Leadership at Universität Giessen

“Leadership is the process of influencing others to understand and
agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the
process of individual and facilitating (erleichtern) collective efforts to accomplish
shared objectives (gemeinsame Ziele).”

• Economic Effectiveness: Organizational perspective, direct contributions to company goals (e.g. productivity, quality, profit)
• Socio-psychological effectiveness: Human perspective, contributions to employees' needs(e.g. (job satisfaction, absenteeism, turnover)

• Theories directly related to leadership processes
• May explain antecedent (alte?) conditions of leadership
• May outline how a leader can effectively influence followers

= Must be empirically testable and enable practical application

• What is the origin of a leader's power?
• Which tactics can leaders use to effectively influence their followers?

• Rights, responsibilities, and duties associated with one’s position in the organization
• Formal authority ≠ power or influence
  – A potential source of power
  – May increase one’s influence possibilities

• Expertise is relevant across team contexts
• Dominance is only helpful in highly competitive teams

• stability of the power position
• behavioral control and accountability
• individual and cultural differences

• Resistance: No change, refusal to conform, maybe active resistance
• Compliance: Only behavioral change, conformity, but little effort and enthusiasm
• Commitment: behavioral and attitudinal changes, enthusiasm, inspiration, persistence, great effort to achieve desired goals

1. some onfluence tactics require specific sources of power (reward power -> exchange)
2. Power can determine the effectiveness of an influence tactic (rational persuasion may be more effective with high expert power)
3. power can directly produce specific results, without active influence (high position power -> anticipatory obedience)

• Why do leaders treat different followers differently?
• What are the consequences?

• Leaders look for reasons why a subordinate may behave or perfom a certain way
• These "attributions" (Zuordnung/Zuschreibung) shape a leader's behavior toward a subordinate
• They are often based on subjective interpretations

> May be incorrect

> May differ across subordinates and contexts

• followers try to uncover competences and intentions of leaders = attributions
• attribution often are based pn subjective interpretations and/or stereotypes