1. Unit 3: Leading Nature of Leadership

2. What is the nature of leadership?  Leadership.  The process of inspiring others to work hard to accomplish important tasks.  Contemporary leadership challenges:  Shorter time frames for accomplishing things.  Expectations for success on the first attempt.  Complex, ambiguous, and multidimensional problems.  Taking a long-term view while meeting short-term demands.

3.  Visionary leadership.  Vision  A future that one hopes to create or achieve in order to improve upon the present state of affairs.  Visionary leadership  A leader who brings to the situation a clear and compelling sense of the future as well as an understanding of the actions needed to get there successfully.

4.  Meeting the challenges of visionary leadership:  Challenge the process.  Show enthusiasm.  Help others to act.  Set the example.  Celebrate achievements.

5. Figure 13.1 Leading viewed in relationship to the other management functions.

6.  Power.  Ability to get someone else to do something you want done or make things happen the way you want.  Power should be used to influence and control others for the common good rather seeking to exercise control for personal satisfaction.  Two sources of managerial power:  Position power.  Based on a manager’s official status in the organization’s hierarchy of authority. (Sources: Reward, Coercive, Legitimate)  Personal power.  Based on the unique personal qualities that a person brings to the leadership situation. (Sources: Expert, Reference)

7. Figure 13.2 Sources of position power and personal power used by managers.

8.  Turning power into influence …  Successful leadership relies on acquiring and using all sources of power.  Use of reward power or legitimate power produces temporary compliance.  Use of coercive power produces, at best, temporary compliance, often accompanied by resentment.  Use of expert power or referent power has the most enduring results and generates commitment.

9. Ethics & The Limits to Power  Acceptance theory of authority.  For a leader to achieve true influence, the other person must:  Truly understand the directive.  Feel capable of carrying out the directive.  Believe the directive is in the organization’s best interests.  Believe the directive is consistent with personal values

10.  Leadership and empowerment.  Empowerment.  The process through which managers enable and help others to gain power and achieve influence.  Effective leaders empower others by providing them with:  Information.  Responsibility.  Authority.  Trust.

11.  How leaders can empower others:  Involve others is selecting their work assignments and task methods.  Create an environment of cooperation, information sharing, discussion, and shared ownership of goals.  Encourage others to take initiative, make decisions, and use their knowledge.  Find out what others think and let them help design solutions.  Give others the freedom to put their ideas and solutions into practice.  Recognize successes and encourage high performance.