Leadership Behavior Through a Critical Lens

Leaders are an important aspect to management and business. Leaders are what provide the basis from which subordinates follow. When a leader behaves in a way that provides a bad example to a subordinate or creates a chaotic environment, subordinates will follow suit and behave accordingly. Leadership behavior also lends to creation of a good or bad reputation for the leader. When a leader treats his or her subordinates badly, that leader builds a bad reputation creating distrust and disharmony among subordinates.

Culture also plays an important role in leadership as culture dictates personality. Personality is an important aspect of leadership style cultivation, lending to how a leader will treat his or her subordinates as well as interact with them. Leaders and subordinates are connected through behavior, culture, and personality. These articles highlight that relationship and outcome. The first article discusses leadership behavior, acceptance of a leader by subordinates, and path-goal theory.

Path-goal theory serves as the basis for exploration of the concept of leadership and what responsibilities a leader has to his or her subordinates. The path-goal theory states leadership style may direct the effectiveness of an organization and that leadership styles must be tailored when met with any given scenario. The findings within the study reveal the effect of leadership behavior on subordinate behavior and whether or not subordinates will be accepting of a leader.

This particular study links together other studies revolving on leadership behaviors and traits and how these can be predictors of effective leadership. The study tests behavior theory as well as situational leadership providing support for other theories revolving around this concept. The second article centered on organizational citizenship behavior and leader-member exchange provides support for the notion that leader behavior dictates subordinate behavior as a leader's reputation and identification of leader lend to consequential results on the part of the subordinates.

Working on the leader-member exchange theory, the study explains how leaders impart more challenging work and opportunities to grow on subordinates they trust, while giving easier work and no opportunities to grow for those they do not trust. This then creates a scenario where the untrusted subordinates become a wasted resource, unable to work at their fullest potential. Here it clearly shows the leader-follower connection in that leadership behavior affects subordinate behavior affects outcomes.

As a result of leaders not trusting a certain group and not giving them an opportunity to grow, they become a wasted resource as seen in the study with 262 leader-subordinate dyads. Another interesting thing to note is leadership reputation also predicts subordinate behavior. Subordinates respond better to a leader with a better reputation than one with a bad reputation. Leaders with good reputations dictated a stronger reputation than leaders that did not have a good reputation.

The leader-follower dynamic is a two-way relationship where behavior predicts outcomes such as how a leader behaves will lead either to a good or bad reputation and will cause the follower/subordinate to trust or not trust the leader. What both studies show is that leaders need to perform well as behave appropriately with subordinates in relation to subordinate engagement. While the studies focused on Chinese business culture and not any Western business culture, it is important to see how these actions are linked within the leader-subordinate dynamic.

Chinese business culture connected the first two studies. The third study compared Chinese cultures to Western managerial culture. The link for all three then becomes Chinese business culture and leader-follower relationships dictated by behavior. While the third article seeks to identify what findings within he leader-follower dynamic is culturally universal and which are culturally-specific, the results point to some similarities found in the previous studies. For example, the third article states context matters in leadership ergo culture provides a significant contextual factor.

Meaning, what it takes to be a great leader varies for different cultures. In Chinese culture it is about leader reputation while in Western, it is more about other things like job obligations and so forth. Still universal aspects like leadership behavior supersede contextual factors as leadership behavior creates either harmony or chaos within a group setting. The fourth articles examine the concept of transformational leadership through the lens of the Big Five Factor Model of Personality theoretical framework.

While this article serves a review of other studies, it takes into account how the big five traits: experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism contribute to leadership behavior. Whether a leadership style is creative or transformation depends on these big five traits. Tying into the third article, the fourth mentions contextual factors that have to be taken into account when analyzing leadership styles and leader behaviors. A person with certain personality traits will express a specific leadership style.

This article provides a deeper look into leadership and the reason why leader behave a certain way based on their personalities that are connected to the culture they were raised in and grew up with. The fifth article follows a field study and two experimental studies. They sought to better understand two often hard to analyze leadership styles, transformational and servant leadership. They found these two styles solidified the commitment of subordinates to their work and their leaders.

Although this study had the least in common with the rest of the articles, it did however highlight what kind of behaviors can positively affect the leader-follower relationship. Leaders that adopt the servant or transformational leadership styles have a higher chance of creating harmony within the leader-follower relationship than with other leadership styles. These styles then can be interpreted in terms of what kind of personality traits someone has to have to adopt these leadership styles.

The three common themes seen throughout the examination of all five articles are behavior, culture, and personality. The first main theme centers on the leader-follower dynamic. How a leader behaves will dictate how the subordinate behaves? If a leader creates an environment where a subordinate cannot grow or there is a lack of trust between the leader and subordinate, there will be problems and issues stemming from it and may have an effect on the reputation of a leader. Reputations of leaders are often times dictated by their behaviors.

Subordinates either respect or do not respect a leader based on their reputation. This however is based on context. Context frequently comes from a person's culture. The Chinese business culture and Asian business cultures in general, have a tendency towards steering away from individuality and workings towards the group's desires. They also respond more towards reputation and standing versus Western business cultures that are not too concerned with reputation.

Culture is an important aspect of what makes someone a good leader and how what kind of leadership style they will adopt. The last theme is personality. Personality is what contributes to a person choosing a certain leadership style. While not all of the articles discussed personality, it was something that is connected to leader behavior, leadership style, and culture. A person is a product of their environment and culture plays into that.

When a person adopts a certain leadership style that thus affects their behavior, they are basing it on aspect of their personality. In conclusion, what makes a great leader can be hard to surmise. However, what can be understood is that great leadership involves looking at the behavior, culture, and personality of a person in order to see what creates that ideal leader-follower dynamic. 2. Leadership behavior is an important aspect of the leader-follower relationship. Businesses run on effective leadership behavior.

That is because effective leaders inspire followers and create an environment that yields higher productivity among other positive outcomes. All five articles helped to highlight and create a gradual progression of what it takes to be an effective leader and that all has to do with context, personality, and behavior. While leadership behavior comes from a multitude of things often times, a person will adopt a certain leadership style and thus leadership behavior based on worldview, identity, and socio-cultural group membership. Identity contributes to effective leadership.

When a leader has a good sense of identity, that person will be able to carry out objectives and build relationships successfully. A part of identity is personality and personality traits. Personality traits dictate leadership style. Some effective leadership styles are transformational and servant. Servant leadership can be considered both a philosophy as well as set of practices that improves the lives of persons, shapes better groups and eventually produces a fair-minded and benevolent world.

Even though servant leadership is a timeless notion, the definite phrase "servant leadership" was first developed by Robert K. Greenleaf in "The Servant as Leader," a 1970 Greenleaf published essay. There is no true commonly accepted definition of servant leadership theory.

The combination of the empirical studies discovered: (a) there is no consensus on the definition of servant leadership; (b) servant leadership theory is being investigated across a variety of contexts, cultures, and themes; (c) researchers are using multiple measures to explore servant leadership; and (d) servant leadership is a viable leadership theory that helps organizations and improves the well-being of followers (Parris & Peachey, 2012, p. 377).

What can be ascertained is a servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people including the groups to which these types of leaders fit in. Whereas traditional leadership regularly involves the addition and application of power by a person at the "top of the pyramid," there exists main dissimilarities in servant leadership. The servant-leader shares power and puts the needs of others before him or herself. He or she assists in the growth of others and accomplishes as much as possible.

Another aspect of identity is power and how people handle power. Power is a means of gaining wealth and leverage/control over others. It can also be described as the power to order, command, enforce. Power has many understandings and definitions. Power for example can mean the power to inspire, legitimize, and encourage cooperation. There is soft power, the power to persuade and hard power or violent acts.

When a leader has the ability to apply soft power to conflicts within their respective groups, this can in turn produce effective leadership behavior. There are three faces of power. Two of them, exchange power and integrative power, share varying levels of creativity and productivity. Integrated and exchange power are associated with soft power. "Exchange power associated with bargaining the compromising approach and integrative power, associated with persuasion and transformative long-term problem solving" (Boulton, 2011, p. 22).

Soft power enables communication and those that practice soft power have an easier time achieving compromise and collaboration. Aside from identity, worldview can also be an integral aspect of effective leadership behavior. Worldview can be defined in several ways. This article provides the context with which to identify worldview. A worldview is a way of describing the universe and life within it, both in terms of what is and what ought to be.

A given worldview is a set of beliefs that includes limiting statements and assumptions regarding what exists and what does not (either in actuality, or in principle), what objects or experiences are good or bad, and what objectives, behaviors, and relationships are desirable or undesirable. A worldview defines what can be known or done in the world, and how it can be known or done (Koltko-Rivera, 2004, p. 3).

When a person has a distinct worldview, that person also has a sense of integrity and what needs to be done versus a person who has none and may be morally ambiguous or unaware of the requirements and responsibilities of an effective leader. Leaders are in charge of setting and completing complex objectives that often require difficult decision making and ongoing conflict resolution. Without a good worldview, a leader may end up aimless and lacking the integrity and fortitude to accomplish.