The Leader-Member Exchange Theory (LMX) hits very close to the heart of who I am as a leader. My mantra as a leader has long been “it’s all about the people”, meaning that a leader is nothing if the relationship with subordinates is either missing or in disrepair. It follows that a leader should have the well-being of the team in mind; not only the team, but each member within the team. In-groups and out-groups have no place in the effective leader’s lexicon. Additionally, a leader’s vision is nothing if that vision is not well articulated to the team. Planning skills, project expertise, and other leadership efforts are all for naught if there is a lack of an exchange mechanism to convey those components to team members and fold them in as part of the team. How can a leader develop a team and know of individual motivations if the communication lines are not well developed?
I have a credo I recite daily to keep in my mind a sharp focus on the components of leadership communication. It is human nature to fall back into old behavior. Deliberate statement of desired thought processes leads to creating new pathways of habitual behavior.
I strive for excellence in all I do.
I will Lead with professionalism, compassion, and wisdom.
I will communicate in a professional, concise, and articulate manner.
Leaders should work to create relationships with the entire group, not just members of the so-called in-group. This relationship affords the leader a conduit for promoting team cohesiveness and individual challenge to perform within the team (Northouse, p. 145). But most notable and pertinent to LMX is the third point of my personal leadership credo. Communicating in a professional, concise, and articulate manner is at the core of a leadership theory in which there is a high level of reciprocity between the leader and followers (Northouse, 2016, p. 143). Northouse articulates why communication is one of the cornerstones of LMX. High quality exchanges are inextricably bound to effective communication (Northouse, 2016, p. 146). Simply put, if a leader has difficulty communicating with team members, it is unlikely that leader will be able to assemble an effective team.
Following are two examples illustrating the critical nature of LMX precepts. The first example of this is found in a member of one of my teams who ultimately lost his job due to an inability to engage in effective exchanges with other team members. Bob was extremely brilliant, and in fact, was a member of the genius society MENSA. He was effective carrying out his duties but was woefully ill-equipped to interact professionally with other people. In the end, Bob was let go. How important is the leader-team exchange? In Bob’s case, it meant his job. Despite repeated attempts to correct Bob’s behavior and establish a professional rapport with others, it was the difference that lead to his dismissal. My attempts as his leader notwithstanding, there existed a personal mental block on Bob’s part that frustrated attempts to communicate effectively.
In another instance, I was the subordinate of a manager who was very abrasive and a person with whom interaction was always a difficult experience. On many occasions, there were engagements that became heated to the point of becoming much more defensive than useful. George was another case in which considerable technical skills were rendered somewhat ineffective due to the barriers he threw up that inhibited meaningful exchanges. On one occasion, he was teaching a group how to use a software application. His mannerisms had become so abrasive he was asked to not return after the first break. Having personally reached a high frustration point with George, it was I who had to initiate a change in communication style. Not every point that came up needed to be debated, and not every issue had to be corrected. Such was an experience that taught the importance of choosing one’s battles. After working together to improve our communications, a highly effective relationship was established. When George left the group, I was disappointed to see him go. Knocking down interaction barriers allowed one to benefit from Bob’s knowledge and expertise.
To summarize, I posit that the quality of the exchange a leader creates with their team is the superlative leadership component leading to high success as a leader as well as within the team. In short, the better the member exchange relationship between the leader and follower, the higher will be productivity, job satisfaction, motivation of the team, and success of the team (Schermerhorn, Hunt, & Osborn, 2011). Effective interaction and communication is the foundation from which functioning relationships are built.
Works Cited:
Northouse, P.G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
Schermerhorn, J. R., Hunt, J. G., & Osborn, R. N. (2011). Organizational behavior (11th ed., p. 253). New York, NY: Wiley
Julia West says
In appropriating Yukl’s (1989) definition of leadership as “influence processes involving determination of the group’s or organization’s objectives, motivating task behavior in pursuit of these objectives, and influencing group maintenance and culture” (as cited in Carson, Tesluk, & Marrone, 2007, p.1218), we can clearly identify the role of communications as an antecedent of leadership emergence. In your post, you make an emphasis on communicative nature of leadership exchanges, which is relevant not only to LMX theory, but to the overall concepts of influence, group determination, and motivation. While it is satisfying to have high-quality relationships with some of our subordinates or peers, as leaders, we often need to work extra hard on relationships that are far from being gratifying in the first place. In order to accomplish that, we need a set of communicative skills to overcome the early stages of leadership making, including the lower-quality stranger phase that primarily relies on contractual roles (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1991 as cited in Northouse, 2016). Truly, as you point out, no effective relationships can exist without solid communicative patterns between the parties; a notion that is particularly important within organizational boundaries.
Furthermore, Yukl (1989) supports your claim that there is no inherent desirability “of having sharply differentiated in-groups and out-groups” (p.267). It appears that sharply differentiated groups tend to create feelings of resentment due to the lack of social identification and team cohesiveness, which can be detrimental to group identification and self-motivation (Yukl, 1989). Just as you argue, it is imperative to establish effective relationships with all subordinates in order to increase the possibility of each developing a sense of belonging, self-importance, and meaningfulness within a team. It might be tempting to isolate oneself to the close circle of followers who are particularly receptive to our leadership styles. However, an effective leader must be able to develop highly sophisticated communication approaches that would fit the needs of all his/her subordinates thus engaging each as an equal part of the team. Drawing from these observations, we can argue that each individual case you presented could have some potential for improvement should effective communicative strategies be employed.
In Bob’s unfortunate example, I would argue that attempting to develop a deeper human connection by “sharing more resources and personal or work-related information” (Northouse, 2016, p.142) could have be an effective first step in mitigating the inadequacy of his poor social skills. As with many brilliant people who excel at certain tasks only to fail in human relationship domains, there is a great leadership challenge to bring some balance to their performance. In that regard, LMX theory offers a unique opportunity to focus on such relationship, which is equally important to leadership development as the overall organizational objectives. To substantiate this claim, we can turn to your example of success with George, who became a more effective team-member after your explicit intervention. Clearly, having stepped in to finesse this relationship you managed to instill in George a much higher “degree of mutual trust, respect, and obligation” (Nothouse, 2016, p.143). As a result, not only did you manage to improve your relationship with George, but you also contributed to the overall organizational effectiveness, which is precisely the point of LMX theory. Overall, your experience clarifies the role of open communications that are tailored to the specific situation as an antecedent of effective leadership making and human resource development.
References
Carson, J. B., Tesluk, P. E., & Marrone, J. A. (2007). Shared leadership in teams: An investigation of antecedent conditions and performance. Academy of management Journal, 50(5), 1217-1234.
Northouse, P.G. (2015). Leadership: Theory and practice. 7th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Yukl, G. (1989). Managerial leadership: A review of theory and research. Journal of management, 15(2), 251-289.