Leadership

PSYCH 485 blog

How Many Leaders Does It Take To Lead A Team?

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Is it better for a team to have one strong leader or multiple leaders who work together?  Hill’s Model of Team Leadership doesn’t specify an individual leader or leaders in terms of team effectiveness (Northouse, 2013).  As long as the leaders are working together and not contradicting each other it shouldn’t effect team effectiveness negatively.

Shared leadership is defined as “an emergent team property that results from the distribution of leadership influence across multiple team members. It represents a condition of mutual influence embedded in the interactions among team members that can significantly improve team and organizational performance” (Hoch, 2010).  In today’s business culture of globalization, change, uncertainty and the need for teams that can handle increasingly more complex tasks, shared leadership is being looked at a better solution then traditional single leader formats used in the past.  Shared leadership consists of constructing a more comprehensive idea of leadership that goes beyond a singular appointed leader (Lindsay, 2011).  Shared leadership creates a more interactive work environment between team members as they work towards the goals of both the team and the organization. “Shared leadership differs from collective decisions, as it also includes the later phases following the decision processes, such as initiating action, taking responsibility for action and responsibility for outcomes, etc.  Shared leadership refers to a collective social influence process shared by team members and aimed toward the achievement of one or more common goals” (Hoch, 2011). 

In this day and age of multinational companies and telecommuting I think that we will see more and more companies moving towards a shared leadership approach to teams.  Since many teams can now consist of members who are not just separated by an office floor, but an ocean, a single leader doesn’t seem effective.  As I stated above, as long as the leaders have the same goals and have a mutual understanding of how the team should be run, I don’t think it would affect team effectiveness.

 

 

 

Hoch, J. E., Pearce, C. L., & Welzel, L. (2010). Is the most effective team leadership shared? the impact of shared leadership, age diversity, and coordination on team performance. Journal of Personnel Psychology, 9(3), 105-116.

Lindsay, D. R., Day, D. V., & Halpin, S. M. (2011). Shared leadership in the military: Reality, possibility, or pipedream? Military Psychology, 23(5), 528-549.

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

Guilt & Leadership

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Is it better for a leader to be prone to feeling guilt?  Maybe a leader should be above this type of feeling and make decisions based on the positive outcome to the business and ignore the personal ramifications to employees.  Does empathy make you a more effective leader?

In a study by Schaumberg and Flynn (2012), they looked into how guilt proneness affects leadership across 3 studies.  The first study assessed guilt-prone behaviors as more telling of leadership potential than less guilt-prone behaviors.  The second study showed that guilt-prone members in a leaderless group task engaged in more leadership behaviors than did less guilt-prone participants. In the final study, feedback from a group of managers among varying industries was analyzed. 

Most people associate guilt with being a negative personality aspect, but it could actually be considered something positive in relation to leadership.  Having a predisposition to guilt can mean that an individual has a strong sense of responsibility to others which in turn provides a basis for followers to respect their leader because they feel he cares about them.  While emotions like embarrassment can cause individuals to clam up and avoid situations, guilt can propel an individual to take charge and guide a group in working towards their goal.  Guilt can prompt individuals to take a leadership position in groups because they worry about not doing their share, they feel the need to fulfill obligations to others or to achieve an objective (Schaumberg, 2012).

Before coming across this article, I never really considered guilt as something that could improve leadership.  However, once I read the article, it actually makes perfect sense.  The idea of guilt has always brought up negative connotations, but when looked at in the right light, it is just as easy to see guilt as something positive regarding personality.

 

Schaumberg, R. L., & Flynn, F. J. (2012). Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown: The link between guilt proneness and leadership. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(2), 327-342.

Can Video Games Help Create Leaders?

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My 16 year old son loves playing video games, as most teenagers are.  His game of choice is Halo which is a first person shooter where you play as a futuristic soldier battling aliens with your squad.  There is both solo (you and computer AIs) and online multiplayer games to play.  In watching him and listening to him talk about all the thought, time and preparation that goes into a game.  This, in turn, has made me curious as to whether playing games like this can actually help individuals improve their skills in the area of leadership.

Gentile (2007) found seven properties that video games help players learn.  First, games give a clear set of objectives and the ability to adapt the difficulty level to the player.  Second, playing a video game requires active learning which implements practice and feedback to help player’s master skills.  Third, once the skill is mastered it is still continually used to the point of becoming automatized.  Fourth, the mastery of skills is rewarded both extrinsically and intrinsically by way of points, weapons upgrades and the self-esteem boost for completing tasks.  Fifth, a game is set up so that each consecutive level is a bit more difficult and faster paced then the last.  Sixth, a game encourages practice through feedback and rewards regardless of how skilled the player is.  Finally, seventh, skills that are practiced in multiple ways in multiple contexts are more likely to be learned.

Video games do a good job of following of following Katz’s (1955) Three Skills Model.  The game starts with working on a player’s technical skill through practice of basic concepts like shooting, delivering orders and moving around.  As these skills are mastered, a player can venture into multiplayer games where they work on human skills such as cooperation.  Finally, a player can move into conceptual skills by creating their own missions to follow.

The military has already begun implementing the use of video games in training and recruitment.  While I am not sure that video games would be effective in all forms of leadership, I do think it could be utilized effectively in skill development in many situations.

 

 

Gentile, D. A., & Gentile, J. R. (2008). Violent video games as exemplary teachers: A conceptual analysis. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 37(2), 127-141.

Katz, R.L. (1955). Skills of an effective administrator. Harvard Business Review, 33(1), 33-42.

Are Leaders Born or Made?

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After study both the Trait Approach and Skill Approach to Leadership, I am left puzzling over the idea of whether someone is born a leader or if anyone can learn to be a leader.  The Trait Approach looks at personality while the Skill Approach looks at competencies (Northouse 2012).  Personally, I lean more to the side of the Trait Approach because I have seen too many individuals in leadership roles who were not effective leaders.  There are also many examples in history of men and woman with no training in leadership who were incredibly effective leaders.

Business programs in colleges are filled with leadership courses teaching both principle and practice.  Smith and Forbes (2001) worked to create a leadership course within an MBA curriculum based on the Skills Approach.  After a trial class they found that the most effective course of action was to assess their traits through testing (such as the Myers-Briggs personality assessment) and the student’s career goals.  From the collected information a course of action would be put into place that would use both the student’s traits and personal goals to create an MBA program to suit their needs.

To me this shows that an effective leadership program is a combination of both the Trait and Skill Approach.  It lends to the idea that there needs to be certain personality traits in an individual that can be augmented through skills training.  You cannot teach things like charisma, but you can teach someone with charisma how to communicate more effectively. 

Something else that is often overlooked about leadership is that a leader is not doing it alone.  Taking the President of the United States as an example (and I am looking more at the title then the individual) he has a staff and a cabinet that help him stay up to speed on what is going on and give there expert opinions on situations that come up.  It is not a single individual in a room alone deciding how the country will react to something, but a group of people working together towards a common goal.  This holds true even looking at most businesses.  A boss usually has support staff and managers that serve under him and are looked to for opinions on business related decisions.

In conclusion, I would just like to say that I don’t think a leader is born or made, but instead is a combination of both ideas.

 

 

References

Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice (6th edition). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.

Smith, J. E., & Forbers, J, B. (2001). Creating a competency-based leadership and managerial skills program: A model for smaller schools. Journal of Management Education, 25(2), 209-230. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/195727192?accountid=13158

 

What Makes a Good Leader?

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What makes a good leader? You can ask 100 people this question and get 100 different answers. Is it their charisma? How about their knowledge base? Maybe their authoritativeness? Maybe they just have a really cute butt. This question reminds me of the song Popular (2008) from the musical Wicked. There is a section of the song that always comes to mind when I consider leadership:

When I see depressing creatures
With unprepossessing features
I remind them on their own behalf
To think of
Celebrated heads of state or
Specially great communicators
Did they have brains or knowledge?
Don’t make me laugh!
They were popular!

I think this kind of attitude is what leads to so many bad leaders. Just because someone is cute and charismatic does not mean he or she can effectively lead. Unfortunately, we live in a society that is based very heavily on physical appearance which, from a psychological stand point, falls nowhere in the parameters of effective leadership.

It is sad that society puts so much stress on things that don’t matter in terms of leadership. Using the President and Mrs. Obama as an example, with the inauguration coming up you find more information in magazines and online regarding what clothes they will be wearing, what musicians will be playing and that Mrs. Obama now has bangs then you will about policy and what is happening within our country. How is the fact that Michelle Obama getting a haircut more important than the gun control debate or the war in Iraq? To answer, it isn’t.

Bibliography

Cast Recording. “Popular.” Lyrics. Wicked. Verve, 2008.

 

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