HRM: Leading teams – G. Grote ETHZ, Spring Semester 08 Topics HRM: Leading teams

HRM: Leading teams – G. Grote ETHZ, Spring Semester 08 Leadership is … …the process of influencing the activities of an organized group towards goal achievement. …the ability of an individual to motivate others to forego self-interest in the interest of a collective vision (House & Shamir, 1993) …the influential increment over and above mechanical compliance with the routine directives of the organization (Katz & Kahn, 1978)

HRM: Leading teams – G. Grote ETHZ, Spring Semester 08 Substitutes for leadership (Kerr & Jermier, 1978) Abilities and experience of followers Routine tasks Standardization of processes and tasks High level of technology use/automation

HRM: Leading teams – G. Grote ETHZ, Spring Semester 08 Example for leadership subsitutes: Adaptive team coordination in cockpit crews (Grote et al., 2004)  Good teams used more leadership in phase 2 (low standardization) and less in phases 1 and 3 (high standardization)

HRM: Leading teams – G. Grote ETHZ, Spring Semester 08 Basic leadership functions group internal functions –Task orientation/initiating structure Set goals, distribute tasks, check work results etc. –Employee orientation/consideration resolve conflicts, support/coach team members etc. group external functions –Boundary regulation Adjusting external demands in terms of group internal demands and possibilities

HRM: Leading teams – G. Grote ETHZ, Spring Semester 08 Leadership activities (Yukl, 1989)

HRM: Leading teams – G. Grote ETHZ, Spring Semester 08 Prerequisites of effective leaderhsip: The "right"... … instruments? e.g. management by objectives, performance appraisal … situation? e.g. group (size, composition etc.), task (complexity, structure etc.), organization (division of labor, formalization etc.) …behavior/leadership style? e.g. task-centred versus employee-centred, autokratic vs. democratic, transactional vs. transformational, individual leader-member-exchanges …person? e.g. intelligence, extraversion, adjustment, dominance, self-confidence; but: overlapping distributions, cause or effect, situation dependence of differences …interaction between person and situation? e.g. differentiated social perception in combination with structured task, position power and good group climate

HRM: Leading teams – G. Grote ETHZ, Spring Semester 08 Normative leadership models e.g. Blake & Mouton (1968): 9.9 leadership style (general requirement of high task and employee orientation) e.g. Hersey & Blanchard (1977): situation dependent variation of task and employee orientation  attempts to reduce the complexity of leadership demands –instructions for appropriate leadership behavior –tendency to "mechanize" leadership

HRM: Leading teams – G. Grote ETHZ, Spring Semester 08 In the past the question was:"How do I lead a company?" Today it is:"How do we lead a company?" For the future it will be: "How does a company lead itself?" "Boundaryless, flattened, flexible, project-based and team-based organizations that employ temporary, externalized and remote workers, whose tasks are more intellectual amd less routine and cannot be controlled and coordinated by structure or direct supervision, need mechanisms of coordination through shared meaning systems and a shared sense of purpose" (Shamir, 1999)

HRM: Leading teams – G. Grote ETHZ, Spring Semester 08 Changes in the basic understanding of leadership Not technical instruction on the treatment of the object employee, but support for the dialogue with the subject employee (Neuberger, 1990) Leadership is influencing, not dominating people Dialogue under conditions of complex interactions between individual goals and interests Instead of clearly defined leadership tasks and rules more "meta-rules" derived from the acknowledgement of self- organizating properties of teams and organizations Besides technical competence and charima a "sense for systemic dynamics" is needed

HRM: Leading teams – G. Grote ETHZ, Spring Semester 08 Examples for meta-rules (Probst, 1987) Learn to cope with ambiguities, indeterminancies, and uncertainties Keep and create opportunities Increase autonomy and integration Synchronize decisions and actions with "system time" Keep processes going – there are no final solutions

HRM: Leading teams – G. Grote ETHZ, Spring Semester 08 Paradox of systemic leadership The recoginition of self-organizing properties of social systems is to enable its (external) controllabilitiy. i.e. gaining control by giving up control?

HRM: Leading teams – G. Grote ETHZ, Spring Semester 08 New issues in leadership Leadership portfolios –In order to match different situational demands with adequate leadership behaviors, leaders must develop portfolios of styles and behaviors. Shared leadership –Leadership involves different tasks that can be taken on by different team members and may shift between team members

HRM: Leading teams – G. Grote ETHZ, Spring Semester 08 Example: Shared leadership in medical teams (Künzle, 2008) (Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test; n=6 per group)