types of programs can be used to increase
control, coordination, efficiency, and innovation.
iii. Leader influence over the organization culture: A third form of indirect
leadership involves leader influence over the organization culture,
which is defined as the shared beliefs and values of members. There
are many ways for leaders to influence an organization’s culture.
1. Direct influence - e.g., communicating a compelling vision or
leading by example.
2. indirect influence - changing the organizational structure,
reward systems, and management programs
Some forms of influence are not easily classified as either direct or indirect
leadership. Moreover, direct and indirect forms of influence are not mutually
exclusive, and when used together in a consistent way, it is possible to
magnify their effects.
6. Leadership versus management: controversy about the difference between leadership
and management. A person can be a leader without being a manager (e.g., an informal
leader), and a person can be a manager without leading. Here, degree of overlap is a
point of sharp disagreement.
 The most extreme distinction assumes that management and leadership cannot
occur in the same person. For these writers, leaders and managers differ with
regard to their values and personalities.

Manager Leader

Managers value stability, order, and Leaders value flexibility, innovation,

efficiency, and they are impersonal, and adaptation; they care about
risk-averse, and focused on short-term people as well as economic
results. outcomes, and they have a longer-
Leadership in Organizations (Gary Yukl, ed 8) 6

term perspective with regard to

objectives and strategies

Managers are concerned about how Leaders are concerned with what
things get done, and they try to get things mean to people, and they try
people to perform better. to get people to agree about the most
important things to be done.

Managers are people who do things Leaders are people who do the right
right proposed by Bennis and Nanus. thing proposed by Bennis and
Nanus.

 Other scholars view leading and managing as distinct processes or roles, but
they do not assume that leaders and managers are different types of people.
o For example, Mintzberg (1973) described leadership as one of the 10
managerial roles. The other nine roles (e.g., resource allocator,
negotiator) involve distinct managing responsibilities, but leadership is
viewed as an essential managerial role that pervades the other roles.
o Kotter (1990) proposed that managing seeks to produce predictability
and order, whereas leading seeks to produce organizational change
(Developing a vision communicating Motivating and inspiring). The
importance of leading and managing depends in part on the situation.
o Rost (1991) defined management as an authority relationship that
exists between a manager and subordinates to produce and sell goods
and services. He defined leadership as a multidirectional influence
relationship between a leader and followers with the mutual purpose
of accomplishing real change. Rost proposed that leading was not
necessary for a manager to be effective in producing and selling goods
and services but is essential when major changes must be implemented
in an organization.

Most scholars seem to agree that success as a manager or administrator in

modern organizations also involves leading.
Leadership in Organizations (Gary Yukl, ed 8) 7

Leadership: A working definition:

Leadership is the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to
be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to
accomplish shared objectives.

Understand the controversy about differences between leadership and management:

 Leaders and managers as qualitatively different and mutually exclusive types of

people.
 Leading and managing as different roles or processes
 Leading as an influence relationship and managing as an authority relationship.
 Integrative approach

Understand why it is so difficult to assess leadership effectiveness

 Indicators of Leadership Effectiveness

o High group performance
o Follower satisfaction
o Improved group processes
o Career success of leader
o Development of followers
 Immediate and delayed outcomes
o Causal Chain of Effects from Two Types of Leader Behavior

Inspiring Follower
vision effort Quality +
Productivity Unit Profits
Training + Follower
Coaching skills

 Stakeholders with different preferences

 Different conceptions of leadership
 Development of a composite measure
Leadership in Organizations (Gary Yukl, ed 8) 8

Major research Approaches:

 Types of Leadership Characteristics:

o Trait Approach –
 One of the earliest
 Underlying this approach was the assumption that some people are
natural leaders, born as leaders, and that it cannot be learned easily. •
Hundreds of trait studies during the 1930s and 1940s – to discover
these qualities.
 The predominant research method was to look for a correlation
between a leader attributes and a criterion of leaders success
 Failed to find any traits that would guarantee leadership success
 However- helped us understand how traits are related to leadership
behavior and effectiveness
o Behavior Approach –
 Began in the early 1950s after many researches became discouraged
with the trait approach.
 Look into behavior - what managers actually do on the job.
 Two subcategories:
1. How they spent their time and the typical pattern of activities.
Some, how they cope with demands, constrains…Use
descriptive methods (observation, diaries, and questionnaires).
2. Identifying effective leadership behavior. Use survey field
study with BDQ (behavioral description questionnaire).

Hundreds of studies examined correlation between l. behavior and various indicators

of l. effectiveness

o Power-Influence Approach –
 Examines influence process between leaders and other people.
 Leader centered perspective - Assumption that causality is
unidirectional, leader act, followers react. Power is important not only
to influence subordinates but peers, superiors, people outside the
Leadership in Organizations (Gary Yukl, ed 8) 9

organization. Method questionnaire to measure leader power to

effectiveness
1. Influence tactics research – how leaders influence the attitudes
and behavior of followers.
2. Participative leadership – how power is shared and about
empowerment of followers. Rooted in the tradition of behavior
research.
o Situational Approach –
 Emphasizes the importance of contextual factors that influence
leadership process: the characteristics of the followers, the type of
organization, the nature of the work of unit, external environment.
 The approach has two subcategories.
 Research to discover the extent to which type of organization,
level of management and culture influence leadership
processes. Method: Comparative study of two or more
situations.
 To identify aspects of the situation that “moderate” the
relationship of leaders attributes (traits, skills, behavior) to
leadership effectiveness. Contingency theories of leadership.
o Integrative Approach –
 Involves more than one type of leadership variable in the same study
(two or more).
 But it is still rare to find a theory that includes all of them (traits,
behavior, influential process, situational variables, and outcomes).
 Example of integrative approach– self-concept theory of charismatic
leadership (explains why the followers of some leaders are willing to
make sacrifices to accomplish group objectives).

Understand what aspects of leadership have been studied the most over the last 50 years

Bases for comparing Leadership Theories:

1. Key Variables
 Type of variable emphasized: Key variables in leadership theory are as follows
Leadership in Organizations (Gary Yukl, ed 8) 10

o Characteristics of the leader:

 Traits (motives, personality)
 Values, integrity, and moral development
 Confidence and optimism
 Skills and expertise
 Leadership behavior
 Influence tactics
 Attributions about followers
 Mental models (beliefs and assumptions)
o Characteristics of the follower
 Traits (needs, values, self-concepts)
 Confidence and optimism
 Skills and expertise
 Attributions about the leader
 Identification with the leader
 Task commitment and effort
 Satisfaction with job and leader
 Cooperation and mutual trust
o Characteristics of the situation
 Type of organizational unit
 Size of organizational unit
 Position power and authority of leader
 Task structure and complexity
 Organizational culture
 Environmental uncertainty and change
 External dependencies and constraints
 National cultural values
2. Level of conceptualization:
o Intra-individual process –
 Processes within a single individual.
 Theories of decision making, motivation, and cognition.
o Dyadic process –
Leadership in Organizations (Gary Yukl, ed 8) 11

 Relationship between a leader and another individual who is usually a

follower.
 Reciprocal influence process.
o Group process –
 Leadership is a group process.
 Leadership role in a task group.
 How a leader contributes to group effectiveness.
o Organizational process –
 A group exists in a larger social system
 Adaptation to the environment. Identifying threats and opportunities.
 Strategy for adapting.
 Efficiency of the transformation process.
3. Other bases for comparing Leadership Theories:
o Leader-centered versus follower- centered
o Universal versus contingency - applies to all types of situations or describes an
aspect of leadership that applies to some situation but not to others
o Descriptive versus prescriptive - explain leadership process, activities of the
leader… or identify what leaders must do to become effective, conditions to
use particular type of behavior effectively.

Understand the organization of this book:

 Behavior Approach
 Trait Approach
 Situational Approach
 Power and Influence Approach

Secondary: Level of Conceptualization

 Dyadic level
 Group level
 Organizational level
 Multiple levels
 Summary of Major Findings
Leadership in Organizations (Gary Yukl, ed 8) 12