The fuselage offered little protection from the extreme cold, food supplies were scant, and a number of passengers had serious injuries from the crash. Over the next few days, several surviving passengers became psychotic and several others died from their injuries. The passengers who were relatively uninjured set out to do what they could to improve their chances of survival. Several worked on “weatherproofing” the wreckage; others found ways to get water; and those with medical training took care of the injured.
Although shaken by the crash, the survivors initially were confident they would be found. These feelings gradually eave way to despair as search and rescue teams failed to find the wreckage. With the passing of several weeks and no sign of rescue in sight, the remaining passengers decided to mount expeditions to determine the best way to escape. The most physically fit were chosen to go on the expeditions because the thin mountain air and the deep snow made the trips difficult.
The results of the trips were both frustrating and demoralizing: the expedition members determined they were in the middle of the Andes mountains, and walking out to find help was believed to be impossible. Just when the survivors thought nothing worse loud possibly happen, an avalanche hit the wreckage and killed several more of them. Introduction 2 Chapter 1 What Do We Mean by Leadership? 3 The remaining survivors concluded they would not be rescued, and their only hope was for someone to leave the wreckage and find help.
Three of the fittest passengers were chosen for the final expedition, and everyone else’s work was directed toward improving the expedition’s chances of success. The three expedition members were given more food and were exempted from routine survival activities; the rest spent most of their energies securing supplies for the trip. Two months after the plane crash, the expedition members set out on their final attempt to find help. After hiking for 10 days through some of the most rugged terrain in the world, the expedition stumbled across a group of Chilean peasants tending cattle.
One of the expedition members stated, “I come from a plane that fell in the mountains. I am Uruguayan . .” Eventually 14 other survivors were rescued. When the full account of their survival became known, it was not without controversy. It had required extreme and unsettling measures: the survivors had lived only by eating the flesh of their deceased comrades. Nonetheless, their story is one of the most moving survival dramas of all time, magnificently told by Piers Paul Read in Alive. L It is a story of tragedy and courage, and it is a story of leadership.
Perhaps a story of survival in the Andes is so far removed from everyday experience that it does not seem to hold any relevant lessons about leadership for you personally. But consider some of the basic issues the Andes survivors faced: tension between individual and group goals, dealing with the different needs and personalities of group members, and keeping hope alive in the face of adversity. These issues are not so different room those facing many groups we’re a part of. We can also look at the Andes experience for examples of the emergence of informal leaders in groups.
Before the flight, a boy named Pardon was awkward and shy, a Lives of great men all “second-stringer” both athletically and socially. Nonetheless, this unlikely remind us hero became the best loved and most respected among the survivors for We can make our his courage, optimism, fairness, and emotional support. Persuasiveness in lives sublime group decision making also was an important part of leadership among And, departing, leave the Andes survivors. During he difficult discussions preceding the jabbering us Footprints on the inning decision to survive on the flesh of their deceased comrades, one of sands of time. He rugby players made his reasoning clear: “l know that if my dead body Henry Headwords could help you stay alive, then I would want you to use it. In fact, if I do Longfellow die and you don’t eat me, then I’ll come back from wherever I am and give you a good kick in the ass. “2 What Is Leadership? The Andes story and the experiences of many other leaders well introduce to you in a series of profiles sprinkled throughout the chapters provide numerous examples of leadership. But just what is leadership? Part One Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position People who do research on leadership disagree more than you might think about what leadership really is. Most of this disagreement stems from the fact that leadership is a complex phenomenon involving the leader, the followers, and the situation. Some leadership researchers have focused on the personality, physical traits, or behaviors of the leader; others have studied the relationships between leaders and followers; still attestation Baldwin, errs have studied how aspects of the situation affect how leaders act.
Some British prime have extended the latter viewpoint so far as to suggest there is no such minister in the thing as leadership; they argue that organizational successes and failures sass often get falsely attributed to the leader, but the situation may have a much greater impact on how the organization functions than does any individual, including the leader. 3 Perhaps the best way for you to begin to understand the complexities Remember the difference of leadership is to see some of the ways leadership has been defined. Teens a boss and a Leadership researchers have defined leadership in many different ways: The halls of fame are open wide and they are always full. Some go in by the door called “push” and some by the door called “pull. ” leader: a boss says, “Go! “?a leader says, “Let’s go! ” The process by which an agent induces a subordinate to behave in a desired manner. 4 E. M. Kelly Directing and coordinating the work of group members. 5 An interpersonal relation in which others comply because they want to, not because they have to. The process of influencing an organized group toward accomplishing its goals. 7 Actions that focus resources to create desirable opportunities. 8 Creating conditions for a team to be effective. 9 Getting results wrought others (the ends of leadership), and the ability to build cohesive, goal- oriented teams (the means of leadership). Good leaders are those who build teams to get results across a variety of situations. 10 A complex form of social problem solving. 1 As you can see, definitions of leadership differ in many ways, and these differences have resulted in various researchers exploring disparate aspects of leadership. For example, if we were to apply these definitions to the Andes survival scenario described earlier, some researchers would focus on the behaviors Pardon used to keep up the morale of the survivors. Researchers who define leadership as influencing an organized group toward accomplishing its goals would examine how Pardon managed to convince the group to stage and support the final expedition.
One’s definition of leadership might also influence just who is considered an appropriate leader for study. Thus each group of researchers might focus on a different aspect of leadership, and each would tell a different story regarding the leader, the followers, and the situation. Although having many leadership definitions may seem confusing, it is important to understand that there is no single correct definition. The What Do We Mean by Leadership? 5 various definitions can help us appreciate the multitude of factors that affect leadership, as well as different perspectives from which to view it.
For example, in the first definition just listed, the word subordinate seems to confine leadership to downward influence in hierarchical relationships; it seems to exclude informal leadership. The second definition emphasizes the directing and controlling aspects of leadership, and thereby may deemphasize emotional aspects of leadership. The emphasis placed in the third definition on subordinates’ “wanting o” comply with a leaders wishes seems to exclude any kind of coercion as a leadership tool.
Further, it becomes problematic to identify ways in which a leader’s actions are really leadership if subordinates voluntarily comply when a leader with considerable potential coercive power merely asks others to do something without explicitly threatening them. Similarly, a key reason behind using the phrase desirable opportunities in one of the definitions was precisely to distinguish between leadership and tyranny. And partly because there are many different definitions of leadership, there is also a wide range of individuals e consider leaders.
In addition to stories about leaders and leadership we will sprinkle through this book, we will highlight several in each chapter in a series of Profiles in Leadership. The first of these is Profiles in Leadership 1. 1, which highlights Peter Jackson. All considered, we find that defining leadership as “the process of influencing an organized group toward accomplishing its goals” is fairly comprehensive and helpful. Several implications of this definition are worth further examination.
Leadership Is Both a Science and an Art Saying leadership is both a science and an art emphasizes the subject of dervish as a field of scholarly inquiry, as well as certain aspects of the practice of leadership. The scope of the science of leadership is reflected in the number of studies?approximately 8,000?cited in an authoritative reference work, Bass & Goodwill’s Handbook of Leadership: Theory, Research, and Managerial Applications. 12 However, being an expert on leadership research is neither necessary nor sufficient for being a good leader.
Some managers may be effective leaders without ever having taken a course or training program in leadership, and some scholars in the field of leadership may be relatively poor adders themselves. However, knowing something about leadership research is relevant Any fool can keep a rule. God gave him a to leadership effectiveness. Scholarship may not be a prerequisite for brain to know when to leadership effectiveness, but understanding some of the major research break the rule. Findings can help individuals better analyze situations using a variety of General Willard perspectives.
That, in turn, can tell leaders how to be more effective. W. Scott Even so, because skills in analyzing and responding to situations vary greatly across leaders, leadership will always remain partly an art as Peter Jackson PROFILES IN LEADERSHIP 1. 1 When Peter Jackson read The Lord of the Rings trilogy at the age of 18, he couldn’t wait until it was made into a movie; 20 years later he made that movie himself. In 2004 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King took home 1 1 Academy Awards, winning the Oscar in every category for which it was nominated.
This tied the record for the most Oscar ever earned by one motion picture. Such an achievement might seem unlikely for a producer/director whose film debut was titled Bad Taste, which it and subsequent works exemplified in spades. Peter Jackson made horror movies so grisly and revolting that his fans nicknamed him the “Sultan of Splatter. ” Nonetheless, his talent was evident to discerning eyes?at least among horror film aficionados. Bad Taste was hailed as a cult classic at the Cannes Film Festival, and horror fans tabbed Jackson as a talent to follow.
When screenwriter Costa Votes heard that The Lord of the Rings would be made into a live action film, he thought those responsible were crazy. Prevailing wisdom was that the fantastic and complex trilogy simply could not be believably translated onto the screen. But he also believed that “there as no other director on earth who could do it justice” (Votes, 2004). And do it justice he obviously did. What was it about the “Sultan of Splatters” leadership that gave others such confidence in his ability to make one of the biggest and best movies of all time? What gave him the confidence to even try?
And what made others want to share in his vision? Peter Jackson’s effectiveness as a leader has been due in large part to a unique combination of personal qualities and talents. One associate, for example, called him “one of the smartest people know,” as well as a maverick willing to buck the establishment. Jackson is also a tireless worker whose early successes were due in no small part to the combination of his ambition and dogged perseverance (dotes, 2004). His initial success was driven largely by his budding genius in making films on a low budget and with virtually no other staff.
In reading others’ comments who worked with him on the LOTT project, however, it’s clear that his leadership continued to develop over the years. It was his ability to communicate a shared vision and inspire such extraordinary work from an incredibly large staff that made LOTT so spectacularly successful. Source: Adapted from Costa Votes, Made in New The Cinema of Peter Jackson, ENGAGED. Com, May 2004. A democracy cannot follow a leader unless he is traumatized. A man to be a hero must not content himself with heroic virtues and anonymous action.
He must talk and explain as he acts? drama. Well as a science. Highlight 1. 1 provides further perspective on how the art and science of leadership are represented in somewhat distinctive research traditions. Leadership Is Both Rational and Emotional Leadership involves both the rational and emotional sides of human experience. Leadership includes actions and influences based on reason and logic as well s those based on inspiration and passion. We do not want to cultivate merely intellectualized leaders who respond with only logical predictability.
Because people differ in their thoughts and feelings, hopes William Allen and dreams, needs and fears, goals and ambitions, and strengths and White, American weaknesses, leadership situations can be complex. People are both rationale and editor, anal and emotional, so leaders can use rational techniques and emotional Emperor Gazette appeals to influence followers, but they must also weigh the rational and emotional consequences of their actions. What Do We Mean by Leadership? 7 The Academic and Troubadour Traditions of Leadership Research HIGHLIGHT 1. On a practical level, leadership is a topic that almost everyone is interested in at one time or another. People have a vested interest in who is running their government, schools, company, or church, and because of this interest thousands of books and articles have been written about the topic of leadership. Church and Hogan believe these works can be divided into two major camps. The academic tradition consists of articles that use data and statistical techniques to make inferences about effective leadership.
Because the academic tradition is research based, for the most part these findings are written for other leadership researchers and are virtually interpretable to leadership practitioners. As such, leadership practitioners are often unfamiliar with the research findings of the academic tradition. The second camp of leadership literature is the troubadour tradition. These books and articles often consist of nothing more than the opinions or score-settling reminiscences of former leaders. Books in the troubadour tradition, such as Who Moved My Cheese? What the CEO Wants You o Know, Winning, and Lead Like Jesus: Lessons from the Greatest Leadership Role Model of all Time, are wildly popular, but it is difficult to separate fact from fiction or determine whether these opinions translate to other settings. People who are unfamiliar with the findings of the academic tradition and the limitations of the troubadour tradition find it difficult to differentiate research findings from opinion. Perhaps the biggest challenge to improving the practice of leadership is to give practitioners timely, easily digestible, research-grounded advice on how to effectively lead others.
The knowledge accumulated from 90 years of leadership research is of tremendous value, yet scientists have paid little attention to the ultimate consumers of their work?leaders and leaders- to-be. Leadership practitioners often want fast answers about how to be more effective or successful and understandably turn to popular books and articles that appear to provide timely answers to their practical concerns. Unfortunately, however, the claims in the popular literature are rarely based on sound research; they oversimplify the complexities of the leadership process; and many times they actually offer bad advice.
Relatively little weight is given to wholehearted leadership studies, primarily because the arcane requirements of publishing articles in scholarly journals make their content virtually unreadable (and certainly uninteresting) to actual leadership practitioners. One of the primary objectives of this book is to make the results of leadership research more usable for leaders and leaders-to-be. Sources: G. J. Church, M. J. Benson, A. Baldric, and R. T. Hogan, Managerial Incompetence (unpublished manuscript, 2007); G. J.
Church, “What We Really Know about Leadership (But Seem Unwilling to Implement)” (presentation given to the Minnesota Professionals for Psychology and Applied Work, Minneapolis, MN, January 2004); R. T. Hogan, Personality and the Fate of Organizations (Amah, NJ: Lawrence Relearn Associates, 2007). A full appreciation of leadership involves looking at both these sides of human nature. Good leadership is more than just calculation and planning, or following a checklist, even though rational analysis can enhance good leadership.
Good leadership also involves touching others’ feelings; emotions play an important role in leadership too. Just one example of this is the civil rights movement of the sass, which was based on emotions as well as on principles. Dry. Martin Luther King Jar. Inspired many people to action; he touched people’s hearts as well as their heads. 8 Aroused feelings, however, can be used either positively or negatively, constructively or destructively. Some leaders have been able to inspire others to deeds of great purpose and courage.
On the other hand, as images of Doll Hitless mass rallies or present-day angry mobs attest, group frenzy can readily become group mindlessness. As another example, emotional appeals by the Reverend Jim Jones resulted in approximately 800 of his followers volitionally omitting suicide. The mere presence of a group (even without heightened emotional levels) can also cause people to act differently than when they are alone. For example, in airline cockpit crews, there are clear lines of authority from the captain down to the first officer (second in command) and so on.
So strong are the norms surrounding the authority of the captain that some first officers will not take control of the airplane from the captain even in the event of impending disaster. Bookshelf reported a study wherein airline captains in simulator training intentionally feigned incapacitation so the response of the est. of the crew could be observed. The feigned incapacitation occurred at a predetermined point during the plane’s final approach in landing, and the simulation involved conditions of poor weather and visibility.
Approximately 25 percent of the first officers in these simulated flights allowed the plane to crash. For some reason, the first officers did not take control even when it was clear the captain was allowing the aircraft to deviate from the parameters of a safe approach. This example demonstrates how group dynamics can influence the behavior of group members even when emotional levels are not high. Believe it or not, airline crews are so well trained that this is not an emotional situation. ) In sum, it should be apparent that leadership involves followers’ feelings and narration behavior as well as rational behavior.
Leaders need to consider both the rational and the emotional consequences of their actions. Leadership and Management In trying to answer “What is leadership? ‘ it is natural to look at the relationship between leadership and management. To many, the word management suggests words like efficiency, planning, paperwork, procedures, regulations, control, and consistency. Leadership is often more associated with words like risk taking, dynamic, creativity, change, and vision. Some say leadership is fundamentally a value-choosing, and thus a value-laden, activity, whereas management is not.
Leaders are thought to do the right things, whereas managers are thought to do things right. 14,15 Here are some other distinctions between managers and leaders:16 Managers administer; leaders innovate. Managers maintain; leaders develop. Managers control; leaders inspire. If you want some ham, you goat go into the smokehouse. Hey Long, governor of Louisiana, 1928-1932 What Do We Mean by Leadership? Managers have a short-term view; leaders, a long-term view. Managers ask how and when; leaders ask what and why. Managers imitate; leaders originate.
Managers accept the status quo; leaders challenge it. Socialized goes so far as to say these differences reflect fundamentally different personality types: leaders and managers are basically different kinds of people. He says some people are managers by nature; other people are leaders by nature. One is not better than the other; they are just different. Their differences, in fact, can be useful because organizations typically need both functions performed well. For example, consider again the U. S. Civil rights movement in the sass. Dry. Martin Luther King Jar. eave life and direction to the civil rights movement in America. He gave dignity and hope of freer participation in national life to people who before had little reason to expect it. He inspired the world with his vision and eloquence, and he changed the way we live together. America is a different nation today because of him. Was Dry. Martin Luther King Jar. A leader? Of course. Was he a manager? Somehow that does not seem to fit, and the civil rights movement might have failed if it had not been for the managerial Allen’s of his supporting staff.
Leadership and management complement each other, and both are vital to organizational success. With regard to the issue of leadership versus management, the authors of this book take a middle-of-the- road position. We think of leadership and management as closely related but distinguishable functions. Our view of the relationship is depicted in Figure 1 . 1, which shows leadership and management as two overlapping functions. Although some functions performed by leaders and managers may be unique, there is also an area of overlap. In reading Highlight 1. , do you see more good management in the response to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, more good leadership, or both? FIGURE 1. 1 Leadership and Management Overlap Leadership Management 10 The Response of Leadership to a Natural Disaster HIGHLIGHT 1. 2 Much has been written about the inadequate response of local, state, and federal agencies to Hurricane Strain. It may be instructive to compare the response of government agencies to a natural disaster on a different coast a century earlier: the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906.
While the precipitant disaster was the earthquake itself, much destruction resulted from he consequent fire, one disaster aggravating the impact of the other. Because of the earthquake, utility poles throughout the city fell, taking the high-tension wires they were carrying with them. Gas pipes broke; chimneys fell, dropping hot coals into thousands of gallons of gas spilled by broken fuel tanks; stoves and heaters in homes toppled over; and in moments fires erupted across the city.
And because the earthquake’s first tremors also broke water pipes throughout the city, fire hydrants everywhere suddenly went dry, making fighting the fires virtually impossible. In objective terms, the disaster is estimated to have killed s many as 3,000 people, rendered more than 200,000 homeless, and by some measures caused $195 billion in property loss as measured by today’s dollars. How did authorities respond to the crisis when there were far fewer agencies with presumed response plans to combat disasters, and when high-tech communication methods were unheard of?
Consider these two examples: The ranking officer assigned to a U. S. Army post in San Francisco was away when the earthquake struck, so it was up to his deputy to help organize the army and federal government’s response. The deputy immediately cabled Washington, D. C. Requesting tents, rations, and medicine. Secretary of War William Howard Taft, who would become the next U. S. President, responded by immediately dispatching 200,000 rations from Washington State. In a matter of days, every tent in the U. S. Army had been sent to San Francisco, and the longest hospital train in history was dispatched from Virginia. Perhaps the most impressive example of leadership initiative in the face of the 1906 disaster was that of the U. S. Post Office. It recovered its ability to function in short order without losing a single item that was being handled when the earthquake struck. And because he earthquake had effectively destroyed the city telegraphic connection (telegrams inside the city were temporarily being delivered by the post office), a critical question arose: How could people struck by the disaster communicate with their families elsewhere?
The city postmaster immediately announced that all citizens of San Francisco could use the post office to inform their families and loved ones of their condition and needs. He further stipulated that for outgoing private letters it would not matter whether the envelopes bore stamps. This was what was needed: Circumstances demanded that people be able to ammunition with friends and family whether or not they could find or pay for stamps. Perhaps this should remind us that modern leadership is not necessarily better leadership, and that leadership in government is not always bureaucratic and can be both humane and innovative.
Source: Adapted from S. Winchester, A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006). What Do We Mean by Leadership? 11 The Romance of Leadership HIGHLIGHT 1. 3 This text is predicated on the idea that leaders can make a difference. Interestingly, though, while businesspeople generally agree, not all scholars do. People in the business world attribute much of a company’s success or failure to its leadership.
One study counted the number of articles appearing in The Wall Street Journal that dealt with leadership and found nearly 10 percent of the articles about representative target companies addressed that company’s leadership. Furthermore, there was a significant positive relationship between company performance and the number of articles about its leadership; the more a company’s leadership was emphasized in The Wall Street Journal, the otter the company was doing. This might mean the more a company takes leadership seriously (as reflected by the emphasis in The Wall Street Journal), the better it does.
However, the study authors were skeptical about the real utility of leadership as a concept. They suggested leadership is merely a romanticizes notion?an obsession people want and need to believe in. Belief in the potency of leadership may be a cultural myth that has utility primarily insofar as it affects how people create meaning about causal events in complex social systems. The behavior of leaders, the authors contend, does not account for much of he variance in an organization’s performance.
