Wednesday, October 7th, 2015

Psychology of Organisations
Psychology, 2nd Year

lvaro Melndez Gutirrez

Problem 2:
Help! We need effective leadership
On Leadership

Introduction
In this second case we are presented a problem of personal management: an
inefficient group leader that is unable to organise and listen his team. Again, as a
team, we agreed to solve the former situation basing our research on the following
learning goals:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Relationship and Feedback between leadership and workers.

Group dynamics (roles).
Leadership Training techniques.
Consequences of bad leadership.
Definition of leadership

As in the previous work I will structure the learning goals in such a way that they
will be answered towards the resolution of the conflict:
I.
II.
III.

Leadership & Management: which will include the definition of our

concept, developing learning goals 2 and 5.
Becoming a Leader: developing learning goals 1 & 3.
Solving the Conflict: Consequences of Bad Leadership, which is
learning goal 4, as the development of learning goal 4, together with the
solutions for the problem.

This document, again, presents my own research and will discuss the possible
solutions based on the resulting knowledge of such investigation. These results
are not definite answers as they are meant to be complimented and combined,
if not rejected, by my teamworks answers, opinions and researches during our
next PBL meeting. I hope, at least, that they will be seen as a useful, though
humble, contribution to the problem we have been entangled to resolve.
I. Leadership & Management

The first approach was developed by Harvard Business School professor

Abraham Zaleznik in 1977 with an article comparing leaders to managers,
according to John P. Kotters 1990 introduction article republished in 2001.
According to Kotters perspective, Managers contribute to stability and leaders
press for change. He defends that companies need to understand the differences
between both roles, instead of promoting people to become leaders and
managers all at once. That might be a first hint of the problem that we are dealing
with: Mr. Green is been established as a leader and a manager, and he clearly
cannot cope with the required standards for both. Following Kotter, management
is about bringing a degree of order and consistency to key dimensions like quality
and profitability of products. On the contrary, leadership is about dealing with
the constant change of the new markets and company models and styles,
something Mr. Green is not good at all, explicitly expressed in his wish for old
times. It is the difference between planning and budgeting, and setting a vision of
future, giving a direction. While the manager monitors and solves the factual
problems, leaders have to keep up with motivating and inspiring towards that
vision of future.
Leaders tend to manage data and view relationship amongst them, often using an
inductive methodology, creating visions and strategies. They are broad-base
strategic thinkers who are willing to take risks. The vision of the leader is broad
and wide and it includes absolutely everyone that can be relevant to implement
the plan. Motivation and inspiration energize people, not by pushing them in the
right direction as control mechanisms do but by satisfying basic human needs for
achievement, a sense of be- longing, recognition, self-esteem, a feeling of control
over one's life, and the ability to live up to one's ideals. Such feelings touch us
deeply and elicit a powerful response.
On the other side of the coin we have the compilation of leadership styles made
by Goleman (2000). He views leadership as the intelligent application of these
specific styles in specific contexts; in other words, he outlines the importance of
the concept of change and adaptation that we already pointed out before in
Kotters proposal. We will discuss this theory in our next section.
II. Becoming a Leader
One of the key points that Goleman strikes is that becoming a leader can be
achieved by particular training; it is a technique, teachable and learnable as any
other skill. These styles are: Coercive leaders who demand immediate
compliance, authoritative leaders who mobilize people toward a vision, affiliative

leaders who create emotional bonds and harmony, democratic leaders who build
consensus through participation, pacesetting leaders who expect excellence and
self-direction and coaching leaders who develop people for the future.
Following Kotter (1990), recruiting people with leadership potential is only the first
step. Equally important is managing their career patterns. Individuals who are
effective in large leadership roles often share a number of career experiences.
Perhaps the most typical and most important is significant challenge early in a
career. Leaders almost always have had opportunities during their twenties and
thirties to actually try to lead, to take a risk, and to learn from both triumphs and
failures. Such learning seems essential in developing a wide range of leadership
skills and perspectives. These opportunities also teach people some- thing about
both the difficulty of leadership and its potential for producing change.
Also helps the network of relationships that is often acquired both in- side and
outside the company. When enough people get opportunities like this, the
relationships that are built also help create the strong informal net- works needed
to support multiple leadership initiatives. In the problem that we are trying to solve
it is difficult to implement this strategy of early training, so we need another
solution. Still, Kotter remarks that when told that future promotions will depend to
some degree on their ability to nurture leaders, even people who say that
leadership cannot be developed somehow find ways to do it.
III. Solving the Conflict
As Goleman (2000) defends, leaders who use styles that positively affect the
climate have better financial results. Mr. Green is not one of these, clearly. Only
four of the six leadership styles have positive impact: Authoritative, Affiliative,
Democratic and Coaching.
The first solution I proposed is based on these repertories just mentioned. If Mr.
Green is to be the team leader for bureaucratic necessity, he should be
assessed in his (lack of) leadership style developing his emotional
intelligence in a direction that allows him to acquire one of these styles, by
understanding the emotional intelligence competencies that underlie in those
which he lacks.
Related to the first one, I propose a second. If we would deepen the analysis I
would dare to state that he has a pacesetting leadership style, which demands
high standards of performance (Do as I do, now). But this style only works for
quick results in highly motivated and competent teams, so maybe he should start
developing ways for getting to that level of motivation.
The last one is a company level solution, that would imply separating Mr.

Greens very good work at managing from his terrible work as a leader, in
the search for a new leader. This is, to draw the borders between the two roles
and make the company realise that Mr. Green, at the moment, is not suitable for
vision and motivation, but planning and organising. Maybe looking for someone
younger to willing to take some short scale risks would make the company start
forming its own leaders over time.
Bibliography
Goleman, D. (2000). Leadership that gets results. Harvard Business
Review, 78(2), 78-90.
Kotter, J.P. (2001). What Leaders Really Do. Harvard Business Review,
79(11), 81-96.