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 Following the template provided, outline chapter 10 on Leadership and write a synopsis of the case study 

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Basic Outlining Format Guide for Chapter Outlines

Title of the Chapter

 I.  Topic of First Main Section of the chapter (include definitions, explanations, details and page numbers)

A.     First Main Point under the First Main Section of the chapter (include definitions, explanations, details and page numbers)

1. Subpoint under the Main point
                a. Detail and/or definition for the subpoint
          2.  Subpoint under the Main point
                a. Detail and/or definition for the subpoint   
          3.  Subpoint under the Main point
                a. Detail and/or definition for the subpoint

B.     Second Main Point under the First Main Section of the chapter (include definitions, explanations, details and page numbers)

1. Subpoint under the Main point
                a. Detail and/or definition for the subpoint
          2.  Subpoint under the Main point
                a. Detail and/or definition for the subpoint
          3.  Subpoint under the Main point
                a. Detail and/or definition for the subpoint

C.     Third Main Point under the First Main Section of the chapter (include definitions, explanations, details and page numbers)

1. Subpoint under the Main point
                a. Detail and/or definition for the subpoint
          2.  Subpoint under the Main point
                a. Detail and/or definition for the subpoint
          3.  Subpoint under the Main point
                a. Detail and/or definition for the subpoint

II.  Topic of  Second Main Section of the chapter (include definitions, explanations, details and page numbers) 

–Continue Outlining Following the Section I guide that includes subcategories, sub-subcategories, definitions, details and page numbers.

 The Outline is to be used as your study guide for the chapter, so the more complete it is, the better prepared you will be to take the Chapter quizzes and the Unit Exams. 

Outlining a textbook chapter is not just copying down the first sentence of every paragraph or every heading headings. A good outline demonstrates understanding of the material and an ability to identify and summarize its main points. If you are outlining for a class assignment, follow any assignment instructions first; some teachers prefer outlines with sentences, while others want outlines with keywords and topics only. If you are outlining for yourself, follow whatever style best fits the purpose of the outline.

Step 1

Skim the textbook chapter for a few minutes, looking at the headings and any bold or italic words. Having a basic idea of the chapter content and keywords will help you follow the structure of the chapter better and prepare you for outlining.

Step 2

Read the chapter. Don’t start writing your outline yet, but feel free to write down any particularly interesting points or page numbers as you go.

Step 3

Begin your outline. Many textbook chapters have introductory paragraphs that give a good outline for the chapter. For example, in a history textbook, a chapter introduction may say it will discuss the lead up to the Vietnam War, the war itself and the aftermath. For the Vietnam War chapter, you might choose three main headings: Before the War, During the War and After the War.

Step 4

Adhere to the outline format. Outlines typically have several different levels; one of the most common formats has heading titles preceded by I, II, III. Subheadings begin with capital letter headings, followed by Arabic numeral headings (1, 2, 3), followed by lowercase Roman numeral headings (i, ii, iii). Label each level of heading and content with both a number or letter and a title, key word, or sentence, and indent each successive level of headings more than the previous level. Use the structure your instructor prefers, if given.

Step 5

Search for the main ideas and subjects as you re-read the chapter and write your outline. Under each main heading, add subheadings that elaborate on the subject, giving additional facts and details. For the Vietnam War, you might have subheadings with key facts about the effects of the American draft on American society and significant events such as the Tet Offensive. Ideas that are part of a main idea should be indented and labeled as a subheading of that idea.

Step 6

Skim the chapter once more when you have finished re-reading the chapter and constructing your outline to check that you have not missed any important information.

1

390

CHAPTER

10

Leadership

Keynote: The Hedgehog, the Fox, Henry V,
or the “Hidden-Hand” Golfer 390

Leading for Performance 393

Defining Leadership 394
Leadership and Management 395
Trait Theories 398
Transactional Approaches 398
Contingency Approaches 400
Transformational Leadership 401
The Importance of Optimism 403

Too Much Leadership 404

Micromanagement 404
Overmanagement 405

Moral Leadership 405

The Bully Pulpit 406
Rhetorical Leadership 406

A Case Study: Transforming the Postal
Service 407

CHAPTER OUTLINE

KEYNOTE: The Hedgehog, the Fox, Henry V,

or the “Hidden-Hand” Golfer

The hedgehog is a small animal similar to a porcupine. When threatened, it rolls up
into a ball so it is protected by the sharp quills covering its body. The fox is a noto-
riously clever, shrewd, and ingenious creature—so much so that “foxy” has become
a synonym for these traits. One fine day in ancient Greece the poet Archilochus
wrote, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
Twenty-six hundred years later Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997), the British political phi-
losopher, used Archilochus’s brief poetic fragment as the basis for The Hedgehog
and the Fox, his now-famous essay on intellectual style, on how leaders think, and
on the utility of animal similes for describing human traits.

Berlin’s essay has inspired a popular parlor game in political circles: classifying
leaders as either hedgehogs or foxes. Hedgehogs are those who are single-minded
about a concept. They know, like the hedgehog, “one big thing.” President Ronald
Reagan was a hedgehog. He knew that capitalism was better for the prosperity of
the peoples of the world than socialism. This basic belief guided both his domestic
policies (lower taxes, less government regulation) and his foreign policies (defeat
communism wherever possible). As a hedgehog he was notorious for not bothering
with the details of policy implementation. But that, of course, was what helped
define him as a hedgehog. Hedgehogs are big-picture, not small-detail, leaders.

Now contrast Reagan with the Democratic presidents who preceded and fol-
lowed him. Both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were policy wonks obsessed with

391Keynote: The Hedgehog, the Fox, Henry V, or the “Hidden-Hand” Golfer

the details. They were both brilliant foxes. They knew all the excruciating details
on all the policies before them. The problem was that they were men who knew too
much. They were so obsessed with details that they never gave their subordinates
in the administration, let alone the American people, a clear vision to follow. They
thought and acted too much tactically and not enough strategically. Foreign policy
to them was essentially a collection of improvisations. In contrast, Reagan’s foreign
policy could be summed up in two words: beat communism.

A hedgehog leader is one who imbues the organization with his or her overall
philosophy of action. It is Elizabeth I heaping “foul scorn” on the 1588 Spanish
armada that unsuccessfully sought to invade England. It is Admiral Horatio Nelson
telling his captains before the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, “No captain can do very
wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.” It is President Abraham
Lincoln in 1863 dedicating the cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and demand-
ing of the nation “that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that
cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion; that we here highly
resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.” Fancy words for “Let’s win
the war.” It is President Franklin D. Roosevelt telling the nation in a radio address
(December 19, 1940) that “we must be the great arsenal of democracy.” And it is
President Ronald Reagan telling a Republican congressional dinner (May 4, 1982),
“We’re the party that wants to see an America in which people can still get rich.”

“Hedgehogic” visions all. These are calls to action that, while simple, are not
simplistic, that offer specific instructions, and that are ultimately inspirational.
After all, the job of a leader is to inspire—and hedgehogs do it better than foxes
because they are more focused, more on target. People will not rally around a
laundry list of little things no matter how worthy each item may be. Foxes may be
brilliant managers and organizers of all the policy details, but management is not
leadership. The original managers, etymologically speaking, were horse trainers.
The word’s meaning was gradually extended to any kind of skillful handling. So
while a fox’s skill in handling situations is generally acknowledged, handling is not
leadership. All the attention to details may not add up to “Follow me!” A leader
with a hedgehogic vision inspires others, while a manager merely delegates.

The presidential election of 2000 offered a direct contrast between a hedge-
hog and a fox. Then Governor George W. Bush knew a few big things: cut taxes,
strengthen the military, and reform education and Social Security. His opponent,
then Vice President Al Gore, wallowed in details. Despite Gore’s obviously better
grasp of the facts at hand, Bush seemed to win the presidential debates because he
stayed on message with his hedgehogic vision. According to columnist Dick Morris,
“It wasn’t that Bush didn’t know the details, but that he didn’t much care. He knows,
instinctively, that details don’t matter as much as big ideas do” (New York Post, Janu-
ary 2, 2001). So President Bush got to be a hedgehog in the White House. He showed
every sign of following in the hedgehogic tradition of Ronald Reagan—except that
while the elderly Reagan sought a nap every afternoon, the energetic Bush headed off
to the gym for a workout. Remember that leaders may have a detached management
style and still be strongly focused on objectives. They just see things differently. They
see to it that their staff deals with the foxy details.

Note that it is Reagan that Bush is imitating here, not his father. The first Pres-
ident Bush, despite being understudy to hedgehog Reagan for eight years, became

392 LeadershipC H A P T E R 1 0

too foxy for his own good. He got off his own message domestically (“Read my
lips—no new taxes”) when he raised taxes. Then his foreign policy of forging a
“new world order” was so vague and complicated—not to mention reminiscent of
Nazi phraseology—that what he meant by it remains elusive to this day. The best
proof that the son will not imitate the father is the glaring fact that the father lost
his 1992 bid for reelection to the fox from Arkansas. Bill Clinton was the ultimate
fox. He put forth one detail after another with no overarching vision. So the public
is all the more ready to follow a presidential hedgehog—especially if there are no
sex or financial scandals that demean the presidential office.

There is no better example in the world’s literature of tactical rhetoric support-
ing a strategic objective than Shakespeare’s Henry V. President George W. Bush
has often been analyzed as a modern Henry V. While still a prince, young Henry
led a degenerate life as a hard-drinking associate of fun-loving ne’er-do-wells—
thieves, prostitutes, and worse. His father despairs that his son, destined to inherit
the throne, will never amount to much. As he approaches death, King Henry IV
advises the prince to cope with his forthcoming domestic problems by making an
effort to “busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels.” The youthful Prince Hal, when
crowned Henry V on his father’s death, takes exactly that advice. Shakespeare has
the new king order his officials to find a legal justification for waging war on
France. Henry then assembles his “band of brothers” and forces them to listen to
some of the most famous, most inspirational, and most quoted lines in all of Shake-
speare. With poetry he rallies them to go “once more into the breach,” compares
them to “greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start,” and has them attack
on the shout of “the game’s afoot!” Thanks to Shakespeare’s stirring words and to
the 1415 Battle of Agincourt, Henry conquers France, thus becoming history’s and
literature’s greatest example of how someone turns out to be a great national hero
after a misspent youth.

Ever since George W. Bush became a serious contender for president, political
commentators have compared him to Henry V as a leader. (Nobody has compared
him to Henry for eloquence.) Like Henry, Bush has a father who led a great nation,
logged a misspent youth replete with frequent alcoholic binges, and ascended to
power. All this links the forty-third president with the legendary English ruler. Yet
the question remains, did Bush end up as much of a hero as Henry V? He cer-
tainly followed Henry in busying “giddy minds with foreign quarrels” with wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq. But Henry V won his wars. In contrast, when Bush left
office in January 2009, he handed off two unfinished wars to his successor, he left
the American economy in the worst shape since the Great Depression, he departed
with record-low approval ratings, and, finally, he left the nation in the hands of an
ascendant left determined to reverse his right-wing agenda. Henry V remains one of
England’s great heroes. George W. Bush, despite his unwavering focus on the war
in Iraq for most of his two terms, is overwhelmingly considered if not a failure, then
less than a success as a president.

President Barack Obama’s leadership style seems to be a hybrid of the hedge-
hog and the fox. In his first few months in office, he laid out a hedgehogic list of big
things to accomplish: conclude two wars, reform health care, stimulate an economy
in deep recession, develop new energy policies, reform education, install new regu-
latory regimes for business and banking, reform immigration policies, and facilitate

393Leading for Performance

peace in the Middle East. He seeks to be an everything-at-once, a hedgehog with a
fox’s control of details.

But perhaps there is another model at work here—that of the “hidden-hand”
golfer. This was Fred I. Greenstein’s description of President Dwight D. Eisenhow-
er’s management style. Outwardly Eisenhower appeared to the public to be an
amiable golfer, a president who would rather spend his days chasing after golf balls
than chasing after legislators to get them to implement his agenda. He left office in
1961 with a reputation as a nice man, truly a beloved figure, who didn’t accomplish
very much as president except to play a lot of golf. That image changed radically
two decades later when Greenstein published the first edition of The Hidden-Hand
Presidency. Greenstein had gone into the archives and discovered that Eisenhower’s
fingerprints, so to speak, were figuratively all over every major policy issue dealt
with by the Congress or the cabinet departments. Eisenhower believed in working
behind the scenes, with what Greenstein termed a “hidden-hand,” to bend the leg-
islature and bureaucracy to his will. Greenstein’s analysis started a major upward
reassessment of Eisenhower’s presidency.

Are there parallels here with the Obama administration? The most obvious is
that President Obama also plays so much golf, so publicly, that he is criticized for it
now as Eisenhower was then. But political observers also complain that Obama is not
as engaged in the policy process as he should be, that he is too laid back. As a result
he has been accused by Ryan Lizza (The New Yorker, May 2, 2011) of “leading
from behind” in foreign and domestic policy. Other journalists have picked up on
the phrase and claimed that “leading from behind” is not leading at all. But this
all sounds very much like an Eisenhower-like “hidden-hand.” Whether Obama’s
“hand” turns out to be as effective as Eisenhower’s remains to be judged.

For Discussion: Why are the hedgehog and fox analogies so useful as shorthand
ways of referring to leadership styles? Have you seen leaders in organizations with
which you are familiar who fit the hedgehog and fox analogies?

LEADING FOR PERFORMANCE

There are many characteristics of public sector management that call for knowl-
edge and skills somewhat distinct from those required in private sector manage-
ment. We have seen how the political context and governance arrangements that
exist in the public sector present constraints and frameworks of decision making
that must be understood and in many respects “managed” by public officials. We
have discussed the special problems in public sector strategic management of con-
verting political programs and managerial imperatives into a well-sequenced path
to be followed. We have examined how the external and internal structures through
which government is managed—intergovernmental relations and the machinery
of government—give a framework that public sector managers must acknowledge
and accommodate if they are to work effectively.

All of these areas, however fundamental, really amount to parts of the context
in which the public sector manager is to operate. It is as though we have examined
a theater—its lighting, its marketing arrangements, its ownership, the way the sup-
porting cast of actors and dancers are hired and fired. But we have now to turn

394 LeadershipC H A P T E R 1 0

to the heart of the question: how good is the performance going to be? What do
the producer and director, the managers, have to do to exact from the cast the best
performances of which they are capable?

The word performance is shared here by the world of management and the the-
atrical world—it also permeates the sporting world. There, too, the task is to exact
a personal best from an athlete or a supreme performance from a team. There, too,
issues such as training, team functioning, leadership, comparison with the best,
total quality in the sense of trying never to miss a trick, and of course strategy
are central ideas. Performance, above all, means the demonstration of a skill, the
display of competence. In public sector management there are now many senses in
which the term is applied. There are so many because knowing what kind of perfor-
mance we are getting and setting up means for individuals and teams to do better
are central concerns of public sector leaders. Thus performance management really
does begin with leadership.

Defining Leadership

As a callow youth, one of the authors of this book took an undergraduate course
in medieval history. Having seen dozens of films in which castles were stormed
by a cast of thousands, this student asked the professor, “How do they get large
numbers of men in real life to storm castles and the like when it appears to be, and
indeed often is, certain death?” The professor’s answer was memorable: “That’s
leadership for you!”

Beastly descriptions of leaders have a long lineage in
political analysis. Perhaps the best known is Niccolò
Machiavelli’s comparison of the lion and the fox in
The Prince (1532):

A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as
a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion
cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot
defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox
to recognize traps and a lion to frighten wolves.

The most famous recent political leader with both
of these animalistic traits was President Franklin D.
Roosevelt (1882–1945). Roosevelt reached the height
of political power despite the fact that, after 1921
when he contracted polio, he was basically confined to
a wheelchair. Yet, because he was able to stand (with

braces) to give speeches and because reporters were
not allowed to take pictures that made him appear to
be disabled, much of the American public was unaware
of his handicapped condition—even though it was not
a secret. His critics attacked him and his wife, Eleanor,
as being either socialist or fascist. But he was just
being pragmatic in response to his times. He was the
President of the United States (1933–1945) whose
New Deal policies are often said to have saved the
capitalistic system; who led the nation through the
Great Depression of the 1930s and to victory in World
War II; and who is on every leading historian’s list,
along with Abraham Lincoln and George Washington,
as one of the best US presidents ever. So it was not
surprising that historian James MacGregor Burns
entitled his 1956 biography of him Roosevelt: The
Lion and the Fox.

BOX 10.1 The Lion and The Fox

395Leading for Performance

And so it is. The job of the leader of any organization is to get people to do
things they have never done before, to do things that are not routine, and to take
risks—and sometimes even to die—for the common good. Once the organization
accepts the credo of Alexander Dumas’s three musketeers—“One for all and all for
one”—then they have been led, and only then have they been molded into an orga-
nization. In essence, that is the most basic task of a leader—to create organization
out of disorder, to make people more capable as a cohesive group than they are as
unorganized individuals.

Leadership is the exercise of authority, whether formal or informal, in directing
and coordinating the work of others. The best leaders are those who can simultane-
ously exercise both kinds of leadership: the formal, based on the authority of rank
or office, and the informal, based on the willingness of others to give service to a
person whose special qualities of authority they admire. It has long been known
that leaders who must rely only on formal authority are at a disadvantage when
compared with those who can also mobilize the informal strength of an organiza-
tion or nation. Shakespeare observed this when in Macbeth (Act V, Scene 2) he has
Angus describe Macbeth’s waning ability to command the loyalty of his troops:

Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love: now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.

Macbeth had become the very definition of an incompetent leader. Once he
lost the respect and admiration of his followers, his organization was as doomed
as he was.

The power that a leader possesses implies a hierarchy of control of stronger
over weaker. J. R. P. French and B. Raven, in “The Bases of Social Power,” suggest
that there are five major bases of power: (1) expert power, which is based on the
perception that the leader possesses some special knowledge or expertise; (2) refer-
ent power, which is based on the follower’s liking, admiring, or identifying with the
leader; (3) reward power, which is based on the leader’s ability to mediate rewards
for the follower; (4) legitimate power, which is based on the follower’s perception
that the leader has the legitimate right or authority to exercise influence over him
or her; and (5) coercive power, which is based on the follower’s fear that noncom-
pliance with the leader’s wishes will lead to punishment. Subsequent research on
these power bases has indicated that the first two (expert and referent power) are
more positively related to subordinate performance and satisfaction than the last
three (reward, legitimate, and coercive power).

Leadership and Management

We need to distinguish between leadership and management. The two functions and
roles overlap substantially. Management involves power (usually formal authority)
bestowed on the occupant of a position by a higher organizational authority. With
the power of management comes responsibility and accountability for the use of
organizational resources. In contrast, leadership cannot be bestowed on a person

396 LeadershipC H A P T E R 1 0

Napoléon Bonaparte (1769–1821) was a master
of modern propaganda. The horsey example in this
picture has Napoléon gloriously pointing the way to
victory in Italy. Life-sized pictures such as this were
commissioned for public display to influence popular
feelings and perceptions of Napoléon. Of course, this
picture by Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825) is a
lie. Note that the rider has a great-looking long leg.
But if Napoléon had legs that size, he would not have
been the subject of so many “short” jokes. And, unlike
generals such as George Washington and Ulysses S.
Grant, who were among the best horsemen of their
age, Napoléon was a notoriously poor rider—often
falling off his horse, especially if it had reared up as
in the picture. This is why he much preferred traveling
by coach. But the greatest misrepresentation here is
that Napoléon crossed the Alps not on a fleet-footed
steed but on a sure-footed mule. Thus this picture is
a good example of Napoléon’s policy of never telling
the truth when a lie would do him more good. After
all, a diminutive Napoléon on a rearing mule would
hardly have had the same emotive punch. The French
wouldn’t have it. The only people ever to be inspired
by mules are members of the Democratic Party in the
United States.

Of course, American presidents don’t do
propaganda. They do photo opportunities. This
President George W. Bush action figure toy was not
authorized by the White House. But it was inspired by
President Bush’s visit to the aircraft carrier Abraham
Lincoln on May 1, 2003. He landed on the flight deck
as a passenger in a military aircraft so all the world
would see him exit in full “top gun” regalia—just like
the action figure. While the photos were optimal, he
was severely criticized for imitating a real warrior
when it was totally unnecessary. After all, the carrier
was within sight of the California coast and his
regular helicopter could have transported him without
the need of a photogenic costume. While he also gave
an internationally televised speech to the crew of the
carrier, the “warrior” photos of the commander in
chief in wartime were the major reason for the trip.
Unfortunately, the photos also reminded his critics
that when Bush had the opportunity to be a real
warrior as a young man during the Vietnam War, he
conspicuously avoided combat by joining the National
Guard. Nevertheless, both Bush and Napoléon knew
that whatever their critics said, all that mattered was
their posturing pictures. And pictures never lie—or
do they?

BOX 10.2 Leading Through Public Relations

397Leading for Performance

by a higher authority. Effective managers must also be leaders, and many leaders
become managers, but the two sets of roles and functions differ.

The subject of leadership raises many complex issues that have plagued the
behavioral sciences for generations. For example, what gives a manager or a leader
legitimacy? Simply put, legitimacy is a characteristic of a social institution, such
as a government, a family, or an organization, whereby it has both a legal and a
perceived right to make binding decisions. Thus managers presumably have legiti-
macy because of the legal and perceived rights that accompany their organizational
positions. In contrast, the legitimacy of a leader—separate and distinct from the
legitimacy of a manager—cannot be addressed without introducing the concept of
charisma, leadership based on the compelling personality of the leader rather than
on formal position.

This last concept was first articulated by Max Weber—who distinguished char-
ismatic authority from the traditional authority of a monarch and the legal authority
one receives by virtue of law, such as the authority that legitimizes organizational
executives. The word charisma is derived from the Greek word for divine grace.
Charismatic leadership, if it is to survive, must eventually be institutionalized or rou-
tinized. Thus the founder of a movement or organization may be a charismatic spell-
binder, but his or her successors are often, of necessity, comparatively dull bureaucrats.

Despite the differences and the unresolved questions, two things are evident:
first, leadership involves a relationship between people in which influence and
power are unevenly distributed on a legitimate basis; and second, a leader cannot
function in isolation. In order for there to be a leader, someone must follow.

Perhaps the most accepted pure definition of the organizational leadership func-
tion comes from Chester I. Barnard. In his 1938 study The Functions of the Execu-
tive, he defines three essential functions of leaders or executives:

1. To provide a system of communication.
2. To promote the securing of essential efforts.
3. To formulate and define the purposes and goals of an organization.

Note how he was decades ahead of his time in arguing that the most critical
function of a chief executive is to establish and communicate a system of organiza-
tional values among organizational members. “The formulation and definition of
purpose is then a widely distributed function only the more general part of which is
executive. In this fact lies the most important inherent difficulty in the operation of
cooperative systems: the necessity for indoctrinating those at the lower levels with
general purposes (Barnard p 233).” Here Barnard is referring to the necessity for
top management to develop and instill a strategic vision for the organization.
“Without that up-and-down-the-line coordination of purposeful decisions, general
decisions and general purposes are mere intellectual processes in an organization
vacuum, insulated from realities by layers of misunderstanding. The function of
formulating grand purposes and providing for their redefinition is one that needs
sensitive systems of communication, experience in interpretation, imagination, and
delegation of responsibility.” Barnard knew, in part because he was a real executive,
that if the value system of the organization was clear and strong, the day-to-day
concerns would take care of themselves.

398 LeadershipC H A P T E R 1 0

Trait Theories

The trait approach to leadership assumes that leaders possess traits—personality
characteristics—that make them fundamentally different from followers. Advo-
cates of trait theory believe that some people have unique leadership characteristics
and qualities that enable them to assume responsibilities not everyone can execute.
Therefore they are “born” leaders.

It is no longer fashionable to contend that people will be effective leaders
because they possess certain traits—without also considering other variables that
influence leadership effectiveness. The arguments against trait theory are persuasive
and come from a number of points of view. First, trait theory has largely fallen out
of favor because reality never matched the theory. Instead, starting in the late 1950s,
it has become standard practice to view leadership as a relationship, an interac-
tion between individuals. The interaction was called a transaction, so that the term
transactional leadership has become the umbrella label encompassing many theo-
ries of leadership. Second, the situation strongly influences leadership. The situation
is now viewed as an enormous influence in determining the qualities, characteristics,
and skills needed in a leader. There is even a law of the situation that deals with this.

Probably the most damaging criticism of trait theory, however, has been its lack
of ability to identify which traits make an effective leader. Even among the traits that
have been most commonly cited—intelligence, energy, achievement, dependability,
and socioeconomic status—there is a lack of consensus across studies. The most
obvious proof that leadership involves more than possessing certain traits is the
simple fact that a leader may be effective in one setting and ineffective in another. It
all depends on the situation.

Transactional Approaches

While the central question for the trait approach was who was a leader, transac-
tional approaches sought to determine how leadership was established and exerted.
Leadership-style-oriented transactional approaches all follow in the tradition of
the famous K. Lewin, R. Lippitt, and R. K. White (1939) studies of the effectiveness
of leadership styles on the group efforts of 10-year-old children engaged in hobby
activities. The leader in each group was classified as having an authoritarian, a
democratic, or laissez-faire orientation.

Authoritarian leaders determined all policies, set all work assignments, were
personal in their criticisms, and were product (or task) oriented. Democratic leaders
shared decision-making powers with subordinates, left decisions about assignments
up to the group, and participated …

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