Leader Effectiveness
As defined in our textbook, Organizational Behavior, leader effectiveness is the degree to which the leader’s actions result in the achievement of the unit’s goals. An effective leader’s behaviors should reflect strong decision-making skills, communication skills, and the ability to motivate others to achieve a common goal.
The goal of the Effective Leadership Skills model that our team has created is to outline the general skills an effective leader should possess and highlight a main component for each of those skills that we found to be primarily beneficial to practice in order to strengthen your leader effectiveness.
Decision Making
According to our textbook, Organizational Behavior, decision-making is the process of generating and choosing from a set of alternatives to solve a problem. An important aspect of decision-making is making sure that you, as a leader, keep in mind the “climate” of your organization. According to Daniel Goleman author of "Leadership That Gets Results" a climate is the combination of six key factors that influences the working environment of an organization; these factors include flexibility, responsibility, standards, rewards, clarity, and commitment. Studies have found that direct correlations have been found between specific types of leaders and the specific decisions that they make in regards to their organization’s climate. Leaders that positively affect the climate are leaders that take into consideration all of the six factors, and decidedly betters the financial results of their organization; these leaders all have different styles but ultimately have the same overall effects. In Daniel Goleman article, "Leadership That Gets Results", Goleman describes how Authoritative Leaders are among the positively correlated leaders that mobilize their team toward a specific vision. Along with Authoritative, Democratic Leaders are also positive; these leaders focus on building a type of consensus through the participation of the team as a whole instead of dividing tasks up. Many times these effective Democratic Leaders use integrative thinking to accomplish the necessary tasks through building consensus. Pacesetting Leaders expect excellence and self-direction to accomplish organization goals. And finally leaders that Coach are there to encourage and develop people for further progress within the organization. These types of leaders are extremely effective in the way they use the knowledge of their climate to make the best decisions possible for their organization.
Integrative Thinking
The theoretical model we created highlights integrative thinking as a valuable aspect of decision-making when striving to be an effective leader. Roger Martin, author of “How Successful Leaders Think”, defines integrative thinking as a decision-making process, in which an individual holds two opposing ideas at once and then by balancing tensions between the two, generates a new idea. Roger Martin, describes integrative thinking as a process of consideration and synthesis. He argues that this process of decision-making is a defining characteristic of many exceptional leaders and the successful companies that they run. By using integrative thinking, a leader can generate an alternative solution to a problem, one that fills the gap between an “either-or” choice. The decisions made by leaders who use this way of thinking are enhanced because a new idea is created that contains elements of the other ideas but is superior to both.
Leaders can use integrative thinking in almost any aspect of decision-making. For example, if the leader were trying to develop a successful product they would need to analyze the pros and cons of other products to develop a more superior product, which is ultimately the organization’s overall goal. In contrast, if a leader was trying to resolve communication issues within a team, he or she could use integrative thinking to find a place of middle ground rather than deciding who is “right” and who is “wrong”.
Although this idea of integrative thinking may seem like an obvious or easy way to make good decisions, integrative thinkers are fairly rare. Roger Martin argues that people don’t exercise their ability to think in an integrative way because most of us seek out the comfort of simplicity and clarity. Naturally, we seek a sense of certainty when choosing between well-defined alternatives and the closure that comes when a decision has been made. Martin argues that to improve leader effectiveness, we should welcome complexity and use that tension to think our way toward new, superior ideas, rather than avoiding ambiguity.
Unfortunately, most of us are not born with the tacit knowledge to think this way. According to our text, Organizational Behavior, tacit knowledge is very difficult, if not impossible, to articulate to others and sometimes holders don’t even know they possess this skill. In “How Successful Leaders Think”, Roger Martin claims that many integrative thinkers aren’t aware they possess this skill and therefore do not consciously exercise it. However, by analyzing and practicing the four-step process that integrative thinking generally follows, one could improve their ability in integrative thinking to become a more successful leader.
Ability to Motivate
According to our textbook, Organizational Behavior, motivation can be defined as "a set of energetic forces that originates both within and outside an employee, initiates work-related effort, and determines its direction, intensity, and persistence". With that being said, it is easy to see why many people view motivation is the glue that holds an organization together. Whether it is uniting an organization or accomplishing a goal, the ability to motivate is a key component in a successful organization. According to Daniel Goleman, author of "Leadership That Gets Results", successful leaders are generally judged on their strengths in emotional intelligence competencies. These competencies include self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, social skills, and one of the most important aspects, motivation. In another article written by Daniel Goleman, "Leadership That Gets Results", he explains these different competencies should be used in different combinations in order for a leader to be an effective motivator.
Goal Commitment
Goal commitment is a driving force of motivation. Our textbook, Organizational Behavior, defines goal commitment as the degree to which a person accepts a goal and is determined to meet it. It is key for a leader to motivate the team in order to keep a high level of goal commitment towards achieving a successful outcome. Organizational Behavior presents five of the most powerful strategies for fostering goal commitment.
By using rewards to foster goal commitment, members of a team are motivated to meet the goal because they will get some kind of monetary or nonmonetary reward for their achievement. This has shown to be a very beneficial technique for leaders to use in order to motivate their team members. The next strategy, publicity, suggests leaders should use social pressure to motivate team members to meet a goal. Publicizing the goal to coworkers could create this pressure, making the person trying to achieve the goal feel obligated to do so. The support strategy suggests that leaders should supervise team members so they can assist them if they run into trouble in order to effectively achieve the goal. Through the participation strategy, a leader should find a way for team members to feel a sense of ownership over the goal. This can be done by including team members in decisions that are made within the dimensions of the goal; including how the goal should be met. The last strategy Organizational Behavior provides as a way to foster goal commitment is providing resources to team members and removing constraints that are needed to achieve the goal. All of these strategies can be used to motivate members of a team into having a high level of goal commitment.
Communication Skills
To be an effective leader, communication is one of the main components when working in teams and is an essential skill. Our textbook, Organizational Behavior, defines communication as the process by which information and meanings gets transferred from a sender to a receiver. While working in teams the work is often done interpedently and communication plays a main role among members to determine if there is process gain or loss. Effective leaders need to make sure that they eliminate communication issues that are involved with working in teams. Since teams don’t always have the access to be able to work in the same location, messages have to be transmitted in written form, electronically, and indirectly through other individuals. Communicators then have to interpret and decode these messages; otherwise it can be lost in transition since the members are not communicating face-to-face. Communication is a vital role when working in a team setting or in a work setting in general. If there were no communication between members, the tasks would never be accomplished. Leaders who encourage proper communication with one another are more likely to achieve a successful outcome.
Network Structure
According to Herminia Ibarra and Mark Hunter, authors of “How Leaders Create and Use Networks”, a network is significant for team effectiveness. Networking creates a fabric of personal contacts who will provide support, feedback, insight, resources, and information. For an aspiring leader, this is one of the most dreaded developmental challenges that effective leaders may encounter, but it will make you stand out from the ordinary. Many mangers believe that networking is a tasteful way of using people, but a good network only thrives when it is used. This is what distinguishes the managers between the effective leaders.
Ibarra and Hunter discovered that there are three distinct forms of networking: operational, personal, and strategic, which all play a substantial role in leadership transition. Many effective leaders will go through the leadership transition, which is an inflection point in their careers that challenges them to rethink both themselves and their roles. Operational networking is known to come most naturally for leaders. The goal for this type of networking is to make sure that there is cooperation and coordination among people who must trust one another in order to accomplish the tasks given to them. It is the mutual trust within the organization that gives operational network its power. Personal networking can be very challenging because most leaders don’t have time outside of work to create new networks. However, this is important because this allows you to develop supportive relationships, such as mentors, and to gain referrals. Having a personal network can provide a foundation for strategic networking. The last network, strategic networking, can be the most difficult for developing leaders because it takes up so much time that they would like to dedicate mainly to operational demands. According to Ibarra and Hunter, effective leaders learn to employ networks for strategic purposes. This allows them to figure out future priorities and challenges that may occur and try to get stakeholder’s to support them. The three strategies that Ibarra and Hunter discovered will help transfer a manager into an effective leader throughout time.
While this list does not cover every skill one needs to be an effective leader, it outlines a few main concepts and touches on some aspects within those concepts. By practicing influential decision-making skills, exceptional communication skills, and the ability to motivate others towards a common goal, a clear path is paved to building effective leadership skills.
As defined in our textbook, Organizational Behavior, leader effectiveness is the degree to which the leader’s actions result in the achievement of the unit’s goals. An effective leader’s behaviors should reflect strong decision-making skills, communication skills, and the ability to motivate others to achieve a common goal.
The goal of the Effective Leadership Skills model that our team has created is to outline the general skills an effective leader should possess and highlight a main component for each of those skills that we found to be primarily beneficial to practice in order to strengthen your leader effectiveness.
Decision Making
According to our textbook, Organizational Behavior, decision-making is the process of generating and choosing from a set of alternatives to solve a problem. An important aspect of decision-making is making sure that you, as a leader, keep in mind the “climate” of your organization. According to Daniel Goleman author of "Leadership That Gets Results" a climate is the combination of six key factors that influences the working environment of an organization; these factors include flexibility, responsibility, standards, rewards, clarity, and commitment. Studies have found that direct correlations have been found between specific types of leaders and the specific decisions that they make in regards to their organization’s climate. Leaders that positively affect the climate are leaders that take into consideration all of the six factors, and decidedly betters the financial results of their organization; these leaders all have different styles but ultimately have the same overall effects. In Daniel Goleman article, "Leadership That Gets Results", Goleman describes how Authoritative Leaders are among the positively correlated leaders that mobilize their team toward a specific vision. Along with Authoritative, Democratic Leaders are also positive; these leaders focus on building a type of consensus through the participation of the team as a whole instead of dividing tasks up. Many times these effective Democratic Leaders use integrative thinking to accomplish the necessary tasks through building consensus. Pacesetting Leaders expect excellence and self-direction to accomplish organization goals. And finally leaders that Coach are there to encourage and develop people for further progress within the organization. These types of leaders are extremely effective in the way they use the knowledge of their climate to make the best decisions possible for their organization.
Integrative Thinking
The theoretical model we created highlights integrative thinking as a valuable aspect of decision-making when striving to be an effective leader. Roger Martin, author of “How Successful Leaders Think”, defines integrative thinking as a decision-making process, in which an individual holds two opposing ideas at once and then by balancing tensions between the two, generates a new idea. Roger Martin, describes integrative thinking as a process of consideration and synthesis. He argues that this process of decision-making is a defining characteristic of many exceptional leaders and the successful companies that they run. By using integrative thinking, a leader can generate an alternative solution to a problem, one that fills the gap between an “either-or” choice. The decisions made by leaders who use this way of thinking are enhanced because a new idea is created that contains elements of the other ideas but is superior to both.
Leaders can use integrative thinking in almost any aspect of decision-making. For example, if the leader were trying to develop a successful product they would need to analyze the pros and cons of other products to develop a more superior product, which is ultimately the organization’s overall goal. In contrast, if a leader was trying to resolve communication issues within a team, he or she could use integrative thinking to find a place of middle ground rather than deciding who is “right” and who is “wrong”.
Although this idea of integrative thinking may seem like an obvious or easy way to make good decisions, integrative thinkers are fairly rare. Roger Martin argues that people don’t exercise their ability to think in an integrative way because most of us seek out the comfort of simplicity and clarity. Naturally, we seek a sense of certainty when choosing between well-defined alternatives and the closure that comes when a decision has been made. Martin argues that to improve leader effectiveness, we should welcome complexity and use that tension to think our way toward new, superior ideas, rather than avoiding ambiguity.
Unfortunately, most of us are not born with the tacit knowledge to think this way. According to our text, Organizational Behavior, tacit knowledge is very difficult, if not impossible, to articulate to others and sometimes holders don’t even know they possess this skill. In “How Successful Leaders Think”, Roger Martin claims that many integrative thinkers aren’t aware they possess this skill and therefore do not consciously exercise it. However, by analyzing and practicing the four-step process that integrative thinking generally follows, one could improve their ability in integrative thinking to become a more successful leader.
Ability to Motivate
According to our textbook, Organizational Behavior, motivation can be defined as "a set of energetic forces that originates both within and outside an employee, initiates work-related effort, and determines its direction, intensity, and persistence". With that being said, it is easy to see why many people view motivation is the glue that holds an organization together. Whether it is uniting an organization or accomplishing a goal, the ability to motivate is a key component in a successful organization. According to Daniel Goleman, author of "Leadership That Gets Results", successful leaders are generally judged on their strengths in emotional intelligence competencies. These competencies include self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, social skills, and one of the most important aspects, motivation. In another article written by Daniel Goleman, "Leadership That Gets Results", he explains these different competencies should be used in different combinations in order for a leader to be an effective motivator.
Goal Commitment
Goal commitment is a driving force of motivation. Our textbook, Organizational Behavior, defines goal commitment as the degree to which a person accepts a goal and is determined to meet it. It is key for a leader to motivate the team in order to keep a high level of goal commitment towards achieving a successful outcome. Organizational Behavior presents five of the most powerful strategies for fostering goal commitment.
By using rewards to foster goal commitment, members of a team are motivated to meet the goal because they will get some kind of monetary or nonmonetary reward for their achievement. This has shown to be a very beneficial technique for leaders to use in order to motivate their team members. The next strategy, publicity, suggests leaders should use social pressure to motivate team members to meet a goal. Publicizing the goal to coworkers could create this pressure, making the person trying to achieve the goal feel obligated to do so. The support strategy suggests that leaders should supervise team members so they can assist them if they run into trouble in order to effectively achieve the goal. Through the participation strategy, a leader should find a way for team members to feel a sense of ownership over the goal. This can be done by including team members in decisions that are made within the dimensions of the goal; including how the goal should be met. The last strategy Organizational Behavior provides as a way to foster goal commitment is providing resources to team members and removing constraints that are needed to achieve the goal. All of these strategies can be used to motivate members of a team into having a high level of goal commitment.
Communication Skills
To be an effective leader, communication is one of the main components when working in teams and is an essential skill. Our textbook, Organizational Behavior, defines communication as the process by which information and meanings gets transferred from a sender to a receiver. While working in teams the work is often done interpedently and communication plays a main role among members to determine if there is process gain or loss. Effective leaders need to make sure that they eliminate communication issues that are involved with working in teams. Since teams don’t always have the access to be able to work in the same location, messages have to be transmitted in written form, electronically, and indirectly through other individuals. Communicators then have to interpret and decode these messages; otherwise it can be lost in transition since the members are not communicating face-to-face. Communication is a vital role when working in a team setting or in a work setting in general. If there were no communication between members, the tasks would never be accomplished. Leaders who encourage proper communication with one another are more likely to achieve a successful outcome.
Network Structure
According to Herminia Ibarra and Mark Hunter, authors of “How Leaders Create and Use Networks”, a network is significant for team effectiveness. Networking creates a fabric of personal contacts who will provide support, feedback, insight, resources, and information. For an aspiring leader, this is one of the most dreaded developmental challenges that effective leaders may encounter, but it will make you stand out from the ordinary. Many mangers believe that networking is a tasteful way of using people, but a good network only thrives when it is used. This is what distinguishes the managers between the effective leaders.
Ibarra and Hunter discovered that there are three distinct forms of networking: operational, personal, and strategic, which all play a substantial role in leadership transition. Many effective leaders will go through the leadership transition, which is an inflection point in their careers that challenges them to rethink both themselves and their roles. Operational networking is known to come most naturally for leaders. The goal for this type of networking is to make sure that there is cooperation and coordination among people who must trust one another in order to accomplish the tasks given to them. It is the mutual trust within the organization that gives operational network its power. Personal networking can be very challenging because most leaders don’t have time outside of work to create new networks. However, this is important because this allows you to develop supportive relationships, such as mentors, and to gain referrals. Having a personal network can provide a foundation for strategic networking. The last network, strategic networking, can be the most difficult for developing leaders because it takes up so much time that they would like to dedicate mainly to operational demands. According to Ibarra and Hunter, effective leaders learn to employ networks for strategic purposes. This allows them to figure out future priorities and challenges that may occur and try to get stakeholder’s to support them. The three strategies that Ibarra and Hunter discovered will help transfer a manager into an effective leader throughout time.
While this list does not cover every skill one needs to be an effective leader, it outlines a few main concepts and touches on some aspects within those concepts. By practicing influential decision-making skills, exceptional communication skills, and the ability to motivate others towards a common goal, a clear path is paved to building effective leadership skills.