Deck 10: Leaders and Leadership

Question 1

Managers who verbally criticize their subordinates, put them down in front of their coworkers, or use the threat of job loss to influence behavior are exercising coercive power. Some employees subject to coercive power believe that using it is unethical.
Either alone or in a group, think about the ethical implications of the use of coercive power.

Answer 1

Coercive power is defined as the manager's ability to make the employees follow an order by threatening and punishing.
Ethical or unethical implications of the coercive power depends on the way it is executed. It is ethical when used with in the boundaries of its limits. Coercive power is considered as an authority or power which depends on fear and results in punishments in its existence. A manager or management who is using this power should make sure that they are not crossing the line by treating the employees unfair, abusive, offensive and demeaning acts.
Ethical implications of using coercive power, it gives the managers and supervisors the benefit of controlling the operations in the organisation effectively. It helps in improving the discipline among the employees in the organisation. It eliminates discrimination and harassment in the organisation. Ethical implications of the coercive power will help the managers get the work done by their subordinates and attain goals of the organisation.
Therefore, use of coercive power in an ethical way in the organisation will help in achieving the goals set.

Question 2

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL CASE IN THE NEWS [LO 10-1, 10-2, 10-4, 10-5]
Managers Need to Make Time for Face Time
How might emotional intelligence help managers to ensure that they have effective face-to-face interactions?

Answer 2

Emotional intelligence: It is the capabilities of an individual recognition of his/her own emotions as well as the other people's emotions. It helps to differentiate different kinds of emotions and divide them appropriately in order to adjust and manage the emotions that help to adopt for new environments easily.
Importance of emotional intelligence:
• It is very important in daily life of the individuals in order to make the decisions in the workplace related to the hiring of the candidates and promoting the employees.
• It helps in maintaining relationships with colleagues and other staff members
• It helps in maintaining relations with clients that helps to make deals and can build strong relations with them. It helps in achieving the goals of the organization.
Face to face interaction: In business and social lives of an individual's interpersonal communication plays a very crucial role. Since, digital communication seems to be quick and efficient, but face to face communication is more productive and effective in achieving the organizational goals.
It is important to build trust and credibility with your clients and employees
It enhances the productivity.
Therefore, directly or indirectly emotional intelligence of the managers helps to ensure effective face to face communication. With the help of face to face communication managers maintain relations with their employees that help them to enhance their emotional intelligence levels.

Question 3

Improving Leadership Effectiveness Form groups of three to five people, and appoint one member as the spokesperson who will communicate your findings and conclusions to the class when called on by the instructor. Then discuss the following scenario:
You are a team of human resource consultants who have been hired by Carla Caruso, an entrepreneur who has started her own interior decorating business. A highly competent and creative interior decorator, Caruso has established a working relationship with most of the major home builders in her community. At first she worked on her own as an independent contractor. Then because of a dramatic increase in the number of new homes being built, she became swamped with requests for her services and decided to start her own company.
She hired a secretary-bookkeeper and four interior decorators, all of whom are highly competent. Caruso still does decorating jobs herself and has adopted a handsoff approach to leading the four decorators who report to her because she feels that interior design is a very personal, creative endeavor. Rather than pay the decorators on some kind of commission basis (such as a percentage of their customers' total billings), she pays them a premium salary, higher than average, so they are motivated to do what's best for a customer's needs and not what will result in higher billings and commissions.
Caruso thought everything was going smoothly until customer complaints started coming in. The complaints ranged from the decorators' being hard to reach, promising unrealistic delivery times, and being late for or failing to keep appointments to their being impatient and rude when customers had trouble making up their minds. Caruso knows her decorators are competent and is concerned that she is not effectively leading and managing them. She wonders, in particular, if her hands-off approach is to blame and if she should change the manner in which she rewards or pays her decorators. She has asked for your advice.
Analyze the sources of power that Caruso has available to her to influence the decorators. What advice can you give her to either increase her power base or use her existing power more effectively?

Answer 3

Power is considered as possession of authority obtained by a position in the organisation. There are multiple sources of power.
The four sources of power that is available is legitimate, reward, coercive and expert power. She is not using legitimate power as hands off approach is followed naturally. She has every right to decide on which practises are to be followed by the employees as she is the owner of the company. Expert power can be used here.
Being a successful owner with her vast experience she could tell her decorators about the customer satisfaction and what satisfies them most. If the employees wish not to respond to her expert and legitimate power, she can execute her coercive power by holding the further assignments until the customers are satisfied. If the employees abide with her legitimate and expert power, then she can execute her reward power by considerations for bonus system.
Therefore, Caruso can utilise the sources of power to influence her decorators and make her business successful.

Question 4

Analyzing Failures of Leadership [LO 10-1, 10-2, 10-3, 10-4]
Think about a situation you are familiar with in which a leader was very ineffective. Then answer the following questions:
What signs, if any, did this leader show of being a transformational leader?

Question 5

Describe the steps managers can take to increase their power and ability to be effective leaders. [LO 10-1]

Question 6

Describe what transformational leadership is, and explain how managers can engage in it. [LO 10-4]

Question 7

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL CASE IN THE NEWS [LO 10-1, 10-2, 10-4, 10-5]
Managers Need to Make Time for Face Time
Why might making sure to incorporate time for face-to-face interactions be an important component for many managers' personal leadership styles?

Question 8

Imagine that you are working in an organization in an entry-level position after graduation and have come up with what you think is a great idea for improving a critical process in the organization that relates to your job. In what ways might your supervisor encourage you to implement your idea? How might your supervisor discourage you from even sharing your idea with others? [LO 10-4, 10-5]

Question 9

Analyzing Failures of Leadership [LO 10-1, 10-2, 10-3, 10-4]
Think about a situation you are familiar with in which a leader was very ineffective. Then answer the following questions:
What kinds of behaviors did this leader engage in? Were they appropriate for the situation? Why or why not?

Question 10

Interview a manager to find out how the three situational characteristics that Fiedler identified affect his or her ability to provide leadership. [LO 10-3]

Question 11

Managers who verbally criticize their subordinates, put them down in front of their coworkers, or use the threat of job loss to influence behavior are exercising coercive power. Some employees subject to coercive power believe that using it is unethical.
To what extent do managers and organizations have an ethical obligation to put limits on the amount of coercive power that is exercised?

Question 12

Find a company that has dramatically turned around its fortunes and improved its performance. Determine whether a transformational manager was behind the turnaround and, if one was, what this manager did. [LO 10-4]

Question 13

Improving Leadership Effectiveness Form groups of three to five people, and appoint one member as the spokesperson who will communicate your findings and conclusions to the class when called on by the instructor. Then discuss the following scenario:
You are a team of human resource consultants who have been hired by Carla Caruso, an entrepreneur who has started her own interior decorating business. A highly competent and creative interior decorator, Caruso has established a working relationship with most of the major home builders in her community. At first she worked on her own as an independent contractor. Then because of a dramatic increase in the number of new homes being built, she became swamped with requests for her services and decided to start her own company.
She hired a secretary-bookkeeper and four interior decorators, all of whom are highly competent. Caruso still does decorating jobs herself and has adopted a handsoff approach to leading the four decorators who report to her because she feels that interior design is a very personal, creative endeavor. Rather than pay the decorators on some kind of commission basis (such as a percentage of their customers' total billings), she pays them a premium salary, higher than average, so they are motivated to do what's best for a customer's needs and not what will result in higher billings and commissions.
Caruso thought everything was going smoothly until customer complaints started coming in. The complaints ranged from the decorators' being hard to reach, promising unrealistic delivery times, and being late for or failing to keep appointments to their being impatient and rude when customers had trouble making up their minds. Caruso knows her decorators are competent and is concerned that she is not effectively leading and managing them. She wonders, in particular, if her hands-off approach is to blame and if she should change the manner in which she rewards or pays her decorators. She has asked for your advice.
Given what you have learned in this chapter (for example, from the behavior model and path-goal theory), does Caruso seem to be performing appropriate leader behaviors in this situation? What advice can you give her about the kinds of behaviors she should perform?

Question 14

Think of specific situations in which it might be especially important for a manager to engage in consideration and in initiating structure. [LO 10-2]

Question 15

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL CASE IN THE NEWS [LO 10-1, 10-2, 10-4, 10-5]
Managers Need to Make Time for Face Time
How might face-to-face interactions contribute to managers effectively engaging in consideration and initiating structure?

Question 16

Analyzing Failures of Leadership [LO 10-1, 10-2, 10-3, 10-4]
Think about a situation you are familiar with in which a leader was very ineffective. Then answer the following questions:
From what you know, do you think this leader was a task-oriented leader or a relationship-oriented leader? How favorable was this leader's situation for leading?

Question 17

Improving Leadership Effectiveness Form groups of three to five people, and appoint one member as the spokesperson who will communicate your findings and conclusions to the class when called on by the instructor. Then discuss the following scenario:
You are a team of human resource consultants who have been hired by Carla Caruso, an entrepreneur who has started her own interior decorating business. A highly competent and creative interior decorator, Caruso has established a working relationship with most of the major home builders in her community. At first she worked on her own as an independent contractor. Then because of a dramatic increase in the number of new homes being built, she became swamped with requests for her services and decided to start her own company.
She hired a secretary-bookkeeper and four interior decorators, all of whom are highly competent. Caruso still does decorating jobs herself and has adopted a handsoff approach to leading the four decorators who report to her because she feels that interior design is a very personal, creative endeavor. Rather than pay the decorators on some kind of commission basis (such as a percentage of their customers' total billings), she pays them a premium salary, higher than average, so they are motivated to do what's best for a customer's needs and not what will result in higher billings and commissions.
Caruso thought everything was going smoothly until customer complaints started coming in. The complaints ranged from the decorators' being hard to reach, promising unrealistic delivery times, and being late for or failing to keep appointments to their being impatient and rude when customers had trouble making up their minds. Caruso knows her decorators are competent and is concerned that she is not effectively leading and managing them. She wonders, in particular, if her hands-off approach is to blame and if she should change the manner in which she rewards or pays her decorators. She has asked for your advice.
What steps would you advise Caruso to take to increase the decorators' motivation to deliver high-quality customer service?

Question 18

Discuss why managers might want to change the behaviors they engage in, given their situation, their subordinates, and the nature of the work being done. Do you think managers can readily change their leadership behaviors? Why or why not? [LO 10-3]

Question 19

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL CASE IN THE NEWS [LO 10-1, 10-2, 10-4, 10-5]
Managers Need to Make Time for Face Time
How might face-to-face interactions help managers effectively engage in transformational leadership?

Question 20

Analyzing Failures of Leadership [LO 10-1, 10-2, 10-3, 10-4]
Think about a situation you are familiar with in which a leader was very ineffective. Then answer the following questions:
What steps did this leader take to motivate his or her followers? Were these steps appropriate or inappropriate? Why?

Question 21

Improving Leadership Effectiveness Form groups of three to five people, and appoint one member as the spokesperson who will communicate your findings and conclusions to the class when called on by the instructor. Then discuss the following scenario:
You are a team of human resource consultants who have been hired by Carla Caruso, an entrepreneur who has started her own interior decorating business. A highly competent and creative interior decorator, Caruso has established a working relationship with most of the major home builders in her community. At first she worked on her own as an independent contractor. Then because of a dramatic increase in the number of new homes being built, she became swamped with requests for her services and decided to start her own company.
She hired a secretary-bookkeeper and four interior decorators, all of whom are highly competent. Caruso still does decorating jobs herself and has adopted a handsoff approach to leading the four decorators who report to her because she feels that interior design is a very personal, creative endeavor. Rather than pay the decorators on some kind of commission basis (such as a percentage of their customers' total billings), she pays them a premium salary, higher than average, so they are motivated to do what's best for a customer's needs and not what will result in higher billings and commissions.
Caruso thought everything was going smoothly until customer complaints started coming in. The complaints ranged from the decorators' being hard to reach, promising unrealistic delivery times, and being late for or failing to keep appointments to their being impatient and rude when customers had trouble making up their minds. Caruso knows her decorators are competent and is concerned that she is not effectively leading and managing them. She wonders, in particular, if her hands-off approach is to blame and if she should change the manner in which she rewards or pays her decorators. She has asked for your advice.
Would you advise Caruso to try to engage in transformational leadership in this situation? If not, why not? If so, what steps would you advise her to take?

Question 22

Analyzing Failures of Leadership [LO 10-1, 10-2, 10-3, 10-4]
Think about a situation you are familiar with in which a leader was very ineffective. Then answer the following questions:
What sources of power did this leader have? Did the leader have enough power to influence his or her followers?

Question 23

Discuss why substitutes for leadership can contribute to organizational effectiveness. [LO 10-3]