Leadership and Innovation condensed - Appunti

Leadership

Managers are those who are supposed to get things done: they define processes, KPIs... They also need to be good with people, have interpersonal skills, be able to communicate and be trustworthy from a technical, human and conceptual point of view. For managers, the aim is to get things done through other people in the organization - Planning and organizing.

Leaders are more connected to influence a group of individuals to something that is new (achievement of a vision or goal) and provide support (it's a process) - Inspire and motivate.

1. Leadership is a process between a leader and followers.
2. Leadership involves social influence.
3. Leadership occurs at multiple levels in an organization.
4. Leadership focuses on goal accomplishment.

A trait is a genetically determined characteristic and, if you have those traits, you are more probably a leader in your environment. We are talking about some inborn abilities that could be either physical or personality traits. At the very beginning,

Physical Characteristics and Leadership

Researchers have explored the relationship between physical characteristics and leadership. While certain physical traits can contribute to becoming a leader, it is important to note that being good-looking is not a prerequisite for leadership. However, we often associate specific characteristics with leadership. These characteristics may include intelligence, dominance, task-relevant knowledge, self-confidence, and high energy levels.

Energy, in particular, is a key trait that distinguishes leaders. Leaders are often recognized for their energetic and active nature, as they are rarely seen tired. While traits can predict the emergence of leaders, they may not necessarily differentiate between effective and ineffective leaders.

It is important to understand that traits alone are not sufficient to define a leader, as different leaders possess diverse qualities. There are two different approaches to understanding leadership:

1. Trait Approach: This approach suggests that leadership is an acquired skill that is highly influenced by the environment.
2. Incremental Approach: This approach views leadership as a combination of traits that can be developed and improved over time.

1. Country Club management: "accommodating" style of manager, is most concerned about team members' happy needs and feelings. He assumes that, as long as they are and secure, they will work hard. What tends to be the result is a work environment that is very relaxed and fun, but where productivity suffers because there is a lack of direction and control. It is very good when you have an employee dealing with personal problems.
2. Authority-compliance management: People in this category believe that their team members are simply a means to an end. The team's needs are always secondary to its productivity. This type of manager is autocratic, has strict work rules, policies and procedures, and can view punishment as an effective way of motivating team members. This approach can drive impressive production results at first, but low team morale and motivation will ultimately affect unpopular measures.

arepeople's performance, and this type of leader will struggle to retain high performers→Whentaken (like cutbacks or reorganizations).

Impoverished management → With a low regard for creating systems that get the job done, and with little interestin creating a satisfying or motivating team environment, the results are inevitably disorganization, dissatisfaction anddisharmony→Minimum e ort is enough for de ning organizational belonging. 9ff ff fifl fi fi fi fl fi ff ff ff fl ff ff ff ff

Team management→Team or "sound" managers commit to their organization's goals and mission,motivate the people who report to them, and work hard to get people to stretch themselves to deliver great results. But,at the same time, they're inspiring gures who look after their teams. Someone led by a Team manager feels respectedand empowered, and is committed to achieving her goals. Team managers prioritize both the organization's

production organization's needs and their people's needs. They do this by making sure that their team members understand the purpose and by involving them in determining production needs. When people are committed to, and have a stake in, the organization's success, their needs and production needs coincide. This creates an environment based on trust and respect, which leads to high satisfaction, motivation and excellent results.

Team managers likely adopt the Theory Y approach to motivation, as we mentioned above. It is not the best as it may seem, because it is only easy to put in place in short-term projects that are carried out by experienced employees.

5. Middle-of-the-Road management - The manager tries to balance results and people, but this strategy is not effective as it may sound. Through continual compromise, he fails to inspire high performance and also fails to meet people's needs fully. The result is that his team will likely deliver only

mediocre→performance It is perfect when there is pressure of time (such as meeting deadlines) and it is a good way to encourage people.

→When Blake & Mouton created the model, they thought that managers behaviours were xed It is also called xed behaviours matrix. They thought that people couldn’t change their behaviours, meaning that you cannot be a good leader in di erent situations (when the situation changes, the leader needs to be changed too), even if they didn’t consider traits. We behave in a certain way and changing our behaviour is extremely di cult, so in some way, they were right as many people are not able to adapt to di erent situations: they identi ed 5 macro-descriptions for behaviours and recognized that none of them is better than the other. Their “only” mistake was thinking that people couldn’t change their behaviours, but we know that great leaders should change their behaviour according to di erent situations.

Attribution

Attribution theory is a well-researched psychological theory that has shown that people tend to simplify reality when they make causal inferences. People have a tendency to analyse the world and make causal inferences, which seem to trigger effects around them. The problem is that reality is frighteningly complex, and people have limited cognitive abilities. They thus need to simplify the world when they make attribution judgments. One way in which they do so is to look for salient objects, circumstances, or people in their environment. A person or object is salient when she stands out in contrast to the background.

Situational Leadership - Hersey & Blanchard

Blake and Mouton are more connected with generic behaviours, while Hersey and Blanchard are more focused on the relationships between leaders and their employees. →The basic idea of this matrix is the fact that the two things are connected with follower readiness. Leaders have to guide people, who are scared and insecure.

along their path. The leader needs to understand the level of readiness of the follower: in some cases, he will never be able to delegate, or in other cases, he has to go back from delegating to selling. Then, even if people are still unable, they start to be more willing and less insecure, because they want to learn more, to grow their knowledge. Then, they become able, but still insecure, because even if they have enough knowledge, they do not know how to do things, because they never did them. Thanks to supporting activity, people become able and willing to do, and so also more confident. (Telling selling participating delegating)

Transactional leadership

Transactional theory is related to transaction costs in make or buy decisions. It is a kind of exchange, a trade, with relative costs and benefits connected (a transaction is an exchange of value). The concept is based on the Newton's third law: "to every action there is always opposed"

Characteristics of transformational leadership:

1. Individualized Consideration (IC): Transformational leaders demonstrate genuine concern for the needs and feelings of followers. This personal attention to each follower is a key element in bringing out their very best. It's a one-to-one relationship.
2. Intellectual Stimulation (IS): The leader challenges followers to be innovative and creative. A common misunderstanding is that transformational leaders are "soft," but the truth is that they constantly challenge followers to higher levels of performance. Challenging the followers.
3. Inspirational Motivation (IM): Transformational leaders have the ability to inspire and motivate followers. Combined these first two I's are what constitute the transformational leader's charisma. Inspire and motivate.
4. Idealized Influence (II): The leader serves as an ideal role model for followers; the leader "walks the talk".