3.4 Leadership & Coaching
Problem 1
What different leadership styles (positive and negative) can be differentiated?
How can leadership be categorized?
What are differences/similarities between different leadership styles?
What are outcomes of these different leadership styles?
1.1 Leadership Current Theories, Research and Future Directions
Introduction
AIM: Analyze how the field of leadership is evolving and its consequences on models,
methods, and populations studied.
The historical focus was on individual male leaders in large private-sector organizations
in the US
Today Leadership research encompasses not only leaders but also followers, peers,
supervisors, work context, culture, and a diverse range of individuals worldwide
o Now viewed as dyadic, shared, relational, strategic, global, and a complex social
dynamic
OVERVIEW OF AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP
Authentic leadership development An emerging area of interest in the field of
leadership
Introduced as a result of writings on transformational leadership Highlighted the
distinction between pseudo and authentic transformational leaders.
Main purpose:
o Examine what constitutes genuine leadership development, including what works
and what doesn't.
o Integrating positive organizational behavior with life-span leadership
development.
o Incorporates recent work in positive psychology (Fredrickson's broaden-and-build
theory) to offer a more positive approach to leadership development.
Fredrickson's theory Individuals with more positive psychological
resources are likely to grow more effectively and build additional personal
resources.
Prior leadership development work Followed a deficit-reduction model Focused
on identifying and correcting deficits in leaders
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Authentic Leadership Defined
Definition A process that draws from positive psychological capacities and a well-
developed organizational context, leading to greater self-awareness and positive
behaviors in leaders and followers.
o Considered multilevel Encompassing the leader, follower, and context.
General agreement on four key components of authentic leadership (despite initial
criticisms):
o Balanced processing: Objectively analyzing data before decision-making.
o Internalized moral perspective: Being guided by internal moral standards to self-
regulate behavior.
o Relational transparency: Presenting one's authentic self by openly sharing
information and appropriate emotions.
o Self-awareness: Demonstrating an understanding of strengths, weaknesses, and
one's worldview.
These four components were further defined and validated by researchers Good
support
Authentic leadership scales were developed and validated Demonstrates their
reliability and discriminant validity from other leadership measures.
Authentic leadership Found to be a significant and positive predictor of OCB,
organizational commitment, satisfaction with supervisors, and performance.
AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
Historically, researchers questioned whether leaders are born or made and whether
specific leadership theories could be used to develop leaders effectively.
Heritability and Leadership
Research into whether leaders are born or made involved studying identical and
fraternal twins.
Preliminary evidence using a behavioral genetics approach indicated that around 30% of
the variation in leadership style and emergence was heritable.
The remaining variation was attributed to environmental factors Having different
role models and early opportunities for leadership development.
The research consistently found similar results for both men and women across various
cultures.
Conclusion: The life context in which an individual grows up and works is more
important than heritability in predicting leadership emergence throughout one's career.
Examining Evidence for Positive Leadership Interventions
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Previous research on leadership Relied on simple bivariate correlations to explore
complex leadership issues.
Most leadership models made causal predictions, but only a small portion of the
literature actually tested these predictions using controlled leadership interventions
To assess the impact of experimental leadership interventions on leadership
development and performance A qualitative and quantitative meta-analytic review
of the leadership intervention literature was conducted
AIM: First meta-analysis that focused on leadership interventions
o Leadership interventions were categorized into six types: training, actor/role-play,
scenario/vignette, assignments, expectations, and others.
Results Regardless of the leadership theory being investigated, leadership
interventions had a positive impact on work outcomes like ratings of leader performance
o Surprisingly, even short interventions lasting less than one day had a positive effect
o Participants in the broadly defined leadership treatment condition had a 66%
chance of achieving positive outcomes, compared to a 34% chance for the
comparison group
COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND LEADERSHIP
Cognitive science leadership literature Encompasses various approaches aimed at
understanding how leaders and followers think and process information.
o Topics within this literature include self-concept theory, meta-cognitions, and
implicit leadership theory.
Recent developments in this literature involve the creation of models that emphasize
leadership cognition.
o Lord & Hall (2005) Developed a model emphasizing the leader's cognitive
attributes and abilities.
o Mumford et al. (2003) Introduced a model that explores how shared
thinking contributes to leader creativity.
These models differ in their focus, with the former concentrating on individual leader
activities and the latter on interactions between individuals.
Emerging Cognitive Constructs
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Recent literature on the self-concept distinguishes between its structure and contents.
o The contents include self-evaluations and self-beliefs
o The structure refers to how these contents are organized for processing.
Study by Campbell et al. (2003) Explored whether unity or pluralism in the self-
concept is more beneficial
o They found that unity and pluralism were not necessarily related, and different
measures of unity had implications for leader development.
Lord & Brown (2001) Leaders can influence followers' motivations and behaviors by
emphasizing values or activating specific self-concepts.
o Values and self-concepts mediate the link between a leader's actions and
follower behavior.
Wofford et al. (1998) Transformational and transactional leaders interpret events
using different schemas Which then influence their leadership behaviors.
o Transformational leaders Use schemas related to transformational behaviors
o Transactional leaders Use schemas related to transactional behaviors.
Prototypical Abstractions of Leadership
Prototypical leaders Exemplars of the groups that followers belong to or aspire to join
Early research Considered prototypes as relatively static and universally applicable.
Recent work Argues that prototypes are dynamic and adaptable based on situational
constraints and challenges faced by leaders.
Subsequent research Explores the relationship between implicit leadership theories
and performance outcomes.
AIM: Connect how leaders' thinking, behavior choices, and development processes are
linked
COMPLEXITY LEADERSHIP
Complexity leadership applies concepts from complexity theory to leadership.
Views leadership as: An interactive system of dynamic agents with complex feedback
networks
This approach leads to adaptive outcomes such as knowledge dissemination, learning,
innovation, and adaptation to change.
Complex systems leadership:
o Leadership can emerge from any interaction within an organization.
o It emphasizes that organizations should not have overly simplified structures
and must consider the complexity of their context.
o Simple leader-follower exchange processes are insufficient to explain the full
dynamics of leadership
Complexity and Traditional Leadership Theory
