Chapter 1: Introduction to Leadership

1.1. Leadership Definition

Leadership can be defined as the ability to influence a group toward the achievement of goals.
The source of this influence may be formal, such as that provided by the possession of
managerial rank in an organization. Since management positions come with some degree of
formally designated authority, a person may assume a leadership role simply because of the
position he or she holds in the organization. But not all leaders are managers; nor, for that matter,
are all managers leaders. Just because an organization provides its managers with certain formal
rights is no assurance that they will be able to lead effectively. We find that nonsanctioned
leadership—that is, the ability to influence that arises outside the formal structure of the
organization—is often as important as or more important than formal influence. In other words,
leaders can emerge from within a group as well as by formal appointment to lead a group.
There is probably no topic more important to business success today than leadership. The
concept of leadership continues to evolve as the needs of organizations change. Among all the
ideas and writings about leadership, three aspects stand out: people, influence, and goals.
Leadership occurs among people, involves the use of influence, and is used to attain goals.
Influence means that the relationship among people is active. Moreover, influence is designed to
achieve some end or goal.

Leading is establishing direction and influencing others to follow that direction. But this
definition isn’t as simple as it sounds because leadership has many variations and different areas
of emphasis. Common to all definitions of leadership is the notion that leaders are individuals
who, by their actions, facilitate the movement of a group of people toward a common or shared
goal. This definition implies that leadership is an influence process. The distinction between
leader and leadership is important, but potentially confusing. The leader is an individual;
leadership is the function or activity this individual performs. The word leader is often used
interchangeably with the word manager to describe those individuals in an organization who
have positions of formal authority, regardless of how they actually act in those jobs. But just
because a manager is supposed to be a formal leader in an organization doesn’t mean that he or
she exercises leadership.
Thus, leadership as defined here is the ability to influence people toward the attainment of
goals. This definition captures the idea that leaders are involved with other people in the
achievement of goals. Leadership is reciprocal, occurring among people. Leadership is a
“people” activity, distinct from administrative paper shuffling or problem-solving activities.
Leadership is dynamic and involves the use of power to get things done.

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There are many ways of looking at leadership and many interpretations of its meaning.
Leadership might be interpreted in simple terms, such as ‘getting others to follow’ or ‘getting
people to do things willingly’, or interpreted more specifically, for example as ‘the use of
authority in decision-making’. It may be exercised as an attribute of position, or because of
personal knowledge or wisdom. Leadership might be based on a function of personality, or it can
be seen as a behavioral category. It may also be viewed in terms of the role of the leaders and
their ability to achieve effective performance from others. Taffinder suggests that everyone has a
theory but, although we know quite a lot about management, we do not know as much about
leadership. Handy believes that: like motivation, the search for the definitive solution to the
leadership problem has proved to be another endless quest for the Holy Grail in organization
theory.
According to Crainer there are over 400 definitions of leadership and: it is a veritable minefield
of misunderstanding and difference through which theorists and practitioners must tread warily.
According to Useem, leadership is a matter of making a difference. It entails changing an
organization and making active choices among plausible alternatives, and depends on the
development of others and mobilizing them to get the job done.
Leadership is at its best when the vision is strategic, the voice persuasive and the results tangible.
In the study of leadership, an exact definition is not essential but guiding concepts are needed.
The concepts should be general enough to apply to many situations, but specific enough to have
tangible implications for what we do.
However, in addition to vision and strategy, Useem suggests that they have been joined by new
critical capabilities – leading out and leading up. With the increasing use of outsourcing,
managers need the skill to lead out: not just to send work downwards to subordinates but also to
have a talent for lateral leadership in arranging work with colleagues. And as organizations
decentralize authority managers must be able to lead their own bosses, to have the capacity to
lead up and muster support from above as well as below.

Inspiring and influencing other people

Today, leadership is increasingly associated not with command and control but with the concept
of inspiration, of getting along with other people and creating a vision with which others can
identify. For example, Adair sees leadership as a combination of example, persuasion and
compulsion that results in making people do things they might not otherwise have done. It is
difficult, therefore, to generalize about leadership, but essentially it is a relationship through
which one person influences the behavior or actions of other people. This means that the process
of leadership cannot be separated from the activities of groups and with effective teambuilding.
According to Levine, leaders need to focus on moving people and organizations forward by
increasing the competency of staff and the co-operation of teams in order to improve the
organization. A leader’s job is to constantly challenge the bureaucracy that smothers individual
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enthusiasm and the desire to contribute to an organization. Leaders in the new millennium will
create an environment that encourages the development of skills, learning and openness so that
those on their team can participate in the deployment of financial and human resources.

1.2 Leadership Vs Management

Traditionally, the term management refers to the activities (and often the group of people)
involved in five general functions: planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling.
Managers perform and integrate these five functions throughout their organizations. However,
emerging trends in management point out that leading people is different than managing them.
Many people believe that leadership is simply being the first, biggest, or most powerful person.
But leadership in organizations has a different and more meaningful definition.
An issue often debated among business professionals is whether leadership is a different function
and activity from management. Harvard’s John Kotter says that management is about coping
with complexity, and leadership, in contrast, is about coping with change. He also states that
leadership is an important part of management, but only a part; management also requires
planning, organizing, staffing, and controlling. Management produces a degree of predictability
and order. Leadership produces change. Kotter believes that most organizations are underled and
overmanaged. He sees both strong leadership and strong management as necessary for optimal
organizational effectiveness.
While almost everyone seems to agree that leadership involves an influence process, differences
tend to center around whether leadership must be noncoercive (as opposed to using authority,
rewards, and punishments to exert influence over followers) and whether it is distinct from
management. The latter issue has been a particularly heated topic of debate in recent years, with
most experts arguing that leadership and management are different. For instance, Abraham
Zaleznik of the Harvard Business School argues that leaders and managers are very different
kinds of people.
They differ in motivation, personal history, and how they think and act. Zaleznik says that
managers tend to adopt impersonal, if not passive, attitudes toward goals, whereas leaders take a
personal and active attitude toward goals. Managers tend to view work as an enabling process
involving some combination of people and ideas interacting to establish strategies and make
decisions. Leaders work from high-risk positions—indeed, they are often temperamentally
disposed to seek out risk and danger, especially when opportunity and reward appear high.
Managers prefer to work with people; they avoid solitary activity because it makes them anxious.
They relate to people according to the role they play in a sequence of events or in a decision-
making process. Leaders, who are concerned with ideas, relate to people in more intuitive and
empathic ways.
John Kotter, a colleague of Zaleznik at Harvard, also argues that leadership is different from
management, but for other reasons. Management, he proposes, is about coping with complexity.

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Good management brings about order and consistency by drawing up formal plans, designing
rigid organization structures, and monitoring results against the plans. Leadership, in contrast, is
about coping with change. Leaders establish direction by developing a vision of the future; then
they align people by communicating this vision and inspiring them to overcome hurdles. Kotter
sees both strong leadership and strong management as necessary for optimum organizational
effectiveness. But he believes that most organizations are underled and overmanaged. He claims
we need to focus more on developing leadership in organizations because the people in charge
today are too concerned with keeping things on time and on budget and with doing what was
done yesterday, only doing it 5 percent better.

Much has been written in recent years about the leadership role of managers. Management and
leadership are important to organizations. Effective managers have to be leaders, too, because
distinctive qualities are associated with management and leadership that provide different
strengths for the organization. Management and leadership reflect two sets of qualities and skills
that frequently overlap within a single individual. A person might have more of one set of
qualities than the other, but ideally a manager develops a balance of manager and leader
qualities.
A primary distinction between management and leadership is that management promotes
stability, order and problem solving within the existing organizational structure and systems.
Leadership promotes vision, creativity, and change. In other words, “a manager takes care of
where you are; a leader takes you to a new place.” Leadership means questioning the status quo
so that outdated, unproductive, or socially irresponsible norms can be replaced to meet new
challenges. Leadership cannot replace management; it should be in addition to management.
Good management is needed to help the organization meet current commitments, and good
leadership is needed to move the organization into the future.
Based on experience of management approaches in both commerce and the military,
Hollingsworth questions how many managers consider themselves first and foremost as leaders,
relegating ‘manager’ to their job title. He argues that commercial managers need to learn from
the armed forces if they wish to be viewed as leaders. Having accepted that there are some links
between management and leadership, Hollingsworth lists six ‘fundamental differences’.
■ A manager administers – a leader innovates.
■ A manager maintains – a leader develops.
■ A manager focuses on systems and structure – a leader focuses on people.
■ A manager relies on control – a leader inspires trust.
■ A manager keeps an eye on the bottom line – a leader has an eye on the horizon.
■ A manager does things right – a leader does the right thing.
Leader Qualities Manager Qualities
Visionary Rational
Passionate Consulting

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Creative Persistent
Flexible Problem solving
Inspiring Tough-minded
Innovative Analytical
Courageous Structured
Imaginative Deliberate
Experimental Authoritative
Initiates change Stabilizing
Personal Position power

Not everyone would agree with this list. Robinson, for example, suggests that if the word
‘manager’ is replaced by ‘administrator’ then the lists works. However, whatever your view the
list makes for a helpful basis for critical discussion on the nature of management and leadership.
Management is getting work done through the efforts of other people. To be an effective
manager it is necessary to exercise the role of leadership. A common view is that the job of the
manager requires the ability of leadership and that leadership is in effect a subset of
management, although leadership is a special attribute which can be distinguished from other
elements of management.

According to Miller et al., by definition there are important distinctions between the two
concepts of management and leadership. ‘Management involves using human, equipment and
information resources to achieve various objectives. On the other hand, leadership focuses on
getting things done through others. Thus you manage things (budgets, procedures, and so on),
but you lead people.
Close relationship between management and leadership
Despite a continuing debate on differences between management and leadership, there is a close
relationship between them and it is not easy to separate them as distinct activities. Many methods
of management training can also be used as a means of measuring leadership style. For example,
the Leadership Grid was until recently known as the Managerial Grid. Note also that the new
framework of effective leadership introduced by Investors in People is called the ‘Leadership
and Management Model’.
Today, there appears an increasing tendency to emphasize the interrelationship between
management and leadership, and to see them more as synonymous.
I have never been fond of distinguishing between leadership and management: they overlap and
you need both qualities. Increasingly, management and leadership are being seen as inextricably
linked. It is one thing for a leader to propound a grand vision, but this is redundant unless the
vision is managed so it becomes real achievement.
Leadership and management, I think, are closely inter-related; how to get things done through
people and how to make work an enjoyable experience. Sixty-three per cent of people at work

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are not engaged, do not enjoy what they are doing and yet they are using their most precious
resource – time. So, there must be a way of making that experience worthwhile and meaningful
and enjoyable.

1.3 What Makes Effective Leader

Theories abound to explain what makes an effective leader. The oldest theories attempt to
identify the common traits or skills that make an effective leader. Contemporary theorists and
theories concentrate on actions of leaders rather than characteristics. A number of traits that
appear regularly in leaders include ambition, energy, desire to lead, self-confidence, and
intelligence. Although certain traits are helpful, these attributes provide no guarantees that a
person possessing them is an effective leader. Underlying the trait approach is the assumption
that some people are natural leaders, and are endowed with certain traits not possessed by other
individuals. This research compared successful and unsuccessful leaders to see how they differed
in physical characteristics, personality, and ability.
A recent published analysis of leadership traits (S.A. Kirkpatrick and E.A. Locke, “Leadership:
Do Traits Really Matter?” Academy of Management Executive 5 [1991]) identified six core
characteristics that the majority of effective leaders possess:
Drive. Leaders are ambitious and take initiative.
Motivation. Leaders want to lead and are willing to take charge.
Honesty and integrity. Leaders are truthful and do what they say they will do.
Self-confidence. Leaders are assertive and decisive and enjoy taking risks. They admit mistakes
and foster trust and commitment to a vision. Leaders are emotionally stable rather than recklessly
adventurous.
Cognitive ability. Leaders are intelligent, perceptive, and conceptually skilled, but are not
necessarily geniuses. They show analytical ability, good judgment, and the capacity to think
strategically.
Business knowledge. Leaders tend to have technical expertise in their businesses.
Traits do a better job at predicting that a manger may be an effective leader rather than actually
distinguishing between an effective or ineffective leader. Because workplace situations vary,
leadership requirements vary. As a result, researchers began to examine what effective leaders do
rather than what effective leaders are.
Leadership skills
Whereas traits are the characteristics of leaders, skills are the knowledge and abilities, or
competencies, of leaders. The competencies a leader needs depends upon the situation. These
competencies depend on a variety of factors:
_ The number of people following the leader
_ The extent of the leader’s leadership skills
_ The leader’s basic nature and values

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_ The group or organization’s background, such as whether it’s for profit or not-for-profit, new
or long established, large or small
_ The particular culture (or values and associated behaviors) of whomever is being led
To help managers refine these skills, leadership-training programs typically propose guidelines
for making decisions, solving problems, exercising power and influence, and building trust. Peter
Drucker, one of the best-known contemporary management theorists, offers a pragmatic
approach to leadership in the workplace. He believes that consistency is the key to good
leadership, and that successful leaders share the following three abilities which are based on
what he refers to as good old-fashioned hard work:
_ To define and establish a sense of mission. Good leaders set goals, priorities, and standards,
making sure that these objectives not only are communicated but maintained.
_ To accept leadership as a responsibility rather than a rank. Good leaders aren’t afraid to
surround themselves with talented, capable people; they do not blame others when things go
wrong.
_ To earn and keep the trust of others. Good leaders have personal integrity and inspire trust
among their followers; their actions are consistent with what they say. In Drucker’s words,
“Effective leadership is not based on being clever, it is based primarily on being consistent.”
Very simply put, leading is establishing direction and influencing others to follow that direction.
Keep in mind that no list of leadership traits and skills is definitive because no two successful
leaders are alike. What is important is that leaders exhibit some positive characteristics that make
them effective managers at any level in an organization.

1.4 Importance of Leadership

Leadership is related to motivation, interpersonal behavior and the process of communication.
For example, according to Sir Paul Judge: ‘Thirty years ago it was very much about what you
knew, the technicalities of things. Managers now are leaders of their groups, their departments.
Although they may well need some specialist knowledge, the human relations part of the
management job is more important than ever. People have more flexibility and more choice in
their careers, which are themselves more fluid, so keeping people motivated is very important.’
Leadership is also important in attempting to reduce employee dissatisfaction.
Good leadership involves the effective process of delegation and empowerment. The leadership
relationship is not limited to leader behavior resulting in subordinate behavior. Leadership is a
dynamic process. The leader–follower relationship is reciprocal and effective leadership is a two-
way process which influences both individual and organizational performance.
Lord Sieff, for example, maintains that: Leadership is vitally important at all levels within the
company, from main board to the shop floor. Leadership is the moral and intellectual ability to
visualize and work for what is best for the company and its employees ... The most vital thing the
leader does is to create team spirit around him and near him, not in a schoolboy sense, but in
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realistic terms of mature adults ... To be effective leadership has to be seen, and it is best seen in
action.
Good management leadership helps to develop teamwork and the integration of individual and
group goals. It aids intrinsic motivation by emphasizing the importance of the work that people
do. The changing nature of work organizations, including flatter structures and recognition of the
efficient use of human resources, coupled with advances in social democracy, have combined to
place growing importance on leadership. The nature of management is moving away from an
emphasis on getting results by the close control of the workforce and towards an environment of
coaching, support and empowerment. ‘The maxim that: “there is nothing you cannot achieve if
you don’t mind who gets the credit” should be the watchword for all team leaders … The view
that is beginning to emerge, is that if teams are to come up with the goods, the leaders need to
step out of the limelight and let others take a bow.’
Hooper and Potter discuss the importance of leadership in times of change and uncertainty, and
that good leaders are sensitive to the impact of the change process on people. ‘Never is
leadership more sought after than in times of change and uncertainty. Effective change
leadership is the key to shifting people’s perceptions from seeing change as a threat to seeing it
as an exciting challenge.
Fullan also discusses leadership in a culture of change and points out that leadership is key to
large-scale improvement. It is essential for leaders to understand the change process, and moral
purpose without change will lead to moral martyrdom. Leaders must be able to operate under
complex, uncertain circumstances.
Vecchio raises the question of whether leadership does make a difference and suggests one
interesting way to learn whether leaders can have an impact is by studying the results of a change
in leader. As work-unit achievements result more from the efforts of the unit’s members than of
one individual, and organizations have rules and policies that govern behavior, a good argument
can be made that leadership has only a modest impact on group performance. However, Vecchio
also contends that: ‘one has a sense that a leader, under the right circumstances, can have a
powerful impact on group performance.’

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