Leadership and Behavioural Decision Making (HMA83A)
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Summary Leadership and Behavioural Decision Making
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Course
Leadership and Behavioural Decision Making (HMA83A)
Institution
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven)
This is a complete summary of the course Leadership and Behavioural Decision Making taught at KU Leuven, campus Brussels including complete notes from all classes. The course is part of the core module of the Master of Business Administration.
Leadership and Behavioural Decision Making (HMA83A)
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Leadership and behavioural decision making – summary
Class 1: introduction
Leadership is the process of influencing other(s) towards the realisation of a shared goal; when at least two ppl
agree on a common goal bcs they’re influenced by sb else to agree on that goal; not everybody w a lot of
power in a company (eg manager) is a leader
- A dynamic influential process, not a position or a static label
- Everyone exercises some form of leadership
- Leadership can be developed
- The effective leader behaviours/styles are context-specific
- Women and men are equally effective as leaders
- Many leadership practices are universal and some are culturally-specific
- Being a leader contains certain pitfalls eg power, ethics
Developing as a leader:
- Across the entire lifespan
- All individuals do not experience or benefit in the same ways from the same experience
70-20-10:
- 70%: Challenging assignments eg job transitions, unfamiliar responsibilities, obstacles; such
experiences may help us grow
- 20%: Developmental relationships eg coaching, mentoring, feedback programs; it’s a way for a person
to grow and become better
- 10%: Coursework and training eg reflection, personal development, “knowledge”
Mindful engagement model: a way to look at own development as leader from a systematic pov
1. Approach: identify needs and embrace learning with a growth mindset and goals; I need to want to
change, identify what’s lacking for me at the moment, what would allow me to be more effective
when I lead; I need to be convinced that I can grow as a leader; 3 components
o Identify what you need to develop (perform a ‘needs analysis’)
o You can grow as a person/leader: growth (vs fixed) mindset
o Have a learning orientation & set learning goals -> set concrete goals bcs more likely to
actually benefit from the challenge
▪ Learn to learn: improve the way we learn, the way we spend time to acquire new
skills etc
2. Action: seek learning opportunities in tailored challenging experiences; tailored to what you’ve
identified that you lack; get out of comfort zone
o Get out of comfort zone by gaining some experience in leading challenging assignments:
unfamiliar responsibilities; create change; work across cultures/boundaries; manage diversity
3. Reflection: capture the lessons of experience, consider counterfactuals, and refine the lessons
learned; what worked well, what didn’t work well and why to capture the lessons of experience
o Why did i fail? Why was i not at the right place in that organisation? Why did my plan not
work out the way I wanted it to?
o US army spends a lot of time developing the leaders, w role games, debriefings etc
o Gather lessons and new insights
, o It’s up to the person to utilise experience; without reflection there is very little learning and
we may reproduce mistake
o Hearing feedback: critical!! If others don’t perceive you the way you think are, it’s very likely
that you are wrong
If already too far out of comfort zone, you have to find balance between challenge and support; if too far, ppl
might go into burn out; everybody has different tolerance for change and challenges
Pre-class 2: Traits & Behaviours
Traits: differences among individuals in a typical tendency to behave, think or feel in some conceptually related
ways, across a variety of relevant situations and across some fairly long period of time
- Unlike behaviour (malleable and can be changed), personality is relatively stable and is partly
determined by genes -> important life events and aging affect personality
HEXACO model: six dimensions w each subdimensions
Honest-humility
- Sincerity: tendency to be genuine in interpersonal relations
- Fairness: tendency to avoid fraud and corruption
- Greed avoidance: tendency to be uninterested in possessing lavish wealth, luxury goods and signs of
high social status
- Modesty: tendency to be modest and unassuming
- Low on honest humility are managers that are more likely for abusive supervision and corruption; low
on this will do everything to get what they want; can be detrimental in context where you don’t have
to be too humble
- Predicts many variables in organisational work such as corruption, work performance and abusive
supervision
Emotionality (to what extend do we experience (negative) emotions)
- Fearfulness: tendency to experience fear
- Anxiety: tendency to worry in a variety of contexts
- Dependence: one’s need for emotional support from others
- Sentimentality: tendency to feel strong emotional bonds w others
- Ideal employees have a relatively low level of emotionality which helps performance, teamwork and
leadership; eg group settings w ppl w high emotionality are likely to fail; provide space so that
emotionality doesn’t affect work
Extraversion
- Self-esteem: tendency to have a positive self-regard (in social contexts)
- Social boldness: one’s comfort or confidence within a variety of social situations
- Sociability: tendency to enjoy conversation, social interactions and parties
- Liveliness: one’s typical enthusiasm and energy
- Predicts who will emerge as leader in work groups; extroverts may be perceived as bad listeners or as
lacking a clear vision/big picture idea
Agreeableness
- Forgiveness: one’s willingness to feel trust and like those who may have caused them harm
- Gentleness: tendency to be mild and lenient in dealings w other ppl
- Flexibility: one’s willingness to compromise and cooperate w others
- Patience: tendency to remain calm rather than to become angry
, - Important for organisational context and leadership; more agreeable, more likely to be chosen by
others to influence them; important to engage in agreeable behaviour; managers that are too
agreeable are less efficient bcs no critical/negative feedback for employees that need it
Conscientiousness
- Organisation: tendency to seek order, particularly in one’s physical surroundings
- Diligence: tendency to work hard
- Perfectionism: tendency to be thorough and concerned w details
- Prudence: tendency to deliberate carefully and inhibit impulses
- Relate to work performance; more consistent and strongest predictor of work performance; too high
may come at cost
Openness to experience (to what degree do we accept unconventional ideas, to what degree are we creative in
our own way of thinking etc)
- Aesthetic appreciation: one’s enjoyment of beauty and art in nature
- Inquisitiveness: tendency to seek information about and experience w the natural/human world
- Creativity: one’s preference for innovation and experiment
- Unconventionality: tendency to accept the unusual
- Best predictor of creative behaviour; interesting for companies to measure and recruit on
Intelligence is a strong predictor of job performance; positively correlated w job performance, leader
emergence and leader effectiveness
Possible to be too high on a desirable factor so that it has a negative effect on job? Yes eg if too smart you may
talk in a language that others don’t understand
Class 2: Traits & Behaviours
Reflection questions pre-class:
- Traits helpful to influence others towards the realisation of shared goals?
o General intelligence (IQ): the most highly correlated with emerging and behaving as a leader
o Extraversion/conscientiousness/agreeableness/low emotionality
o High social capacities (EQ, self-monitoring, emotional regulation)
o Motives: need for power & achievement, motivation to lead
- How can organisations practically use knowledge from traits theories of leadership for selecting
and/or developing their employees?
o To inform the selection of individuals appointed to formal leadership roles
o To form groups with ideal composition: eg not have more than one person extremely high on
emotionality in a group of 4 ppl; eg not have too many agreeable ppl
o To identify what are potential limitations of individuals and help them work on it
- In what situations may our traits not predict our behaviour?
o In strong situations, behaviours are not explained by traits eg class you are behaving
according to the norm
o Strong organisational cultures might make us behave in certain ways that are not in line with
our values
Personal development: you need to understand your natural (ie trait-like) inclinations to modify or compensate
for them
- We can from time to time behave according to the situations that we are in
Traits approach could be useful:
- Organisations can use assessments to find the ‘right’ ppl for specific positions
- Long history and large body of research: more ‘credible’ in the eyes of organisations and managers
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