Lecture 2: Leadership Overview & Keohane

Question 1

what are the challenges of leadership?

Answer 1

• Representing everyone’s wishes as much as you can
• Jurisdiction
• Knowing when to step down
• Compromise
• Stereotypes
• Keeping your weaknesses in check
• Motivating others

Question 2

we take leadership for granted until there is:

Answer 2

• Failure of leadership
• Absence of leadership
• Lack of leadership

Question 3

Nannerl Keohane

Answer 3

• A leading political theorist, the first woman president of Duke University, and former president of Wellesley College
• Examines what leaders do, how and why they do it, and the challenges they face
• Provides a useful set of considerations for understanding and assessing leadership

Question 4

Keohane argues that leadership:

Answer 4

• Occurs in many contexts
• Has some relationship with power, but not a synonym for holding power
• Involves exercising authority, but not necessarily formal authority
• Can be performed in a variety of ways, from the admirable to the deplorable
• Central to almost all collective social activity

Question 5

Joseph Rost

Answer 5

argues that leadership as we know it is a 20th-century concept as the word itself did not appear in dictionaries until the 19th-century

Question 6

counterarguments to Rost’s notion of leadership

Answer 6

many ancient and modern languages have words that can easily be translated as leadership or some synonym

Question 7

leadership and context

Answer 7

the character of leadership can vary significantly with context

Question 8

family resemblances and leadership

Answer 8

• Keohane employs Ludwig Wittgenstein’s idea of family resemblances when discussing leadership in a different context
• It allows for “meaningful general statements about leadership as an aspect of human social life”

Question 9

Kehone’s two parts of leadership

Answer 9

1. Putting forward ideas for accomplishing group goals
2. Bringing together members of the group to act on these suggestions

Question 10

Leaders must:

Answer 10

• Make decisions
• Devise and implement strategies
• Compromise to achieve goals
• Listen to proposals or petitions from others
• Adjudicate conflict
• Assemble resources and deploy incentives
• Give voice to vision
• Seek counsel and issue statements
• Take stands
• Persuade, require, or force

Question 11

Max Weber

Answer 11

• Famous 19th-century German sociologist
• Argued for the distinction between power, authority, leadership, and legitimacy

Question 12

Weber on leadership

Answer 12

Leadership requires the use of power but is also limited by existing power structure and relations (the institutional context)

Question 13

Weber on power

Answer 13

the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be able to carry out his actions without resistance

Question 14

Weber on authority

Answer 14

the probability that a command given within a specific context will be obeyed by a given group of people

Question 15

examples of contextual factors

Answer 15

culture, geography, history, etc.

Question 16

three leadership styles

Answer 16

• founders
• fixers
• sustainers

Question 17

founders

Answer 17

establish new organizations

Question 18

fixers

Answer 18

repair or radically transform existing institutions

Question 19

sustainers

Answer 19

develop or sustain existing institutions

Question 20

public vs. private leadership

Answer 20

Private leadership is more concerned with making a profit

Question 21

James MacGregor Burns’ evaluation of leadership

Answer 21

• Leaders vs. power wielders
• Bad leadership implies no leadership

Question 22

Joseph Nye’s evaluation of leadership

Answer 22

• Good = effective or morally admirable
• Bad= incompetent or evil

Question 23

Barbara Kellerman and Jean Lipman-Blumen’s evaluation of leadership

Answer 23

argue for complexity

Question 24

James MacGregor Burns on transforming leadership

Answer 24

• transforming leadership involves values
• Leadership that provides higher levels of motivation and morality

Question 25

Sidney Hook on transforming leadership

Answer 25

- Event-making = transformative without the moral uplift - Juxtaposes event-making with eventful leadership

Question 26

Keohane on the relationship between leaders and followers

Answer 26

- Followers define what is possible for a leader - They provide opportunity by silence or acquiescence and set limits to what is feasible by strong negative reactions - They may also become resisters, withdrawing their support

Question 27

Barbara Kellerman on the relationship between leaders and followers

Answer 27

followers are subordinates who have less power, authority, and influence than their superiors and who therefore usually, but not invariably, fall into line

Question 28

The spectrum of followership (Kellerman)

Answer 28

the isolate, bystander, participant, activist, and diehard

Question 29

followers and the complexity of organizations

Answer 29

Typologies of followers differ according to their place in complex organizations

Question 30

Burns’ concentric rings model

Answer 30

- Secondary, tertiary, and even “lower” leadership at most levels - Leaders often oversee leaders of smaller units - Leadership is thus multilayered

Question 31

leadership across situations

Answer 31

- One can be a follower and a leader - Furthermore, the difference between leaders and followers can be especially hard to define in a democracy - Few of us are leaders or followers in every situation

Question 32

what distinguishes leadership from followership? (Keohane)

Answer 32

A persistent asymmetry of influence between leaders and their followers, so that leaders affect or shape the behaviour of followers to a greater degree than followers affect or shape the behaviour of their leaders

Question 33

Kenneth Janda on how leaders get accepted by followers

Answer 33

group members identify a leader’s behaviour with the group goal and thus have the right to prescribe behaviour patterns for them concerning their activities as group members

Question 34

informal leadership

Answer 34

personality, abilities, resources, special knowledge, etc.

Question 35

formal leadership

Answer 35

- A position in a formal structure or formal status by a legitimizing agent - This is often understood in terms of authority

Question 36

coercion and leadership

Answer 36

Neither coercion nor persuasion is needed when one has authority

Question 37

three types of legitimate authority (Weber)

Answer 37

rational, traditional, and charisma

Question 38

rational authority

Answer 38

rests on the belief in the legality of patterns of normative rules and the right of those elevated to authority under such rules to issue commands

Question 39

traditional authority

Answer 39

ancient recognition, traditional dominance, or habitual orientation

Question 40

charismatic authority

Answer 40

a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from followers as endowed with supernatural superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities

Question 41

leadership as a figurative pyramid

Answer 41

below a top leader are other leaders, responsible to the top leader but also charged with leading others

Question 42

leadership as a flotilla

Answer 42

leadership is needed on each ship and an overall leader whose job it is to make sure everyone stays on course

Question 43

two key elements to leadership

Answer 43

- reciprocity - selection of subordinates

Question 44

leadership as relational

Answer 44

The actions and decisions of leaders are shaped by the actual and anticipated reactions and preferences of followers

Question 45

relational leadership in a democracy

Answer 45

This is particularly true in a democracy, where leaders are chosen by the followers and charged with carrying out their will

Question 46

following

Answer 46

joining with the leader, whether through offering energy or ideas or by simply going along

Question 47

resisting

Answer 47

resisting the course determined by the leader

Question 48

government

Answer 48

leaders who are in power at any particular time

Question 49

state

Answer 49

the formal constitutional regime that provides the framework for the leadership

Question 50

resistance activities across situations

Answer 50

There is a spectrum of resistance activities