For the purposes of this class, we have been studying leadership from the perspective of Northouse’s textbook, Leadership Theory and Practice. It is safe to assume that this textbook is written in regard to Western ideals of leadership, since the book was published in the US and Northouse himself is a professor at Western Michigan University and earned his doctorate at the University of Denver. Western culture is dominated by individualism, and this is seen in leadership theory. The leader is emphasized as someone special, someone who has unique skills that differ from the followers (Northouse, 2019). Collectivism instead focuses on the group, what is best for the group as a whole, and relationships within the group. Does leadership theory differ in non-Western cultures?

China is a well-known collectivist society, as reflected in their socialist market economy and cultural practices. A study on Eastern Chinese Women and Entrepreneurial Leadership noted that most women “adopted an achievement-oriented style of leadership” consisting of “high initiating structure and high consideration” (Li et al., 2013). This aligns with the Eastern culture ideals of considering the whole society or the whole company as a collective (Li et al., 2013). The high structure creates conformity and harmony according to Eastern ideals. High consideration also relates to prioritizing employee relationships, which is also a collectivist ideal. This study shows that the collectivist society infiltrates into the leadership style and theory.

Another study analyzes Paternalistic leadership, which is not often analyzed in Western culture, but is widely prevalent in the majority of the world (Jackson, 2016). Paternalism is not looked at in leadership theory or practices in Western culture. This is because it has mainly negative connotations, and is associated with a lack of freedom and infantilizing the citizens. However, “more recent research typically defines paternalistic leadership as ‘a style that combines strong discipline and authority with fatherly benevolence’”(Jackson, 2016). The benevolence includes “an individualized concern for subordinates’ personal well-being” (Jackson, 2016). The high power associated with the leader in paternalism also has negative connotations in the West. However, this all comes down to societal values, collectivism versus socialism. The duality of control and care is not as attractive to the West as other cultures.

A subsection of paternalism further separates the reality of paternalism and the negative connotation of the paternalism that the West portrays. The concept of benevolent paternalism involves a caring leader similar to a father who cares for children. This concept results in loyalty and respect for the leader from the followers because the leader cares for their wellbeing and success. However, exploitive paternalism involves a leader that is caring towards followers, but the end goal is to gain compliance to achieve the leader’s interests (Jackson, 2016). This difference may be situational and a leader may switch between benevolent paternalism and exploitative paternalism. Jackson describes that “Within a collectivist society, a benevolent paternalistic relationship may only exist between in-group members, whereas out-group members may be treated in a completely different way (perhaps in an authoritarian way)” (Jackson, 2016). There are downsides to those not in the leader’s inner circle within paternalism, the favorite child will receive more care and attention.

The research on non-Western leadership theory has not been publicized in the West, making it unknown. We assume it is “worse” or “damaging” compared to our own leadership practices in the West. However, making this assumption without the proper study of these cultures and their values is ignorant. We, as Americans, could learn from non-Western leadership practices in many ways to improve our own leadership skills.

References:

Jackson, T. (2016). Paternalistic leadership: The missing link in cross-cultural leadership studies? International Journal of Cross Cultural Management. 16(1):3-7. doi:10.1177/1470595816637701

Li, C., Bao, L., & Jiang, Q. (2013). Leadership Styles of Entrepreneurial Women in Eastern China: Characteristics and Differences, Social Behavior and Personality. 41 (3): 421-431. doi: https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.2013.41.3.421

Northouse, P.G. (2019).  Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

As I’ve mentioned in pervious blog posts, I run a sustainability education program that is funded through Penn State Housing. We work to educate campus residents about how to live sustainably on campus and in the dorms. We focus on teaching proper recycling, electricity conservation, and reducing water use. However, some other topics we’ve done work on have been easy plant-based meal recipes, responsible consumerism, and sustainable swaps for everyday items. I’m in charge of a general body of about 60 students and about 8 leadership team members that I hire and manage. This leadership team is responsible for coordinating, planning, and running our events and outreach programs while I work on administrative work. These 8 leadership team members work closely with me to manage the program’s success and evaluate our work. Over the years, I have become very close with the members of this program and I’m friends with many of them. One person in particular is one of my best friends and we hang out frequently outside of work. Everything was running smoothly until they became a problem within the program.

My friend is in charge of recruitment, a very important part of our program. Our program depends on his recruitment committee because if he doesn’t recruit enough people to apply, we won’t have enough people to work in the program next year. He had been telling us that his committee had been moving forward with recruiting from first-year seminars. We were under the impression that he would present at multiple seminars and we would get plenty applicants. When it got later in the semester we were wondering how many seminars he had booked and why he hadn’t gone to any yet. He asked him at one of our meetings how many he had booked and he let it slip that he hadn’t even emailed the professors to ask to come and present yet. By this time, we needed to be wrapping up recruitment, so we were disappointed and confused why he hadn’t made any steps to complete this project he had been telling us about for months. We felt deceived because we had been under the impression that he had been moving forward based on what he told us.

We set up an individual meeting soon after we realized he had not been moving forward with his role. We made our expectations clear in the beginning of the semester and we restated these in the meeting. We told him we were disappointed because we really had faith in his ability to move forward with recruitment project. We tried to balance both “concern for production” and “concern for people” in our meeting (Hamel). Although recruitment is an important part of our program, my friend is an important person in this program as well. We thought maybe there was an underlying reason he had not been honest with us earlier. He ended up breaking down and becoming very emotional. He had been struggling with lots of academic stress and mental health issues, but felt he needed to put on the façade that he was getting everything done. We ended up talking about how he could delegate more to his team and how I could take over some portion of his project. We used aspects of Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid, specifically “team management” in which we emphasized both the achievement of goals we set and also the wellbeing of our team and their individuality (Northouse, 2019). I think that my willingness to take on parts of his role that he couldn’t handle in the moment assigns my leadership style to this aspect of team management because I took his individual needs into account and was willing to compromise and take on some work myself (Northouse, 2019). Additionally, I used my own experiences and knowledge about delegation to help mitigate the challenges he was dealing with.

 

Similarly, the Ohio State Studies on Leadership Behavior showed that taking both consideration and initiating structure resulted in positive leadership style (Hamel). The concepts were not opposite sides of a spectrum, a leader needs to embody both to be effective. The expectations we set for my friend initiated structure and we restated these expectations and how he was not meeting them in our meeting. At the same time, we told him we knew he was capable of much more than what he was producing, and if he needed help he needed to be honest with us. This was incredibly effective and we both maintained our goals for our program and our friendship with him. I’m so happy we were able to work together and I was able to be firm yet caring. I’m still very close friends with him and it is because of the duality of my leadership style.

 

References:

Hamel, R. (n.d.). Lesson 5: Style and Situational Approaches. Reading.

Northouse, P.G. (2013).  Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

Upon reading the Northouse chapter on skills and trait theory, many of the studies mentioned are observational, and correlational rather than causational experimental studies. Northouse mentions that the reason so much leadership research is observational and correlational is because there are so few research studies on the topic currently (Northouse, 2019). As a researcher myself, I do understand why this is as observational and correlational studies are easier to do in shorter time frames. Experimental studies require a lot of planning and control variable management. I wonder how these variables would be controlled in a causational experimental study on leadership.

In the skills approach chapter, Northouse mentioned Robert Katz as the original researcher of the skills approach (Northouse, 2019). However, Katz’s study is limited in how it can be applied to all leadership situations. Katz used “field research in administration and his own firsthand observations of executives in the workplace” to develop his research article published in 1955 (Northouse, 2019). Katz came to the conclusion that each leader needed certain levels of these skills depending on their ranking within a company: technical, human, and conceptual (Northouse, 2019). Katz said that top management did not need as much technical skills but more human and conceptual skills, but lower level management would need more technical and human skills but less conceptual skills (Northouse, 2019). However, I can think of numerous situations where technical skills would be very important in an upper level leader, for example a surgeon.

This brings me to my next point: how can one claim a causational leadership study is widely applicable when each industry has different needs for leadership? One study by Smith and Foti found that certain traits such as dominance, intelligence, and self-confidence, were related to leadership emergence in a sample of 160 male college students (Smith and Foti, 1998). However, this study cannot be applied to all leadership situations. To assume all people in a leadership situation will be male is not likely. Additionally, male college students are a very specific demographic with cultural implications of what they likely respond to in leadership situations. Another study by Watson and Hoffman found with a mixed-sex college students, that although equally influential in their groups, women were rated significantly lower than men on leadership (Watson and Hoffman, 2004). Clearly, there are variables making this study making it not widely applicable, but the inclusion of women shows that women are judged differently in leadership roles.

When producing a causational study, one must minimize variability in data to reduce error. All the conditions must be controlled so every participant has a comparable experience to the next. However, this is not how leadership works in the work force. Leadership is a more organic and flexible process by which someone emerges as a leader over longer periods of time. This makes me think a longitudinal study would work best to survey leadership traits or personalities that make leadership roles successful.

 

References:

Northouse, P.G. (2019).  Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

Smith, J. A., & Foti, R. J. (1998). A pattern approach to the study of leader emergence. The Leadership Quarterly, 9(2), 147–160. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1048-9843(98)90002-9

Watson, C., & Hoffman, L. R. (2004). The Role of Task-Related Behavior in the Emergence of Leaders: The Dilemma of the Informed Woman. Group & Organization Management, 29(6), 659–685. https://doi.org/10.1177/1059601103254263

 

After reading Northouse’s chapter on followership, I was particularly interested in the types of followership and which of these types would grant the most satisfaction in a career. I hope that my job post-graduation brings me satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment, and I can say that I’m confident it will. My experiences with followership and leadership in environmental research and activism have been very positive. This brings me to the realization and I’m not the same follower in every leadership interaction. My followership depends drastically on my attitude towards the leader, the leadership style, and the ethics and values of that organization.

The Northouse chapter, as an introduction to followership, went over many different academic studies to categorize followers, including Zaleznik (1965), Kelley (1992), Chaleff (1995), and Kellerman (2008). These studies placed followers into categories based on how they interact and respond to leadership. It was never mentioned how these categories can be fluid or changing in different situations. The lack of quantitative research on followership is probably the reason this was not discussed. For the purposes of this blog post, I will be focusing on Kelly’s 1992 study on followership types, the most recognized followership typology, which are defined as Alienated, Passive, Conformist, Pragmatist, and Exemplary followership (Northouse, 2019). These positions are on two axis scale between Passive versus Active and Independent, Critical Thinking versus Dependent, Uncritical Thinking (Northouse, 2019).

A study published in The Psychologist-Manager Journal in 2009 investigated the relationship between these two factors of Kelley’s Followership Typology and job satisfaction and organizational commitment (Blanchard et al., 2009). In this study, they surveyed 331 university employees and found that the dimensions of Kelley’s followership typology had job satisfaction implications. The results indicate that “active engagement is positively associated with job satisfaction and commitment” but independent critical thinking is negatively associated with organizational commitment and extrinsic job satisfaction” (Blanchard et al., 2009). The results of this study are interesting to me because I can relate to both results in various situations when I was a follower.

I would say my organizational commitment has been very high and very low during my college career. On example of it being very high was when I was a Project Drawdown research fellow for the summer. I worked with this non-profit to research climate change solutions and to create educational resources for local farmers. I felt that this organization’s values were closely aligned with mine and my independent thinking was valued, and for that reason, I was a fully active follower. An example of my organizational commitment being very low was my experience as a THON volunteer. I was a THON Dancer Relations committee member my freshman year and had an horrible time even though I have a passion for medical research and public health. The meetings were super long, yet I felt like I wasn’t working hard at all. The entire THON weekend was exhausting and I broke down crying at the end with my committee members, yet it felt like some sort of emotional manipulation to gain my involvement. I never participated in THON again and spent my time volunteering for causes that I felt didn’t get enough funding or support due to the surplus of THON involvement at PSU.

Although both of my experiences as a follower were very different, my independent thinking was heavily involved in both. As a fellow with Project Drawdown, my independent thinking was praised and encouraged by my research mentor. However, as a THON volunteer, my independent thinking felt irrelevant within my committee, and further drove me away from the primary mission of THON even though I’m heavily passionate about public health and cancer research. I think that in my experience, independent thinking can provide organizational commitment, if a follower’s thoughts are valued and taken into consideration by the leadership.

 

References:

Northouse, P.G. (2013).  Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

Blanchard, A.B., Welbourne, J., Gilmore, D., and Bullock, A. (2009). Followership styles and employee attachment to the organization. The Psychologist-Manager Journal, 12(2), 111-131. doi: 10.1080/10887150902888718.

Upon reading about the Trait Approach in leadership, one theme seemed to dominate the traits described as favorable in a leader: hegemonic masculine traits. In fact, three separate studies by Stogdill, Lord, DeVander, and Alliger, and Mann all found that masculinity was a trait that “significantly related to how individuals perceived leaders” (Northouse, 2019). Traits that are thought of as adjacent to masculinity are also included in some of these trait studies as positive correlatives to leadership abilities. For example, dominance, emotional stability, and influence are noted by several studies as positive traits of leadership (Northouse, 2019). These traits, although not exactly the trait of masculinity, are thought of as part of hegemonic masculinity. Men are traditionally expected to be emotionally restricted, dominant, and influential in professional and personal settings. It’s important to note that these stereotypes are damaging to all people, including men.

This brings me to question, why are these studies highlighting traits mainly stereotypically male? Do we see leadership as inherently male? Obviously, there are significantly more men in leadership positions than women. According to a New York Times analysis of sexism in leadership, Fortune 500 CEOs consist of more men named John than women in total (Miller et al., 2018). How society views good, effective leadership is reflected in who has those leadership positions. This is related to a concept called vertical sex segregation, in which more men are likely to be employed at a higher level than women on average. These statistics vary by extremity in different fields. According to a study on sex segregation in academic science and engineering, neither vertical nor horizontal sex segregation is declining in the past 28 years (Frehill, 2006). This implies that the issue is not temporary and society has not simply progressed beyond sexism in the workplace.

This brings me to the issue of benevolent sexism and its relationship with leadership. Benevolent sexism is a type of sexism in which women are praised for upholding stereotypical and traditional femininity. For example, a woman may be praised for staying home and raising her children, cooking, cleaning, and being conventionally attractive because “that is her role as a woman”. A study on benevolent sexism shows that it can impact women’s advancement potential in the workplace. The study says that “benevolent sexism may undermine their provision of the needed career support to advance in leadership positions” (Hideg and Shen, 2019). The study goes on to say that some women themselves do not recognize benevolent sexism as a type of sexism and endorse it themselves, thus causing them to lack the career support they need to advance into a leadership position (Hideg and Shen, 2019). Both external and internal issues are at play here.

In my own leadership experience, I find that contrary to what might be expected as a young woman in the STEM field, my leadership is not often questioned. When it is, I never assume it is because of my gender. I typically assume this person has issues with authority or does not respect me for whatever reason it may be. I hope that I continue to think critically about this relationship between sexism and our perception of good leadership. I look forward to reading more about women like Mary Barra, Indra Nooyi, and Ginni Rometty who are all CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and their experiences with leadership.

 

References:

Frehill, L.M. (2006). Measuring occupational sex segregation of academic science and engineering. The Journal of Technology Transfer, 31, 345-354. doi: 10.1007/s10961-006-7206-0

Hideg, I. & Shen, W. (2019). Why still so few? A theoretical model of the role of benevolent sexism and career support in the continued underrepresentation of women in leadership positions. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 26(3), 287-303. doi:10.1177/1548051819849006

Miller, C.C., Quealy, K., & Sanger-Katz, M. (2018). The Top Jobs Where Women are Outnumbered by Men Named John. Retrieved January 27, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/24/upshot/women-and-men-named-john.html?auth=login-email

Northouse, P.G. (2013).  Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.