Psychological foundations of organizational leadership and success

¶ … Psychology to Organizations

In many ways, business organizations are reflections of those who create them and occupy positions of executive leadership and direction. Generally, business founders and organizational leaders who are functional psychologically and whose motivations correspond appropriately to the legitimate needs of the organization and its personnel tend to attract and cultivate individuals with similar characteristics and personal attributes. Conversely, business founders and organizational leaders whose motivations correspond to the need to overcompensate for personal shortcomings and psychological insufficiency tend to attract associates who mirror those negative personal characteristics and attributes.

While myriad factors contribute to the success of business organizations, those that meet certain fundamental criteria in the realm of psychology are often much better positioned for long-term success than those that do not meet those fundamental criteria. Ideally, the founders of any organization would lay the groundwork most conducive to organizational success in many ways.

In the realm of human psychology, some of the essential defining elements and characteristics consistent with the success of the organization would include establishing a climate that cultivates leaders; recognizing the primary sources of human motivation for achievement; distinguishing psychologically functional and dysfunctional sources of motivation; emphasizing the opportunity for intellectual independence, creativity; de-emphasizing over-reliance on natural inclinations toward social conformity; recognizing different aspects of human cognitive intelligence and learning capacity; and promoting personal and professional integrity.

Cultivating Organizational Leadership

Generally, the most successful organizations are those that seek to identify candidates for employment who have high potential for professional development into organizational leaders. Modern principles of business management and organizational psychology distinguish between management and leadership. Management is substantially limited to operational and administrative efficiency; leadership incorporates concepts such as the ability (and inclination) to help other develop professionally and achieve their fullest professional potential. Therefore, in designing a business organization for success, one would seek to hire supervisors and business managers who demonstrate high levels of leadership skills and to install a managerial development program whose primary purpose is to cultivate leadership skills throughout the organization.

Obedience to Authority, Conformity, Intellectual Independence, and Ethical Values

Today, ethical issues have become tremendously important aspects of modern business and business management. One need look no further than very recent headlines about the deterioration of ethical compliance in the financial services and home mortgage industries to realize that unethical practices are extremely dangerous to business organizations as well as to every component of society capable of being affected by ethical transgressions. The current American economic crisis was caused directly by the systemic ethical violations within the home mortgage and loan industry in conjunction with long-standing unethical practices throughout the financial services and negotiable securities markets. In essence, some of the nation's brightest minds spent the last decade or more devising highly complex methods of violating every element of the spirit of existing financial services industry regulation by inventing mortgage-backed securities and incredibly unethical and dangerous methods of playing both sides of the market without violating the letter of the law.

To a large extent, individuals within the fields involved followed the lead of superiors and allowed the profit margins demonstrated by colleagues and competitors to dictate their behavior. Many of them knew that what they were doing, particularly within the housing mortgage industry, was highly unethical, dishonest, and in many cases, highly illegal. Psychologists Solomon Asch, Stanley Milgram, and Philip Zimbardo (among others) demonstrated the tremendous capacity of human beings to abandon their own convictions to avoid conflicts with a group of peers and to follow unethical orders out of obedience to authority.

To help identify prospective employees who are less likely to abandon their own convictions and perceptions, one might include an element to test that characteristic in job applicants. Simple (but effective) methods might include placing applicants in benign but illustrative situations designed to test their susceptibility to the phenomenon of group think and conformity. In principle, the goal of the organization would be to hire individuals with higher resistance to conformity and to blind obedience to reduce the likelihood that unethical policies, practices, and procedures can become normal operational elements within the organization.

Cognitive Processes, Human Intelligence, Learning, and Vocational Performance

Modern principles cognitive psychology in relation to measurable aspects of human intelligence and learning capacity suggest that individuals learn in very different ways. Nevertheless, contemporary education still emphasizes methods of academic instruction (such as passive learning by lecture and textbook and rote memorization) that are not necessarily conducive to optimal learning in many people. The same is largely true of vocational training and even the typical physical layout of the workplace. However, many individuals learn much more efficiently from hands-on practical experience than from reading texts; and many individuals work most productively in different environments.

Applying those concepts to the design of a business organization might include allowing personnel to express preferences for seemingly superficial elements of their workplace environment. Some examples of this approach might include allowing greater flexibility in working hours (where practicable) to accommodate the natural preferences and waking schedule of individuals instead of requiring everyone to keep identical traditional business hours. The same holds true for the value of allowing teleworking opportunities. Even elements such as workstation lighting and layout can play a significant role in promoting maximum output and productivity. That concept would also suggest allowing employees greater flexibility in some of the ways that they perform their work tasks. In addition to maximizing morale and productivity in the workplace, those features would also promote rather than stifle intellectual creativity.