Seminar_1

arSeminar 1 – Discussion Questions Question 1: Trait Approach: 2 Style Approach: 4, Contingency Approach: 5, 6 New Leadership Approach: 9, 10, 11, 12, 15 The leader’s power and influence: 7, 8, 13 General introduction and overview: 1, 16 No group attribution: 3, 14 Question 2: a) Using a trait-based approach, Phil is the more efficient leader. He is ambitious, achievement oriented, dominant, energetic and self-confident, while Ben puts his focus on the people and their needs. b) Taking a three-factor model, we can see a very task-oriented behaviour on Phil’s side. He sets specific goals and also checks very carefully whether goals were achieved or not. Ben on the other side is more relation-oriented, by socializing with workers, taking care of them and organizing group-bonding activities. The third factor, change-orientation, is more executed by Phil than Ben. Phil makes changes to lower cost and increase productivity, while Ben doesn’t do any changes on his own, neither encourages his employees to think of possible opportunities. c) Using the path-goal theory, Phil follows a directive leadership by setting goals and using penalties in case they aren’t achieved. Ben on the other side is a supportive leader. He cares about the welfare of his employees and tries to make their work more tolerable. But he doesn’t give any incentives to increase productivity and outcome. In the case of Consolidated Products, a supportive leadership is probably more appropriate because most of the tasks are easy and boring. Question 3: Using a trait-based approach, managers have to be strong, self-confident and intelligent. Therefore, they could be selected by IQ-tests, their ability to direct people, etc. Considering a three-factor model, a potential leader should be able to “provide” some behaviour of each criterion. This could probably be tested by assessments where a group of people has to be directed/guided to achieve a goal, but also with the opportunity to change existing processes. After the assessment there could interviews with the “test-employees” could be conducted to test satisfaction with their leader to cover the relation-part of the model. Question 4: Even though there is a huge amount of studies and theories, there are still a lot of ambiguities which make it difficult to extract the most pertinent points to be an effective leader. In the author’s opinion and also mine, the most important tasks a leader has to fulfil in order to be efficient, are mentioned on page 507 in the book. In my opinion, the most existential point mentioned in this short summary, is that none of the theories is perfect and there will never exist one of that kind. But if we take a combination of the theories in the book, there is already a really good way to understand leadership and to find the appropriate measure for different kind of situations.