LECTURE 5: Leadership, Change & Decision Making
1. LEADERSHIP:
World’s greatest leaders in 2021 (by Fortune business magazine)
- Jacinda Ardern: prime minister of New Zealand
- Dan Schulman: CEO of PayPal
- mRNA Pioneers: Covid-19 vaccines developers.
Leadership is the process of influencing the activities of an organized group in its efforts
toward goal setting and goal achievement.
First key idea: there is no leadership without followers. This takes place in many spheres: in
musical concerts (the concert has a conductor), in sports (the coach leads the team), obviously
in organizations and enterprises (there is a CEO who leads the firm) and even in the animal
world (the oldest female elephant always leads the rest of the family).
Leader vs. Manager:
Leader and manager roles are complementary. One person can engage in both roles at
different times.
MANAGER: LEADER:
• Do things right. • Do the right thing.
• Maintain order and stability. • Are visionaries, drive new
initiatives.
• Is a technician, administrator,
problem solver. • Is a prophet, catalyst,
movershaker, strategist.
• Establish plans and budgets,
monitors and controls, … • Inspires, generates positive
change.
Etc.
Etc.
Leader stereotypes:
Leader’s stereotype is described by: man, tall, white, extravert, university degree, visionary,
charismatic, confident, makes perfect decisions under pressure…
The reality is that only a few successful leaders fit this profile. Most successful leaders are
introvert, for instance, and not extrovert, as is generally thought.
The trait theory:
There is one best way to lead; personality traits allow certain people to master the best way.
It is based on the “Great man theory”: a historical perspective which argues that the fate of
societies, and organizations, is in the hands of powerful, idiosyncratic (male) individuals.
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, It is a theory developed in the 19 th century that is not empirically validated, that is, no scientific
basis supports it. It focuses on the great men in the history who performed very well. The
theory said that great men were born leaders, that they born equipped with these traits. Great
men are born leaders, they have built in qualities, they take the power regardless of the
context. However, this theory was abandoned because there is no scientific support. The focus
was made on leadership types.
Are leaders born or made?
A research study was made with identical twins (who share the 100% of their genetic
background) and fraternal twins (who share the 50%).
What about Great woman theory?
A theory about Great women never existed. Women were largely ignored in leadership
research until 1990s. Even nowadays women are still largely underrepresented in leadership
positions.
There have been attempts to improve gender imbalance, as quotas for female representations
on the boards. Some countries, such as the Netherlands, has penalties for inequality between
men and women.
Glass ceiling: stops women from reaching roles higher up the hierarchical ladder.
Glass cliff: promoting women to high-risk positions, being set up to fail.
Gender punishment gap: when a leader woman makes a mistake, she is penalized way more
than a leader man who made similar mistake(s).
Pay inequality: studies showed that payment to female CEOs is 5 times lower than to male
CEOs. There is a difference of 45 million £, against 8.8 million £ (UK pounds). Moreover, it is
proved that higher salary is not linked to higher performance. In fact, when the distribution of
men and women is higher, the performance and profits for the company are higher.
Why are women underrepresented? There are various reasons:
- One of them is simply discrimination against women
- Familiar responsibilities (embarazos, parto, postparto, etc.)
- Women are often taking the housework (tareas domésticas).
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