Leadership and Innovation

WHAT IS LEADERSHIP, LEADERSHIP FUNCTIONS, STYLES AND

BEHAVIOURS

WHAT IS LEADERSHIP? LEADERSHIP VS MANAGEMENT

At the core of Patagonia is its founder, Yvon Chouinard, a man who is saving the world one fleece jacket

a time. A legendary climber, surfer, entrepreneur, environmentalist and philanthropist, he is justly

famous for success on his own terms.

“Before you’re a leader, success is all about When you become a leader,

growing yourself.

Jack Welch:

success is all about others.”

growing You cannot be a leader if you didn’t spend enough time on

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yourself. “Leaders are the ones that followers decide to follow.”

Suzanne Hopgood:

Leadership vs Management

The main difference between leadership and management is on the way you deal with people.

Leadership is about understanding people’s values, beliefs and behaviours and gaining their

commitment. The differences between management and leadership are both in the what (activity vs

vision, objective, goals and direction) and in the how.

The aim of leadership is to influence (group of) individuals toward the achievement of a vision or goals.

At the end they have more than things done, because they also have a vision for the future. Leadership

creates and communicates a vision: leadership make people able to share the same vision; it is not

simply communicating something new like a vision you have in your mind, but it means explain it to

others. While managers already know what they have to do (they only need to convince people to do it),

leaders need to communicate and convince people to do something risky, insecure and different,

something connected with the vision that the leader has in mind but is completely insecure.

Leaders manage and managers lead, but the two activities are

Bernard Bass:

not synonymous. Leadership and management are not opposing and in

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most of the cases they are overlapped.

Leaders manage: they normally have charisma and soft skills. They are more

related to people than managers. They need to be followed and considered as

leaders. Managers lead: they normally have skills. They are more connected

with technical assets. They so not need to be followed.

Leadership definition

Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common

goal.

1- Leadership is a process between a leader and followers

2- Leadership focuses on goal accomplishment

3- Leadership involves social influence: leadership is a social process necessary to make followers

follow the leader

4- Leadership occurs at multiple levels in an organization: leader is whoever is influencing

someone, even if it is not at the top of the organization

LEADERSHIP FUNCTIONS

We can cluster leadership functions in:

- Purpose: you need to be able to describe and understand what is the purpose of the leader

Envision: leaders should have vision and everyone should be moved by this vision

§ Align

§ Establish direction

§ - People: once you have a vision, you engage, inspire, …people according to your purpose

Engage, inspire, motivate

§ Lead by example

§ Empower, support, coach (the aim is to have autonomous people that pursue the vision)

§ - Performance

Stimulate

§ Challenge

§ – Patagonia

Example

Purpose: quality connected with functionality; People: self motivation; Performance: support and

challenge.

The purpose

Vision: a realistic, credible, attractive future for your organization.

A big picture on the way things ought to be. A billboard image of what you are working towards. A vision

should include both something incredible and something realizable to understand that you are not just

a dreamer but you are proposing something that can be done: there must be a balance between

dreaming (think big) and really (stay attached to reality). Moreover, a vision need to touch both rational

and emotional aspects (much more the emotional one!).

“Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the

stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and

commerce.”, John F. Kennedy

How to create a vision?

- Dreaming is the first step. Dare to dream. Dreaming big

allows you to think about ideas that may not seem likely,

yet are in fact possible … but people may think your big

picture is a meaningless mirage if you don’t give them

some ideas as to how things can actually change. So, you

should develop also practical details. The starting point

is yourself: having vision about yourself.

“Nothing happens without a dream. The daydreaming

mind will wanter to something greater that the conscious

mind could ever have imagined… the more you visualize

your dream, the more you understand it. That’s how you

begin. Soon you’re on the road to realizing your dream.”,

Lili Fini Zanuck

- Communicate your vision to others

inform is the basic level: inform about what is your vision is necessary but it is not enough; no

§ one can decide to follow you until they know what direction you’re headed in

inspire: creating a situation in which, starting from your vision, other people can create their

§ own vision; if your vision is one that touches a chord with many people and if you can

communicate it well, people will join you in reaching towards your goals

engage: meet people where they are and challenge them at the same time

§

The people

Engagement: employee engagement describes the people feel about

level of passion and excitement

their work; it consists of put into work beyond the minimal job

extra attention, thought, and energy

requirements to achieve company goals; people become engaged when their workplace activities

connect to happy.

what matters in their lives and what makes them

People management and development – how leaders interact with individuals:

inspire support, encourage

• •

lead by example reward provide feedback

• •

influence coach

• •

motivate …

• •

empower, enable others to act

•

The performance

The leader is always pushing the limit and challenging the status quo. Smart leaders challenge

everything – especially conventional thought, best practices, and dominant logic (existing

behaviours/practices). They also need to ask their people to challenge all the time the situation they are

in. the important challenge dimensions are:

talent: look always for better/improved talent (leaders deserve the teams they build)

§ yourself: hold yourself to a higher standard of rigor, discipline, accountability and transparency

§

Examples of leaders Steve Jobs

Mother Teresa Elon Musk

Mark Zuckemberg

LEADERSHIP TRAITS

Leaders were with some to lead. A leader trait is a or

born inborn abilities physical personality

characteristic that can be used to differentiate leaders from followers. In the past there were the idea

that some people are born to lead and some others are not. Nowadays we can identify five different

traits that distinguish a leader: (put yourself in a higher position),

intelligence, dominance self-

(irradiate energy to others, make people active),

confidence, level of energy and activity task-relevant

(intelligence is broader, task-relevant knowledge refers to specific knowledge for specific

knowledge

fields in which you are leader).

The Big Five Personality Dimensions

Then… is leadership a trait?

The personal/psychological traits of people are not enough to explain leaders; traits are good to predict

emergence.

Leadership skills of CEOs are not predictive of which companies succeed

§ There are little evidence linking personality to leadership performance

§ Head of the table effect: typically, the person that sits at the head of the table shows a strong

§ leadership in the discussion of the team compared to others (even if there are not established roles)

Fewest chair effect: those who sit on the side with less chairs tend to be more leaders than others

§ Forcing people to sit somewhere do not tell us about leadership

§ Traits are good in predicting the emergence of leaders but may fail in distinguishing between effective

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and ineffective leaders.

Some of the characterises that are typical of leaders you have from the day

you born: for sure we can have natural abilities and traits but it is possible

for everyone to learn even the most difficult thing.

To what extent can we learn?

It is possible to learn something very difficult!

Examples

1) Alex Zanardi: after an accident he lost his leg and wanted to raise

again (from cars in formula 1 to arm-bike champion). The typical

reactions are either I can do everything (nothing is impossible) or

I’m losing my time.

2) Bram Cohen – mental training: CEO of BitTorrent, he was 28 years old when he was diagnosed

with Asperger’s syndrome (an autism spectrum disorder – ASD – that is characterized by

significant difficulties in social interaction and non verbal communication, alongside restricted

and repetitive patterns of behaviour and interests); he learned how to understand human

expressions, follow social cues, use eye contact, developing a kind of social algorithm.

Through it is possible to

practice, learning, dedication and motivation

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overcome nature.

Traits are not enough. There are two different approaches:

- Trait approach

- Incremental approach

THE ROLE OF FOLLOWERS

Is leadership a follower thing? Leadership is about followership: if there are no

followers then there is no leader. “leadership, as a phenomenon, has to do with

nothing

Pfeffer 1970:

the but rather with the

exceptional qualities of gifted individuals,

of their followers”

gullibility

The attention shifts from leaders to followers: followers are

fundamental and it is important to understand why followers are

following the leaders.

The role of the followers

When the leader changes, followers tend to understand the characteristics of the new leader and adapt.

There are no leaders without followers (and vice versa)

§ Followers vary in terms of the extent to which they commit, comply, and resist a leader’s influence

§ attempts

Leaders should adapt their leadership style to followers but also…

§ Followers should:

§ Understand the leader

o Understand him/herself

o Understand the gap and “accommodate the leader

o

Not all the followers are the same: there are different type of people with different behaviours. The

leader should be aware of different behaviours and should know how to deal with them and how to

manage them. The possible behaviours of followers are:

- Helpers: support more the leader, follow