Leadership and Change

Management
Lecture 7, Date 17/02/2019
Leadership Theories
• Psychodynamic approach
• The leader has insight into his/her personal psychological make up.
• The leader has self-awareness, he is aware of the way he would respond to a
situation
• The leader understands the mental make up of his followers and has the
ability to communicate his thought process to his followers and earn their
support.
know Others

Johari Window

SElf

Not know know

Organic Leadership Theory
• The leader sees his responsibility as a living organism.
• Leadership is based on processed that make sense to all concerned.
(mutual sense making)
• Leadership is shared.
• Followers are trained to be self leading and self-organizing and are
empowered.
• Organizational power is shared.
Transformational leadership
• Transformational Leaders
• Inspire others to achieve extraordinary outcomes
• Align the genuine needs of followers with the objectives and goals of the
group.
• They satisfy the higher needs of followers. (Esteem, Self-actualisation)
• They engage with the full personality of their follower and help them achieve
their potential.
Transactional Leadership
• Action and consequence driven.
• Reward and Punishment
• Safety and security to followers.
• It may be noted that transactional leadership is useful in many
circumstances.
• Situations of emergency
• Connection with the followers is short term.
The Transformational Leader
• Idealized Influence
• They are admired and respected by their followers who want to emulate them. This has an inherent
danger if the leader follows in incorrect path like Hitler.
• Inspiration and Motivation
• They provide meaning and challenge to their follower’s work. They inspire them with their vision.
Vision should be co-created.
• Intellectual stimulation
• They stimulate their followers by questioning their assumptions, reframing problems and finding
new approaches to their solution.
• Individualized consideration
• They address each followers needs for achievement and growth.
• Leadership should be a distributed process and not stay in the hands of a select group of individual.
• Leadership should enhance the overall adaptive capacity of the system.
The Servant (seva) Leader
• Exhibits emotional and moral concern for followers. Focused primarily
on the welfare of others.
• Humble, Value driven and ethical
• Contribute to their followers who in turn become wiser and
autonomous.
• The ability of prescience – to have an intuitive feel of the future.
Emotional Intelligence
• Self Knowledge
• Knowledge of one’s strengths and weaknesses
• Self awareness
• Awareness of one’s emotional tendencies. A controlled display of emotions.
• Self motivation
• Empathy
• Ability to step into another person’s shoes and understand his thoughts and
feelings.
Defining Leadership
• Leadership is a relational activity where an individual(s) guide(s) or direct(s) others (followers) to attain an
objective or a goal.
• Exercise of leadership needs a Goal.
• One can not be a leader in isolation. Followers are required.
• Leadership requires its exerciser to be able to Relate to the followers as a guide.

• Questions
• How does an activity qualify to be one that concerns leadership?
• Are there some required traits to be a leader?
• Is there a style of behaviour associated with a leader?
• Is leadership an event or a process?
• What makes a follower?
• Is the leader alone responsible for setting the goal and direction of the group?
• What about the ethical aspects of the goal and the means adopted to achieve it?
Necessity of Leadership
• How does an activity qualify to be one that concerns leadership?
• Openness
• Attentiveness
• Curiosity
• System Thinking
• Ability to see patterns and relationships
• Reasoning Skills
Traits of a leader?
• Prescient mindfulness
• Alertness
• Cognitive Abilities
• Emotional Intelligence
Style of a leader?
• Empathy
• Forthrightness
• “Seva” leadership
• Critical Thinking Skills
• Conflict Management Skills
Leadership as process
• Leadership involves a process.
• Abilities Required
• High cognitive skills
• Process orientation
• Emotional Maturity
• Endurance
Leadership a process
• A house with a family inside has caught fire. The family is ultimately evacuated safely.
• Cognitive Complexity
• Understanding the scale of the problem
• Part of house on fire.
• Intensity and spread of fire
• Present of explosive items
• Presence of Exits
• Opening smoke vents.
• Emotional Complexity
• Self Awareness
• Personal strengths and weaknesses
• Empathy
• Old/ infirm persons in the house
• Fire man
Qualities of a follower
• Avoid people of the following types.
• Blind Followers
• Agree for the short term
• Reluctantly agree
• Adaptive Leaders provide a holding environment that enables the
group/system to internalize and integrate the need for change.
Subsequently the leader creates the urgency and energy within the
system for change.
• Abilities Required
• Persuasion
Leaders and Goals
• Is the leader alone responsible for setting the goals?
• No.
• Reality-Testing
• Share the perception of the new reality with constituents.
• Ability required
• Confidence
• Patience
• Humility
Leadership and ethics
• Does the goals to which followers are directed have to be worthwhile
or ethical to make it an act of leadership?
• YES
• Ethics is about dealing with changed reality in an honest and
courageous manner.
• Ability required on part of a leader
• Courage
Ability to Reframe
• Structural Frame
• System as a machine
• Human Resource Frame
• System as a family.
• Political Frame
• As an ecosystem.
• Symbolic Frame
• As a carnival.
A case of harassment
• Four female employees of the accounting department of a firm made a complaint to the Employee
Grievance Cell about the head of the department indulging in in appropriate behaviour which
amounted to harassment. The complaints stated by the them in the relevant form were as given
below. The company had a Vishakha committee to look into such cases and a meeting was
convened with all four members of the committee which was equally represented by senior ranking
male and female employees. The ladies produced two male employees of the same department as
witnesses in support of their charges. The employees concerned happened to be related and came
from the same place. Under the company norms, if the charges were proven the offending
employees was to be removed from service.
• A childless lady employee complained that the HOD would call her “barren” and mock at the state of her
marriage.
• A divorcee in the group complained that the HOD made snide remarks about her character which he claimed
was the reason behind her divorce.
• A third lady claimed that the HOD lavished undue attention on a new joinee. On questioning she revealed that
previously she used to be the object of the HOD’s attention who would “trouble” her by “dropping her at her
place” in his care. These days he had shifted his attention to the new joinee.