Leadership, Power, and Politics Flashcards
(29 cards)
What is power?
Power is the capacity to influence others who are in a state of dependence.
What is leadership?
-Leadership occurs when particular individuals exert influence on the goal acheivement of others in an organizational context.
-Effective leadership exerts influence to achieve organizational goals by enhancing productivity, innovation, satisfaction, and commitment of the workforce.
What are the five key sources of power?
1) Legitimate Power: This form of power is derived from a person’s position or job in an organization.
2) Reward Power: The power holder can exert influence by providing positive outcomes and preventing negative outcomes, and it often comes with or backs up legitimate power. Reward power is tied to a manager’s ability to recommend raises, do performance evaluations, and assign preferred tasks to employees.
3) Referent Power: Exists when the power holder is well liked by others. We are prone to consider their points of view, ignore their failures, seek their approval, and use them as role models.
4) Expert Power: This form of power occurs when the person has special information or expertise that the organization values. The more crucial and unusual this expertise, the greater the expert power available.
5) Coercive Power: It’s available when the power holder can exert influence using punishment and threat. Like reward power, it is often a support for legitimate power. Managers may be permitted to dock pay, assign unfavourable tasks, or block prootions. Coercive power is generally ineffective and can provoke considerable employee resistance.
Rank the bases of power in terms of the likelihood that employees respond to that power?
1) Expert and Reverent Power. Fosters Commitment.
2) Reward and Legitimate Power. Fosters Compliance
3) Coercive Power. Fosters Resistance.
What is the relationship between power and performance?
-When performance is on the y axis, and power is on the x axis, the relationship between power and performance is a rainbow.
-A lack of power often leads to lower performance.
-As empowerment increases, performance increases as well.
-However, when abuse of power occurs, performance begins to diminsh in those who are abusing their power(in addition to them worsening other people’s performance).
What are the 7 key influence tactics?
1) Rationality: using logic, reason, planning, and compromise. Effective.
2) Coalitions: seeking united support from other organizational members. Effective, if ethical.
3) Exchange: doing favours or offering to trade favours. Effective, if ethical.
4) Ingratiation: using flattery; acting friendly, polite, or humble; opinion conformity. Feels sleazy, effective in interviews.
5) Self-Promotion: touting one’s accomplishments, image enhancement, name-dropping. Feels sleazy, effective in interviews.
6) Assertive: ordering, nagging, setting deadlines, and verbally confronting others. Positional power dependent.
7) Upward Appeal: making formal or informal appeals to organizational superiors for intervention. Positional Power Dependent.
What are organizational politics?
Organizational politics is the pursuit of self-interest within an organization, whether or not this self-interest corresponds to organizational goals.
What is Machiavellianism?
-Machiavellianism is a set of cynical beliefs about human nature, morality, and the permissibility of using various tactics to achieve one’s ends. Machiavellian people display the following four characteristics:
1) Act very much in their own self-interest, even at the expense of others
2) Appear cool and calculating, especially when others get emotional
3) Manifest high self-esteem and self-confidence
4) Form alliances with powerful people to acheive their goals.
-Research shows that high Machs are unlikely to be high performers, and they are inclined toward counterproductive behaviours such as sabotage and theft.
What are the four contingencies of power?
1) Substitutability: If work can be contracted out to other employees, the power of the subunit that performs these activities is reduced.
2) Centrality: Subnits whose activities are most central to the mission or workflow of the organization should acquire more power than those whose activities are more peripheral. A subunits activities are more central when their impact is more immediate. E.g. the finance or accounting department approving expenses, which affects the rest of the firm.
3) Discretion: The freedom you have to make decisions without needing approval from others.
4) Visibility: How much your work and achievements are seen and recognized by others–especially those in positions of higher authority.
What are the 3 sets of leadership theories?
1) Fundamental Theories
-Trait Theories
-Behavioural Theories
2) Contingency Theories
-Fiedler’s Theory
3) Contemporary Theories/Issues
-LMX
-Transformational Leadership
-Leader Derailment
What does the trait theory of leadership suggest?
-The trait theory of leadership suggests that certain personality, social, physical, or intellectual traits distinguish leaders from non-leaders.
-There are five core traits that are associated with leadership:
1) Extraversion
2) Conscientiousness
3) Opennes
4) Intelligence
5) Emotional Intelligence
What are the limitations of the trait theory of leadership?
-Even though some traits seem to be related to leadership, it can be difficult to determine whether traits make the leader, or whether the opportunity for leadership produces the traits.
-Do dominant individuals tend to become leaders, or do employees become more dominant after they successfully occupy leadership roles.
What are the two behaviours that a leader can show?
1) Consideration: the extent to which a leader is approachable and shows personal concern and respect for employees. The considerate leader is seen as friendly and egalitarian, expresses appreciation and support, and is protective of group welfare.
2) Initiating Structure: the degree to which a leader concentrates on group goal attainment. The structuring leader clearly defines and organizes their own role and the roles of followers, stresses standard procedures, schedules the work to be done, and assigns employees to particular tasks.
-Consideration and initiating structure both contribute positively to employees’ motivation, job satisfaction, and leader effectiveness.
-Consideration leads to greater follower satisfaction, motivation, and leadership effectiveness.
-Initiating structure is slightly more strongly related to leader job performance and group performance.
What are the two key leadership contingency theories?
1) Fiedler Contingency Model
2) Path Goal Theory
What does Fiedler’s Contingency Model suggest? How does that tie in with
-Fiedler’s Contingency Model suggests that leadership orientation and group effectiveness is contingent on the extent to which the situation is favourable for the exertion of influence.
-Some situations are more favourable for leadership than others.
-The three drivers of performance are leader-member relations, task structure, and position power.
-The key assumption of Fiedler’s Contingency Model is that the leader must fit the situation, so either we must select the leader to fit the situation, or we must change the situation to suit the leader.
-Leadership orientation is highly tied to Fiedler’s Contingency Model.
-Leadership orientation is measured by having leaders describe their least preferred coworker–someone with whom the leader had a difficult time getting the job done with.
-The leader who describes the LPC favourably can be considered relationship oriented; however, the leader who describes the LPC unfavourably can be considered task oriented.
-The LPC score is not a measure of consideration or initiating structure, because these are observed behaviours, while the LPC score is an attitude of the leader toward work relationships.
What does House’s Path-Goal Theory suggest?
-Path-goal theory is concerned with the situations under which various leader behaviours are most effective.
-House named his theory the “path-goal theory” because he believed the most important activities leaders can take is to clarify the paths to various goals of interest to employees.
-Such goals may include a promotion, a sense of accomplishment, or a pleasant work climate.
-House contends that to promote employee effort, leaders must make rewards dependent on performance and ensure that employees have a clear picture of how they can acheive these rewards.
-Path-goal theory concerns itself with two classes of situational factors–employee characteristics and environmental factors.
What are the four specific kinds of leader behaviour that path-goal theory concerns itself with?
1) Directive Behaviour: Directive leaders schedule work, maintain performance standards, and let employees know what is expected of them. This behaviour is essentially identical to initiating structure.
2) Supportive Behaviour: Supportive leaders are friendly, approachable, and concerned with pleasant interpersonal relationships. This behaviour is essentially identical to consideration.
3) Participative Behaviour: Participative leaders consult with employees about work-related matters and consider their opinions.
4) Achievement-Oriented Behaviour: Achievement-oriented leaders encourage employees to exert high effort and strive for a high level of goal accomplishment. They express confidence that employees can reach these goals.
How do different types of employees prefer different types of leadership?
-Employees who are high need achievers should work well under achievement-oriented leadership.
-Employees who prefer being told what to do should respond best to a directive leadership style.
-When employees feel they have low task abilities, they appreciate directive leadership and coaching behaviour. When they feel capable of performing the task, they will view such behaviours as unnecessary and irritating.
-Leaders must tailor their behaviour to the needs, abilities, and personalities of individual employees.
How does the effectiveness of leadership behaviour change based on the work environment?
-When tasks are clear and routine, employees should perceive directive leadership as a redundant and unnecessary imposition. This should reduce satisfaction and acceptance of the leader. Similarly, participative leadership would not seem as useful when tasks are clear, since there is little in which to participate. Obviously, such tasks are most common at lower organizational levels.
-When tasks are challenging but ambiguous, employees should appreciate both directive and participative leadership.
-Frustraitng and dissatisfying jobs should increase employee apprciation of supportive behaviour. To some degree, such support should compensate for a disliked job, although it should probably do little to increase effort.
What does leader-member exchange theory suggest?
-Leader-member exchange theory suggests that over time and through the course of their interactions, different types of relationships develop between leaders and employees.
-As a result, each relationship that a leader develops with an employee will be different and unique, and these relationships will differ in terms of the quality of the relationship.
-The basis of the effect of leader-member exchange theory is social exchange theory.
-High-LMX leaders provide employees with challenging tasks and opportunities, grater latitude and discretion, task-related resources, and recognition.
-However, not all the relationships a leader forms in a workgroup will be high quality. This is known as LMX differentiation (LMXD), which refers to the variability in the quality of LMX relationships between members of the same workgroup.
-The original LMX idea is not well supported. Although in-group members benefit, having an out-group makes leaders worse overall.
What does the full range of leadership model show?
-Passive leadership methods tend to be ineffective, while more active leadership methods tend to be more effective.
-The full range of leadership model breaks down leadership into transactional and transformational, with transactional being passive and ineffective, and transformational being active and effective.
What are the transactional means of the full range of leadership model?
1) Laissez-Faire: Not caring.
2) Management by Exception: this is the degree to which leaders take corrective action on the basis of leader-follower transactions. They monitor follower behaviour, anticipate problems, and take corrective actions before the behaviour creates serious problems. There are two forms of management by exception–management by exception-active (MBEA) and management by exception-passive (MBEP). Management by exception-active involves routinely monitoring the behaviour of followers and actively searching for and correcting deviations from the norm as they happen. Management by exception-passive involves correcting mistakes only after they have occured. Also it’s tough to do management by exception well, it is a necessary component of leadership.
3) Contingent Reward: Setting clear expectations and rewarding performance.
What are the transformational means of the full range of leadership model?
1) Individualized Consideration: involves treating employees as distinct individuals, indicating concern for their needs and personal development, and serving as a mentor or coach when appropriate.
2) Intellectual Stimulation: people are stimulated to think about problems, issues, and strategies in new ways.
3) Inspirational Motivation: involves the communication of visions that are appealing and inspiring to followers. Leaders with inspirational motivation have a strong vision for the future based on values and ideals. They stimulate enthusiasm, challenge followers with their high standards, communicate optimism about future goal attainment, and provide meaning for the task at hand.
4) Idealized Influence: involves being a role model for followers. Leaders with idealized influence are admired, respected, and trusted. They display high standards of ethical and moral conduct, take stands on difficult issues, and prioritize the interests of the group over personal gain.
What is charisma? When does charisma become ineffective?
-Charismatic individuals have been portrayed throughout history as having personal qualities that give them the potential to have extraordinary influence over others.
-Charisma becomes ineffective when:
1) It is inauthentic
2) It is not in line with followers’ goals
3) Followers doubt the leader’s competence
4) Followers doubt the leader’s morals(especially challenging)
