March 27

Personality and Leadership

Topics:  Two types of leadership.  The contingency model of leadership.  Identifying your leadership style.  What conditions maximize your effectiveness?  Transformational leadership.  Leadership and attribution.  Why people resist leadership.  The Kantor paradox.

In this last session of the course, we'll be taking a whirlwind tour of some influential theories of organizational leadership.  First, however, let's draw some links back to the Big Five model of personality with which we began the course.  How do you think people of different personality types would exert or exercise leadership?  (Think about it for a few minutes before reading further.)

One would probably not be surprised to find that:

• E- types would exercise leadership in a quieter way (perhaps one-on-one or more behind the scenes), while E+ types would exercise leadership in a more overt (active, communicative, group-oriented) fashion.
• O- types would focus on the here-and-now, practical details of leadership (tactical or bottom-up approach), while O+ types would focus on the long-range, innovative elements of leadership (strategic or top-down approach).
• A- types would be more blunt, direct, forceful in their leadership approach, which might involve more confrontation or competition, or might be more hierarchical;  while A+ types would be more subtle, indirect, and tactful, with a more harmony-seeking or cooperative style.
• C- types would be more flexible, spontaneous, "seat of the pants" leaders, utilizing high degrees of humor;  C+ types would be more structured, traditional, bureaucratic, and serious-minded leaders.
• N- types would respond to stress with stoicism, N+ types with an authentic admission or expression of their emotional responses.

Think about your own leadership style.  Do the above contrasts accurately depict the links between your style and your Big Five personality profile?

Fiedler's contingency model of leadership

It's commonplace today to recognize that there is more than one effective approach to leadership, and that a style which works well in one situational context may be extremely inappropriate or counterproductive in another.  But this insight was largely unrecognized in management circles before the development of the so-called contingency model of leadership, by a social psychologist named Fiedler.

Fiedler first noted that two distinct styles of leadership appear to exist.  He christened them "task-oriented" versus "relationship oriented".  A task-oriented leader is focused on generating results or getting things done (impersonal outcomes or goals);  s/he may not care how the team gets there or how they feel about it before, during, or after completing the task.  In contrast, a relationship-oriented leader is focused on maintaining morale or enhancing the process (personal relationships or processes);  while this doesn't mean a total neglect of outcomes, it implies that if people are happy, doing work they enjoy (and that is matched to their natural gifts and temperament), getting along with each other, and so forth, high-quality results will naturally follow.  Fiedler noted that many organizations (without knowing the above terms) seem naturally to generate both kinds of leaders - and that it is rare, though not impossible, for the same person to fill both sets of shoes.  Those gifted at one style of leadership tend to find the other rather uncomfortable, foreign, or awkward.

Fiedler also noted that neither style is better than the other in an abstract way, even when we define "better" as "more likely to produce positive work outcomes" (which is, of course, an objectively, scientifically measurable sort of outcome).  Rather, the effectiveness of the two styles depends on the kind of work environment (and/or the type of task demands). 

Defining work situations in terms of the degree of ambiguity proved to be the key to this puzzle.  By "ambiguity" we mean the uncertainty of a situation -- the degree of confusion or chaos inherent in that situation, or how unstructured and unpredictable it is.  What Fiedler found in his research is that task-oriented leaders excel (are better at generating positive work outcomes) in situations with extreme levels of ambiguity in either direction -- very ambiguous or very unambiguous situations;  while relationship-oriented leaders excel in situations with moderate levels of ambiguity.  Graphically, the result would look like this:

you see why these results make sense?  (We'll be discussing that in class.)

Think about how this relates to the expected life-cycle of an organization. Although it's not always so, one would think that, all things being equal, the ambiguity of a work culture (and of the tasks assigned to people in that culture) would steadily decrease as the organization ages (and gets larger), starting with the extreme ambiguity of a small startup entrepreneurial venture and ending with the extreme predictability of a large mature bureaucracy.  (It's in this spirit that one wit said that the history of all organizations has four stages: a man [or woman, that is, the single person who was the founder or originator of it all], a mission, a movement, a monument.)

In Big Five terms, how can we predict which style of leadership a person is more likely to express?  Factors A and C are probably most relevant. 

• A task-oriented leader is more likely to be A- (analytical, impersonal, competitive) and, secondarily, C+ (structured, organized, goal-minded).
• A relationship-oriented leader is more likely to be A+ (empathic, personal, cooperative) and, secondarily, C- (flexible, adaptable, process-minded).

(In situations where the two factors provide cross-indicators -- that is, for A- C- or A+ C+ people -- Factor A probably exerts the stronger influence on which style the person will favor.  But we'd expect less clarity in the leadership style of people with one of these two "inconsistent" Big Five patterns.)

Again, remember that the Big Five dimensions represent a person's psychological and motivational default mode, not her/his skill sets.  An A- C+ person can learn to be (or, at least act "as if" s/he is) empathic and sensitive and relational;  an A+ C- person can learn to be (or, at least act "as if" s/he is) analytical and results-driven and goal-oriented.  But it's not second nature;  it's playing a part, and can feel to the person playing it (and, sometimes, can look to those observing it) like a sort of hypocrisy.  The role behaviors will never be "shoes-off self", "default mode" behaviors, and will come with a price (increasing stress), as discussed in earlier units.

Bass's model of transformational leadership

Later theorists, the social psychologist Bass among them, subsequently identified a second dimension of leadership, styled by him "transactional" versus "transformational" leadership.  Using easier terms, we might think of "maintainers" versus "builders". 

• Maintainers (transactional leaders) are at their best in established situations:  keeping things running smoothly in times of stability.  They excel at finishing tasks and have a more tactical emphasis.
• Builders (transformational leaders) are at their best in new, emerging situations:  getting things going in times of transition and change.  They excel at starting tasks (but may lose interest once the "genie is out of the bottle") and have a more strategic emphasis.

Just reading the above descriptions suggests strong links with Factor O.  It would be no surprise to discover that maintainers are usually O- (if it ain't broke, don't fix it), while builders are usually O+ (boldly going where no one has gone before).  Stability is comforting to maintainers, boring or tedious to builders;  change (even chaotic change) is threatening to maintainers, exciting -- or even the breath of life itself -- to builders.

Integrating the two perspectives

Since the two perspectives are more or less independent of one another, we can develop a four-quadrant system of classifying leadership styles as follows:

Note the links to David Kiersey's model of the four personality types or temperaments.

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