UGBA105:

Organizational Behavior
Professor Jim Lincoln
Week 4: Lecture
Leadership in Organizations
 Class agenda:
Leadership in Organizations

Discuss meanings and types of leadership roles

and how they differ from “management”

Consider examples of leaders in business and

politics

Discuss how organizations make or find leaders

2
 What is leadership?
“A leader is a person who leads
because of people's confidence
and trust in their ability, as
opposed to their formal title and
their ability to do a command-and-
control mentality”

Cisco CEO John Chambers, quoted

by Don Gillmore,
SiliconValley.com,
May 20, 2000

3
 “Leaders are living individuals whom
employees can smell, feel, touch their
presence” [the elevator test] … “Leaders
love their work. That passion is
infectious.” … “ ‘It’s only business, not
personal’ … IT ALWAYS IS
PERSONAL.” … “If you love what you
do, it shows. You cannot fake love
and succeed.”
-Tom Peters 4
 The Congruence Model

Informal
Organization

Input Output
Environment Formal Systems
Strategy Tasks
Resources Organization Unit
History Individual

People

5
“Great leaders are almost always great
simplifiers who can cut through
argument, debate, and doubt to offer a
solution everyone can understand”

--Colin Powell

6
Leadership as an alignment or
coordination mechanism
Market-
Market-
ing
ing Accounting
Accounting

Manu-
Manu-
facturing
facturing

Engineer
Engineer
ing
ing
Human
Human
Resources
Resources
7
Jack Welch: coordinating with charisma

(He) has been a combination

of charismatic preacher, all-
knowing judge, internal
ombudsman and hard-
driving coach.

If leadership is an art, then

surely Welch has proved
himself a master painter.
Few have personified
corporate leadership more
dramatically.

Business Week May 28, 1998

8
Debi Marchovik, a
Southwest flight
attendant for six
years, sums up what
motivates a lot of the
airline’s employees:
“you don’t want to let
Herb (Southwest
Airlines CEO Herb
Kelleher) down.”
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Leadership is power; but is all
power leadership?

What are some

other forms of
power?

10
 Management
versus Leadership
• Management: the design and implementation of
formal systems of control, coordination, and
decision-making
– Management is about coping with complexity

• Leadership: The use of personal capabilities and

relationships to direct, inspire, motivate, and
empower others
– Leadership is about coping with change

11
Lou Gerstner as change agent at IBM

Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. was chairman of

the board of IBM Corporation from April
1993 until his retirement in December
2002. He served as chief executive officer
of IBM from 1993 until March 2002. In
January 2003 he assumed the position of
chairman of The Carlyle Group, a global
private equity firm located in
Washington, DC.
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 Carly Fiorina gets the axe at HP;
fails as a leader of change

Why did Carly fail? 13

Leadership is Janus-faced

• Vision: directing and inspiring

• Clear picture of future
• Passion to achieve

• Charisma: motivating & empowering

– Personal qualities & capabilities that
attract & motivate others

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 Crafting a vision

• Must a vision be unique or new?

• What are the characteristics of a strong vision?

15
 Martin Luther King
as visionary leader
Strong, clear vision
– Put an end to “de jure”
discrimination
– Consistent strategy of
nonviolence
– Appeals to core American values

Powerful communicator of vision

– “I have a dream speech”

Less charismatic a personality than

other civil rights leaders (e.g.,
Malcolm X or Stokely
Carmichael)

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 Steve Jobs as visionary and
charismatic leader
“Do you want to sell sugar water to children for
the rest of your life, or do you want to change
the world?”
Steve Jobs’ 1983 recruitment pitch to Pepsi
CEO John Sculley

“His defining characteristic is an unalloyed

confidence—some might call it arrogance—
that his own judgment is correct, whatever
other people say. This is coupled with
extraordinary powers of persuasion: he is said
to be surrounded by a “reality distortion field”
that enables him to convince everyone in his
immediate vicinity that he is right. And he is
unquestionably the greatest showman in the
computer industry.”

The Economist 2/5/04 17

Dividing leadership at Microsoft: Bill Gates as
visionary, Steve Ballmer as charismatic coach

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 The Body Shop founder
Anita Roddick as
charismatic and visionary

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 The charismatic and visionary leader
as deviant, eccentric, slightly mad

 Deviant, exotic, eccentric, iconoclast; a cut apart; symbolic of a

new direction
• Charisma may be context-specific

 Different mind-set, style, gestalt, way of framing reality

 Steve Jobs’ “reality distortion field”

 Leaders emerge from unconventional career paths

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“Never, ever think outside the box”

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 Larry Ellison’s (FAKE) Yale Commencement Speech
"Graduates of Yale University, I apologize if you have endured this type of prologue before, but I want
you to do something for me. Please, take a good look around you. Look at the classmate on your left.
Look at the classmate on your right. Now, consider this: Five years from now, 10 years from now, even
30 thirty years from now, odds are the person on your left is going to be a loser. The person on your right,
meanwhile, will also be a loser. And you, in the middle? What can you expect? Loser. Loserhood. Loser
Cum Laude.

"In fact, as I look out before me today, I don't see a thousand hopes for a bright tomorrow. I don't see a
thousand future leaders in a thousand industries. I see a thousand losers.

"You're upset. That's understandable. After all, how can I, Larry Ellison, college dropout, have the
audacity to spout such heresy to the graduating class of one of the nation's most prestigious institutions?
I'll tell you why. Because I, Lawrence "Larry" Ellison, second richest man on the planet, am a college
dropout, and you are not.

"Because Bill Gates, richest man on the planet is a college dropout, and you are not.
"Because Paul Allen, the third richest man on the planet, dropped out of college and you did not.
"And for good measure, because Michael Dell, No. 9 on the list and moving up fast, is a college dropout,
and you, yet again, are not.“

Oh sure, you may, perhaps, work your way up to No. 10 or No. 11, like Steve Ballmer. But then, I don't
have to tell you who he really works for, do I? And for the record, he dropped out of grad school. Bit of a
late bloomer."

"Finally, I realize that many of you, and hopefully by now most of you, are wondering, 'Is there anything
I can do? Is there any hope for me at all?' Actually, no. It's too late. You've absorbed too much, think you
know too much. You're not 19 anymore. You have a built-in cap, and I'm not referring to the mortar 22
boards on your heads."
 Although leadership is personal, it is a role
and (therefore) a relation,
not an individual attribute

• Leadership is inherently relational

• Leadership is also situation-specific

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 Are leaders born or made?
Leadership traits and skills
Quality/behavior Immutable Learnable
(trait) (skill)
Passion, commitment Med Med
Aggressiveness/toughness Hi Med
Energy Hi Lo
Extroversion Hi Lo-med
Empathy, sensitivity, “emotional intelligence” Med Med
Confidence Lo Hi
Cognitive intelligence Hi Lo
Networking/team-building ability Med Med
Genius/imagination Hi Lo
Charm, smoothness Hi Med
Eccentricity, zaniness Hi Lo
Public speaking skills Med Med
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Physical features (voice, height, looks, gender) Hi Lo
 Tom Peters on gender differences
“AS LEADERS, WOMEN
RULE: New Studies find
that female managers
outshine their male
counterparts in almost
every measure”
25
Title, Special Report, Business Week, 11.20.00
More Tom Peters on gender differences

Women’s Stuff = New Economy Match

Improv skills
Relationship-centric
Less “rank consciousness”
Self determined
Trust sensitive
Intuitive
Natural “empowerment freaks” [less
threatened by strong people]
Intrinsic [motivation] > Extrinsic
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 Charlotte Beers’
leadership style

A cowboy's daughter from southeast Texas… Beers reckons

that Southern charm is simply smart business. "Yes, I call
CEOs 'honey,' but to me, that's wry Texas humor," she says.
"I'm likely to say the most outrageous thing in the room--to
liven things up."
--Fortune, 1966: “Women, sex, and power”
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How to find and build leadership
• Selection:
• Socialization:
• What conditions breed leadership?
•
•
•

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 Leadership is hard to come by when the
informal organization is undeveloped
• Weak culture
–
• Fragmented networks

• Negative politics

But that makes it all the more important

• The leader’s task is to create the context
• Strong cultures usually originate with visionary leaders

29
 Heroic versus developmental
(post-heroic) leadership

What are the characteristics of

heroic leaders?

What are their strengths and

weaknesses?

30
Are American executives prone to
“heroic” leadership?

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 Michael Dell as heroic leader

"If Michael weren't as involved, I'd worry. There's no one who

can make that company run like Michael," says Doug
MacGregor, a former Dell vice president who is now a researcher
at Harvard Business School.
Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2000

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 Steve Jobs as heroic leader
“But with so much of its future resting on the
power--and instincts--of one person, Apple is
vulnerable. What if Jobs gets distracted or falls
off his game?”
From “Yes, Steve, you fixed it. Congrats! Now what's
Act Two?” (Business Week, July 31, 2000)

33
It's an old joke in Silicon Valley:
Q: What's the difference between God
and Larry Ellison?
A: God doesn't think he's Larry
Ellison.

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 Jack Welch as heroic leader?

In this classroom, where Welch has appeared more than 250

times in the past 17 years to engage some 15,000 GE managers
and executives, something extraordinary happens.
This is …. Professor Welch, coach and teacher to 71 high-
potential managers attending a three-week development course.
He cultivates and rewards the same qualities in the system and in
his employees -- aggressiveness, high energy -- that he prizes in
himself. Employees who don't measure up are weeded out.
Business Week May 28, 1998 35
Heroic versus developmental
(post-heroic) leadership

What are the

characteristics of
developmental
leaders?

36
Developmental leadership
is about teamwork
Picture a dog sled. A human is riding, holding a whip, as the team
pulls the sled. ``The leader in that group is the lead dog,''
Chambers says.

“(A leader) is able to set the course for the team, who never asks
the team to do something that she or he is not willing to do
themselves, who has the confidence of the team that they will
follow him, that when it really gets tough, will be able to set the
pace and know how hard the team can run without breaking down.

Cisco CEO John Chambers, quoted by Don Gillmore, SiliconValley.com,

May 20, 2000

37
Transitioning from “heroic” leadership
to developmental leadership
L

L
L = Leader

Mature

L
Experienced

Transitional

L
Start - up C. Manz & H. Sims
Business Without Bosses
John Wiley, 1993
38
Continuous rotation of leadership
and followership in mature teams
L L

L L

Is this a “mature
team?”
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Takeaway Points
• Leadership is:
– Personalistic, charismatic
– Relational (requires followership/teamwork)
• Leadership consists of vision and charisma
– Crafting a vision is the easy part; selling it is hard
– Anyone can become charismatic
• Leadership requires fertile ground to fluorish
• There is no one best style of leadership (congruence model).
However:
– Heroic leadership is effective in the short run but disempowers followers
and creates succession crisis
– Developmental leadership empowers followers & grows next-generation
leaders

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 Tuesday discussion
• Other business; lecture tie-ups
• Charlotte Beers case

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Preparing for the Charlotte Beers case
1. Assess Ogilyv’s problems in relation to its strategy and environment
2. Analyze cause and effect relationships behind problems
a. Consider all the of O’s existing organizational architecture
3. What were Charlotte’s strengths and weaknesses as a leader?
4. Critique Charlotte’s analysis of Ogilvy’s problems
5. Evaluate her approach to:
a. Crafting the brand stewardship vision
b. Communicating the vision
c. Aligning Ogilvy’s organization with the vision
6. What would you have done differently?
7. Was there real substance to “brand stewardship” or was Charlotte just a
good saleswoman?
8. How much of what Charlotte did was “leadership” and how much of it
was “management”?

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