Leadership: Theory and Practice
Sometimes, the college textbook is the best way to learn something. In Leadership: Theory and Practice, Peter Northouse reviews the various perspectives and theories of leadership, explaining what they are, what’s good about them, and what’s bad. It’s a wonderful summary of some of the perspectives and theories that I’ve studied in more detail.
Of course, it’s necessary to define what we’re talking about when we say “leadership.” Here, Northouse draws upon Rost (Leadership for the Twenty-First Century) and Burns (Leadership) before settling on a slightly more complicated version of “leadership is influence.” It’s the ability for one person to influence the other. His perspective that the influence is, at least in some ways, reciprocal comes through, as he avoids directly favoring any one approach and instead focuses on what has been supported by empirical research.
Few people realize that the concept of leadership connects back to the work of Aristotle. Where “management” has been conflated with leadership, management is a much more modern concept, having arrived with the industrial revolution and the rise of large organizations at the turn of the century.
Power
Northouse draws from French and Raven’s famous “The Bases of Social Power” article, citing the following six bases of power:
| Referent Power | Based on followers’ identification and liking for the leader. A teacher who is adored by students has referent power. |
| Expert Power | Based on followers’ perceptions of the leader’s competence. A tour guide who is knowledgeable about a foreign country has expert power. |
| Legitimate Power | Associated with having status or formal job authority. A judge who administers sentences in the courtroom exhibits legitimate power. |
| Reward Power | Derived from having the capacity to provide rewards to others. A supervisor who compliments employees who work hard is using reward power. |
| Coercive Power | Derived from having the capacity to penalize or punish others. A coach who sits players on the bench for being late to practice is using coercive power. |
| Information Power | Derived from possessing knowledge that others want or need. A boss who has information regarding new criteria to decide employee promotion eligibility has information power. |
Leadership Traits
Early on, Northouse questions the trait theory of leadership. This theory posits that some people are destined for leadership. It says that the presence and absence of consistent traits will separate those who can lead from those who cannot. Very quickly, we see that not everyone agrees on what these traits are. He produces the following table of proposed traits:
| Stogdill (1948) | Mann (1959) | Stogdill (1974) | Lord, DeVader, and Alliger (1986) | Kirkpatrick and Locke (1991) | Zaccaro, Kemp, and Bader (2017) |
| Intelligence alertness insight responsibility initiative persistence self-confidence sociability |
Intelligence masculinity adjustment dominance extraversion conservatism |
Achievement persistence insight initiative self-confidence responsibility cooperativeness tolerance influence sociability |
Intelligence masculinity dominance |
Drive motivation integrity confidence cognitive ability task knowledge |
cognitive ability extraversion conscientiousness emotional stability openness agreeableness motivation social intelligence self-monitoring emotional intelligence problem solving |
While the lists have a degree of overlap, there’s a lot of difference as well. This is, of course, a small subset of the research that tries to find the magical traits divide those who are destined for leadership and those who are not.
The problem – besides the lack of consistency – is that, in many cases, there is evidence to support that supposedly fixed and unchangeable traits are actually teachable skills and behaviors. This means that traits aren’t useful as a sorting mechanism. However, they may help us to gauge what skills we need to develop in our leaders. Emotional intelligence, for instance, has been shown to improve results and to be teachable. (See Emotional Intelligence and Primal Leadership for emotional intelligence.)
Skills
This transition leads us to the next approach, where the work focuses on what skills a leader needs to have to be successful. Here, there is some indication that skills are helpful – beyond the emotional intelligence referenced above.
Unfortunately, despite billions of dollars spent on leadership training, we’ve not been able to demonstrate value. (See Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Training Evaluation for some clues as to why.) From a research perspective, the skills model has generally had weak predictive value. That is to say that we’ve not found the set of skills that we can teach leaders that will shift the balance to better results.
Behaviors
What if leadership isn’t about traits or skills but behaviors? The behavioral approach posits that there’s two kinds of behaviors: task behaviors and relationship behaviors. Some research shows that being high in both kinds of behaviors is the best form of leadership. However, there’s no universal agreement on the categorization. A better categorization might be employee orientation vs. production orientation. The focus might on people and results orientation. The lack of consistency has hampered the ability to find a set of key behaviors that matter in all situations.
The lack of consistency and replicability is one of the drivers that led to a situational approach.
Situational
A situational approach starts with the idea that different situations demand different kinds of leadership. The reason we can’t find a single approach – whether it involves traits, skills, behaviors – is because the situation changes, and there’s no one set of anything that can address every situation.
Here, too, we find the familiar 2×2 grid along two axes: supportive behaviors and directive behaviors. Within the grid is a pathway that starts highly directive and not very supportive, called directing, up through increased support – called coaching – and back down the directive axis into a quadrant of low directive but highly supportive behavior, called supporting. The pathway ends with a low directive and low supportive behavior quadrant called delegating.
Conceptually, it’s clear that situations differ, and therefore the leadership should change to meet the situation. What isn’t clear is how to describe a framework that captures this in a measurable and demonstratable way. In short, we don’t know how to match up the traits, skills, and behaviors to the conditions – or even how to describe the conditions.
Path-Goal Theory
If we shift the focus from the leader to the follower needs and motivations, we get path-goal theory. It’s similar to information scent, which is derived optimal foraging. (See Killer Web Content for more.) Basically, this means we’re drawn to things that we desire. Thus, the more signals a leader sends saying we’re likely to get what we want by following them, the more likely it is we will follow them. These signals can come in the form of a directive leadership, which provides simple answers to problems, or supportive leadership, which signals a desire to enable the success of the follower.
While path-goal theory seems well founded, it’s also complex and encompasses so many elements that it can be confusing and, importantly, difficult to measure. As a result, to date, there’s only partial validity supported by some studies.
Leader-Member Exchange Theory
What if every act of leadership is centered on the exchanges between the leaders and followers? How would we measure the degree to which people are intellectually intimate with one another? How might roles, influences, exchanges, and interests be looked at? The answer is that we might look at the relationship strength and describe how these dimensions might change.
As a theory, it’s interesting. It’s the first time we see a shift from people to the relationships between people – and important aspect of leadership that had not been considered.
Transformational Leadership
Taking the relationship further, transformational leadership is focused on how some leaders can inspire their followers. It’s here that we begin to see the work of Burns (see Leadership) and a greater focus on the bi-directional influence exerted between leaders and followers. It’s also the first place where we start to see the moral implications of leadership surface. We start to see concerns about pseudo-transformational leadership, where the influence threatens the welfare of the followers. Transformational leadership is supposed to be transformational for the leader, the follower, and their relationship, with the implication that it’s getting better or growing.
Transformational leadership is in contrast to a transactional approach, which isn’t much more than a direct exchange. It’s really tit-for-tat. I’ll pay you X for Y. (See The Evolution of Cooperation for more on tit-for-tat.) Tangentially, laissez-faire leadership – or almost a lack of leadership – has historically been seen negatively, but it appears to be adaptive in some situations. By taking a step back, you allow followers to reach their capacity. The research seems to show that combining different styles of laissez-faire, transactional, and transformational approaches is best.
We also begin to see work like Kouzes and Posner’s The Leadership Challenge, which proports to show a path towards more effective application of transformational leadership. Their model is simplified but still includes 10 different skills that must be mastered for transformational leadership. One of their skills is building a vision – something that’s consistent across many other authors with for transformational leadership.
Authentic Leadership
Authentic leadership “describes leadership that is transparent, morally grounded, and responsive to people’s needs and values.” Despite this summary, there’s no single accepted definition of authentic leadership. Speaking in broad, sweeping terms like the above is great – but it becomes problematic, because each of the terms can be questioned. How transparent is transparent? Do you share the balance sheet and the CEO’s compensation package? What about pending litigation?
“Morally grounded” has its own set of challenges. Whose morals? As Jonathan Haidt explains in The Righteous Mind, he believes that there are foundations for morality. We each lean on these in different ways, sometimes generating radically different moral beliefs that are equally valid from others’ points of view.
Here, Northouse elevates a persistent refrain about the capacity to lead millennials. There is an elevation of the values of individualism and work-life balance compared to extrinsic rewards. While I believe that generational leadership is worthy of study, I don’t believe that younger workers are fundamentally different than we were at their ages. The data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics backs up this point of view, as any review of transitioning jobs has remained relatively stable for decades.
Servant Leadership
Promoted by Robert Greenleaf, servant leadership is fundamentally based on the simple premise that leaders exist to serve the people they lead. While Greenleaf’s Servant Leadership is difficult to read, it’s a detailed exposition of his thoughts.
Perhaps the largest area of difference between servant leadership and other forms is the use of coercive influence. Servant leadership shuns it, while other leadership forms believe that it’s a tool in the toolbelt for use when necessary.
Adaptive Leadership
Adaptive leadership extends the concept of situational leadership. It was initially proposed by Ronald Heifetz in 1994. (You can see my review of another of his works, Leadership on the Line.) It proposes that there are situations that are fundamentally different. In the first category are technical challenges. These are the kinds of challenges that can be solved by simply applying methodological, cookie-cutter type solutions. The other category are adaptive challenges – those for which there is no one answer. He also allows for a blended category, where aspects are technical while the overall challenge is adaptive.
This is consistent with work across disciplines. Horst Rittel and Melvin Weber proposed the concept of wicked problems characterized by 10 characteristics. (See Wicked Problems.) David Snowden believes problems break down into clear, complicated, complex, and chaotic, with the first two roughly corresponding to Heifetz’ technical category. Snowden’s approach, called Cynefin, recognizes not only these categories of challenges but also liminal spaces where challenges transition between categories – and not always linearly. (See also his book, Cynefin.)
Also embedded in the concept of adaptive leadership is the need for holding environments. This is the requisite condition for creating psychological safety, as Amy Edmondson explains in The Fearless Organization. One of the aspects of the holding environment that’s proven to be universally valuable is the capacity to speak about the unspeakable. The chapter includes a reference to a student newspaper whose editors wanted to expose depression but were prohibited from running the story. They make the comment that, “By telling us that students could not talk openly about their struggles, they reinforced the very stigma we were trying to eliminate.” We see this in suicide prevention, as explained in Life Under Pressure. Regarding substance use disorder, Bruce Alexander tries to correct the myths of the rats who were addicted to morphine laced water in The Globalization of Addiction. Similarly, Jonathan Hari explains in Chasing the Scream how we’ve made substance use disorder prevalence worse by our policies and approaches.
Inclusive Leadership
It’s the same core idea as diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts that are currently under attack. In its purest form, it’s valuing everyone and trying to find space for their contributions. In The Difference, Scott Page explains the power of diversity. No matter how you define diversity, it improves performance – within the limits of good collaboration structures. (See Hackman’s Collaborative Intelligence for more on the right frameworks.)
At the heart of inclusive leadership is creating and allowing for shared identity. In addition to individual identities, the group develops the capacity to work together and bring their unique history and gifts to bear on the problems they’re facing.
Followership
Followership gets a bad reputation. It’s not as glamorous as leadership – though it’s clearly necessary, because you cannot lead without followers. Very little research or study is done on followership – and some of that is followership in cults. (See Terror, Love, and Brainwashing.) Despite the lack of study, there are hidden clues in unlikely places.
Work Redesign shares the story of Ralph who probably ended up in burnout. However, the decisions that Ralph made are important. He decided that his contributions (to leadership) didn’t matter. He decided that he wasn’t cut out to be a leader or wasn’t going to be a leader, and so in this binary frame of reference, the only other option was to be a follower. In this frame, it seems only like losers end up following.
A better frame may be that we need everyone’s gifts. Some will be followers. Some will be the people that get the important things done. Others will be leaders. Somehow, we need to continue to study the dynamics of followership and Leadership.