Leadership

PSYCH 485 blog

Inside-Out Perspective on Leadership

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Since I was 18 years old, my career has been groomed around the concept of leadership. I made the decision to join the United States Army shortly after high school and I flew off to Ft. Benning, GA for 14 weeks of basic/advanced training. Aside from the stereotypical images of young men and women navigating obstacle courses, beating each other up with pugil sticks, and marching in formation, we were all taught to live by the seven Army core values: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage (LDRSHIP) (US Army, n.d.).

Figure 1

Army Confidence Tower

These values are instilled in every soldier because collectively they define and provide a foundation for the process known as leadership. According to Northouse (2018), leadership is a process of influencing a person or group of individuals to achieve a common goal. The United States Army (and other branches alike) trains and develops the world’s best leaders to inspire and influence people to accomplish organizational goals (The University of Akron [UA], 2008). I was trained and groomed over the course of six years for leadership, whether I was a machine gunner within an Infantry weapons squad or was a Non-Commissioned Officer leading a fire-team in Baghdad, Iraq.

Figure 2

US Army Infantry

I officially left the military in 2010 with these developed competencies, attributes, and real-world experience only to find myself entering the civilian world with limited transferable hard skills, unless I wanted to be in law enforcement, a government contractor, or apparently a teacher according to Gross (2019). It wasn’t easy finding a job during The Great Recession (Boyle, 2020), but my transferable soft skills combined with a recommendation from a close friend got me a job as a manufacturing technician for a startup solar company. These soft skills are hard to quantify because they are also what are known as “people skills” or “interpersonal skills” (Doyle, 2020).

Some common soft skills are effective communication, flexibility, leadership, motivation, problem solving ability, teamwork, and time management (Doyle, 2020). I worked as an individual contributor for a little more than a year before I was promoted to a lead position and subsequently to other leadership positions as the years followed. After seven years I had held six distinct positions, three of which were responsible for inspiring and motivating groups of individuals. I often questioned myself on why I was chosen for certain roles or attempted to look deeper within to understand why I felt comfortable to lead people. Was it because I was born this way? Was it based on those six years I spent in the military? Or was it just the right fit given the situation and circumstances?

Figure 3

Leadership Traits

According to Northouse (2018), Ralph Melvin Stogdill conducted two surveys to analyze the traits associated with effective leadership. The first one concluded that the traits a leader possessed must be relevant to the situations in which the leader is functioning, and the second study argued more in favor of both traits and situational factors being an equal determinant of leadership (Northouse, 2018). This view of the trait theory of leadership appears to be accurate with what I have experienced and how I view my successes and failures as a leader. I have been able to develop traits that are most commonly associated with effective leadership, such as courage and resolution, assertiveness, decisiveness, need for achievement, self-confidence, and task competence, but they haven’t always translated perfectly from one team, company, organization, or industry to the next, which is why it’s important to analyze the working relationship between yourself as the leader and your followers (Cherry, 2021).

Recognizing my talents and strengths, I opted to take on a new leadership position within my current organization, a leader in the aerospace and defense industry. This seemed fitting because our customers were those among the U.S. federal government (something I was familiar with) and the role specialized in manufacturing, another specialty area that I had the ability to become proficient in. I succeeded in this role for almost five years before making the decision to finally try something different, join the ranks, and learn to follow rather than lead. This was easier said than done because I had become so accustomed to feeling responsible for the lives and successes of others and quite frankly, it’s what I had become to know.

Northouse (2018) mentions that being a follower and the process of followership has negative connotations for many people. I think many would agree there is a perception in the workforce that being a supervisor, manager, leader, or executive is more compelling or glorified than being an individual contributor. Conversely, I would argue that it is situation dependent like most things. I’ve worked with many manufacturing, electrical, and material engineers who prefer technical/hands-on work, as opposed to being tied up in endless meetings, budgets, reports, and dealing with never-ending personnel issues (Zenger, 2014). Nevertheless, I stepped away from being a leader in my organization and wanted to focus on new hard skills.

Five months into being a project engineer with zero leader/manager responsibilities, I find myself questioning the transition I made. Somedays I feel ecstatic to arrive at work, look at my inbox with a manageable number of unread emails, and the comfort of knowing that I can focus on my work and tasks at hand without interference from personnel/behavior issues. Other days, I find myself and my other teammates lacking motivation because we aren’t receiving the support, guidance, leadership, or even personal connection from our leadership team. This insider-look (and reminder) of what it means to be a follower again has been eye opening for me, allowed me to see what I may have done right, what I did wrong, and how the smallest actions and behaviors can have a dramatic effect on motivation, inspiration, and performance.

 

 

References

Boyle, M. J. (2020, October 23). The Great Recession. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/great-recession.asp

Cherry, K. (2021, March 8). Understanding the trait theory of leadership. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-trait-theory-of-leadership-2795322

Doyle, A. (2020, January 20). Hard skills vs. soft skills: What’s the difference? The Balance Careers. https://www.thebalancecareers.com/hard-skills-vs-soft-skills-2063780

Gross, N. (2019, December 15). Jobs for infantry vets: What you need to know. Military Times. https://www.militarytimes.com/education-transition/2019/12/15/jobs-for-infantry-vets-what-you-need-to-know/

Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: Theory and Practice (8th ed.) [VitalSource Bookshelf version]. vbk://9781506362298

The University of Akron. (2008). Introduction to Army leadership [PDF]. https://www.uakron.edu/armyrotc/MS1/24.pdf

US Army. (n.d.). Living the Army values. goarmy.com. https://www.goarmy.com/soldier-life/being-a-soldier/living-the-army-values.html

Zenger, J. (2014, February 27). Individual contributors are ‘forgotten leaders’: Are you developing them well? Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackzenger/2014/02/27/individual-contributors-are-forgotten-leaders-are-you-developing-them-well/?sh=5826b6d47469

 

 

Bully Bosses

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I have worked in the automotive business for three years now and I love it more than I could ever explain.  The fast pace and ever-changing dynamics make every day that I work more and more interesting as I go along.  One of the things that I find most interesting in the car business is the sheer amount of turnover seen every year. The industry average is a whopping 67% turnover rate every year (Employee turnover costs dealers billions).  This turnover rate can be chalked up to long hours, commission-based sales, or a plethora of other things, but in all reality, I think it all comes down to leadership.

For the first few years of my career I worked under a General Manager, who I will call Jim.  Jim was a leader who ruled with an iron fist.  Each employee, including myself, walked on egg shells constantly trying not to make mistakes.  Should we have the misfortune of making a mistake, you would be berated, called stupid, and sworn at, no matter how simple the mistake.  Jim was an all-around bully, that was nearly impossible to be in the same room with.  In his long tenure he had made several enemies through his abusive antics and subjective firings.

In the Harvard Business Review, Sherry Moss talks about “bully bosses” and their impact on the teams they lead.  Moss states, “in organizations where bullying occurs, employees may arrive late, intentionally slow down the work itself, or not follow the boss’s instructions. […] Not surprisingly, bullying also increases turnover” (Why Some Bosses Bully Their Best Employees).  So, based on all of this, it would be logical to anticipate the Jim had a high level of turnover and a toxic work environment, but that wasn’t the case.  Jim maintained most of his employees for long tenures, and maintained less than a 30% turnover ratio, over 30% lower than the industry average.  It also appeared at most times that the loyalty was to Jim, not to the company we worked for.

Jim was recently fired, and I received many phone calls from people that just didn’t know how to feel.  Several of us joked that we might have Stockholm Syndrome from the years of abuse, because we all felt a sadness and a guilt with his dismissal.  All of this to say, how can we really know what traits make the best bosses?  Jim’s years of abuse seemed to only draw employees closer to him.  How could Jim retain his best employees through his abuse, when all the research shows that he should have the highest rate of turnover?  I’m not sure what the answer is, but Jim’s leadership shows that leadership is not a black and white personality, and that leadership is something that is not easily nailed down.  Research cannot answer every question, you will always find the anomaly, like Jim.

 

Moss, S. (2016, June 07). Why Some Bosses Bully Their Best Employees. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2016/06/why-some-bosses-bully-their-best-employees

Wilson, A. (2017, January 20). Employee turnover costs dealers billions. Retrieved from https://www.autonews.com/article/20170123/RETAIL06/301239850/employee-turnover-costs-dealers-billions

Emotional intelligence and why women are headed to the top.

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grant-thornton-women-leadership-worldwideWomen in Leadership Roles (2012): Image source: BusinessInsider.com

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According to Northouse (2012), emotional intelligence is one way to assess the influence of traits on leadership. Emotional intelligence involves the interplay between our thinking and emotions; specifically, the ability for one to perceive and use emotions to express, facilitate thinking, understand, and reason (Northouse, 2012, p.27). There has been much debate about emotional intelligence and its significance on leadership. Northouse (2012) points out several researchers such as, Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso (2000) , who see a weak link between emotional intelligence and leadership. An article, The future of work, Times Magazine (2009) breathed new life into this debate. As one of the “10 ways your job will change”, Shipman and Kay (2009) write explicitly about why women will rule business in the future and how emotional intelligence plays a role.

Catalyst, a workplace research group found Fortune 500 companies with the most women in senior management, had a higher return on equities- by more than a third (Shipley & Kay, 2012). This provides pretty convincing evidence that women are making a change in the future of business, and for the better. When exploring why this is so, what makes women leaders so special? Shipley and Kay (2009) found one of those factors to be emotional intelligence. CMI (Chartered Management Institute, UK) predicts women will be moving rapidly up the chain of command with their emotional intelligence skills in high demand (Shipley & Kay).

What does this all mean? For one, that emotional intelligence is an important tool that can be used to assess how traits are influencing leadership. This has been shown in many studies unexpectedly, such as Catalyst’s study mentioned earlier. Catalyst set out to look at the positive correlation between company success and women employees, however unintentionally linking the traits women have to their success in the corporate world.The idea that women tend to be more nurturing, and too in touch with their feelings, in other words more emotionally intelligent than men, have now become a powerful tool in the corporate world, specifically, in leadership. Emotional intelligence is making a splash in the future of leadership and we have women to thank for it.

Written by: Mai Dolinh

Sources:

Kay, Claire Shipman and Katty. “The Future of Work.” Time. Time Inc., 14 May 2009. Web. 06 Sept. 2014. retrieved from http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article
/0%2C28804%2C1898024_1898023_1898078%2C00.html.

Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and practice (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Expectations of Integrity and Morality

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The definition of leader has been studied and refined over the decades. Northouse (2013) has a simple definition, “Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal” (p. 5). This gives a skeletal framework for recognizing leadership but what exactly does it look like. What are the nuances? “Consider the following leaders: Hammurabi, Cyrus the Great, Pericles, Asoka…Adolf Hitler…Indira Gandhi, Idi Amin, and Fidel Castro” (Simonton, 2010, p. 630). Great leaders both kind and cruel, all defined by the same common attributes. We can see the pieces of the definition of leadership in their reign of power. The common goal is what the leader envisioned (good or bad), the group described the people who followed willingly or not, and all of these leaders exhibited influence over a time, growing and refining their message. It begs the question, when we have examples throughout history of both good and bad, why are people surprised when our modern leaders fall from grace.

Trait theory is the study of personality attributes in an attempt to determine what is unique about leaders. Why are some individuals catapulted to fame or infamy and others contribute but are never acknowledged? Is there a secret formula that if recreated, could produce the next great leader? It has been shown there are traits in these leaders they all have in common. “His [Ralph Stogdill] results showed that a person who holds a position of leadership surpasses the average member of the group in several ways, including intelligence, scholarship, dependability, and sociability” (Wynn, 2006, 1029).

Leaders have always been in the news and there is usually a scandal behind their shine in the spotlight. Just recently we have seen the Toronto mayor, Rob Ford, who admitted smoking crack, the former chief-of-staff to Sen. Lamar Alexander, Ryan Loskarn, charged with possessing child pornography, Anthony Weiner, and Gov. Chris Christie. As leaders, they all seemingly possessed the same traits, “intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity, and sociability” (Northouse, p. 23). One precipitous event befalls them and they are delivering an apology scripted by their speechwriter. What if we have wrongly attributed morality and integrity amongst the other good attributes and this scandalous persona is the real individual?  “Although evidence was found for the genetic transfer of intelligence and life span, morality and leadership was more subject to role modeling effects” (Simonton, 2010, p. 636).

We are predominantly a Christian society which puts that set of values on top of the characteristics we have come to expect of our leaders. This is ingrained into our psyche by religious leaders and politicians alike. Arnold Ludwig’s (2002) study of 20th century heads of state showed, “that the individual’s type of leadership could be discriminated according to such variables as scholastic performance…sexual profligacy…courage or bravery in battle…mania, anxiety, paranoia and cognitive impairment” (Simonton, 2010, p. 635). Further, Ludwig’s (2002) seven predictors of leadership are, “dominance, contrariness, presence, agent of change, vanity, courage, and wary unease” (Simonton, 2010, p. 635). One could make the argument that while we expect morality and integrity, in reality, those in power have always and will always have the immoral person just under the mask of good.

We see that leaders and leadership are both good and bad and share many of the same characteristics. We have been shown that the moral attributes of a leader are not genetic but as a result of modeling. This role modeling has a long history of immoral leaders from which to learn how to lead. Despite the multitude of immoral examples throughout history, our predominantly Christian society expects moral and pious behavior. This incongruous set of expectations gives us leaders like President Bill Clinton who was caught lying about an immoral act, retained his presidency and has gone on to remain a prominent member of society. Morality and integrity are essential to building trust and creating a welcoming environment. With so many examples exhibiting the contrary, perhaps the world isn’t ready to give up pillaging and plundering that catapulted individuals to power and ruined societies in the not so distant past. It may be pure morality and integrity is not within us at this time and our expectations should be shifted to an area that can truly make a difference.

— O. Lewis

References:

Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA, SAGE Publications, Inc.

Simonton, D. K. (2010). Personality and Leadership. In R. A. Couto (Ed.), Political and Civic Leadership (pp. 630-40). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Wynn, S. R. (2006). Trait Theory. In Encyclopedia of Educational Leadership and Administration. Ed. (pp. 1029-30). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

The Dark Side of Personality – The Argumentative Trait

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Have you ever tried to work with someone who has a negative opinion on everything, who insists on debating to the death until you submit to their decision, but then refuses to take the lead on their decision, avoids accountability and absolutely abhors criticism? If you have, you may have been dealing with an argumentative personality trait – someone who prefers to sit on the sideline while criticizing everyone else. I was very relieved to see this trait covered in the Lesson 2 material, but am not unfamiliar with the concept (The Penn State University, 2013, PSYCH 485, Lesson 2: The Trait Approach {Lecture Notes], https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa13/psych485/001/content/02_lesson/06_page.html).


I have had the experience of working with a person who is characterized by a highly argumentative personality. Everyone on the team dreads talking with this individual, either for work-related or personal purposes, because this individual always has a negative opinion on the matter, and will insist on debating that their opinion is correct. What is worse, the argumentative person is highly sensitive to criticism, so they will usually make their judgmental statements but remove themselves from taking any responsibility, and actually avoid leadership roles. More than often, if they make an error on the job, they will deny having any knowledge of a matter, or say they can’t remember their actions or decisions. Simply put, they want to control people, but not lead them by example. It has been a very difficult situation.

 

I think that the argumentative trait is not necessarily a negative leadership trait in all situations, however, in my experience, it is not a cohesive trait for our situation.  Our work environment requires team work, group decisions, follow-through, accountability, and trust. Soon after it was realized that the team was unsatisfied with the individual’s argumentative personality, I went to work on developing a formal performance appraisal with key performance indicators, that included such things as positive attitudes, team work, contributing to the job, ability to accept constructive criticism and accountability. We have seen a complete change with this individual since implementing the performance appraisal. In part, the issue this individual had was not knowing what was expected of them.

 

Nonetheless, I tend to agree that the argumentative trait is a hindrance for leadership, at least for our situation. It will take many years for this individual to gain the respect of their colleagues in order to attain a leadership position, because they have behaved unprofessionally in past situations. However, I do believe, that given the right leadership position, this individual might be successful. For instance, a lawyer would likely succeed with an argumentative personality.

 

References

 

The Pennsylvania State University. (2013). PSYCH 485. Lesson 2: The Trait Approach. [Lecture Notes]. Retrieved September 7, 2013 from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa13/psych485/001/content/02_lesson/06_page.html

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