1. Identifying and Using Your Personal Leadership Strengths
The Leaders Within Us
Identifying and Using Your Personal Leadership Strengths

2. Leadership . . . Is a process Involves influence Occurs in groups
Includes attention to goals

3. Leadership as a Process
Traits – set of properties
Skills or style – contextual & learned

4. Major Leadership Traits
Intelligence
Self-confidence
Determination
Integrity
Sociability

5. Leadership Traits Exercise & Inventory
Now it’s your turn!
Leadership Traits Exercise & Inventory

6. How does the trait approach work at work?
Designated leadership profiles
“Fit”
Selecting “right” people will increase organizational effectiveness
Personal awareness and development

7. Strengths & Weaknesses of Trait Approach
Intuitively appealing – leader image
100 years of research & data
Focus on leaders
Provides benchmarks
No definitive set of traits
Doesn’t take situation into account
Doesn’t focus on outcomes (e.g. Do leaders with x traits have better results?)
Not helpful for training & development

8. What About Skills? Skills approach – similar to traits
Leader-centered
Long history
Distinctive from Trait approach
Focuses on what can be learned
Focuses on knowledge & abilities vs. solely on personality

9. Research on Effective Leaders
Leaders solve organizational problems
Leaders utilize skills in problem-solving
Leaders can learn these skills
Classic research study (Katz, 1955)
Technical Skill
Human Skill
Conceptual Skill

10. Technical Skill Proficiency in specific type of work or activity
Competencies & analytical abilities
Often “hands on” & involved in production

11. Human Skill Knowledge & ability to work with people
Work with peers, supervisees, & supervisors to achieve organization’s goals
Awareness of own & others’ perspectives & needs
Creates atmosphere of trust

12. Conceptual Skill Ability to work with ideas & concepts
Put organizational goals into words
Works with abstract ideas or hypothetical situations to shape policy
Central to vision & planning for organization

13. Leadership Skills inventory
Again, it is YOUR turn!
Leadership Skills inventory

14. Strengths & Weaknesses of Skills Approach
Leader-centered & process oriented
Intuitively appealing – democratic
Expansive & far reaching
Consistent with leadership education criteria
Too broad – moves beyond leadership
Weak in predictive value
Research was based on military personnel – can this be generalized to all leaders?

15. How About Style? Trait = personality Skills = capabilities
Style = actions
Task behaviors
Relationship behaviors

16. Task & Relationship Behaviors
Setting goals
Accomplishing goals
Helping team meet objectives
Help team feel comfortable
Facilitate atmosphere of respect
Facilitate atmosphere of trust

17. Which style is best? High relationship High task
Important to look at how the two are integrated

18. Leadership Grid Blake & Moulton (1985); Blake & McCanse (1991)
Country Club Team
Management Management
(1,9) (9,9)
Middle-of-the-Road Management
(5,5)
Impoverished Authority-Compliance
(1,1) (9,1)

19. Style Approach Inventory
Again, it is YOUR turn!
Style Approach Inventory

20. Strengths & Weaknesses of the Style Approach
Shift focus on leaders’ behaviors
Significance of task & relationship components
Allows assessment of leadership dimensions
Does not link behaviors to performance outcomes
Implies that high task, high relationship is best, but this is not always the case

21. Other theories: Situational Contingency Path-Goal
Leader-Member Exchange
Transformational
Team
Psychodynamic
Ethical
Servant
…and many more

22. One last example: Contingency Theory
Good LM Relations
Poor LM Relations
High Task Structure
Low Task Structure
Strong Power
Weak Power 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Middle to High Task
High Relationship
High Relation-ship
High Task

23. What does this mean for YOUR leadership?
So What ???

24. Questions / Comments?