Queen Essays

Group Dynamics

Donelson Forsyth

Forsyth, D. (2018). Group Dynamics (7th ed.). Cengage Learning US.  https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9798214344799

Chapter 8. Power

Power is a group-level process, predicated on differentiation in each member’s capacity to influence others. Those with power sometimes make demands that others in the group try to resist, but they also influence by persuading, cajoling, and maneuvering. Power processes can trigger conflict, tension, and animosity, but these same processes also promote order, stability, and efficiency. We would not be social beings if we were immune to the impact of power, but power can corrupt.

What are the limits of an authority’s power?

What are the sources of power in groups?

What are the sources of status in groups?

Does gaining power have a transformative effect on people?

How do people react when power is used to influence them?

Chapter Outline

8-1

Obedience to Authority

8-1a

The Milgram Experiments

8-1b

Milgram’s Findings

8-1c

The Power of the Milgram Situation

8-2

Social Power in Groups

8-2a

Bases of Power

8-2b

Bases and Obedience

8-2c

Power Tactics

8-3

Social Status in Groups

8-3a

Claiming Status

8-3c

Achieving Status

8-3d

Status Hierarchies and Stability

8-4

The Metamorphic Effects of Power

8-4a

Changes in the Powerholder

8-4b

Reactions to the Use of Power

8-4c

Who Is Responsible?

Chapter Review

Resources

The People’s Temple: The Metamorphic Effects of Power

The members of the People’s Temple Full Gospel Church were united by a shared vision of a world much better than this one. Jim Jones, the group’s founder, was an inspiring leader who decried the racism, inequality, and spiritual emptiness of American society. He won the respect of his community, and, under his charismatic leadership, the congregation grew to 8,000 members. But the church, and Jones, had a dark side. Former members reported that at some services, people were beaten before the congregation, with microphones used to amplify their screams. Jones, some said, insisted on being called Father, and he demanded dedication and absolute obedience from his followers. He asked members to donate their property to the church, and he even forced one family to give him their six-year-old son.

Jones, to transform his church into a collective society free from the interference of outsiders, moved the entire congregation to Guyana, in South America. He called the isolated settlement Jonestown and claimed that it would be the model for a new way of living where all would find love, happiness, and well-being. But the men, women, and children of Jonestown did not find contentment. They found, instead, a group that exercised incredible power over their destiny. Jones asked members to make great personal sacrifices for the group, and time and again they obeyed. They worked long hours in the fields. They were given little to eat. They were forbidden to communicate with their loved ones back home. When a congressional delegation from the United States visited, disaster struck: An armed group of church members attacked and killed the outsiders.

Jones, fearing the dismantling of all he had worked to create, ordered his followers to take their own lives. When authorities reached the settlement, they could not believe the scope of the tragedy. On Jones’s orders, 908 men, women, and children had either killed themselves or been killed by other followers. One resident wrote this entry (his last) in his journal that day: “We are begging only for some understanding. It will take more than small minds … to fathom these events. Something must come of this” (quoted in Scheeres, 2011, p. 237).

Few interactions advance very far before elements of power and influence come into play. The police officer asking the driver for the car’s registration, the teacher scowling at the errant student, and the boss telling an employee to get back to work—all are relying on social power to influence others. In many cases group members nudge rather than push; they suggest rather than pressure. But in other cases their influence can be extraordinarily strong. Rather than subtly shaping opinions and choices, some can compel others to do things they would rather not do. Here we consider the sources of that power and the consequences of power for those who wield it as well as those who are subjected to it (Cartwright, 1959).

8-1. Obedience to Authority

Why did the Jonestown group obey Jones’s orders? Some blamed Jim Jones—his persuasiveness, his charisma, his depravity. Others emphasized the kind of people who join such groups—their psychological instability, their willingness to identify with causes, and their religious fervor. But such explanations underestimate the power of groups and their leaders. As Chapter 7 noted, groups influence members’ thoughts, actions, and feelings—with results that range from the ordinary and every day to the extraordinary and extreme. But can group members be so bent to the will of an authority that they would follow any order, no matter how noxious? Social psychologist Stanley Milgram’s (1963, 1974) experimental studies of obedience to authority suggest that they can.

8-1a. The Milgram Experiments

Stanley Milgram carried out his now-famous studies in the early 1960s. Intrigued by people’s tendency to do as they are told, he tested American subjects’ reactions to an experimenter who ordered them to do something they would normally not do—to harm a person innocent of any wrongdoing.

The Obedience Situation

Milgram studied obedience by creating small groups in his laboratory at Yale University. In most cases, he studied three-man groups: One member was a volunteer who had answered an advertisement; one was the experimenter who was in charge of the session; and one appeared to be another participant but was in actuality part of the research team. This confederate looked to be in his late 40s, and he seemed friendly and a little nervous. The self-assured experimenter set the group’s agenda, explained their task, issued orders, and assigned the participants to one of two roles—teacher or learner. Teachers read a series of paired words (blue box, nice day, wild duck, etc.) to the learner who was supposed to memorize the pairings. The teacher would later check the learner’s ability to recall the pairs by reading the first word in the pair and several possible answers (e.g., blue: sky, ink, box, lamp). Failures would be punished by an electric shock. What the volunteer did not know, however, was that the confederate was always assigned to the learner role and that the learner did not actually receive shocks.

After assigning the participants to their roles, the experimenter took both group members into the next room where he strapped the learner into a chair that was designed “to prevent excessive movement during the shock.” As the experimenter attached an electrode to his wrist, the confederate asked if the shocks were dangerous. “Oh, no,” answered the experimenter, “although the shocks can be extremely painful, they cause no permanent tissue damage” (Milgram, 1974, p. 19).

The experimenter then led the participant back to the other room and seated him at the shock generator. This bogus machine, which Milgram himself fabricated, featured a row of 30 electrical switches. Each switch, when depressed, would supposedly send a shock to the learner. The shock level of the first switch on the left was 15 volts V, the next switch was 30, the next was 45, and so on, all the way up to 450 V. Milgram also labeled the voltage levels, from Slight Shock to Danger: Severe Shock as shown in Figure 8.1. The final two switches were marked XXX. The rest of the face of the shock generator was taken up by dials, lights, and meters that flickered whenever a switch was pressed.

The experimenter administered a sample shock of 45 V to “strengthen the subject’s belief in the authenticity of the generator” (Milgram, 1974, p. 20). Then, speaking into a microphone, the teacher read the list of word pairs and then began “testing” the learner’s memory. Each time the teacher read a word and the response alternatives, the learner indicated his response by pushing one of four numbered switches that were just within reach of his bound hand. His response lit up on the participant’s control panel. Participants were to deliver one shock for each mistake and increase the voltage one step after delivering a punishment.

The Demands (Prods)

Milgram set the stage for the order-giving phase by having the learner make mistakes deliberately. Although participants punished that first mistake with just a 15-V jolt, each subsequent failure was followed by a stronger shock. At the 300-V level, the learner also began to protest the shocks by pounding on the wall, and, after the next shock of 315 V, he stopped responding altogether. Most participants assumed that the session was over at this point, but the experimenter told them to treat a failure to respond as a wrong answer and to continue delivering the shocks. When the participants balked, the experimenter, who was seated at a separate desk near the teacher’s, would use a sequence of prods to goad them into action (Milgram, 1974, p. 21):

Prod 1: “Please continue,” or “Please go on.”

Prod 2: “The experiment requires that you continue.”

Prod 3: “It is absolutely essential that you continue.”

Prod 4: “You have no other choice; you must go on.”

The situation was extremely realistic and served as a laboratory analog to real-world groups when authorities give orders to subordinates. The experimenter acted with self-assurance and poise. He gave orders crisply, as if he never questioned the correctness of his own actions, and he seemed surprised that the teacher would try to terminate the shock sequence. Yet from the participant’s point of view, this authority was requiring them to act in a way that was harmful to another person. When they accepted the $4.50 payment, they implicitly agreed to carry out the experimenter’s instructions, but they were torn between this duty and their desire to protect the learner from possible harm. Milgram designed his experiment to determine which side would win in this conflict.

8-1b. Milgram’s Findings

Milgram was certain that very few of his participants would carry out the experimenter’s orders. He went so far as to purchase special equipment that would let him record the duration of each shock administered, expecting that few participants would give more than four or five shocks (Elms, 1995). So he was surprised when 26 of the 40 (65%) individuals who served as teachers in the initial experiment administered the full 450 V to the presumably helpless learner (see Figure 8.1). Most of the participants resisted, challenging the experimenter again and again each time he told them to continue. But no one broke off before the 300-V level or checked on the learner when he failed to answer. The comments made by the participants during the shock procedure and their obvious psychological distress revealed that they were reluctant to go on but felt unable to resist the experimenter’s demands for obedience.

Perplexed, Milgram studied over 800 people in a series of replications and extensions of his original study. Although he continued to search for the limits of obedience, again and again his participants buckled under the pressure of the experimenter’s power.

Harm versus Rights

In the original version of the study, the participants heard only a pounding on the wall when they pressed down the switch for 300 V. So Milgram added additional cues that signaled the learner’s suffering and an emotional entreaty for release. In the voice-feedback condition, the learner’s shouts and pleas (carefully rehearsed and tape-recorded) could be heard through the wall. At 75 V, he grunted. At 120 V, he shouted out. Painful cries continued to escalate in intensity until the 180-V level when he shouted “I can’t stand the pain” (Milgram, 1974, p. 23).

What Made Them Stop?

After pretesting his procedures, Milgram added the sound of the learner’s grunts, groans, and screams, thinking that this clear evidence of the harm would prompt participants to resist the experimenter’s orders. But when social psychologist Dominic Packer (2008a) re-examined the results of eight of Milgram’s studies meta-analytically, he found no association at all between obedience and the learner’s cries of pain: screams did not prompt teachers to disobey. But he did discover a clear inflection point in the data—a place where far more participants stopped following orders and pushed back from the shock machine: the 150-V level. It was the participant’s protest “Get me out of here! I won’t be in the experiment anymore! I refuse to go on!” delivered at that level that triggered a refusal to continue (Milgram, 1974, p. 23). Packer concludes that the learner’s invocation of his rights created a qualitative change in the balance of power in the situation. When they heard the learner withdraw his consent to participate, many realized “that the learner’s right to end the experiment trumped the experimenter’s right to give orders to the contrary” (2008a, p. 303).

These changes did not substantially reduce the level of obedience, for 62.5% of the participants still obeyed to the 450-V level. So Milgram increased the possibility of significant harm in the heart-problem condition. When the experimenter connected the wires to his arm, the learner mentioned that he had a heart condition and asked about complications. The experimenter said that the shocks would cause no permanent damage. When shocked, the learner’s groans and shouts of protest could be heard through the wall, and he also repeatedly complained that his heart was bothering him. Even when the learner stopped responding after 330 V, 65% of the participants continued to administer shocks to the 450-V level.

Proximity and Surveillance Effects

In earlier versions of the study, the teacher and learner were separated by a glass observation window. Milgram noticed that, even though teachers could see the learner react to the shocks, most averted their eyes and expressed discomfort at having to watch. So, to make the consequences of their actions even clearer to subjects, Milgram moved the learner into the same room as the teacher. In the proximity condition, the learner sat in the same room as the teacher, voicing the same complaints used in the voice-feedback condition and writhing with pain at each shock. Obedience dropped to 40%. In the most extreme of all the variations, the touch-proximity condition, the learner sat next to the teacher and received his shock when he put his hand on a shock plate. At the 150-V level, he refused to put his hand down on the plate, so the experimenter gave the participant an insulated glove and told him to press the learner’s hand down onto the plate as he depressed the shock switch. Still, 30% obeyed.

Milgram also examined the impact of increased distance between the experimenter and the teacher on rates of obedience by having the experimenter leave the room after he reviewed the procedures with the participant. He continued giving orders to the participant by telephone, but he lost his ability to monitor the subject’s actions. In this low surveillance condition, 25% of the participants stopped as soon as the learner insisted on release (the 150-V level). Only 20% of the participants were obedient to the 450-V level, and many participants disobeyed by deceiving the authority—they assured the experimenter that they were administering increasingly large shocks with each mistake when they were actually only delivering 15 V.

Prestige and Legitimacy

Milgram conducted his initial studies on the campus of Yale University, which most people recognize as a prestigious center of learning and science. Milgram was concerned that people obeyed the experimenter because he was perceived to be a “Yale scientist” and could therefore be trusted to act appropriately. So, in the office-building condition, Milgram moved the study to a building located in a shopping area. “When subjects inquired about professional affiliations, they were informed only that we were a private firm conducting research for industry” (Milgram, 1974, pp. 68–69). Obedience dropped to 48%—still a surprisingly large figure given the unknown credentials of the staff. However, two individuals refused to give any shocks at all.

Milgram next diminished the authority’s legitimacy by arranging for the orders to come from someone other than the expert experimenter. In the ordinary-man variation, he added a fourth member to the group who was given the task of recording the shock levels used. The experimenter explained the study, as in the other conditions, but gave no instructions about shock levels before he was called away. The new participant, who was actually a confederate, filled the role of the authority; he suggested that shocks be given in increasingly strong doses and ordered the participant to continue giving shocks when the learner started to complain. Obedience dropped to 20%. But when the participants refused to continue, the confederate left the experimenter’s desk and began administering the shocks. In this case, most of the participants (68.75%) stood by and watched without stopping the confederate—although one “large man, lifted the zealous shocker from his chair, threw him to a corner of the laboratory, and did not allow him to move until he had promised not to administer further shocks” (1974, p. 97).

Milgram further explored the legitimacy of the authority in the authority-as-victim condition. Here the experimenter agreed to take the role of the learner, supposedly to convince a reluctant learner that the shocks were not harmful. The experimenter tolerated the shocks up to 150 V, but then he shouted, “That’s enough, gentlemen!” The confederate, who had been watching the procedure, then insisted, “Oh, no, let’s go on. Oh, no, come on, I’m going to have to go through the whole thing. Let’s go. Come on, let’s keep going” (Milgram, 1974, p. 97). In all cases, the participant released the experimenter; obedience to the ordinary person’s command to harm the authority was nil.

Group Effects

Milgram (1974) studied obedience rather than conformity, since the authority did not himself engage in the action he demanded of the teacher and the teacher faced the power of the authority alone. But Milgram recognized that in many cases authorities give orders to groups rather than lone individuals, and the group may be a second source of power in the situation—either in standing against the authority or taking sides with him. So Milgram arranged for groups to administer the shocks. In the two peers rebel condition, Milgram added two more confederates to the situation. They posed as fellow participants and the three worked together to deliver the shocks to the learner. One read the list of words, one gave the verbal feedback to the learner, and the participant pushed the shock button. The subject sat before the shock machine, and the other group members sat on either side.

The confederates played out their roles until the learner cried out in pain at 150 V. Then, one of the confederates refused to continue and left the table. The experimenter could not convince him to return and ordered the remaining two to continue. However, at the 210-V mark, the second confederate quit as well, explaining, “I’m not going to shock that man against his will” (1974, p. 118). Only the real subject was left to give the shocks, and, in most cases, he sided with the group and refused to obey. Only 10% of the participants were fully obedient. Membership in a group helped participants defy the authority.

But what if an individual is part of a group that was obedient? In the peer administers shock condition, the subject was given subsidiary tasks, such as reading the questions and giving feedback, but he did not push the shock button; a second subject (actually, a confederate), who was fully compliant, did so. In this variation, 37 of the 40 people tested (92.5%) obediently fulfilled their tasks without intervening. As Milgram explained, “They are accessories to the act of shocking the victim, but they are not psychologically implicated in it to the point where strain arises” (1974, p. 118).

And what if the participant and the learner were themselves members of a group? In a variation of the study conducted at the office-building site, Milgram arranged for participants to bring a second person—a friend or colleague—with them to the study. The study proceeded as usual, but with one change: Milgram coached the participant assigned to the learner role to pretend he was receiving the shocks. In this unusual variation of the study, 85% of the participants refused to continue before reaching the maximum shock voltage, and they refused sooner in the shock sequence than in other conditions. As one explained, “I can’t continue doing this. I have to face this guy. He’s my neighbor and I can’t go on with this” (Rochat & Blass, 2014, p. 456; see Figure 8.2 for a summary).

8-1c. The Power in the Milgram Situation

Milgram’s studies of obedience continue to provoke discussion, debate, and even disputes about their methods, ethics, and implications (Brannigan, Nicholson, & Cherry, 2015). Were the studies a tour de force of scientific rigor? Some investigators, after examining documents and records of the studies archived at the Yale University Library, have identified inconsistencies in Milgram’s descriptions of the procedures (e.g., Perry, 2013). Others have challenged the work on moral grounds. Milgram’s participants were not just put through a highly stressful procedure without full consent, but they were also deceived and, in some cases, never even told that the shocks were a sham (Griggs, 2017). The work, too, raises important questions about human nature, our capacity to resist the orders of malevolent authorities, and the degree to which the claim “I was only following orders” exculpates us from responsibility for harmful actions (Miller, 2016).

Challenges and Replications

Most people, including both experts and laypersons alike, were surprised by the level of obedience Milgram discovered in his research. When Milgram asked panels of psychiatrists, college students, and middle-class adults to make predictions about how people would act in his experiment, only a few predicted anyone would give more than 180 V. The high levels of obedience Milgram recorded prompted some to suggest that the participants were not taken in by Milgram’s subterfuge. They suggested that the participants knew that no shocks were being administered, but they played along so as not to ruin the study (Orne & Holland, 1968). Milgram’s research team, however, interviewed all the participants, and fewer than 20% challenged the reality of the situation (Elms, 1995). Moreover, if participants saw through the elaborate duplicity, then why did they become so upset? According to Milgram,

Many subjects showed signs of nervousness in the experimental situation, and especially upon administering the more powerful shocks. In a large number of cases the degree of tension reached extremes that are rarely seen in sociopsychological laboratory studies. Subjects were observed to sweat, tremble, stutter, bite their lips, groan, and dig their fingernails into their flesh. (1963, p. 375)

The distress of the participants was so great that the publication of the study sparked a controversy over the ethics of research (Herrer, 2013). Many trace improvements in the level of protection for participants, such as the review of social and behavioral science studies by institutional review boards, back to Milgram’s work (Schrag, 2010).

Others note that Milgram’s subjects were mostly men, they were paid, and they lived at a time when people trusted authorities more than they do now (Twenge, 2009). Yet, replications of the study using different procedures and participants have generally confirmed Milgram’s initial findings (Blass, 2012). Many believe that the level of obedience that Milgram documented in his laboratory matches levels found in military, organizational, and educational settings (Fiske, Harris, & Cuddy, 2004; Hinrichs, 2007; Pace & Hemmings, 2007).

Other experts, when trying to explain why so many people obeyed, pointed to the participants themselves, suggesting they were unusual individuals and unrepresentative in some way. Just as many people, when first hearing of the Guyana tragedy, wondered, “What strange people they must have been to be willing to kill themselves,” when people are told about Milgram’s findings, they react with the question, “What kind of evil, sadistic men did he recruit for his study?” Yet, by all accounts, Milgram’s participants were normal and well-adjusted (see Blass, 1991, for an analysis). The people who took part in Milgram’s study differed from one another in age, personality, and life experiences, and they also differed in their response to the experimenter’s orders. Some broke off at the first sign of trouble from the learner, others obeyed until the learner stopped answering, and others continued until the shocks reached levels they felt were too dangerous. But age and occupation did not predict these variations.

Are People Still Obedient?

Many things have changed since Milgram conducted his study, and one of those things might be obedience to authority. Would people born in the second half of the twentieth century be so willing to obey an authority (Twenge, 2009)?

Milgram’s study can never be exactly replicated given the level of distress his participants experienced and procedures that are now required to protect subjects from harm. However, social psychologist Jerry Burger (2009), by modifying aspects of the Milgram situation that caused the greatest stress for participants, was able to test 70 men and women in 2006. Burger used a facsimile of the original shock machine (complete with the “Shock Generator, Type ZLB, Dyson Instrument Company, Waltham, Mass. Output 15 volts–450 volts” label on the side), an innocent male victim who cried out in pain and demanded to be released, and an experimenter who delivered well-rehearsed prods if participants balked. But Burger ended the study when participants administered 150 V and appeared to be continuing on to the next set of word pairs. He also hired a clinical psychologist who interviewed each potential participant so as to eliminate anyone who might have “a negative reaction to participating in the study” (Burger, 2009, p. 6).

In the 1960s, 82.5% of the men continued past the 150-V level. But in 2006, 70% of the men and women Burger tested were similarly obedient—a decline, but not a statistically significant one. Women were just as obedient as men, and those subjects tested in a group with a confederate who refused to continue were only slightly less obedient (63.3%). People are still obedient after all these years.

The Riddle of Obedience

If Milgram’s studies are methodologically sound and the obedience he observed does not reflect his subjects’ peculiarities, then why did so many obey the orders of the authority? “It is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act,” explains Milgram (1974, p. 205). The subjects had no power in the setting. The experimenter gave the orders, and the subjects followed those orders. Maybe they wanted to resist the commands of the experimenter, but like the hapless members of the People’s Temple, they could not. As we will see in the next section, those who control the bases of power in a situation influence others, and those who do not are the targets of that influence.

8-2. Social Power in Groups

Milgram created a complex social situation in his Yale laboratory. Those who entered into it were pressured to act in ways that were inconsistent with their values, and some yielded to this pressure. He succeeded in controlling others’ actions to promote his own goals “without their consent, against their will, or without their knowledge or understanding” (Buckley, 1967, p. 186). But just as Jim Jones did not use physical force to coerce his followers into leaving their homes in the United States and joining him in Jonestown, Milgram’s experimenter did not resort to threats of violence or punishment to extract high levels of obedience from participants. But both the Jonestown residents and many of the Milgram subjects followed orders. Why?

8-2a. Bases of Power

Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell concluded many years ago that “the fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics” (1938/2004, p. 4). The conquest of one civilization by another, the persistence of social inequalities, revolutions and rebellions, and the obedience of the members of the People’s Temple and Milgram’s subjects—all are inexplicable if one does not understand power. Russell added, however, that power takes many forms, so to understand the “laws of social dynamics … it is necessary first to classify the forms of power” (1938/2004, p. 6).

Social psychologists John R. P. French and Bertram Raven’s (1959) theory of power bases answers Russell’s challenge. French and Raven recognized that power is relational and rooted in inequalities in control over resources and punishments. When a person’s experience of positive and negative outcomes depends on another person who is not similarly dependent in return, differences in power result. French and Raven identified and differentiated the five forms of power shown in Figure 8.3: reward, coercive, legitimate, referent, and expert power. Raven (1965, 2008), drawing on his subsequent studies of influence, added a sixth base: informational power.

Reward Power

Jones’s reward power was considerable because he controlled the allocation of both impersonal and personal rewards. Impersonal rewards are material resources, such as food, shelter, protection, promotions, wages, and awards. Personal rewards are positive interpersonal reinforcements, such as verbal approbation, compliments, smiles, and promises of liking or acceptance. Both types of rewards are potent sources of power, particularly during times of scarcity (Emerson, 1962). Money and food, for example, are valued resources, but they become a source of power when the rest of the group is penniless and starving. Rewards that one controls exclusively are also more likely to augment one’s power, so Jones power increased when he isolated the church members in Jonestown (Cook, Cheshire, & Gerbasi, 2006).

Ironically, when followers’ dependence on a leader increases, this dependence often triggers increases in respect, trust, and deference (van der Toorn, Tyler, & Jost, 2011). Dependence also increases the perceived value of rewards from those who are powerful. A smile from Jim Jones, for example, was far more rewarding than a smile from a rank-and-file member. Researchers investigated this phenomenon by giving group members the opportunity to trade goods of equal monetary value with other group members. Most were willing to pay more for goods they received from a high-status group member, and they considered those resources to be more valuable, important, and worth having. Because powerful individuals’ rewards were overvalued by others, they did not need to expend as many of their resources to achieve the same level of success in the exchange as did those members with low power, their resources tended to grow rather than diminish (Thye, 2000).

Coercive Power

Jones used threats and punishment as a means of exacting obedience from his followers. When members broke the rules or disobeyed his orders, he was quick to punish them with beatings, solitary confinement, denials of food and water, and long hours of labor in the fields.

Coercive power derives from one’s capacity to dispense punishments, both impersonal and personal, to others. Terrorists attacking other countries, employers threatening employees with the loss of pay or dismissal, and teachers punishing mischievous students with extra assignments are all relying on impersonal coercive bases of power. Disagreeing friends insulting and humiliating one another, the boss shouting angrily at his secretary, and religious leaders threatening members with loss of grace or ostracism derive their power from personal sources (Pierro, Kruglanski, & Raven, 2012; Raven, 2008).

Certain people consistently rely on coercion to influence others, but most only turn to coercive power when they feel it is the only means they have to influence others (Kramer, 2006). When individuals who are equal in coercive power interact, they often learn over time to avoid the use of their power (Lawler & Yoon, 1996). Group members also prefer to use reward power rather than coercive power if both are available and they fear reprisals from others in the group should they act in a coercive way (Molm, 1997). In consequence, and paradoxically, individuals in positions of authority who feel relatively powerless are more likely to use coercion than more powerful individuals (Bugental, 2010).

Obedience to Authority: Cooperation or Capitulation?

Milgram theorized that those participants who obeyed entered into what he called the agentic state; as agents of a higher authority, they no longer thought for themselves, but only carried out the experimenter’s orders no matter what the cost (Milgram, 1974). Subsequent studies, however, offer an alternative explanation—one based on cooperation instead of capitulation. The subjects, rather than viewing themselves as subordinates taking orders from a superior, thought of themselves as collaborators working on a scientific study of learning. They identified more with the researcher, rather than the learner, and it was that identification that caused them to continue to administer shocks even when the learner protested (Haslam, Reicher, & Birney, 2014; Reicher & Haslam, 2011).

This reinterpretation of Milgram’s findings is supported by the marked ineffectiveness of the fourth and final prod used by Milgram’s experimenter: “You have no other choice: you must go on” (1974, p. 21). Unlike the first three prods, which implied the shocks were necessary for scientific purposes, this prod was an order. And this order failed, consistently, to generate compliance, both in the original Milgram studies (Gibson, 2011) and in subsequent replications. Burger, for example, found that the majority of his participants continued onward after being told “Please continue,” but no one—not one—continued after receiving the fourth, “you must go on,” prod (Burger, 2009; Burger, Girgis, & Manning, 2011). Similarly, in a clever replication conducted online (participants were required to say very mean things about groups of people), obedience rates were lowest when reluctant participants were nudged with the commanding fourth prod rather than the more legitimate “the experiment requires you continue” prod (Haslam et al., 2014). These findings lend support to an engaged followership model: “participants’ willingness to continue with an objectionable task is predicated upon active identification with the scientific project and those leading it” (Haslam et al., 2014, p. 473). This explanation reframes Milgram’s study, suggesting participants did not cave in to the demands of an authority but instead were cooperative contributors to a scientific project.

Legitimate Power

Individuals who have legitimate power have the socially sanctioned right to ask others to obey their orders. The security personnel at the airport telling a passenger to remove her shoes, the professor waiting for the class to become quiet before a lecture, and the minister interpreting the Gospel for the congregation are powerful because they have the right to command others, and others are obligated to obey. Jones, for example, was the legitimate head of the People’s Temple. He was an ordained minister; his work had been commended by many political and religious leaders, and he had received such honors as the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award. When individuals joined the People’s Temple, they tacitly agreed to follow Jones’s orders.

Those who rely on reward or coercive power often find that their influence dwindles when their control over resources diminishes. In contrast, those with legitimate power find that their decisions are accepted, without resistance, by others in the group (Tyler, 2005). Members obey these legitimate authorities because they personally accept the norms of the group. Their obedience is not coerced but voluntary, for it springs from an internalized sense of loyalty to the group rather than the desire to gain resources or avoid harm. Even duly appointed or selected authorities will lose their legitimate power, however, if they consistently act in ways that are viewed as unfair or they repeatedly cause harm to the group and its members (Lammers et al., 2008). Those who engage in unethical behavior or fail to show proper respect for their followers, for example, run the risk of losing the members’ loyalty—and once loyalty is gone so is the willingness to obey (Tyler & Blader, 2003).

Referent Power

Who is the best-liked member of the group? Who is the most respected? Is there someone in the group whom everyone wants to please? The individual with referent power occupies the interpersonal center of the group. Just as group members seek out membership in selective, desirable groups, so they identify with and seek close association with respected, attractive group members. The members of the People’s Temple were devoted to Jones—to the point where they loved, admired, and identified with him. Many made financial and emotional sacrifices in the hope of pleasing him. As one of his followers explained, Jones “was the God I could touch” (quoted in Reston, 2000, p. 25).

The concept of referent power explains how charismatic leaders manage to exert so much control over their groups (Flynn, 2010). Sociologist Max Weber first used the term charisma to account for the almost irrational devotion that some followers exhibit for their leaders. People often refer to a charming leader as charismatic, but Weber reserved the term to describe the tremendous referent and legitimate power of the “savior–leader.” Charisma originally described a special power given by God to certain individuals. These individuals were capable of performing extraordinary, miraculous feats, and they were regarded as God’s representatives on earth (Weber, 1956/1978). Weber argued that charismatic leaders do not have unique, wondrous powers, but they succeed because their followers think they have unique, wondrous powers. Weber himself was struck by the charismatic leader’s power to demand actions that contradict established social norms: “Every charismatic authority … preaches, creates, or demands new obligations—most typically, by virtue of revelation, oracle, inspiration, or of his own will” (1956/1978, p. 243). Charismatic leaders, such as Jones, usually appear on the scene when a large group of people is dissatisfied or faces a stressful situation. The leader offers these people a way to escape their problems, and the masses react with intense loyalty.

Expert Power

Group members often defer to and take the advice of those who seem to possess superior skills and abilities. A physician interpreting a patient’s symptoms, a local resident giving directions to an out-of-towner, and a computer technician advising a user—all transform their special knowledge into expert power.

As with most of the power bases identified by French and Raven, a person does not actually need to be an expert to acquire expert power; the person must only be perceived by others to be an expert (Kaplowitz, 1978; Littlepage & Mueller, 1997). Researchers demonstrated the impact of perceived expertise on influence by arranging for dyads to work on a series of problems. Half of the participants were led to believe that their partner’s ability on the task was superior to their own, and the rest were told that their partner possessed inferior ability. As the concept of expert power suggests, people who thought that their partners were experts accepted the partner’s recommendations an average of 68% of the time, whereas participants paired with partners thought to be inferior accepted their recommendations only 42% of the time (Foschi, Warriner, & Hart, 1985).

Informational Power

In 1965, Raven separated out informational power from expert power: Group members can turn information into power by providing it to others who need it, by keeping it from others, by organizing it, increasing it, or even falsifying it. Some individuals achieve informational power by deliberately manipulating or obscuring information or at least making certain that the information remains a secret shared by only a few group members. Other individuals are recognized as the keepers of the group’s truths or secrets, and these individuals must be consulted before the group makes a decision (Fine & Holyfield, 1996). People who share information with others can achieve informational power, even by passing unverified and, in some cases, private information through the group’s “grapevine” (Kurland & Pelled, 2000). Individuals who pass along the latest gossip (personal and, in many cases, scurrilous information about others) or rumors (information that is potentially useful and relevant, but is unsubstantiated) are using informational power to influence others (DiFonzo, 2008).

What Are Your Bases of Power?

People differ in their degree of personal assertiveness—across situations some people are more forceful than others. But French and Raven’s (1959) theory of power bases traces power to its interpersonal sources and so is group specific: A person who is powerful in one group may have relatively little power in another.

Instructions

To examine the relationship between power and the group processes that sustain that power, from the many groups to which you belong, identify the one where you are the most influential—one where you can change the thoughts, actions, or emotions of others in the group. Then put a check by each item which accurately describes your experiences in this group.

Reward Power

The members appreciate it when I praise or compliment them.

The members know that I can reward them.

I can give members the things they want.

I control the distribution of rewards that the members value.

Coercive Power

I can take the steps needed to end a person’s membership in this group.

Members take my reprimands or criticisms very seriously.

I can reduce or end members’ privileges and/or benefits.

I can sanction, in a negative way, members of this group.

Legitimate Power

I hold a position of authority in this group.

I have the right to require compliance with my requests.

Other members of this group are supposed to do what I ask them to do.

I am a recognized leader in this group.

Referent Power

Members do things for me because of our friendship.

I have built strong positive relationships with the members of this group.

I am admired by many members of this group.

The other members of the group respect or identify with me.

Expert Power

Members know I have strong skills and abilities.

This group relies on my extensive background and experience.

I am considered to be an expert by others in this group.

Others regard me as skilled in ways that are valued by this group.

Informational Power

Members appreciate and accept my interpretations and suggestions.

Members listen to what I have to say.

Members rely on me to provide them with accurate, useful information.

Members seek me out when they need information.

Scoring:

If you checked three of the four indicators in any one set, then that base of power is secure in that particular group. Remember, though, that power is relative. Even though you may have checked many of the boxes, if others in your group can check even more, they may be more influential in this group than you are.

8-2b. Bases and Obedience

Was the experimenter in the Milgram study powerful, as French and Raven define power? Even though the experimenter was not an authority in a traditional sense—he was not formally identified as the group’s leader and given an impressive title, such as captain, president, director, or doctor—he did draw power from all six of the bases identified by French and Raven (1959). His power to reward was high, because he gave out the payment and also because he was an important source of positive evaluations; participants wanted to win a favorable appraisal from this figure of authority. His demeanor was intimidating, and he controlled the machine that could dispense punishment when a person failed. Many participants also assumed that the experimenter had a legitimate right to control their actions and that the learner had no right to quit the study. The participants also respected Yale University and recognized the importance of scientific research, so the experimenter had referent power. Very few participants knew much about electricity, either, so they considered the experimenter an expert. He also persuaded them to continue by telling them that the study was important and that its findings would answer questions about how people learn.

Social psychologist Thomas Blass (2000) confirmed the power of the experimenter in the Milgram study by asking a group of unbiased observers to review a 12-minute videotape of Milgram’s procedures. The observers then ranked six possible reasons, derived from French and Raven’s power base theory, as explanations for why the participants obeyed. For example, did Milgram’s experimenter have coercive power? Did he “warn of negative consequences” should people not obey (Blass, 2000, p. 42)? Did he have expert power? Did participants assume that the experimenter was a professional and knew what he was doing? Using these items, the observers ranked the experimenter as higher on expert, legitimate, coercive, and informational power, but lower on reward power, and lower still on referent power. The experimenter adopted a very brusque manner during the study, so he did not seem particularly likable, hence his low referent power. His stern, no-nonsense manner, however, apparently made him seem like an expert scientist whose orders could not be disobeyed.

8-2c. Power Tactics

The French and Raven (1959) theory of power bases identifies and differentiates the six most common sources of influence in groups, but they did not claim their list was exhaustive. When people need to poke, prod, or prompt others into action, their choice of power tactic (or compliance tactic) is limited only by their ingenuity, self-regulation, and willingness to ignore social controls (Cialdini & Griskevicius, 2010).

Types of Tactics

Table 8.1 gives examples of some of the ways people influence other people. These influence tactics, however, are not interchangeable, for they differ in terms of their hardness, rationality, laterality, and social acceptability (Falbo & Peplau, 1980; Raven, Schwarzwald, & Koslowsky, 1998).

Hard and soft tactics. Hard tactics are more coercive than soft tactics; they limit the “freedom an influence recipient is allowed in choosing whether or not to comply with a request or a demand” (Pierro et al., 2012, p. 41). Bullying, enforcing or invoking standards, punishing, and delivering contingency-based rewards are examples of hard tactics. Soft tactics, in contrast, exploit the relationship between the influencer and the target to extract compliance. When individuals use such methods as collaboration, socializing, friendships, personal rewards, and ingratiation, they influence more indirectly and interpersonally. Hard tactics are often described as harsh, forcing, or direct, but they are not necessarily more powerful than soft tactics; threatening people with exclusion from a group or public embarrassment may lead to substantially greater change than the threat of some deprivation or corporal punishment (Fiske & Berdahl, 2007).

Direct, rational and indirect, nonrational tactics. Tactics that emphasize reasoning, logic, and good judgment are rational tactics; bargaining and persuasion are examples. Other tactics—the indirect ones—are uniquely subtle and difficult to detect. These tactics work by creating a favorable cognitive and emotional response in the targets of the influence attempt and disrupting their capacity to think critically about what they are being asked to do. They may also rely on emotionality and misinformation; ingratiation and evasion are both examples of such nonrational tactics.

Unilateral and bilateral tactics. Some tactics are interactive, involving give-and-take on the part of both the influencer and the target of the influence. Such bilateral tactics include persuasion, discussion, and negotiation. Unilateral tactics, in contrast, can be enacted without the cooperation of the target of influence. Such tactics include demands, faits accomplis, evasion, and disengagement.

Table 8.1 A Sampling of the Many Power Tactics People Use to Influence Other People in Everyday Situations

Tactic Examples

Apprise

I point out what she will gain.

I note the personal benefits he’ll receive.

Bully

I yell at him.

I push him around.

Claim expertise

I let her know I’m an expert.

I rely on my experience.

Collaborate

I offer to help.

I provide assistance as needed.

Complain

I gripe about all the work I have to do.

I grumble about having to study.

Consult

I ask him to help me with the project.

I get her involved in the work.

Criticize

I point out her limitations.

I find fault with their work.

Demand

I demand that the problem be solved.

I order her to continue.

Discuss

I give him supporting reasons.

We talk about it.

Disengage

I give him the cold shoulder.

I stop talking to her.

Enforce

I remind him about the rules.

I make it clear what the standards are.

Evade

I change the subject when it comes up.

I skip the meeting.

Fait accompli

I just do it.

I don’t get anyone’s permission.

Ingratiate

I flatter her.

I compliment him on the way he looks.

Inspire

I appeal to her sense of fair play.

I cheer him on.

Instruct

I teach him how to do it.

I set an example.

Join forces

I get the boss to agree with me.

I turn the group against her.

Manipulate

I lie.

I leave out important details.

Negotiate

I offer her a bargain.

I wheel and deal.

Persist

I don’t take no for an answer.

I reiterate my point.

Persuade

I coax her into it.

I convert him to my side.

Promise

I promise to never do it again.

I offer to do some of his work for him.

Punish

I fire her.

I slap him.

Put down

I insult him.

I say something like, “You are an idiot.”

Request

I ask him to do me a favor.

I tell her what I expect.

Reward

I increase his pay.

I give her a present.

Socialize

I make small talk for a while.

I ask about the family.

Supplicate

I plead.

I beg humbly for permission.

Threaten

I threaten legal action.

I tell him that he might get fired.

Use humor

I try to make a joke out of it.

I tell a funny story.

How People “Get Their Way”

People vary in their habitual use of one type of power tactic over another. When asked the question “How do you get your way?” more interpersonally oriented people—those more concerned with being liked and accepted—showed a preference for soft, indirect, and rational power tactics (Falbo, 1997). Those who espoused a Machiavellian, manipulative philosophy when dealing with others tended to use indirect/nonrational tactics, as did those who scored lower in terms of agreeableness and emotional stability (Butkovic & Bratko, 2007). Extraverts use a greater variety of tactics than introverts (Caldwell & Burger, 1997). Men and women also differ somewhat in their choice of power tactics (Keshet et al., 2006). Men and women who supervised an ineffective employee used both rewards and criticism, but women intervened less frequently with a more limited range of tactics. Women promised fewer pay raises and threatened more pay deductions than men, and they were more likely to criticize subordinates (Instone, Major, & Bunker, 1983). The sexes also differ in their use of power in more intimate relationships, for men tend to use bilateral and direct tactics, whereas women report using unilateral and indirect methods (Falbo & Peplau, 1980).

People also choose different power tactics depending on the nature of the group situation (Yukl & Michel, 2006). A person who has high status in a group that is already rife with conflict will use different tactics than an individual who is low in status and wants to minimize conflict. In a corporate setting, authorities rely on referent and expert power, but in an educational setting, teachers may turn to reward and punishment power (Krause & Kearney, 2006). Who one is attempting to influence can also dictate the choice of power tactic; for example, people report using a variety of soft and hard methods to influence subordinates but, when dealing with superiors, they rely heavily on rational methods such as persuasion and discussion (Kipnis et al., 1984). People also shift from soft to hard tactics when they encounter resistance (Carson, Carson, & Roe, 1993; Teppner, 2006). The interpersonal consequences of the use of these various types of influence methods will be considered later in this chapter.

The Power of Commitment

Many compliance tactics exploit people’s desire to remain true to their prior commitments and so act consistently over time and across situations. The foot-in-the-door technique, for example, works by prefacing a major request with a minor one that is so inconsequential that few people would refuse to comply. Investigators exploited people’s behavioral commitment by asking home owners to post a large, unattractive sign in their yards. Nearly all refused—unless this major request had been preceded by a smaller one (Freedman & Fraser, 1966). In general, two requests are superior to a single request, although such factors as the sex of the influencer and the amount of time that elapses between the two requests moderate the power of the foot-in-the-door method (Beaman et al., 1983; Dillard, 1991).

What Is Brainwashing?

Interrogators often exploit behavioral commitment to extract compliance from detainees. Chinese military personnel, for example, used the foot-in-the-door tactic in their so-called brainwashing methods during the Korean War. They began by subjecting U.S. prisoners of war to physical hardships and stressful psychological pressures. The men were often fatigued from forced marches, and their sleep was disrupted. Their captors broke down the chain of command in these units by promoting nonranking soldiers to positions of authority, and friendships among the men were systematically discouraged.

Although the Chinese relied heavily on traditional methods of influence, such as punishment, compliance tactics proved more effective. The prisoners were initially asked to perform inconsequential actions, such as copying an essay out of a notebook or answering some questions about life in the United States. Once the men agreed to a minor request, a more significant request followed. They might be asked to write their own essays about communism or discuss the problems of capitalism. Each small concession led to a slightly larger one, until the men found themselves collaborating with the Chinese. The Chinese rarely succeeded in permanently changing the men’s attitudes and values, but they did extract obedience to their authority: Morale was poor and the men rarely tried to escape (Schein, 1961; Segal, 1954).

Milgram, when he designed his procedures for studying obedience, may have unwittingly capitalized on behavioral commitment to increase compliance. He did not ask participants to push a lever that would deliver 450 V to the learner at the outset of the study. Instead, he asked them only to give the learner a mild shock if he answered incorrectly. No one refused. Over time, however, the demands escalated, and participants were unable to extricate themselves from the situation. Once they began, they could not stop (Burger, 2014).

Jim Jones may have also capitalized on behavioral commitment to counter his followers’ natural rejection of his order to take their own lives. Jones did not suddenly order his followers to commit suicide. Instead, he prefaced his request with months of demands that increased in their intensity. Jones had talked about mass suicide even before the People’s Temple moved to Guyana. On more than one occasion, Jones had told the congregation that he had poisoned the sacramental wine and that all would be dead within the hour. He went so far as to plant confederates in the audience who feigned convulsions and death. He repeated this ceremony in Jonestown, calling it the White Night. After enough repetitions, the thought of suicide, so alien to most people, became commonplace in the group.

8-3. Social Status in Groups

Jonestown was founded on principles of equality and social justice, but like most groups its members’ rights, responsibilities, and privileges were determined by their position in the group’s status hierarchy. As the analysis of group structure noted in Chapter 6, the members of a newly formed group may begin as equals, but before long, some members gain greater power, influence, and control over others. And just as individuals have a need to be included in groups, they also have a strong need to achieve status within these groups (Anderson, Hildreth, & Howland, 2015). In this section, we examine this status-organizing process, focusing on the factors that determine status, personal qualities of the ones who seeks status, and biases in the status-allocation process.

8-3a. Claiming Status

The human brain is adept at detecting and processing information about status. Perceivers notice the difference between people displaying signals of dominance and deference (based on directness of eye gaze and head tilt) in as little as 33 milliseconds (Chiao, 2010). People are also remarkably accurate in their estimations of their own and others’ status within a group. Although individuals often overestimate their own standing on valued social characteristics, their estimates of their status in the group tend to match up well with other people’s appraisals (Anderson & Brion, 2014).

Status Signals

All social animals know how to communicate the message “I am in charge.” Dominant chimpanzees chatter loudly at potential rivals, the leader of the wolf pack growls and bares his teeth at low-ranking wolves, and the ranking lioness in the pride swats another with her paw. Members of these social groups compete for status, for the individual at the top of the hierarchy—the so-called alpha male or female—enjoys greater access to the group’s resources. These high-ranking members maintain their position by threatening or attacking low-ranking members, who in turn manage to avoid these attacks by performing behaviors that signal deference and submissiveness. This system of dominance and submission is often called a pecking order because (at least in chickens) it determines who will do the pecking and who will be pecked (Piazza & Castellucci, 2014).

Humans, too, compete for status in their groups. Humans rarely snarl at one another to signal their status, but they do use such nonverbal cues as a firm handshake, intense facial expressions, a relaxed, open posture, or an unsmiling countenance to let others know that they should be respected. People also seek status by speaking clearly, loudly, confidently, and directly, whereas those who speak softly and pepper their comments with nervous giggles are afforded less authority. Displays of emotion also signal differences in status. Group members who seem angry are thought to be more influential and are accorded higher status, whereas those who seem sad are thought to be lower in status (see Hall et al., 2014).

People also signal their authority through their verbal communications. Those seeking status often initiate conversations and shift the discussion to their own areas of competence. A person seeking high status would be more likely to

(1)

tell other people what they should do,

(2)

interpret other people’s statements,

(3)

confirm or dispute other people’s viewpoints, and

(4)

summarize or reflect on the discussion (Stiles et al., 1997).

In a study group, for example, a high-status member may say, “I’ve studied this theory before” or “I think it’s more important to study the lecture notes than the text.” A low-status individual, in contrast, may lament that “I always have trouble with this subject” or “I’m not sure I understand the material.” Status seekers tend to dominate conversations and are quicker to voice their opinions. Group members also assert their authority over the group by interrupting other speakers frequently (see Leary, Jongman-Sereno, & Diebels, 2014).

Who Seeks Status?

Not everyone seeks power over others. Some members are content to be rank-and-file members, equal in responsibilities and influence to most of the others in the group, and do not desire to rise upward in the group’s hierarchy. Other individuals seek only personal power. They wish to control their own individual outcomes and experiences, but they are not concerned about controlling other’s outcomes (van Dijke & Poppe, 2006). Some, however, strive for power, and they pursue it across time, groups, and situations (Winter, 2010).

People with a dispositional need for power, for example, tend to pursue status and prestige more vigorously than others. They describe themselves as hoping to have power in the future: “I want to have power in every aspect of my life” (Bennett, 1988; Harms, Roberts, & Wood, 2007). The need for power, measured when people are first hired for a large company, predicts their rise to positions of authority in the corporation’s management hierarchy some 8–16 years later (McClelland & Boyatzis, 1982). They are more likely to hold offices in groups and organizations. As noted in Chapter 4, individuals who are strong in their need for power are more likely to experience power stress when that need is thwarted (Fodor & Wick, 2009). Also, the quest for power is linked to testosterone, which is the primary androgen that determines masculine sexual features, both physical and psychological. (Women’s bodies produce testosterone, but at a substantially reduced level.) Testosterone predicts aggression, assertiveness, and toughness, all of which improve one’s chances of besting others in contests of dominance (Rivers & Josephs, 2010). However, testosterone’s effects are muted when men are members of stable rather than contested dominance hierarchies (e.g., McIntyre et al., 2011).

Bullying: Harmless Teasing or Coercive Abuse?

Each day, as Erick boards the bus, Jonathan berates him, making fun of his hair and clothes. No one will sit with Erick for fear of being drawn into the abuse. The staff at the clinic where Carol works deliberately circulate nasty rumors about her, and exclude her when they gather socially after work. Charlotte’s boss would berate her so brutishly that it made the woman who worked at the desk next to Charlotte’s cry (Beers, 2012).

Bullying is a form of coercive interpersonal influence. Although originally considered to be a characteristic of children’s and adolescents’ groups, bullying, mobbing, and harassment also occur in military, business, and professional organizations (Branch, Ramsay, & Barker, 2013). Both males and females bully, but they tend to do so in different ways: Females are relationally aggressive, for they use gossip, criticism, and exclusion against their victims. Males tend to use noncontingent punishment: they treat people negatively for no reason (Hoel et al., 2010). Jim Jones was a bully.

Bullying signals a marked imbalance in the power relationship between the bully and his or her victim. The victim of abuse “has difficulty in defending himself or herself and is somewhat helpless against” the bully (Olweus, 1997, p. 216). Bullying, then, is not retaliation between parties in a dispute or conflict, but the mistreatment of a less powerful person by someone with power. Bullying is also a group behavior. Victims are sometimes isolated and friendless individuals abandoned to their fate by the rest of the group, but in many cases, groups of individuals are abused by groups of bullies. Similarly, although bullies are often thought to be poorly adjusted individuals who are expressing anger by picking on those who cannot defend themselves, bullies are often relatively popular group members. In schools, for example, boys who are bullies are often members of high-status sports teams, whereas girls who are bullies belong to high-status social cliques. They tend to be recognized as school leaders and trend setters, but they are also disliked for the way they treat other people of lower status in the group (Vaillancourt, Hymel, & McDougall, 2003). Bullying also involves more than just the bully and the victim, as other group members are drawn into the harmful bully–victim exchange (Giacalone & Promislo, 2010). Because bullying is rooted in both power dynamics and group dynamics, experts recommend organization- and group-level interventions for preventing peer abuse (Olweus & Limber, 2010).

Some individuals are more motivated to engage fully in the politics of status-seeking in groups. One measure, the Political Skill Inventory, includes such items as “I spend a lot of time and effort at work networking with others,” “I am able to make most people feel comfortable and at ease around me,” and “I am good at building relationships with influential people at work” (Ferris et al., 2005, p. 149). Those with political skills are more likely to be affable, likeable, outgoing, proactive, and task-oriented; when they seek to influence others, they are more likely to succeed (Ferris et al., 2007).

8-3b. Achieving Status

People’s status-seeking efforts will be for naught if the group rejects them. This status-allocation process, unfortunately, is often unfair—individuals whose influence should be accepted are not always recognized by the group, just as the group sometimes takes direction from people who are not qualified to lead.

Expectation-States Theory

Sociologist Joseph Berger and his colleagues developed expectation-states theory to explain how groups determine who will be granted status and who will not be. This theory assumes that status differences are most likely to develop when members are working collectively in the pursuit of shared goals that they feel are important ones. Because the group seeks to use its resources to its best advantage, members intuitively take note of one another’s status characteristics—personal qualities that they think are indicative of ability or prestige. Those who possess numerous status characteristics are implicitly identified and permitted to perform more numerous and varied group actions, to provide greater input and guidance for the group, to influence others by evaluating their ideas, and to reject the influence attempts of others (Berger, Wagner, & Webster, 2014; Ridgeway & Nakagawa, 2014).

Expectation-states theorists believe that group members base their expectations on two types of status cues. Specific status characteristics are indicators of ability at the task to be performed in the given situation. On a basketball team, for example, height may be a specific status characteristic, whereas prior jury duty may determine status in a jury. In Jonestown, given the physically challenging tasks the group faced in building a community in a South American rain forest, strong, energetic individuals who were experienced in building and farming moved upward in the status hierarchy relative to those who are not so skilled.

Diffuse status characteristics are more general qualities that the members assume are relevant to ability and evaluation. Sex, age, wealth, ethnicity, status in other groups, or cultural background can serve as diffuse status characteristics if people associate these qualities with certain skills, as did the members of the People’s Temple. Age and spiritual wisdom were both considered important diffuse status characteristics, with older, more devout members gaining status. In other groups—those that value youth, for example—the opposite might hold true (Oldmeadow, 2007).

Researchers have largely confirmed expectation-states theory’s prediction that individuals with positively evaluated specific status and diffuse status characteristics usually command more authority than those who lack status-linked qualities (Wilke, 1996). In police teams, officers with more work experience exercised more authority than their less experienced partners (Gerber, 1996). Members of dyads working on a perceptual task deferred to their partner if he or she seemed more skilled at the task (Foddy & Smithson, 1996). People who are paid more are permitted to exert more influence over people who are paid less (Stewart & Moore, 1992). When air force bomber crews work on nonmilitary tasks, rank predicts influence (Torrance, 1954). Juries allocate more status to jurors who have previously served on juries or who have more prestigious occupations (Strodtbeck et al., 1957). The bulk of the research also confirms the following causal sequence in status allocation: First, group member X displays specific and diffuse status characteristics. Second, other members form positive expectations about X. Last, members permit X to influence them (Driskell & Mullen, 1990).

Status Generalization

Because status in a group is determined by both specific and diffuse status characteristics, groups do not always allocate status fairly. Imagine, for example, a jury that includes these three individuals:

Dr. Prof, a 40-year-old European American woman who teaches in the School of Business and who has written several books on management.

Mr. Black, a 35-year-old African American high school principal.

Dr. White, a 58-year-old European American male physician who has an active practice.

Considerable evidence suggests that, when selecting a foreman, a jury of middle-class European Americans would favor Dr. White. Dr. Prof and Mr. Black, despite their specific status credentials, may be disqualified from positions of status in the group by their (completely irrelevant) diffuse status characteristics. In contrast, Dr. White poses little incongruence for the group if the group members unfairly consider advanced age, pale skin, an MD degree, and upper-class social status to be positive features (York & Cornwell, 2006). This phenomenon is known as status generalization: Group members let general status (i.e., diffuse status) characteristics influence their expectations, even though these characteristics may be irrelevant in the given situation (Ridgeway, 2014).

Status generalization explains why women and African Americans are given less status and authority in groups than men and European Americans, respectively (Ridgeway et al., 2009). Women and racial minorities report more dissatisfaction about how status is allocated in groups (Hembroff, 1982). Women are less likely to be selected as leaders of their groups, and they are more likely to be assigned to lower status roles (Eagly & Carli, 2007). Women and minorities must put extra effort into their groups and reach higher performance standards just to gain the same level of respect and authority granted to less productive European American men (Biernat & Kobrynowicz, 1997; Foschi, 1996). Groups, failing to recognize women’s expertise, tend to underperform when women, rather than men, have the expertise a task demands (Thomas-Hunt & Phillips, 2004).

Solo Status

These unfair status-allocation processes are magnified when you are the only one in your group who is different from others. Solo status causes you to feel the other members are categorizing you in terms of your social group and so are not accepting you as a full member. In consequence, you are less likely to identify with the group, you will not be as loyal to the group, and may feel your performance will be unfairly evaluated. You may also expect that your contributions are devalued. These concerns are generally justified: Solo members are rarely allocated high status in groups (e.g., Biernat et al., 1998; Sekaquaptewa & Thompson, 2003).

These negative status effects often fade over time as groups revise their hierarchies as they recognize the skills and abilities of previously slighted members and as solos learn how to cope with the challenges of status generalization (Johnson & Richeson, 2009). Women and minorities who communicate their involvement in the group to the other members tend to gain status more rapidly, as do those who act in a group-oriented rather than a self-oriented way (Anderson & Kilduff, 2009). If a solo woman in an otherwise all-male group remains actively involved in the group by asking questions, the negative effects of her solo status are eliminated (Fuegen & Biernat, 2002). External authorities can also undo unfair status generalizations by explicitly stressing the qualifications of women and minorities or by training group members to recognize their biases (Ridgeway, 1989). Moreover, groups may reduce biases in the allocation of status to their members by making use of computer-based technology to make decisions and exchange information.

Are Online Groups More Egalitarian?

When people meet offline in face-to-face groups to make decisions or solve problems, their impact on the final outcome is often a function of their status in the group. Those who have risen to the top of the group’s hierarchy speak as much as 40%–50% of the time (Stephan & Mischler, 1952), even when the meeting is supposed to be a discussion. The remainder of the speaking will be done by two or three other group members, but these people will have higher status than the rank-and-file members (Gibson, 2003). Those at the bottom of the “speaking order” may say nothing at all during the course of a meeting. Contributions to the discussion also tend to be clustered. Once individuals enter the discussion stream, they tend to concentrate their comments during periods of high vocality, or megaturns (Dabbs & Ruback, 1987; Parker, 1988). This pattern occurs, in part, because some individuals are too slow to speak when the previous speaker concludes, so they never manage to capture the floor. The group gives the more influential members more latitude when they are speaking (Bonito & Hollingshead, 1997).

What happens when groups meet online rather than face to face? In many online groups, the effects of status on participation are muted, resulting in a participation equalization effect (Hollingshead, 2001b). Many of the cues that people implicitly use to allocate status to others are minimized when people interact via computers—a group member’s height, age, sex, and race can be kept private in online groups, and the computer-mediated format prevents the exchange of nonverbal signs of dominance and authority. There can be no raised voice, no long stare, and no rolling of the eyes when members are connected only by a computer. So, when group members interact by email, forums, and discussion forums, individuals who tend to participate less in face-to-face groups—or whose contributions in such groups are often ignored—contribute at much higher rates (e.g., Bazarova & Yuan, 2013; Dubrovsky, Kiesler, & Sethna, 1991).

Long-term online groups, however, still exhibit signs of status differentiation. Participants, through the content of their messages, engagement, and style of communication (e.g., length of posts, use of emoticons) lay claim to characteristics that define their place within the group (Walther, 2013). In some cases, group members may even be more influenced by irrelevant diffuse status characteristics in online groups because they have no other information to use to guide their perceptions of the other members. If all Ed knows about his partner in a discussion is that his or her name is Jolina, then he may inevitably draw conclusions about her personality and interests from her name alone (Spears, Lea, & Postmes, 2007). Online groups may resist some of the biases that distort status allocations in offline groups, but these groups, too, tend shift in time from equivalence to hierarchy.

8-3c. Status Hierarchies and Stability

Humans, like many social species, live in groups with organized systems of power relations. As Milgram (1974, p. 124) concluded, “Each member’s acknowledgement of his place in the hierarchy stabilizes the pack.”

Dominance and Cooperation

Evolutionary theory suggests that the system of dominance and deference in human groups is an adaptive one, designed to enhance survival by increasing group coordination and decision making, improving defense, and providing a means to resolve conflict. A group that must move regularly in search of food and water requires some means to determine whose advice to take and whose advice to ignore. When conflicts occur between members, someone in the group must mediate the dispute, either by negotiating a peace or by requiring it through a show of force. When a group encounters a threat, the group that is organized will likely fare better than the one that is not. Because the environment in which human groups lived favored those with a stable dominance hierarchy, modern humans are instinctively prepared to accept, understand, and even prefer status differences. So long as the authority is motivated to advance the interests of the group, those lower in the status hierarchy prosper by cooperating with those of higher status (see, e.g., Anderson & Willer, 2014; Cheng & Tracy, 2014; von Rueden, 2014).

Interpersonal Complementarity

The naturalness of dominance hierarchies is in evidence when people join with several others in a “leaderless” group. Even when no explicit instructions are provided, within minutes such groups form status hierarchies that all members can accurately describe without having ever explicitly discussed who will lead and who will follow (Keltner et al., 2010). Leaderless groups do not stay leaderless for long. This tendency translates into a small-group version of sociologist and political theorist Robert Michels’ (1915/1959) iron law of oligarchy—the rule of the many by the few.

This shift from status homogeneity to hierarchy results, in part, from the behavioral complementarity of dominance and deference. According to the interpersonal complementarity hypothesis, each member’s action tends to evoke, or “pull,” a predictable set of actions from the other group members (Carson, 1969). If, for example, an individual seems agreeable, pleasant, and cooperative, the other group members would tend to react in kind: They would behave in positive, friendly ways. Friendly behaviors are reciprocated by friendly behaviors. But what if group members act in dominant, firm, directive ways—issuing orders, taking charge, giving advice? Such behaviors would tend to evoke submissive responses from the others. People also report feeling more comfortable when interacting with someone who displays complementary rather than similar reactions. Group members who display signs of submissiveness when talking to someone who seems powerful are better liked, as are those who take charge when interacting with docile, submissive individuals (Tiedens & Fragale, 2003). The interpersonal complementary hypothesis thus predicts that

(1)

positive behaviors evoke positive behaviors and negative behaviors evoke negative behaviors and

(2)

dominant behaviors evoke submissive behaviors and submissive behaviors evoke dominant behaviors (Sadler & Woody, 2003).

Researchers put this hypothesis to the test by arranging for young women to work, for a short period of time, with a partner who was trained to enact a particular behavioral style. When the partner enacted a dominant, leading style, she exuded confidence and authority. In some cases, she added a degree of friendliness to her dominance, frequently intervening to keep the group working. In others, she was dominant, but less friendly; she stressed her superiority and autonomy, and her self-confidence bordered on self-absorption and conceit. In other conditions, she acted in more submissive, self-effacing ways. Rather than take charge, she would seem timid, uncertain, passive, and inhibited (Strong et al., 1988).

The videorecordings of the sessions revealed clear evidence of complementarity. Participants who were paired with a dominant confederate acted submissively; they acquiesced, behaved passively, and showed respect for their partner. Only rarely did a participant respond in a dominant manner when faced with a dominant interaction partner. Conversely, if the confederate behaved in a docile manner, the participants tended to take charge by acting in a dominant fashion—strong evidence of the power of complementarity.

Hierarchy and Harmony

Hierarchy is not all gain without cost. Individual’s whose status is low in groups sometimes fail to perform to their full capabilities, because their low-level status undercuts their motivation and cognitive functioning (Kishida et al., 2012). High-status group members often exceed their authority, and cause far more harm than good for their groups (Smith, Larimer, et al., 2007). As the final section of this chapter warns, excessive and unfair differences in the distribution of power within a group can lead to a wide range of negative consequences.

A group whose hierarchy of authority is stable, however, will be more productive than one with unsettled status ranks. To test this hypothesis experimentally, researchers manipulated groups’ status structures by carefully distributing people who differed in their levels of testosterone into groups. Testosterone, as noted earlier in the chapter, is associated with one’s tendency to seek influence over others. So the researchers created three kinds of groups, expecting groups with all high-testosterone members to be more unstable ones in comparison to

(a)

groups with just one high-testosterone, low-testosterone, and average-testosterone participants and

(b)

groups with all low-testosterone participants.

As they anticipated, levels of conflict were much higher in the high-testosterone groups, with members reporting problems communicating and connecting to each other. Productivity was also lower in these groups, for groups with a mix of high-, average-, and low-testosterone members outperformed both the all-high- and all-low-testosterone groups. These researchers verified these results in a second study where they manipulated power psychologically rather than biologically. They created groups with different hierarchies by prompting some members to feel more or less powerful. Given the consistency of these results, the researchers concluded hierarchy “enhances rather than undermines group effectiveness” (Ronay et al., 2012, p. 669).

8-4. The Metamorphic Effects of Power

The system for organizing status in human groups is not a perfect one. Individuals sometimes engage in dominance competitions that are so disruptive they create disunity in the group and undermine its productivity. Groups too often fail to extend respect and deference to those who deserve it. Sometimes exploitive, self-serving individuals manage to secure substantial influence within the group, and, when they do, the entire group suffers or, as in the case of the People’s Temple, perishes. Sometimes, the power process can disrupt, rather than facilitate, group functioning.

8-4a. Changes in the Powerholder

Probably for as long as humans have joined together in groups, they have puzzled over the nature of power and its influence on those who have it, those who lack it, and those who seek it (Kipnis, 1974). In their tragedies, the Greeks dramatized the fall of heroes, who, swollen by past accomplishments, conceitedly compared themselves to the gods. Myth and folklore are replete with tales of the consequences of too much power, as in the case of Icarus, whose elation at the power of flight caused his own death. Although some celebrated the liberating effects of power, others spoke of its corruptive side effects. As Lord Acton warned, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Priming Power

Power is, in part, a state of mind—a feeling of authority rather than authority per se. Some individuals who occupy positions of authority and influence report that they feel powerless and without any control over events that transpire in their lives. Yet, other individuals, who face situations that seem to be those they cannot in any way influence and control, report feeling very powerful and in charge (Anderson & Galinsky, 2006). A sense of power also depends on the situation; if you win an election, are appointed to a position of influence in an organization, or are granted membership in a high-status group, in all likelihood, you will experience a feeling of heightened power that comes from the circumstances (Keltner et al., 2008). A sense of power can also be triggered in more subtle ways. Environmental or cognitive cues can prime a sense of power by activating preexisting beliefs, concepts, or memories of experiences relevant to power. College students meeting in a professor’s office act in more powerful ways if they are seated in the professor’s chair behind the desk facing out into the room than those seated in the chair reserved for visitors (Chen, Lee-Chai, & Bargh, 2001).

The Paradoxical Effects of Power

Social psychologist Dacher Keltner and his colleagues (2003, 2008, 2016), synthesizing previous analyses of both power and motivation, theorize that power—having power, using power, even thinking about power—leads to psychological and interpersonal changes for both those who have power and those who do not. Their approach/inhibition theory recognizes that most organisms display one of two basic types of reactions to environmental events. One reaction, approach, is associated with action, self-promotion, seeking rewards and opportunities, increased energy, and movement. The second reaction, inhibition, is associated with reaction, self-protection, avoiding threats and danger, vigilance, loss of motivation, and an overall reduction in activity. Significantly, the approach/inhibition model suggests that power increases approach tendencies, whereas reductions in power trigger inhibition. Power activates people—it causes them to experience increases in drive, energy, motivation, and emotion—and often leads to positive consequences. The powerful can bring their heightened energy, clearer insights, and positive emotions to bear on the issues facing the group and help the group overcome difficulties and reach its goals. But power, and the activation it brings, also has a dark side, for it can create a Jim Jones or an Adolf Hitler as often as a Mahatma Gandhi or an Abraham Lincoln.

Power’s Positive Effects

Power influences those who wield it. Individuals who are powerful (powerholders), or at least, feel powerful, act, feel, and think differently than individuals who feel they are powerless.

Power and action. Power increases activity levels, prompting people to take action rather than remain passive. Powerholders are usually the busiest people in the group or organization. They are proactive; they would rather speak first during a debate, make the first move in a competition, or make the first offer during a negotiation (Magee, Galinsky, & Gruenfeld, 2007). In one study, researchers first asked some people to think back to a time when they had power over other individuals. Others thought of a time when they had little power. They were then left to wait for the next phase of the study at a table positioned too close to an annoying fan blowing directly on them. Some of the participants just put up with this irritation, but others took steps to solve the problem: They moved the fan or turned it off. As predicted, 69% of the individuals who recalled a time they were powerful removed the bothersome fan, compared to only 42% of less powerful participants (Galinsky, Gruenfeld, & Magee, 2003).

Power and emotion. Powerful people tend to experience, and express, more positive emotions than those who are lower in power. Powerholders usually feel good about things—their moods are elevated, they report higher levels of such positive emotions as happiness and satisfaction, and they even smile more than low-power group members (Berdahl & Martorana, 2006; Watson & Clark, 1997). Power is also associated with optimism about the future, apparently because more powerful individuals tend to focus their attention on more positive aspects of the environment (Anderson & Galinsky, 2006). Powerful people seek rewards more actively than people without power who are motivated to avoid negative outcomes (Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003). Some evidence even suggests that powerful people cope more effectively with stress because they are positively challenged, rather than threatened, by difficult circumstances (Scheepers et al., 2012).

Power and goal-striving. Powerful individuals exhibit more intense and resilient goal-striving. When working toward a goal that is illusive, they are able to maintain high levels of motivation, for power is associated with increased levels of self-regulation—provided they are working at tasks that they feel are appropriate ones for the purposes and procedures of the given situation (DeWall et al., 2011). In a work setting, for example, they plan more task-related activities, unless their role requires them to be sensitive to other individuals’ needs and experiences. In such circumstances, the goal-striving orientation of the powerful prompts them to be more empathic and prosocial (Côté et al., 2011; Guinote, 2008; Schmidt Mast, Jonas, & Hall, 2009).

Power and cognitive functioning. Power facilitates executive cognitive functions by enhancing attentional focus, decision-making, planning, and goal-selection (Smith et al., 2008). Power seems to sharpen mental acuity to a degree, helping the powerful to selectively focus on important information and reducing their distractibility (Guinote, 2007). When researchers tracked the brain functioning of people working in a group solving intellectual problems the high-status members displayed (a) increased blood oxygenation in the prefrontal cortex over time, indicating increased mental activity and (b) decreased oxygenation in the amygdala, suggesting decreases in fear and nervousness. This pattern of neuronal change was reversed for lower status members (Kishida et al., 2012).

Power and influence. Power insulates individuals, to a degree, from the influence of others. Powerful people are more likely to act on the basis of their own personal preferences. When people are primed by thoughts of power, their public statements and actions are more authentic in the sense that they correspond to their private beliefs and dispositions. Powerful people feel freer to express their ideas and resist conformity pressures that influence less powerful people (Kraus, Chen, & Keltner, 2011).

Power’s Negative Effects

These consequences of power, in terms of action orientation, emotions, and judgmental tendencies, can also be liabilities.

Power and risk-taking. Powerful people are proactive, but in some cases their actions are risky, inappropriate, or unethical (Emler & Cook, 2001). Some individuals, driven by their need for power, overstep the boundaries of their authority or engage in inappropriate actions. If they feel that they have a mandate from their group or organization, they may do things they are not empowered to do (Clark & Sechrest, 1976). They are, in some cases, not just optimistic, but overly optimistic, for they assume the group can accomplish more in a given amount of time than is rationally possible (Weick & Guinote, 2010).

Power and emotion. Powerful people may be happier, but they often generate negative emotional reactions in their subordinates, particularly when there is disagreement and conflict in the group (Fodor & Riordan, 1995). In a study of dyads, those with more power than their partner reported feeling positive emotions such as happiness, pride, and amusement. Their partners, unfortunately, reported more anger, fear, tension, and sadness (Langner & Keltner, 2008). When people in work settings are asked to identify the sources of their stress and dissatisfaction, the number one cause reported is powerful people: bosses, managers, and supervisors.

Power and empathy. Powerful people often misjudge, misunderstand, and even derogate their subordinates. Powerholders can be discerning judges of those who work for them, but often only when their personal success depends on recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of subordinates (Overbeck and Park, 2001). Power tends to weaken one’s social attentiveness with the result that powerful people have a more difficult time understanding other people’s point of view (Galinsky et al., 2006). Researchers documented the pernicious effects of power by arranging for two people to discuss an experience that caused them emotional pain and suffering. During and after the conversation, the researchers tracked participants’ feelings of compassion, using both physiological measures and self-reports, as they listened to their partner’s outpouring of emotional angst. As expected, people who did not describe themselves as powerful and influential became more and more distressed themselves when their partners became more upset as they related their experience—their emotions were relatively synchronized. Powerful people, in contrast, did not respond emotionally to their partner’s distress, and their levels of compassion declined as their partner’s became more troubled (see Figure 8.4). These findings suggest that power may insulate the powerful from feeling troubled by the harm they inflict on others (van Kleef et al., 2008).

The relationship between the listener’s compassion and the talker’s distress for people who are low and high in power. Low-power people respond with more compassion as the talker becomes more distressed. For high-power people, their initially somewhat higher levels of compassion decline as the talker becomes more distressed.

Power and self-satisfaction. The successful use of power as a means of controlling others can lead to self-satisfaction, unrealistically positive self-evaluations, and overestimations of interpersonal power (Galinsky, Jordan, & Sivanathan, 2008). When social psychologist David Kipnis (1974) asked participants if their subordinates were performing well because of

(1)

the workers’ high self-motivation levels,

(2)

their manager’s comments and suggestions, or

(3)

their desire for money, the high-power managers believed that their workers were only in it for the money (which the manager could control).

The low-power managers believed that the workers were “highly motivated.” Other studies have also revealed this tendency for powerful individuals to assume that they themselves are the prime cause of other people’s behavior (Kipnis et al., 1976). Powerholders tend to

(1)

increase the social distance between themselves and nonpowerful individuals,

(2)

believe that nonpowerful individuals are untrustworthy and in need of close supervision, and

(3)

devalue the work and ability of less powerful individuals (Kipnis, 1974; Strickland, Barefoot, & Hockenstein, 1976).

This tendency is all the more pronounced when powerholders use harsh rather than soft tactics. This reevaluation of self and others also occurs when powerholders use methods that are not congruent with their base of power. Individuals with expert power who use soft power tactics, or people with legitimate power who use harsh power tactics, reevaluate themselves and their targets less than those who use power tactics that do not match their power base (Klocke, 2009).

Power and coercion. Powerful people also tend to use their power to influence others even when a display of power is unnecessary. Kipnis (1974) examined this tendency by arranging for advanced business students to participate as managers in a simulated manufacturing company. Some had considerable power, in that they could award bonuses, cut pay, threaten and actually carry out transfers to other jobs, give additional instructions, and even fire a worker, but others could not. Kipnis controlled the level of productivity of the fictitious workers (all performed adequately), but powerful managers nonetheless initiated roughly twice as many attempts at influence as the less powerful managers. Moreover, power determined the power tactics managers used—the powerless ones relied on persuasion, whereas the powerful ones coerced or rewarded their workers. Other studies have yielded similar support for the idea that people with power tend to make use of it, but the magnitude of this effect depends on many other factors (Fiske & Berdahl, 2007).

Power and ethics. When individuals feel powerful, they sometimes treat others unfairly, particularly if they are more self-centered rather than focused on the overall good of the group (Chen, Lee-Chai, & Bargh, 2001). Some individuals (primarily men) associate power with sexuality, so when they are empowered, they engage in inappropriate sexual behaviors, including sexual harassment (MacKinnon, 2003). This tendency, termed the Bathsheba syndrome, takes its name from the biblical story of David and Bathsheba. King David is smitten by Bathsheba, the wife of one of his generals, and he seduces her. David compounds his moral failure with one misdeed after another, until he eventually orders Bathsheba’s husband killed. A powerholder acting immorally is not, apparently, a new phenomenon in human societies (Ludwig & Longenecker, 1993).

Power and Power Seeking

In small, stable groups, individuals in positions of authority wish to maintain their status relative to those lower in the hierarchy, but once they maintain this relative difference, they do not continue to seek more and more status. Power is not addictive or so alluring that people are never satisfied with the level of power they currently enjoy (van Dijke & Poppe, 2007). In some cases, however, the experience of power is so positive—energizing, emotionally satisfying, psychologically stimulating—that powerholders may become preoccupied with seeking power, driven by a strong motivation to acquire greater and greater levels of interpersonal influence (McClelland, 1975, 1985; Winter, 1973). They seek power, not because they can use it to achieve their goals, but because they value power per se. Hence, once such people attain power, they take steps to protect their sources of influence.

8-4b. Reactions to the Use of Power

Humans, like many social species, are willing to accept guidance from other members of their group. However, in some cases, power does not just include power with people and over people, but also power against people. Powerholders can influence, sometimes dramatically, the outcomes of those who have little power, prompting them to do things they would rather not. How do people respond—behaviorally, cognitively, and emotionally—when the directives of authorities conflict with the goals they have set for themselves (Sagarin & Henningsen, 2016)?

Reactions to Hard Influence Tactics

Approach/inhibition theory suggests that individuals who find themselves without power, relative to others, avoid rather than approach. They not only lack resources, but they are dependent on others for the resources that they need. They therefore tend to display more negative affect, they are sensitive to threats and punishments, and they follow closely the dictates of the norms of the group (Keltner et al., 2003). In general, however, these effects of power are more pronounced when the powerholder uses hard (e.g., punishment, sanctions, nonpersonal rewards) rather than soft (personal rewards, referent power) influence methods. Harsh tactics generate a range of negative emotions, including hostility, depression, fear, and anger, whereas those influenced by softer methods tend to reciprocate with cooperation (Fiske & Berdahl, 2007; Pierro, Cicero, & Raven, 2008). Group members are also more likely to resist an authority who uses coercive influence methods and asks the group members to carry out unpleasant assignments (Yukl, Kim, & Falbe, 1996); this resistance may cause the power holder to turn to even more negative forms of influence (Youngs, 1986). Hence, although coercive powerholders may be successful in initial encounters, influence becomes more difficult in successive meetings as the group’s anger and resistance to pressure grow. Groups will, however, tolerate the use of coercive methods when the group is successful (Michener & Lawler, 1975), the leader is trusted (Friedland, 1976), and the use of such tactics is justified by the group’s norms (Michener & Burt, 1975).

Coercion and Conflict

The conflict created by coercive influence can disrupt the entire group’s functioning. Studies of classrooms, for example, indicate that many teachers rely heavily on coercion, but that these methods cause rather than solve disciplinary problems (Kounin, 1970). Coercive tactics, such as physical punishment, displays of anger, and shouting, not only fail to change the target student’s behavior but also lead to negative changes in the classroom’s atmosphere (Kounin & Gump, 1958). When misbehaving students are severely reprimanded, other students often become more disruptive and uninterested in their schoolwork, and negative, inappropriate social activity spreads from the trouble spot throughout the classroom. This disruptive contagion, or ripple effect, is especially strong when the reprimanded students are powerful members of the classroom status structure or when commands by teachers are vague and ambiguous.

Resistance and Rebellion

In some cases, group members may rebel against an authority who they consider to be unfair, incompetent, or both (Ciulla & Forsyth, 2011). They may escape the powerholder’s region of control or apply influence in return. Members contend against those in power as individuals, particularly when they feel that others in the group have more power than they do. But when members feel a sense of shared identity with the other low-power members of the group, they are more likely to join with them in a revolutionary coalition that opposes the powerholder (van Dijke & Poppe, 2004; Haslam & Reicher, 2012). In one study of group rebellion, two group members worked under the direction of a leader who was appointed to that post because he or she had outscored them on a bogus test of ability. The leader then proceeded to keep more than half of the money earned by the group, giving each participant less than one-fourth. If the leader had personally decided how to apportion payment, 58% of the participants rebelled by forming a coalition with the other low-status participant. If the leader was not responsible for the payment scheme, only 25% revolted (Lawler & Thompson, 1978, 1979).

Identification and Conversion

Both Milgram’s participants and the People’s Temple members did as they were told, but the two groups differed in one crucial respect: Most of Milgram’s participants struggled to withstand the authority’s pressure, for they believed that the learner should not be held against his will. Many of Jones’s followers, in contrast, zealously followed his orders. They did not strain against his authority; they had converted to his way of thinking (Darley, 1995; Lutsky, 1995; Staub, 1989, 2004).

Social psychologist Herbert Kelman (1958, 1961, 2006) identified three basic reactions that people display in response to coercive influence (see Figure 8.5). In some cases, the powerholder only produces compliance—the group members do what they are told to do, but only because the powerholder demands it. Privately, they do not agree with the powerholder, but publicly they yield to the pressure. Like Milgram’s participants, they obey only when the powerholder maintains surveillance. The next phase, identification, occurs when the target of the influence admires and therefore imitates the powerholder. When group members identify with the powerholder, their self-image changes as they take on the behaviors and characteristics of the person with power. Many members of the People’s Temple admired Jones and wanted to achieve his level of spirituality. They obeyed his orders because they identified with him.

Identification, if prolonged and unrelenting, can lead to the final stage—internalization. When internalization occurs, the individual “adopts the induced behavior because it is congruent with his value system” (Kelman, 1958, p. 53). The group members are no longer merely carrying out the powerholder’s orders; instead, their actions reflect their own personal beliefs, opinions, and goals. Even if the powerholder is not present, the group members will still undertake the required actions. Extreme obedience—such as occurred with Jonestown, the murder of millions of Jews by the Nazis during World War II, the My Lai massacre, and suicidal cults—often requires internalization. The group members’ actions reflect their private acceptance of the authority’s value system (Hamilton & Sanders, 1995, 1999; Kelman & Hamilton, 1989).

Kelman’s three-step model of conversion explains how groups convert recruits into fervent members over time. Cults, for example, insist that the members adopt the group’s ideology, but in the early stages of membership, they only require compliance. New recruits are invited to pleasant group functions where they are treated in a warm, positive way. Once they agree to join the group for a longer visit, the veteran members disorient them by depriving them of sleep, altering their diet, and persuading them to join in physically exhilarating activities. The recruits are usually isolated from friends and family to prevent any lapses in influence, subjected to lectures, and asked to take part in group discussions. Compliance with these small requests is followed by greater demands, as with the U.S. prisoners of war in Korea. Eventually, the recruits freely agree to make personal sacrifices for the group, and these sacrifices prompt a further consolidation of their attitudes (Baron, 2000; Baron, Kerr, & Miller, 1992). Once recruits reach the consolidation stage, they have fully internalized the group’s ideology and goals.

Destructive Obedience

In both the Milgram experiment and at Jonestown, power led to destructive obedience, as group members failed to question the authority’s motivation, interpretations, and orders. For example, Jack Washington, a participant in Milgram’s experiment, administered all the shocks up to 450 V with barely a hesitation. When later asked why he followed orders, he said, “I merely went on. Because I was following orders. I was told to go on. And I did not get a cue to stop” (Milgram, 1974, p. 50).

Milgram’s concept of agentic shift, noted earlier in the chapter, maintained that individuals who feel powerless also feel they are not responsible for their own actions. They feel “responsibility to the authority” but “no responsibility for the content of the actions that the authority prescribes” (Milgram, 1974, pp. 145–146). Like Jack Washington, who was just “following orders” when he shocked the screaming learner, many individuals who have little power in the group assume that they are supposed to carry out the orders of the authority without questioning those orders. They no longer feel that they are in control of their own actions and become willing cogs in the group machine, carrying out the orders of an authority without considering their implications or questioning their effects (Hinrichs et al., 2012; Kelman & Hamilton, 1989).

Obedient individuals’ claims of reduced responsibility may be more than self-serving attempts to avoid blame for following, rather than resisting, a malevolent leader. In two studies, researchers arranged for pairs of participants to take turns harming each other. In the first, when in the “agent” role the participant could take money from the “victim.” But in the second study, the agent could earn additional money if she delivered an electric shock to the “victim.” In some cases, the agent was free to make her own choice: to take money or deliver a shock. But, in the coercion condition, the experimenter ordered the agent to harm the victim. Participants in both the free choice and coercion conditions harmed their partner, but only those subjects in the coercion condition exhibited a bias known to be associated with a reduced sense of agency: they tended to misjudge the time interval between their actions and its consequences. And even more telling, the participants in the second study, when their neural responses were monitored, displayed reduced levels of brain activity in areas associated with voluntary actions. The researchers concluded “people who obey orders may subjectively experience their actions as closer to passive movements than fully voluntary actions” (Caspar et al., 2016, p. 585).

Social psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues also documented the consequences of coercive authority in their well-known Stanford Prison Study. Zimbardo, seeking to simulate a prison environment, randomly assigned male student volunteers to the role of prison guard or prisoner. The study was scheduled to run for two weeks, but was ended early due to the extreme reaction of the subjects. The prisoners seemed literally to become prisoners; although some rebelled, the majority became withdrawn and depressed. The guards also became increasingly tyrannical and arbitrary in their control of the prisoners. Some of their actions crossed the line between intimidation and abuse. They threatened the prisoners with physical injury, ran hooded prisoners into walls as they walked them to the bathrooms at night, and forced them to engage in feigned sexual activities. Zimbardo himself sank deeply into the role of superintendent, worrying over possible “prison breaks” and autocratically controlling visiting procedures (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973; Zimbardo, Maslach, & Haney, 2000; Zimbardo, 2004, 2007).

Zimbardo concluded that the participants were overwhelmed by the “power of the situation.” All of the participants had a general idea of the power differences between the role of a prisoner and the role of a guard. As the study progressed, to be a guard meant controlling all aspects of the prison and protecting this control with force if necessary. Prisoners, on the other hand, were supposed to accept this control and try to get through the experience as easily as possible by obeying all the prison’s rules. Participants who refused to obey these norms were pressured by the other participants to bring their behavior back in line; nonconformity was not tolerated. Zimbardo concluded that his study “made it evident that initially our guards were ‘good apples,’ some of whom became soured over time by powerful situational forces” (2007, p. 329). Zimbardo calls the tendency for people to be corrupted by negative group environments the Lucifer effect.

8-4c. Who Is Responsible?

A church member obediently swallowing poison. A soldier executing innocent civilians. A worker installing substandard building materials. A participant in an experiment giving an innocent victim painful shocks. On first hearing about such events, people sometimes fall prey to the fundamental attribution error (FAE): They blame the personalities of the individuals rather than the powerful group processes at work that forced them to obey—even though a closer, more informed analysis of the situation would reveal the power pressures the members faced (Reeder, Monroe, & Pryor, 2008). In extreme instances, when a powerholder inflicts tremendous suffering and misfortune on people, the group members blame themselves for their misery. The members of the People’s Temple may have felt so deserving of their fate that they chose to suffer rather than escape suffering. These feelings of self-condemnation may account for their willingness to take their own lives (Clark, 1971; Fanon, 1963).

Yet obedience is not a reflection of the nature of the individuals in the group, but an indication of the power of the group itself. By controlling key bases of power, using power tactics, and exploiting the nature of the subordinate–authority relationship, authorities exert great influence on group members. As John Darley explained, “Many evil actions are not the volitional products of individual evil-doers. Instead, they are in some sense societal products, in which a complex series of social forces interact to cause individuals to commit multiple acts of stunning evil” (Darley, 1992, p. 204).

Resources

Chapter Case: The People’s Temple

Our Father Who Art in Hell: The Life and Death of Jim Jones by James Reston, Jr. (2000) relies on the analysis of over 800 hours of recordings, as well as personal interviews with Jonestown survivors, to develop a full analysis of the People’s Temple.

A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown by Julia Scheeres (2011) draws on FBI documents and audiotapes to describe the experiences of individuals who lived and died in Jonestown.

Obedience to Authority

“Milgram at 50: Exploring the Enduring Relevance of Psychology’s Most Famous Studies,” edited by S. Alexander Haslam, Arthur G. Miller, and Stephen D. Reicher (2014), is a special issue of the Journal of Social Issues with 14 in-depth articles examining every facet of Milgram’s provocative analysis of the power of an authority.

“Why Are the Milgram Experiments Still So Extraordinarily Famous–and Controversial?” by Arthur G. Miller (2016) unpacks many issues surrounding Milgram’s studies of obedience, reviewing ethical controversies, theoretical extensions, and practical implications.

Source of Power in Groups

“Interpersonal Stratification: Status, Power, and Subordination” by Susan T. Fiske (2010b) is an extensive analysis of the social psychology of status structures and influence in groups.

The Psychology of Social Status, edited by Joey T. Cheng, Jessica L. Tracy, and Cameron Anderson (2014), reviews the most recent work examining status in small groups, including current theoretical perspectives, neurological substrates, and implications for leadership and group performance.

Metamorphic Effects of Power

The Power Paradox by Dacher Keltner (2016) is an evidence-based analysis of how people get power, how they use it, and how it can in some cases corrupt them.

Power: Past Findings, Present Considerations, and Future Directions by Adam D. Galinsky, Derek D. Rucker, and Joe C. Magee (2015) surveys the most recent work examining power and influence, with a focus on theories and models that consider power to be an interpersonal process.

Chapter Case: The People’s Temple

Our Father Who Art in Hell: The Life and Death of Jim Jones by James Reston, Jr. (2000) relies on the analysis of over 800 hours of recordings, as well as personal interviews with Jonestown survivors, to develop a full analysis of the People’s Temple.

A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown by Julia Scheeres (2011) draws on FBI documents and audiotapes to describe the experiences of individuals who lived and died in Jonestown.

Obedience to Authority

“Milgram at 50: Exploring the Enduring Relevance of Psychology’s Most Famous Studies,” edited by S. Alexander Haslam, Arthur G. Miller, and Stephen D. Reicher (2014), is a special issue of the Journal of Social Issues with 14 in-depth articles examining every facet of Milgram’s provocative analysis of the power of an authority.

“Why Are the Milgram Experiments Still So Extraordinarily Famous–and Controversial?” by Arthur G. Miller (2016) unpacks many issues surrounding Milgram’s studies of obedience, reviewing ethical controversies, theoretical extensions, and practical implications.

Source of Power in Groups

“Interpersonal Stratification: Status, Power, and Subordination” by Susan T. Fiske (2010b) is an extensive analysis of the social psychology of status structures and influence in groups.

The Psychology of Social Status, edited by Joey T. Cheng, Jessica L. Tracy, and Cameron Anderson (2014), reviews the most recent work examining status in small groups, including current theoretical perspectives, neurological substrates, and implications for leadership and group performance.

Metamorphic Effects of Power

The Power Paradox by Dacher Keltner (2016) is an evidence-based analysis of how people get power, how they use it, and how it can in some cases corrupt them.

Power: Past Findings, Present Considerations, and Future Directions by Adam D. Galinsky, Derek D. Rucker, and Joe C. Magee (2015) surveys the most recent work examining power and influence, with a focus on theories and models that consider power to be an interpersonal process.

Chapter 9. Leadership

Groups often require guidance as they strive to reach their objectives, but who will consistently coordinate, motivate, and sustain the group? The leader. A leader can fundamentally shape the group’s future, but the person who takes that role—whether formally recognized or emerging more gradually during the course of the group’s interactions—is not always the individual who should be the leader. If asked, “What one thing would you change to turn an inept group into a productive one?” most people would answer, “The leader.”

What is leadership?

Who will emerge as a leader?

Why do some lead and others follow?

Why are some leaders more effective than others?

Chapter Outline

9-1

Leading Groups

9-1a

Leadership Defined

9-1b

What Do Leaders Do?

9-2

Leadership Emergence

9-2a

The Leader’s Traits

9-2b

Intellectual and Practical Skills

9-2c

The Leader’s Look

9-3

Theories of Leadership Emergence

9-3a

Implicit Leadership Theory

9-3b

Social Identity Theory

9-3c

Social Role Theory

9-3d

Terror Management Theory

9-3e

Evolutionary Theory

9-4

Leader Effectiveness

9-4a

Styles and Situations

9-4b

Leader–Member Exchange Theory

9-4c

Participation Theories

9-4d

Transformational Leadership

9-4e

The Future of Leadership

Chapter Review

Resources

Charlotte Beers: Transforming Groups through Leadership

The ten were all high-ranking executives at Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide: the sixth-largest advertising agency in the world. They had gathered, at the conference room table in a nice hotel in Vienna, Austria, to solve a problem: why was their once thriving company now nearly always described as “beleaguered?” Each one was the director, executive officer, or chair of one of the company’s many corporate branches, and each one had been handpicked by Charlotte Beers, the company’s new chief executive officer (CEO). Beers had been hired just a few months earlier. Most considered her to be a surprising choice: She was the first woman to lead such a large agency and the first CEO brought in from outside the executive ranks of Ogilvy. But she had the reputation of being a turnaround expert: Someone who could breathe new life into the 5.4 billion, 8,000-employee company.

Beers had personally invited each one of them to the meeting, basing her choice on just one criterion: These were the people in the company who believed that Ogilvy must change if it was to survive in a highly competitive marketplace. These executives had never met before, but as the day began they weren’t ready to share their ideas. Previous planning sessions often got little accomplished because the corporate culture emphasized agreement over conflict. The Vienna meeting was different, however. Beers needed the group to come together and agree on two things: the need to change and the direction the company would take to make that change a successful one. As the day went on some argued that the basic problem, and key fix, was morale: The company didn’t need restructuring, it needed confidence. Others emphasized the company’s failure to understand its strengths, and to build on those strengths. And some stressed the company’s sprawling corporate structure, and its offices located all over the world.

But the group got its work done. As the meeting ended, many wondered where the next year would take the company, but they did not wonder about their leader: Beers was energetic, influential, informal, but also deadly serious. As the group adjourned and each leader set to work restructuring the company, reinventing its mission, and building on its strengths, their cynicism and suspicion changed into optimism and enthusiasm: “Charlotte felt right. She fits” they all thought (Ibarra & Sackley, 2011, p. 8).

Group dynamics are the influential interpersonal processes that take place in groups, and one of the most influential of these processes is leadership. Egyptian hieroglyphics written 5,000 years ago include the terms leader and leadership (Bass, 2008). The great epics, such as Beowulf, the Song of Roland, and the Odyssey, are filled with the exploits of leaders of small bands of adventurers. Leadership, like sex, language, and groups, make the anthropologist’s list of universals that have been identified as common to all cultures and all civilizations, without exception (Brown, 1991). Presumably, ever since the first protohuman told the rest of the group “We’re doing this all wrong, let’s get organized” people have pondered the mysteries examined in this chapter: “What do leaders do?” “Who should we select to be our leader?” and “Why are some leaders much more effective than others?”

9-1. Leading Groups

When Charlotte Beers took over as their leader, Ogilvy was good, but not great. An international company, with divisions operating all over the world, it was positioned to become the number one choice for companies looking to expand their brand to new markets. Beers believed that Ogilvy’s strengths weren’t being fully exploited, so she focused on the basics—structure, strategy, systems, and staff—but she did so with an energetic, optimistic, “fearless” style. As she explains, “I came to Ogilvy very clear that my role as CEO and chairman was to be a change agent, to help this grand agency right itself” (Beers, 2002, p. 217). As the company’s leader, she guided the organization in its work, from disorganization and inefficiency to effectiveness. She was not just the manager, CEO, or chairman of the board: She was Ogilvy’s leader.

9-1a. Leadership Defined

The political scientist James McGregor Burns (1978) has asserted that leadership is “one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth” (p. 2). But much of the mystery vanishes when leadership is examined from a group perspective. Certainly, leaders sometimes influence others across time and great distances, but more typically leadership occurs in a context: and that context is the group. For example Beers, when she first took over as the CEO of Ogilvy, sent a message directly to all 8,000 employees expressing confidence in the company, and that change was “going to happen fast” (Ibarra & Sackley, 2011, p. 6). But she did much of her work leading teams of directors, staff, and executives who were responsible for managing the work of the company. Yes, leadership can be considered to be a set of abilities, a position of authority, or a shared vision, but fundamentally: Leadership is an influence process in which group members guide one another in the pursuit of individual and collective goals. Leadership is a process of influence rather than a position or office; a cooperative, reciprocal relationship rather than a coercive one; and a goal-oriented, generative process rather than an oppressive one.

Leadership Is an Influence Process

Experts have defined leadership in many ways, but most definitions return to one core quality—influence:

Leadership is the “successful influence by the leader that results in the attainment of goals by the influenced followers” (Bass, 2008, p. 19).

“Leadership is the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done” (Yukl, 2013, p. 7).

Leadership is “a process whereby an individual influences a group” (Northouse, 2013, p. 5).

Leaders are “individuals who significantly influence the thoughts, behaviors, and/or feelings of others” (Gardner, 1995, p. 6).

This influence process, however, can take a variety of forms. Leaders sometimes use direct methods of influence: they issue directives, orders, instructions, and so on. Military leaders can and do issue orders to subordinates who are duty-bound to follow those orders. Politicians speak directly to their constituents, explaining their policies and asking for support. Team leaders identify the subtasks that must be completed by the group as it pursues its goals, and then they assign different members of the team to each subtask. But leaders also influence their followers in more subtle and less perceptible ways. They put in place organizational procedures and structures that constrain their followers’ actions in ways that often go unnoticed. Their persuasive messages convince listeners not by presenting rational arguments and information, but by appealing to their emotions and unconscious motivations. And some lead by setting an example that they hope others might follow. Leaders don’t just order, demand, and require but also persuade, cajole, and guide.

A distinction is often drawn between leadership and other forms of influence in groups and organizations, such as management and supervision. Leaders may hold supervisory positions in groups, but holding a position does not always translate into leadership; there are many bosses, supervisors, and managers who are not leaders. Conversely, many individuals in groups and organizations who do not hold formal positions of authority are leaders, for they influence others as they pool their efforts in the pursuit of shared goals. Leadership is more about process, rather than position (see Mintzberg, 2009).

Leadership Is a Cooperative, Reciprocal Relationship

Even though the leader’s path to influence is sometimes rife with conflict, leadership processes are based more on cooperation rather than coercion. People who use domination and intimidation to influence others—whether they are kings, presidents, bosses, or managers—maybe powerful, but they are not necessarily leaders. Leaders do not force others to follow them, but instead the leader–follower relationship is a cooperative, consensual one. When people join forces to achieve an outcome, some must step forward and guide the group toward its goals and others must accept that guidance. In general, leaders appear in groups when

(1)

members feel that success on the group task is within their reach,

(2)

the rewards of success are valued,

(3)

the task requires group effort rather than individual effort, and

(4)

an individual with previous experience in the leadership role is present in the group (Guastello, 2007).

A group that is facing a stressful situation—such as a potential failure or danger—is also likely to embrace a leader’s guidance (Goethals & Hoyt, 2011). Individuals who take pride in their independence may find, when difficult circumstances overtake them, that they are relieved to find a leader who is ready to take charge of the group and coordinate its reaction to the threat. Such circumstances can even cause members to see leadership potential in people where none exists. Members of troubled groups, compared to more tranquil groups, exaggerate the potential of possible leaders. They even misremember crucial details, tending to recall their prospective leader as having performed any number of leader-consistent behaviors and forgetting any past behaviors that conflict with their image of the person as a suitable leader. Thus, members do not resist having a leader; instead, they actively create leaders both interpersonally and psychologically (Emrich, 1999).

Followers do, however, sometimes struggle against their leader’s influence, particularly when that influence takes the form of heavy-handed influence or the leader acts to promote his or her own outcomes at the expense of the group (Avolio & Locke, 2002). Yet most people prefer to be led rather than to be leaderless. When in groups, people must often coordinate their actions with those of others in the group, and leaders are often the ones in the group who are responsible for ensuring that harmonization (see Chapter 8). Group members are usually more satisfied and productive when their groups have leaders (Berkowitz, 1953). Group members often complain about the quality of their leaders—surveys that ask employees to identify the worst thing about their job find these complaints tend to converge on the leader—but they seek out better leaders rather than avoiding them altogether (Hogan & Kaiser, 2005). Most people do not just accept the need for a leader but appreciate the contribution that the leader makes to the group and its outcomes (Friedman & Saul, 1991).

Leadership Is a Goal-Oriented Process

Leadership is an adaptive, goal-seeking process, for it organizes and motivates group members’ attempts to attain personal and group goals (Parks, 2005). Studies of leaders in all kinds of group situations—flight crews, politics, schools, military units, and religious groups—all suggest that groups prosper when guided by good leaders. Groups, when discussing solutions to problems, tend to spend too much time discussing information shared by many members—unless a leader is present in the group who controls the group’s tendency to focus on shared information (Larson et al., 1996). When a company gets a new CEO, its performance tends to climb (Jung, Wu, & Chow, 2008). Newly appointed leaders who inspire and excite members with fresh ideas and strategies can spur the group on to great achievements and successes (Kaiser, Hogan, & Craig, 2008). Groups, as noted in Chapter 7, often fail to help in emergency situations. But what happens if a leader is present in the group? In one study of the bystander effect, only 35% of the groups helped a person in need, but when the group had a leader, 80% of the groups delivered assistance (Baumeister et al., 1988).

Unfortunately, although effective leaders facilitate the attainment of positive benefits both for the members of the group and the group itself, not all leaders are effective. Leaders sometimes take their group in directions it should not go. They act to promote their own personal outcomes and overlook the good of the group. Leaders manipulate followers, persuading them to make sacrifices, while the leaders enjoy the rewards of their power and influence. They push their agendas too hard, their groups obey their demands, and only later do all realize their mistakes (Lipman-Blumen, 2005). Such leaders are influential—but in a negative way.

Do Leaders Make All the Difference?

Leaders significantly influence their group’s dynamics, but sometimes people think that leaders do everything. In Western cultures, in particular, people assume that leaders are so influential that they, and they alone, determine their group’s outcomes. This romanticized view of leaders as rescuers and heroes has been aptly termed the romance of leadership (Meindl, Ehrlich, & Dukerich, 1985).

This romance of leadership ignores both the limited influence wielded by most leaders and the many other factors that influence a group and its dynamics. When a team fails, those in charge often replace the group’s leaders, for they assume that a different leader could have rescued the failing team. When people give all the credit for a group’s success to the leader or blame him or her for a failure, they overlook the contributions of the other group members. Leaders are influential, but few leaders deserve all the blame for their group’s failures and fewer still are heroes who can fairly claim the lion’s share of credit for their group’s achievements (Bligh, Kohles, & Pillai, 2011).

9-1b. What Do Leaders Do?

Charlotte Beers was hired to lead Ogilvy, and her official title was Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer. But what did Beers do as a leader? What behaviors define the role of a leader?

A multinational corporation demands different things of a leader than does a study group or a flight crew, yet certain behaviors regularly define the leadership role across a wide variety of groups. To identify these consistencies, researchers at Ohio State University (see Fleishman, 1953) first developed a list of hundreds of types of behaviors typical of military and organizational leaders—initiating new practices, providing praise, interacting informally with subordinates, delegating responsibilities, representing the group, integrating group action, and so on. They then refined the list by asking members of various groups to indicate how many of these behaviors their leaders displayed. Using factor analysis, they identified clusters of related behaviors that were frequently used to describe leaders. These analyses suggested that 80% of the variability in followers’ ratings could be explained by a two-factor model of leadership:

Task leadership focuses on the group’s work and its goals. To facilitate the achievement of group goals, the leader initiates structure, sets standards and objectives, identifies roles and assigns members to those roles, develops standard operating procedures, defines responsibilities, establishes communication networks, gives evaluative feedback, plans activities, coordinates activities, proposes solutions, monitors compliance with procedures, and stresses the need for efficiency and productivity (Lord, 1977; Yukl, 2013).

Relationship leadership focuses on the interpersonal relations within the group. To increase socioemotional satisfaction and teamwork in the group, the leader boosts morale, gives support and encouragement, reduces interpersonal conflict, helps members to release negative tensions, establishes rapport, and shows concern and consideration for the group and its members (Lord, 1977; Yukl, 2013).

Subsequent studies of leaders in many different contexts have repeatedly confirmed the two-factor model. Although the labels vary—task-oriented versus relational-oriented (DeRue et al., 2011), work-facilitative versus supportive (Bowers & Seashore, 1966), production-centered versus employee-centered (Likert, 1967), administratively skilled versus relations-skilled (Mann, 1965), and performance versus maintenance (Misumi, 1995)—the two basic clusters emerge with great regularity (Hamlin & Hatton, 2013).

What Are the Two Sides of Leadership?

Leaders must keep the group moving forward, but they must also make sure the group stays together. The Ohio State researchers developed the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ) to measure these two sides of leadership: task and relationship leadership.

Instructions

How do you act when you are leading others? Pick from the list below those behaviors that you think you would likely perform if leading a group.

Interpretation

People tend to favor one of these two facets when leading groups—some people are naturally task-focused and others are more relational (Schriesheim & Eisenbach, 1995). Which set of items seems more consistent with your personal approach to leadership: task or relationship? (The items are paraphrased from the LBDQ, Halpin, 1957, pp. 4–6.)

Leadership Substitutes

The two-factor model assumes that leaders, despite their widely varying methods and styles, tend to do two basic things when they lead others—they coordinate the work that the group must accomplish and they attend to the group’s interpersonal needs. But these two forms of leadership, though commonplace, are not needed in every leadership situation. Beers, for example, spent much of her time initiating structure: planning, strategizing, organizing, and coordinating the activities of the company’s many units. She was a source of inspiration for others, but because of the high level of professionalism, she did not need to boost members’ commitment to the group’s goals.

Her leadership at Ogilvy is consistent with leadership substitutes theory, which maintains that substitutes for leadership obviate the need to provide task or relational support to the group members (Kerr & Jermier, 1978). In some cases, something about the group members may reduce their need for task, relational, or both task and relational leadership. For example, experienced, professional, and well-trained members may need little in the way of task leadership. In other cases, aspects of the task and the group or organizational setting may substitute for leadership. If the group is highly cohesive and the members are providing all the support to each other they need, relational leadership becomes less important, just as a task that is highly structured or routine will negate the need for task structuring (Dionne et al., 2005).

Other features of the members, the task, or the group and organizational setting may work to neutralize leadership. Whereas substitutes take the place of leadership interventions, neutralizers interfere with or completely prevent the leader from effectively dealing with the task or relational needs of the group. When members work at extremely simple, boring tasks, even the most energetic and well-meaning leader may be unable to transform the work into an intellectually satisfying experience (Howell et al., 1990).

Sex Differences in Leadership

Leadership has two sides—the task side and the relational side—and humans come in two varieties—man and woman. Do these variations in leadership correspond to sex differences in leadership?

Despite changes in the roles of men and women in contemporary society, when men and women gather in groups, the men tend to be agentic—task-oriented, active, decision-focused, independent, goal-oriented—whereas women are more communal—helpful to others, warm in relation to others, understanding, aware of others’ feelings (Abele et al., 2008). Women, to speak in generalities, when asked to describe themselves to others in just-formed groups, stress their communal qualities with such adjectives as open, fair, responsible, and pleasant. Men describe themselves as influential, powerful, and skilled at the task to be done (Forsyth et al., 1985). Women, more so than men, engage in relationship maintenance, including giving advice, offering assurances, and managing conflict (Leaper & Ayres, 2007). Women connect more positively to other group members by smiling more, maintaining eye contact, and responding more tactfully to others’ comments (Hall, 2006). These differences can be seen in groups of children, with boys undertaking physical activities, competing with one another, and playing in rough ways, and girls carrying out coordinated activities with a minimum of conflict (Maccoby, 2002). These differences may even reflect evolutionary pressures that encouraged the development of communal tendencies in women and task-focused activity in men (Geary, 1988).

This sex difference is only a tendency; it does not manifest itself across all groups and situations. Beers, for example, was a task-focused leader. A meta-analytic review of more than 150 studies that compared the leadership styles adopted by men and women concluded women performed more relationship-oriented actions in laboratory groups and also described themselves as more relationship-oriented on questionnaires. The sexes did not differ, however, in studies conducted in organizational settings (Eagly & Johnson, 1990). These findings suggest that stereotypes continue to constrain men and women in a variety of interpersonal and work settings, but that “men and women do not consistently and reliably differ in their enactment of interpersonal versus task style in leadership roles” (Gipson et al., 2017, p. 45).

9-2. Leadership Emergence

Scholars down through the centuries have searched for the source of leadership inside of people rather than the groups they lead. In the nineteenth century, for example, the historian Thomas Carlyle (1841) offered up his great leader theory of history (Carlyle called it the “great man” theory). He asserted that leaders possess certain characteristics that mark them for greatness, so history could be best studied by considering the contributions of the few great men and women. The Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, in contrast, argued such leaders as Alexander the Great and Napoleon came to prominence because the spirit of the times—the Zeitgeist—was propitious for the dominance of a single individual, and the qualities of the person were largely irrelevant to this rise to power. His Zeitgeist theory traced leadership emergence and effectiveness to the situational, rather than, personal factors (Tolstoy, 1887/1952).

Who Needs a Leader?

Some evidence suggests that a group of men will be more likely to include a leader than will a group of women (Schmid Mast, 2002). Investigators tested for this sex difference by arranging for three- to five-person groups to meet over three weeks. Some of the groups were all male, some were all female, and some included two men and two women. At the end of each day’s session, the group members rated one another on leadership, and the researchers used these ratings to determine if control over the group’s activities was concentrated, by consensus, on one group member. Centralization decreased, over time, in all the groups, but it remained higher across the three weeks in the all-male groups. The investigators concluded that men, in general, are more tolerant of inequality than women, so they favor social hierarchy and centralization (Berdahl & Anderson, 2005).

These two perspectives—Carlyle’s great leader theory and Tolstoy’s Zeitgeist approach—continue to shape theoretical analyses of leadership emergence. The great leader theory is consistent with a trait approach to leadership, which assumes that leaders possess certain personality traits and characteristics and that these characteristics are responsible for their rise in the leadership ranks. Tolstoy’s Zeitgeist view, in contrast, is consistent with a situational approach, which suggests that leadership is determined by a host of variables operating in the leadership situation, including the size of the group, its cohesion, the quality of leader–member relations, and the type of task to be performed. Neither approach, however, is sufficient to account for leadership emergence, but must be instead combined in an interactional approach that considers both personal qualities as well as situational factors when predicting leadership. After all, leadership is a behavior, and as Lewin’s (1951) interactional approach maintained, behavior is a function of both the person and the environment: Behavior=𝑓(𝑃, 𝐸).

9-2a. The Leader’s Traits

Early leadership researchers believed that leaders possessed certain personality traits that set them apart from others. This trait approach, which in its strongest form assumed that some people were natural-born leaders, faded in popularity as researchers reported a series of failures to find any consistent impact of personality on leadership behavior across a wide variety of situations. After conducting hundreds of studies, researchers began to wonder if personality made much of a difference when trying to predict who would emerge as a leader and who would not (Mann, 1959; Stogdill, 1948).

In retrospect, this rejection of the trait approach was premature. When researchers used more precise measures of personality, stronger relationships were identified. Table 9.1, for example, samples the results of just a few of the hundreds of studies of the relationship between such personality qualities as assertiveness, dominance, narcissism, self-monitoring, and social motivation and leadership (see Zaccaro, Kemp, & Bader, 2004). The interaction of personality traits with the situation also matters. Conscientious, organized, achievement-oriented, and self-controlled individuals are more likely to emerge as leaders in situations that favor a task-oriented leader, whereas extraverted, gregarious individuals lead when the situation requires interpersonal skills (DeRue et al., 2011).

Table 9.1 A Sampling of Personality Characteristics That Are Reliably Associated with Leadership Emergence

Characteristic Relationship to Leadership Emergence

Assertiveness The relationship between assertiveness and leadership emergence is curvilinear; individuals who are either low in assertiveness or very high in assertiveness are less likely to be identified as leaders (Ames & Flynn, 2007).

Authenticity Individuals who are more aware of their personal qualities, including their values and beliefs and exhibiting less bias when processing self-relevant information, are more likely to be accepted as leaders (Ilies, Morgeson, & Nahrgang, 2005).

Birth order Those born first in their families and only children are hypothesized to be more driven to seek leadership and control in social settings. Middle-born children tend to accept follower roles in groups, and children born later are thought to be rebellious and creative (Grose, 2003).

Character strengths Those seeking leadership positions in a military organization had elevated scores on a number of indicators of strength of character, including honesty, hope, bravery, industry, and teamwork (Matthews et al., 2006).

Dominance Individuals with dominant personalities—they describe themselves as high in their desire to control their environment, to influence other people, and to express their opinions in a forceful way—are more likely to act as leaders in small-group situations (Smith & Foti, 1998).

Five factors of personality Those who emerge as leaders tend to be more extraverted, conscientious, emotionally stable, and open to experience, although these tendencies are stronger in laboratory studies of leaderless groups (Judge et al., 2002).

Gender identity Masculine individuals are more likely to emerge as leaders than are feminine individuals (Lord, De Vader, & Alliger, 1986).

Narcissism Individuals who take on leadership roles in turbulent situations, such as groups facing a threat or those in which status is determined by intense competition among rivals within the group, tend to be narcissistic, arrogant, self-absorbed, hostile, and very self-confident (Rosenthal & Pittinsky, 2006).

Self-efficacy for leadership Confidence in one’s ability to lead is associated with increases in willingness to accept a leadership role and success in that role (Hoyt & Blascovich, 2007).

Self-monitoring High self-monitors are more likely to emerge as the leader of a group than are low self-monitors, since they are more concerned with status-enhancement and are more likely to adapt their actions to fit the demands of the situation (Bedeian & Day, 2004).

Social motivation Individuals who are both success-oriented and affiliation-oriented, as assessed by projective measures, are more active in group problem-solving settings and are more likely to be elected to positions of leadership in such groups (Sorrentino & Field, 1986).

The Dark Triad

Whereas FFM may explain routine interpersonal tendencies by describing qualities that are socially valued—the “right stuff”—another set of personality traits is also related to leadership: the Dark Triad (DT) of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy (Paulhus & Williams, 2002).

Machiavellianism: Machiavellians endorse using manipulative tactics in dealing with other people and espouse a cynical view of human nature.

Narcissism: Narcissists have inflated views of their self-worth; they tend to exaggerate their achievements, block criticism, refuse to compromise, and seek out attention and recognition from others.

Psychopathy: Psychopaths lack concern for both other people as well as for social regulatory mechanisms, so they tend to act impulsively without full consideration of the consequences of their choices.

Studies suggest that all three of the dark triad traits are related to leadership emergence (O’Boyle et al., 2012). Machiavellians’ ability to be social chameleons, taking on the attitudes and behaviors of those around them while subtly manipulating the situation to their favor, explains why they are often able to secure positions of leadership in groups. Narcissists, too, are often selected for positions of leadership, given their outgoing, confident interpersonal styles (Grijalva et al., 2015). Individuals with elevated scores in psychopathy are often passed over for leadership given their lack of conscientiousness and inability to empathize with coworkers, but they are successful in certain types of organizations. One analysis of psychopathology in the workplace (provocatively titled Snakes in Suits) suggested that 3.5% of top executives earn very high scores on standard measures of psychopathy (Babiak & Hare, 2006).

9-2b. Intellectual and Practical Skills

After Charlotte Beers graduated from college she went to work at Uncle Ben’s, working as a group manager for one product: their long-grain rice. Some 40 years later, having been the CEO of one of the largest advertising companies in the world, she was selected by U.S. General Colin Powell to teach (and reassure) the residents of other countries about America’s hopes for world peace and prosperity. Her personality was one of the key reasons why she became the leader across a wide variety of times and contexts, but personality alone does not explain why she was so often the “one in charge.” She is extraverted and highly conscientious, but also intelligent, experienced, and motivated to lead.

General Mental Ability

When people describe Charlotte Beers, they often start with one word: fierce. Their next word, however, is usually smart.

The hallmarks of general mental ability (GMA) are abstract thinking, ability to manipulate the environment, and foresight—all qualities that likely qualify one to be a leader. It’s not surprising that leaders tend to score higher than average on standard intelligence tests, and they make superior judgments with greater decisiveness. They tend to be knowledgeable both in general and about their particular field, and their verbal skills—both written and oral—are superior relative to nonleaders (Stogdill, 1948).

Leaders, however, typically do not exceed their followers’ intellectual prowess by a wide margin (Simonton, 1985). Groups generally prefer leaders who are more intelligent than the average group member, but too great a discrepancy introduces problems in communication, in trust, and in social sensitivity. Although highly intelligent individuals may be extremely capable and efficient leaders, their groups may feel that large differences in intellectual abilities translate into large differences in interests, in attitudes, and in values. Hence, although high intelligence may mean skilled leadership, a group prefers to be “ill-governed by people it can understand” (Gibb, 1969, p. 218).

Emotional Intelligence

When people think of intelligence, they often stress cognitive abilities such as mathematics, verbal skills, and intellectual problem-solving. But some people are also interpersonally intelligent: They have the ability to understand and relate to people, for they deal with others wisely and effectively. They have elevated emotional intelligence: “the ability to perceive emotions in self and others; to understand how emotions blend, unfold, and influence cognition and behavior; to use emotions to facilitate thinking; and to manage emotions in self and others” (Lopes & Salovey, 2008, p. 81).

Skill in communicating and decoding emotions is essential for an effective leader. The emotionally intelligent leader can see problems coming, for such problems are often conveyed indirectly by others’ moods and emotions. Better able to read the politics of the situation, such leaders can detect shifting alliances and recognize where to put their energies and when to bide their time. They can also communicate their ideas to others in more robust ways, for they can use their own emotional energy to influence others. They are also less likely to lose control of their emotions—they are not inappropriately angry, critical, or histrionic. In consequence, emotional intelligence is associated with various aspects of leadership, including emergence as a leader, willingness to cooperate with others, empathy for others, the tendency to take others’ perspectives, and the emotional intensity of one’s interpersonal relations (Humphrey, 2014).

Practical and Creative Intelligence

During World War II, Germany, America, and England experimented with various methods for identifying leaders to serve in the military. In many cases, they used the so-called leaderless-group tests, in which a group of individuals, strangers to one another, was given a task to complete. For example, a group might be assembled on one side of a ravine and told to use the available boards, ropes, and beams to build a temporary bridge to the other side (Eaton, 1947). Some individuals within these groups could master these tasks by identifying the solution and persuading others in their group to follow their directions. Individuals who succeeded in the leaderless-group tests had practical intelligence.

Psychologist Robert Sternberg (2012) includes practical intelligence as one of the cornerstones of his systems model of leadership. Sternberg recognizes that good leaders are often intellectually strong individuals and capable of acquiring and processing information in a logical, sensible, and rapid way. But leaders are also skilled problem-solvers. They have the “know how” needed for success in the given situation, and they are sufficiently skilled to convince others to follow their recommendations. Sternberg also includes creative intelligence in his theory, recognizing that in many cases leaders must be able to recognize future goals and directions and take steps to help the group accept their vision of the future. Charlotte Beers, for example, was intelligent in the analytical sense: she majored in physics and mathematics in college. But she was also intelligent, in a practical and creative sense: she was able to identify a specific strategy to reenergize Ogilvy, and then use her persuasive talents to convince others to share this vision.

Expertise

Practical intelligence comes with experience. One review of 52 studies of characteristics typically ascribed to a leader discovered that technical, task-relevant skills were mentioned in 35% of the studies (Stogdill, 1974). Groups are more accepting of leaders who have previously demonstrated task ability and are more willing to follow the directions of a task-competent person than those of an incompetent person (Hollander, 1965). Furthermore, although high task ability facilitates leadership, low task ability seems to be an even more powerful factor in disqualifying individuals from consideration as leaders (Palmer, 1962). Initially, if group members do not know one another well, then they may rely on diffuse status characteristics, such as rank, age, and tenure with the group, to infer expertise, but over time they will shift to specific, behavioral cues to determine who is competent and who is not (Bunderson, 2003). Given enough experience in working together, most group members can distinguish between the skilled and the unskilled (Littlepage, Robison, & Reddington, 1997; Littlepage & Silbiger, 1992). Task-specific skills are more important in determining leadership emergence in performance-oriented, service–delivery-oriented groups, whereas interpersonal and conceptual skills are more important in upper echelon leadership positions (Yukl, 2013).

What Matters More: Quantity or Quality?

Leaders are active within their groups rather than aloof; they show up for meetings, they ask questions, they offer comments and suggestions, they talk to other members on the phone, and they send out emails. The correlation between leadership emergence and most personal characteristics usually averages in the low .20s, but the correlation between participation rate and leadership ranges from .61 to .72 (Littlepage & Mueller, 1997; Malloy & Janowski, 1992; Stein & Heller, 1979).

Group members take note of participation rate in part because it tells them who is interested in the group and is willing to take responsibility for its performance. One of the surest ways to escape serving as the leader of a group is to not say much during meetings. But what about the opposite tendency—the babble effect? Do group members just assume people who talk a lot in the group meetings are the group leaders, even if what they say has little value (Sorrentino & Boutillier, 1975)?

Social psychologists Eric Jones and Janice Kelly (2007) studied the impact of the quality of talk and the quantity of talk on leadership by manipulating both variables experimentally. Since they are two different variables that can range in intensity from high to low, comparing their relative impact on leadership requires that they be matched in terms of strength. Therefore, before pitting quantity against quality, they first calibrated the strength of these two variables so that each one had a fair chance of overpowering the other one. As in prior research, they created low- and high-quality arguments and low- and high-quantity messages, but they also made sure the high conditions were twice the level of the low conditions for both variables. What they discovered was that quantity did matter, but only if the comments offered were of high quality. People who made low-quality comments during the group discussion received relatively low ratings on leadership potential, even when they offered a substantial number of these comments. Quantity did boost one’s leadership ratings, but only if the comments were of high quality. Rationality (quality) trumped babble (quantity), at least in this case.

9-2c. The Leader’s Look

An individual’s intellectual and practical skills may qualify them to lead a group, yet the group does not select them to lead. As Beers (2012, p. 126) explains, “It’s a subjective process, and people are sometimes moved ahead for some really off the charts reasons.” Those “off the charts” reasons include unrecognized biases based on general demographic characteristics, such as age, race, and sex.

Physical Appearances

Leaders tend to differ physically from their fellow group members. They are often taller, healthier, and older than the average group member. Height and leadership emergence are correlated, on average, at .30 (Stogdill, 1948, 1974). People who look physically fit are considered more leader-like than individuals who are out of shape (Campbell et al., 2002). Older people, too tend to be viewed as leaders more so than younger group members, particularly if group members assume that age is an indicator of wisdom, experience, and sagacity. For example, fewer than 1% of the corporate executives for the top Fortune 700 companies are under 40 years of age, and 81% are 50 or older (Spencer Stuart, 2004). Even hair color has been found to influence perceptions of leadership. A study of the 500 top CEOs in England discovered fewer blondes and more redheads than might be expected given the distribution of these hair colors in the overall population of the country. The authors suggest that stereotypes about blondes—that they are less cognitively swift—and redheads—that they are mean but competent—may be sufficient to cause their under- and overrepresentation in leadership positions (Takeda, Helms, & Romanova, 2006).

Diversity

When Beers (who is white) was the CEO of Oglivy, the majority of the employees were white as well. The president of the student government association of a traditionally African American college is likely a black woman. The executive director of the Organization of Chinese Americans is likely a Chinese American. In 2016, how many African Americans were leaders (CEOs) of a Fortune 500 company in the United States? Only five. And only one was a woman (McGirt, 2016).

Leadership is not limited to any particular cultural, ethnic, or racial group, for the role of leader is firmly embedded in the traditions of African, European, Latino, Asian, and Native American groups (Smith & Bond, 1993). But individuals who are members of a minority group, whether based on ethnicity, religion, or race, are less likely to be recognized as group leaders. For example, when Mexican American and European American women interacted in groups, the Mexican American women exerted less influence than the European American women (Roll, McClelland, & Abel, 1996). In a study conducted in Australia that paired Chinese students with the Australian students, the Chinese students were less influential than the Australian students (Jones et al., 1995).

Minorities are also underrepresented in leadership roles in business and organizational settings. As of 2017, only four African Americans have been elected as state governors, and Barack Obama was the first African American U.S. president. African Americans in U.S. organizations and military groups are less likely to lead in racially diverse groups, even if their experience qualifies them for these roles (Molm, 1986). When senior managers review the leadership potential of lower-level managers, they give higher marks to European Americans than to African Americans and Asian Americans (Carton & Rosette, 2011). Asian Americans, despite their success in scientific and technical fields, are less likely than European Americans and African Americans to achieve positions of leadership in their fields (Tang, 1997). Ethnic and racial minorities are underrepresented in the leadership world (Hooijberg & DiTomaso, 1996).

Sex

Beers, as both a woman and a leader, is something of an exception. Although the gender gap in leadership has narrowed in recent years, it has not closed. Both men and women, when surveyed, express a preference for a male rather than a female boss (Powell, 2014). Women receive lower evaluations and fewer promotions than men, even when actual performance data or behaviors are held constant (Heilman, Block, & Martell, 1995). A survey of over 40 countries, including Austria, Israel, and Singapore, indicated that women hold 20–30% of the governmental, legislative, and managerial positions in those countries (Schein, 2007). The percentage has risen steadily over the years, but men still hold a near monopoly on the high-level leadership positions (Carli & Eagly, 2011). In 2017, only 21 women (4%) were the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Female managers are more likely to feel excluded from career-related and informal interactions with senior managers than are male managers (Cianni & Romberger, 1995), and some have also expressed less confidence in their leadership abilities (Watson & Hoffman, 1996). The terms glass ceiling and leadership labyrinth describe the hidden situational and interpersonal factors that prevent women from gaining leadership positions (Eagly & Carli, 2007).

This gender difference also shapes men’s and women’s actions in small-group settings. Men are five times more likely to enact leadership behaviors than women in small, mixed-sex, leaderless groups and so are more likely to emerge as leaders (Walker et al., 1996). Both leaders and subordinates perceive female leaders to be less dominant than male leaders (Carli, 2001). The lone man in an otherwise all-female group often becomes the leader, whereas the lone woman in an otherwise all-male group has little influence (Crocker & McGraw, 1984). When a woman exerts influence in a group, members tend to frown and tighten their facial muscles; but when a man takes charge, members are more likely to nod in agreement (Butler & Geis, 1990). The tendency for men to dominate women in informal discussion groups was observed even when the men and women were all deemed to be androgynous (Porter et al., 1985), when group members were personally committed to equality for men and women (Sapp, Harrod, & Zhao, 1996), when the women in the group were dispositionally more dominant than the men (Nyquist & Spence, 1986), and when the men and women were equally extraverted (Campbell et al., 2002). When researchers paired together a person who tended to be interpersonally powerful with one who was more submissive, the dispositionally dominant person emerged as the leader in 73% of the same-sex dyads. But in mixed-sex dyads, the dominant man became the leader 90% of the time, and the dominant woman became the leader only 35% of the time (Nyquist & Spence, 1986).

This tendency for men to emerge as leaders more frequently than women is particularly ironic because studies of sex differences in the qualities that have been shown to predict leadership effectiveness—extraversion, conscientiousness, skill in working with others, acknowledging the good work of subordinates, communicating clearly, and facilitating others’ development—all suggest that women are superior in these qualities to men. Hence, although women’s personality traits and competences qualify them to be leaders, they are less likely to gain such positions (Powell, 2014).

9-3. Theories of Leadership Emergence

What explains who emerges from the crowd of candidates to become the group’s leader? Manet was the leader of the Impressionist painters. Fito Strauch took control of the day-to-day activities of the Andes survivors. Jim Jones was the charismatic leader of the People’s Temple. Charlotte Beers was selected to run Ogilvy. But why Manet and not Degas? Why Strauch and not Canessa? Why Beers and not someone from inside the company itself? Here we will consider five theories that provide very different solutions to the riddle of leadership emergence and, in so doing, provide their own unique insights: Implicit leadership theory, social identity theory, social role theory, terror management theory, and evolutionary theory (see Dinh et al., 2014, for a comprehensive review and taxonomy of leadership theories).

9-3a. Implicit Leadership Theory

When people meet for the first time, they quickly appraise one another’s potential as leaders, and, within the first few minutes, those with more potential are permitted to exert more influence over the group than others. Implicit leadership theory, developed by social psychologist Robert Lord and his colleagues, traces these preferences to individuals’ expectations, beliefs, and assumptions about leaders and leadership. These cognitive structures are termed implicit leadership theories (ILTs) or leader prototypes. These structures are described as implicit because they are not overtly stated; followers may not even be aware they have intuitive beliefs about leadership or that these beliefs influence their reactions to leaders. They are called theories because, like formal theories, they include generalities about leadership and hypotheses about the qualities that characterize most leaders (Lord, Foti, & De Vader, 1984; Lord & Maher, 1991).

Consider the hypothetical ILT shown in Figure 9.2. A follower whose thoughts about leadership were organized by this ILT would believe that outstanding leaders should be intelligent, inspirational, visionary, relational, dedicated, team-oriented, diplomatic, and have integrity. This ILT also indicates how these general traits are linked to more specific qualities. How do you know if a leader is dedicated? See if he or she is hardworking and knows how to get things done. And what about inspiration? An inspiring leader should be motivating, dynamic, positive, and encouraging. Although each group member may have a unique conception of leadership, most people’s ILTs include task skills—the leader should be active, determined, influential, and in command—and relationship skills—the leader should be caring, interested, truthful, and open to others’ ideas (Epitropaki & Martin, 2004; House et al., 2004). ILTs are also sensitive to the specifics of a given situation. Some leadership traits, such as persistence, likeability, and charisma, are considered to be essential qualities only in particular contexts, such as politics, business, or sports (Lord et al., 1984).

The Prototype-Matching Hypothesis

Lord suggests that ILTs provide followers with a psychological standard or prototype they can use to distinguish between effective and ineffective leaders and leaders and followers (Lord, 2005; Lord & Maher, 1991). If, for example, a follower thinks that a leader should be bold, energetic, and daring, then she will likely rate a gung-ho leader more positively than a low-key consensus builder. In contrast, if the follower believes that a leader should be considerate and reflective, then he will respond more positively to one who shows concern for others and deliberates extensively before making a decision. To test this prototype-matching hypothesis, Lord and his colleagues (1984) asked people to evaluate one of three hypothetical leaders. One, the prototypical leader, displayed qualities that were congruent with most people’s ILTs: He set goals, provided directive information, talked with subordinates a great deal, and identified problems needing solutions. The second leader displayed qualities that were inconsistent with most ILTs: He admitted mistakes, paid little attention to details, was critical without reason, and withheld rewards. A third leader displayed positive qualities that were neither consistent nor inconsistent with most ILTs. This leader sought out information, clarified his attitudes, and prevented conflicts. As the prototype-matching hypothesis predicts, the prototypical leader was judged to be more effective than the atypical leader, with a match to ITL explaining the majority of the variance in leadership evaluations.

Biases and Errors

ILTs help followers to sift through and organize a welter of information about current or future leaders, but they provide this service at a cost. If individuals’ ILTs are based on factors that are irrelevant to successful leadership—such as skin color or sex—then people will sometimes see leadership when none actually exists and overlook leadership when they do not expect it. When voters must select a leader, they sometimes fall prey to the Warren Harding Effect; they think a handsome candidate has great leadership potential, even when he is thoroughly incompetent (Gladwell, 2005). If members are satisfied with a leader, they may attribute characteristics to him or her that are consistent with their ILT, but inconsistent with the leader’s actual qualities. ILTs can even bias memories, for people remember their favored leaders acting in ways that confirm their ILTs, even when the leader performed no such action (Foti & Lord, 1987). If their group or organization performs poorly, members are quicker to blame the leader for the failure if he or she has ITL-inconsistent qualities (Ryan et al., 2011).

The biasing influence of ILTs on followers’ perceptions and evaluations of leaders may also explain continuing sex differences in leadership. If ILTs were like actual scientific theories, then group members would discard them when they fail to explain who is and who is not an effective leader. But ILTs, because they are implicit theories, are rarely recognized or revised. In consequence, if followers’ ILTs are biased in favor of individuals who are white, masculine, tall, or just highly vocal, then people with these qualities will rise to positions of authority in the group, even if they are not qualified for these positions (Leary, 2017b).

ILTs across Cultures: GLOBE

The theory of ILTs assumes all followers have ILTs, but that the content of these ILTS is influenced by members’ experiences with leaders—and these experiences may vary from one culture to another. The management scholar Robert J. House and his colleagues (2004) studied these cultural variations in perceptions of leadership in the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) project. The GLOBE researchers, drawing on previous studies of leadership, developed a set of items to give respondents who were to indicate if these qualities were those that inhibit, or contribute to, a person being an outstanding leader. The items were translated to the language of each country, usually by a professional translator and then translated back into English by a second party to verify that the translated term matched the meaning of the original English word.

To be certain that the findings they obtained were not caused by differences in the background and experiences of the individuals within each country—its findings would be difficult to interpret if, for example, the survey was completed by mostly college students in one country but military officers in another—the researchers asked over 17,000 managers in 951 businesses in financial services, food processing, and telecommunication industries to complete the survey. The participants were also asked to describe the values of the organization where they worked and the country where they lived. These data were then examined to identify those leadership qualities and cultural values that were shared within an organization or country. Items only made it to the list of a culture’s beliefs about leadership if a significant majority of the individuals in the survey from that country agreed with each other on the relative importance of the item. In terms of level of analysis, this step shifted the data from the individual level to the group level.

The GLOBE project yielded a wealth of information about leadership and its cultural specificity. Table 9.2, for example, summarizes just a small portion of the study’s findings (see, too, Figure 9.2). It indicates that leadership is not just a process common to all cultures, but that people worldwide also share some basic beliefs about leadership. People expect leaders to be diplomatic, moral, charismatic (inspirational and visionary), and team-oriented, as well as dependable, intelligent, decisive, and administratively skilled. Those qualities that were considered to be most undesirable in a leader were those associated with a lack of integrity, self-centeredness, and asocial tendencies (Dorfman, Hanges, & Brodbeck, 2004).

Table 9.2 Shared Conceptions of Leaders Identified by the GLOBE Study of 62 Different Countries

Leadership Dimension Leader Attribute Questionnaire Items

Diplomatic: skilled at interpersonal relations, tactful

effective bargainer: able to negotiate effectively

win/win problem solver: able to identify solutions that satisfy individuals with diverse and conflicting interests

Integrity: moral respectability

trustworthy: deserves trust, can be believed and relied upon to keep his or her word

just: acts according to what is right or fair

honest: speaks and acts truthfully

Inspirational: inspires others to be motivated to work hard

encouraging: gives courage, confidence, or hope through reassuring and advising

positive: generally optimistic and confident

dynamic: highly involved, energetic, enthused, motivated

motive arouser: mobilizes and activates followers

confidence builder: instills others with confidence by showing confidence in them

motivational: stimulates others to put forth efforts above and beyond the call of duty and make personal sacrifices

Team-oriented: interpersonal and organizational skills

communicative: communicates with others frequently

informed: knowledgeable; aware of information

coordinator: integrates and manages work of subordinates

team builder: able to induce group members to work together

Visionary: vision and imagination of the future

foresight: anticipates possible future events

plans ahead: anticipates and prepares in advance

Other qualities

dependable: reliable

intelligent: smart, learns and understands quickly

decisive: makes decisions firmly and quickly

administratively skilled: able to plan, organize coordinate, and control work of large numbers of individuals

excellence-oriented: strives for excellence in performance of self and subordinates

SOURCE: Adapted from TBL21.2 (p. 677) in Dorfman, P. W., Hanges, P. J., & Brodbeck, F. C. (2004). Leadership and cultural variation. In R. J. House, P. J. Hanges, M. Javidan, P. W. Dorfman, & V. Gupta (Eds.), Culture, leadership, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies (669–719). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

In addition to these universal qualities, the GLOBE researchers also identified leadership qualities that were unique to a specific country or world region. Whereas most people surveyed expected effective leaders to be visionary and team-focused, some cultures stressed these qualities more than others. Highly collectivistic societies, for example, favored charismatic leaders more so than more individualistic cultures. Cultures that displayed higher levels of gender egalitarianism stressed participative, team-focused leadership. Those individuals who lived in cultures marked by hierarchical power structures and greater levels of elitism were more tolerant of self-centered leaders who were status conscious and formalistic. The GLOBE researchers also discovered that certain specific traits were highly valued in some cultures but seen as harmful to leadership in others. Even such questionable qualities as risk-taking, cunning, elitism, micromanagement, and willfulness were viewed as positive qualities in some cultures. Given these findings, the GLOBE researchers reminded those who lead multicultural teams to remember that not everyone in the group will value all forms of leadership similarly (Dorfman et al., 2004).

9-3b. Social Identity Theory

Social identity theory, perhaps more than any other theory of leadership, recognizes that leadership is fundamentally a group-level process. As individuals come to categorize themselves as members of the group, and identify with that group, they develop an idealized image of the prototypical member of the group, similar to an ILT, and over time consensus will emerge on these characteristics. Applied to leadership, social identity theory predicts that when group members share a social identity, they will favor individuals in the group who best represent that identity. For example, groups that prize cooperation and sensitive communication among members should favor relationship-oriented leaders, whereas groups of individuals who pride themselves on their action and productivity will support task-oriented leaders (Haslam, Reicher, & Platow, 2015; Hogg, 2013).

Prototypicality and Identity

The leader’s prototypicality is particularly important for group members who strongly identify with their group. If, for example, the group is newly formed or members are not committed to continuing in the group, they are less likely to base their leadership preferences on prototypicality. But “as group membership becomes more important to self-definition and members identify more strongly with the group, leaders who are perceived to be more group prototypical” are more likely to emerge and be effective as leaders (Hogg, 2010, p. 1195). In a test of this hypothesis, researchers formed ad hoc groups in the laboratory and appointed one member as leader of each group. They manipulated the psychological salience of the groups by telling some members that everyone in the group shared certain qualities, whereas others were told the groups were just loose aggregations with no commonalities. They also circulated within the group some background information about the leader to indicate that he or she matched the fictitious group prototype or did not match it. As predicted, group members who identified with the group were more positive about the prototypical leader (Hains, Hogg, & Duck, 1997).

Leadership in Intergroup Situations

Social identity theory also suggests that people will favor individuals who not only exemplify the group, but also those with qualities that demonstrate what makes the group different from, and superior to, other groups. In general, members expect their leader to champion the ingroup and its unique strengths. In consequence, leaders who, during intergroup conflict, make conciliatory gestures toward the outgroup may lose the support of their own group. A skilled leader, recognizing this appeal, may use self-presentational strategies to lay claim to qualities that are prototypical ones for the group and to bolster their popularity by creating conflicts with, and denigrating, other groups (Haslam et al., 2015). Those who convince the other group members that they are “one of us,” while at the same time offering a unique and socially desirable vision of the group’s future, are particularly likely to be endorsed by group members (Halevy, Berson, & Galinsky, 2011).

9-3c. Social Role Theory

Alice Eagly’s social role theory, like ILT and social identity theory, suggests that group members have definite expectations about what kind of qualities are needed in a person who will fill the role of a leader. These expectations tend to emphasize the agentic, task-oriented side of leadership rather than the communal and interpersonal. When group members are asked to describe the qualities needed in a leader, they stress the importance of competition with peers, high energy, dominance, forcefulness, and skill at taking command and controlling a situation (Eagly & Karau, 2002).

These expectations, however, favor men relative to women as leaders. Although gender stereotypes vary across time and place, people in virtually all cultures, when asked to describe women, speak of their expressive qualities, including nurturance, emotionality, and warmth. They expect a “she” to be sentimental, affectionate, sympathetic, soft-hearted, talkative, gentle, and feminine. When describing men, they stress their instrumental qualities, including productivity, energy, and strength (Williams & Best, 1990). In consequence, the expectations associated with leadership mesh with the male gender role stereotype, but the leadership role is inconsistent with stereotypes about women. When people think “leader,” they think “male” (Koenig et al., 2011).

This role incongruity not only disqualifies women from taking the lead in groups, but it also creates a double standard for women once they achieve a position of leadership. Women, to be evaluated as positively as men, must outperform men. When Eagly and her colleagues reviewed 61 different studies that asked people to evaluate the performance of male and female leaders, they found that the behaviors and outcomes achieved by men were viewed more positively than the exact same outcomes achieved by women (Eagly, Makhijani, & Klonsky, 1992). Ironically, this bias reaches its peak when a female leader adopts a more task-oriented approach to leadership. In a classic example of a “Catch-22,” women are urged to act more like male leaders, but when they do, they are denigrated for not being “ladylike” (Hoyt, 2010). Caught in this double-bind, women respond by avoiding the leader role, by underperforming as leaders due to the pressure of the negative stereotypes, or by actively resisting the stereotypes and doing what they can to invalidate members’ negative expectations (Hoyt & Chemers, 2008).

9-3d. Terror Management Theory

The idea that people are drawn to powerful leaders for less than rational reasons is consistent with terror management theory (TMT). This theory assumes that humans, perhaps uniquely, are aware that someday their earthly existence will come to an end. This awareness of one’s inevitable demise, if cognitively inescapable, would be the source of continuous existential anguish, so the human mind has developed defenses against thoughts of death. TMT suggests, for example, that culture diminishes this psychological terror by providing meaning, organization, and a coherent worldview. Self-esteem and pride, too, function to elevate one’s sense of worth and serve as a defense against the intrusive thoughts of death (Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997).

TMT explains why the popularity of a leader sometimes increases during a crisis. After the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001, for example, U.S. citizen’s approval ratings of then-president George W. Bush jumped from about 40% to 90%. TMT suggests that the attack made citizens aware of their mortality and also threatened their worldview. Bush, by promising to find the terrorists responsible for this horrible action and bring them to justice swiftly, provided an antidote to their existential concerns.

Researchers have put TMT to the test by reminding some people of their mortality and then assessing their preferences for different types of leaders (Cohen et al., 2004, 2005; Landau et al., 2004). One study, for example, compared preferences for three candidates for political office.

The task-oriented leader stressed setting difficult but achievable goals, strategic planning, and initiating structure.

The relationship-oriented leader communicated compassion, respect, trust, and confidence in others.

The charismatic leader spoke of long-term goals, the unique value of the nation, and working together.

Before evaluating these candidates, participants in the mortality-salience condition were reminded of their eventual demise in a not-so-subtle way: They were asked to describe the emotions that the thought of their own death aroused in them and to write down what will happen to them, physically, when they die. Those in the control condition were asked parallel questions, but about their next exam rather than their death. The results indicated that, in the control condition, people were more positive toward the task- and relationship-oriented leaders relative to the charismatic one. Conversely, in the mortality-salience condition, ratings of the charismatic leader climbed and ratings of the relationship-oriented leader dropped. The task-oriented leader was the most favorably rated in both conditions (Cohen et al., 2004). Other research finds that, as social role theory might suggest, individuals reminded of their mortality prefer as their leaders

(a)

members of their own group, or

(b)

men rather than women (Hoyt, Simon, & Innella, 2011).

9-3e. Evolutionary Theory

Evolutionary psychology suggests that leadership is an adaptation: a heritable characteristic that developed in a population over a long period of time. Adaptations enhance individuals’ fitness, for they increase the chances of their genetic material being represented in future generations of the species. Leadership and followership, as adaptations, evolved because they contributed so substantially to survival. Our ancestors likely lived in small groups of genetically related individuals, and these groups prospered only if members cooperated with each other. Early leaders led the group from one place to the next, but in time the role expanded as the leader’s facilitative impact on coordinated movement extended to coordination in general. A leader made plans and recruited other members to put them into effect, made decisions about alternative courses of action that were available to the group, quelled conflict that could undermine the group’s unity, and stepped forward when the group confronted danger (Glowacki & von Rueden, 2015).

Leadership and Dominance

Evolutionary theory does not consider leadership to be the same as a dominance contest, where the strongest member of the group—most likely a male—bests all others in the group through force. Leadership benefited both those who led and those who followed, for in scarce resource environments competition among members, struggles for dominance, and uncoordinated defensive and domestic activities were deadly to all. The anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon’s (1997) description of the leadership processes in the Yanomamö illustrates the coopted, rather than contested, nature of leadership in early groups. The leadership among the Yanomamö was not based on heredity or physical strength, but rather on record of service to the village. Leaders gained some special rewards for themselves and their kin, but they frequently proved their worth to the entire group by settling arguments, planning the group’s hunting activities, seeking out connections with other villages, and providing for the defense of the village. This final responsibility put the leader at risk in many cases, for the Yanomamö are known as the “fierce people”—neighboring villages are in a constant state of war with each other.

Mismatch Hypothesis

Evolutionary theory maintains that the adaptive advantages of leadership are achieved only if the group selects the most qualified individual to lead. Natural selection therefore encouraged the development of the mental apparatus needed to evaluate those who sought the position of leadership. Followers, for example, are biologically prepared to gather the social data they need to determine if their leaders are competent, group-oriented, biased, or unfair (Smith, Larimer, et al., 2007). Their preference for older, more experienced, and those who are both task and relationally skilled may also be genetically prescribed.

These tendencies, however, evolved in human groups that existed in a time that differed in dramatic ways from the groups and communities where humans currently live. As a result, the psychological and interpersonal reactions of both followers and leaders are influenced by genetic tendencies that are not as behaviorally adaptive as they were in earlier evolutionary contexts. Social and evolutionary psychologist Mark Van Vugt and his colleagues term this possibility the evolutionary mismatch hypothesis (von Rueden & Van Vugt, 2015). This mismatch may, for example, cause people to prefer men as leaders in political contexts. Van Vugt and his colleagues reasoned that humans do not consistently favor males over females, but moderate their choices depending on the situation. They suggest that groups, for millennia, relied on male leaders to lead their groups when they confronted other rival tribes. These same groups, however, relied on women leaders to make certain that the relations within the group were strong and that any intragroup conflicts were minimized so that the group’s cohesion was not damaged. In their research, they supported this hypothesis by finding that individuals playing an investment-type game preferred a woman as leader during intragroup competition, but a man as leader during intergroup competition. In further work, people tended to prefer more masculine-looking leaders in situations involving intergroup conflict (Spisak et al., 2012; Van Vugt & Spisak, 2008).

9-4. Leader Effectiveness

Alexander the Great controlled a huge empire without any modern means of transportation or communication. General George S. Patton inspired those under his command by displaying high levels of personal confidence, sureness, and an immense strength of character. Charlotte Beers rescued Ogilvy from its doldrums, returning it to its place as the premier advertising company in the world. Alexander, Patton, and Beers are not simply leaders. They are effective leaders. But what was the key to their effectiveness?

9-4a. Styles and Situations

The two-factor model of leadership, which was discussed earlier in the chapter, identified two core components of leadership: task and relationship leadership. But this model not only described what leaders do, but it also suggests what leaders should do in order to be effective. Groups, to succeed, need leaders who guide the group members in their pursuit of their shared objectives, but they also need leaders who can maintain the interpersonal bonds that sustain the group. As Beers (2012, p. 153) puts it: “There comes a time when work shifts from being about the content of the meeting to your relationship with those in the meeting….It’s a moment when the relationship (R) is greater than (>) the work (W).”

The Leadership Grid

Psychologist Robert Blake and management expert Jane Mouton’s classic Leadership Grid theory is an example of a style theory of leadership. They hypothesized that a person’s leadership style depends on how they answer two basic questions:

(1)

How important is the production of results by the group?

(2)

How important are the feelings of group members?

To some leaders, the key goal is achieving results. For others, positive feelings in the group are so important that they emphasize teamwork and personal satisfaction. Others may feel that both of these goals are important (Blake & Mouton, 1964, 1982).

Blake and Mouton summarized these differences in their Leadership Grid (formerly called the Managerial Grid), which is presented in Figure 9.3. Both dimensions—concern for people and concern for results—are represented as 9-point scales ranging from low concern to high concern. Although a person’s orientation could fall at any of 81 possible positions on the grid, Blake and Mouton emphasized the five located at the four corner positions and the center. An apathetic, impoverished 1,1 leader is hardly a leader, for he or she is not interested in subordinates’ feelings or the production of results. The 9,1 individual (high on concern for production, but low on concern for people, located in the lower right corner of the grid) is a taskmaster who seeks productivity at any cost. The 1,9 leader, in contrast, adopts a “country club” approach that makes subordinates feel comfortable and relaxed in the group. The “middle-of-the-roader,” located at 5,5, tries to balance both performance and morale but sometimes sacrifices both when results and individuals’ feelings come into conflict. Finally, the 9,9 leader highly values both people and products and therefore tackles organizational goals through teamwork—“a high degree of shared responsibility, coupled with high participation, involvement, and commitment” (Blake & Mouton, 1982, p. 41).

Blake and Mouton (1982) felt that the 9,9 leadership style was the most effective style overall. In their initial studies, they found that managers who adopted the 9,9 style were far more successful in their careers than managers who adopted other methods. They also noted that studies conducted in educational, industrial, and medical organizations supported the utility of the 9, 9 leadership style, as did the favorable results of their management training system. Their theory is also consistent with the meta-analytic results summarized in Figure 9.4. When researchers used meta-analysis to combine the results of over 320 correlational findings generated in 130 studies of leadership, they found that both task and relationship leadership predicted critically important leadership outcomes. The correlation between task leadership and outcomes was .29, and the correlation between relationship leadership and outcomes was stronger, still: .48. The correlation between relationship leadership and one particular outcome—follower satisfaction—was particularly strong (r = .68; Judge, Piccolo, & Ilies, 2004; see, too, DeRue et al., 2011).

The relationship between task-oriented leadership (structuring), relational leadership (support), and leadership outcomes. When researchers used meta-analysis to combine the results of over 320 correlational findings generated in 130 studies of leadership behavior, they found that both facets of leadership predicted critically important leadership outcomes, but that relationship leadership was more closely associated with follower satisfaction (Judge, Piccolo, & Ilies, 2004).

Situational Leadership Theory

Management experts Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard (1976) also described leadership in terms of the relationship and task dimensions. Unlike Blake and Mouton’s grid, however, their situational leadership® theory suggests that effective leaders combine supportive behaviors with directive behaviors depending on the performance readiness® of the group or subordinate. Some groups are further along in their developmental progression than others, and so members are both willing and able to do the work required to accomplish the group’s goals. Other groups, in contrast, are not yet ready to reach their performance goals, perhaps because they lack the skills and knowledge needed to perform their assigned tasks or they are not motivated to do what the group asks them to do (Hersey, Blanchard, & Johnson, 2013).

Hersey and Blanchard recommend that leaders adapt their methods to match the group’s readiness. If group members are low in readiness—they are both unwilling and unable—then a task-focused, directing style will be most effective. As the group develops and gains more experience on the task and commitment to the group’s goals, the leader can increase relationship behavior and adopt a coaching style (still high direction but with support added). Still later in the group’s development, the leader can ease off on both types of leadership, starting first with task direction. In moderately mature groups, the supporting style of leadership is most effective, and in fully mature groups, a delegating leadership style is best. Thus, an effective leader must display four different leadership styles as the group moves through its life cycle—directing, coaching, supporting, and delegating (Hersey et al., 2013).

Some critics have argued that situational leadership theory puts too much emphasis on matching the readiness of the members; these experts call for a careful balancing of task and relationship orientation at all developmental levels (Vecchio, Bullis, & Brazil, 2006). But the basic premise on which the model rests—that different groups need varying amounts of task and relationship leadership—is consistent with research findings. One of the key sources of leadership success is flexibility in providing to the group more or less relational support and task-orientation, depending on the group’s needs (Zaccaro, Foti, & Kenny, 1991). Newly hired employees, for example, need and appreciate greater task structuring from their manager than do veteran employees (Vecchio, 1987). Conversely, members with higher levels of education and greater levels of job tenure may prefer a leader who provides less task structure (Vecchio & Boatwright, 2002). The theory’s training methods and measures are also very popular among business professionals (Blanchard & Johnson, 1981).

Contingency Theory

Industrial organizational psychologist Fred Fiedler’s (1964, 1978, 1996) contingency theory also assumes that individuals differ in their leadership style. Fiedler termed this tendency the leader’s motivational style, which he measured using the Least Preferred Coworker Scale (LPC). Respondents first think of the one individual with whom they have had the most difficulty working at some time. They then rate this person, dubbed the least preferred coworker, on bipolar adjective scales such as “pleasant–unpleasant,” “friendly–unfriendly,” and “tense–relaxed.” People with high scores on the LPC are assumed to be relationship-oriented; after all, they even rate the person they do not like to work with positively. Low LPC scorers are assumed to be task-oriented.

Just as motivational style is the key person variable in contingency theory, control is the key situational factor in the model. In some groups leaders can be certain that decisions, actions, and suggestions will be carried out by their followers. But in others, leaders have trouble gaining control, and so cannot be certain that the group members will carry out their assigned duties. And what determines how much control a leader has in any given situation? The quality of leader–member relations, the degree of task structure, and the leader’s position power. As Figure 9.5 indicates, if leader–member relations are good, the task is structured, and the leader’s power is strong, the setting is a very favorable one for a leader (Octant I). But, as each one of these indicators of control changes from positive to negative—the leader’s power becomes weak, the task becomes unstructured, and leader–member relations shift from good to bad—then the leadership situation becomes more and more unfavorable. Octant VIII is the least favorable situation, for all three variables combine in a group that is difficult for the leader to control.

Fiedler’s contingency model of leadership. The theory assumes that effectiveness depends on three aspects of the group situation: leader–member relations, task structure, and the leader’s position of power. Octant I corresponds to the most controllable and favorable situation, and Octant VIII corresponds to the least controllable and least favorable setting. The vertical axis indicates the predicted relationship between LPC scores and task performance. If the correlation is greater than 0 (positive), effectiveness is positively related to LPC; that is, relationship-motivated leaders are more effective. If the correlation is smaller than 0 (negative), effectiveness is negatively related to LPC; task-motivated leaders are more effective. The graph suggests that a task-oriented leader is more effective when the situation is favorable (Octants I, II, and III) or unfavorable (Octant VIII) for the leader.

Fiedler did not believe that either type of leader—task-motivated or relationship-motivated—is better overall. Instead, he predicted that task-oriented leaders (low LPC score) would be most effective in situations that are either highly favorable or highly unfavorable, whereas relationship-oriented leaders (high LPC score) would be most effective in middle-range situations. If, for example, Beers is a low-LPC leader (task-motivated), she will get the most out of groups in Octants I, II, and III where situational favorability is high, as well as in Octant VIII, the least favorable situation. If she were a high-LPC leader, her groups would perform best in the middle-range situations—Octants IV to VII. Why? Fiedler suggested that in difficult groups (Octant VIII), task-motivated leaders drive the group toward its goals, but relationship-motivated leaders spend too much time repairing relations. In highly favorable (Octants I–III) situations, in contrast, task-oriented leaders become more considerate, yielding a more satisfied workgroup.

Contingency theory, like all theories, has both weaknesses and strengths. Despite years of research, experts are divided on the model’s validity, with some arguing that evidence supports the model and others arguing against it (see Chemers, 1997, for a review). Investigators have challenged not only the strength of the relationships that provide the basis of the predictions in the eight octants in Figure 9.5, but they have also questioned the methods that Fiedler used to measure leaders’ motivational style. In defense of contingency theory, however, studies of a variety of working groups support the complex predictions charted in Figure 9.5 (Ayman, Chemers, & Fiedler, 2007).

The effectiveness of a unique leadership training program, called Leader Match, also supports the validity of contingency theory. Although many different programs and techniques have been developed to train leaders, the results of these procedures are typically disappointing. Fiedler, however, suggested that these programs fail because they place too much emphasis on changing the leaders—making them more supportive, more decisive, more democratic, and so on. He suggested instead that the situation should be engineered to fit the leader’s particular motivational style. He called his training program Leader Match because he taught trainees to modify their group situation until it matched their personal motivational style (Fiedler, Chemers, & Mahar, 1976). Studies of the effectiveness of this innovative training program suggest that trained leaders outperform untrained leaders, although degree of improvement depends on who is doing the evaluations (Burke & Day, 1986; Taylor, Russ-Eft, & Taylor, 2009).

9-4b. Leader–Member Exchange Theory

Style, situational, and contingency theories of leadership focus on the leader’s style or strategy and how the group responds as a whole to various interventions. But such a “one size fits all” approach does not always match the needs of specific group members. Whereas one group member may work well with a task-oriented leader, others may prefer a leader who provides them with support.

Leader–member exchange theory (LMX theory) uniquely stresses the quality of the one-to-one relationship between a leader and a subordinate. LMX theory (and its predecessor, vertical dyad linkage theory) notes that leaders have dyadic relationships with each group member and that these dyadic relationships may be substantially different within the total group. Some leaders may work well with only a subset of the group members who are more engaged in the group and its tasks. Other group members, however, may not respond as positively to the leader, so their responses are defined by their role and their fixed responsibilities (Dansereau, Graen, & Haga, 1975; Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995).

What Is Your Motivational Style?

Most leadership theories argue that people consistently use a particular set of methods and techniques whenever they find themselves in charge of a group. Different theorists describe these leadership styles differently, but most highlight two key aspects: focus on the task and focus on the relationships among the members.

Instructions

Fiedler’s (1978) Least Preferred Coworker Scale assesses individual differences in leadership style. To complete the measure, first think of a person with whom you work least well. He or she may be someone you work with now or someone you knew in the past. This coworker does not have to be the person you like least but should be the person with whom you had the most difficulty in getting a job done. Describe this person by circling one of the numbers between each pair of adjectives:

Pleasant: 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 :Unpleasant

Friendly: 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 :Unfriendly

Rejecting: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 :Accepting

Tense: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 :Relaxed

Distant: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 :Close

Cold: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 :Warm

Supportive: 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 :Hostile

Boring: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 :Interesting

Quarrelsome: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 :Harmonious

Gloomy: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 :Cheerful

Open: 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 :Guarded

Backbiting: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 :Loyal

Untrustworthy: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 :Trustworthy

Considerate: 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 :Inconsiderate

Nasty: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 :Nice

Agreeable: 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 :Disagreeable

Insincere: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 :Sincere

Kind: 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 :Unkind

Scoring

Add up the 18 numbers you circled to get a total between 18 and 144. According to Fiedler, if you scored 56 or less, you have a task-oriented style of leadership. A score of 63 or higher indicates a relationship-oriented style of leadership. If you scored between 56 and 63, you cannot be classified in either category. Remember, a high LPC score indicates you tend to be a relationship-oriented leader, and a low LPC indicates a task orientation. Given your score, what type of group would be the “best” type of group for you to lead? Which would be the “worst”?

LMX theory suggests that group members tend to cleave into subgroups within the overall group. One group, the ingroup, or inner group, includes those individuals with positive linkages to the leader. Leaders spend more time working with these members, value their inputs more, and also provide them with more resources. These group members respond by working harder for the group, taking on additional role responsibilities, and declaring their loyalty to the leader and the group. They are less likely to leave the group and more likely to earn higher performance evaluations, get promoted more rapidly, express more commitment to the organization, voice more positive attitudes about their work and the group, and garner more attention and support from their leader. They often view their relationship with their boss as a partnership. The second group, the outgroup, or outer group, includes individuals with less satisfying linkages to the leader. These individuals do their work, but do not contribute as much to the group. They also express less loyalty and support for the leader (Dienesch & Liden, 1986).

Researchers who have tested predictions derived from LMX theory have documented the natural tendency for subgroups to develop within groups and for disparities in performance to exist between these two cliques (Dulebohn et al., 2012). Those who enjoy a positive LMX are more likely to do things that benefit their group and organization. These organizational citizenship behaviors include helping other group members, common courtesy, job dedication, civic virtue, supporting organizational changes, and so on (Ilies, Nahrgang, & Morgeson, 2007). Individuals who are not satisfied with their LMX tend to perform more poorly, but the strength of this relationship depends, in part, on the degree of differentiation within the group. In undifferentiated groups, there is little variation in LMX—no ingroup and outgroup at all. In highly differentiated groups, in contrast, the LMX relation varies substantially from one member to the next; there are those who work well with the leader and those who do not. Such variation can lead to dissatisfaction, overall, since it is inconsistent with principles of fairness and equal treatment (Hooper & Martin, 2008). Therefore, leaders who recognize this tendency can improve their overall relations with their group by minimizing the number of people in the outer group (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1991). However, some research suggests that differentiation can be motivating. In such groups, low LMX members recognize that they may, through hard work, meet the leader’s standards, for they view the leader as a discriminating judge of group members (Liden et al., 2006).

LMX theory’s dyadic approach—stressing the relationship between each member and the leader—also provides an additional way of looking at leadership in general. Researchers have returned to other leadership theories, such as Fiedler’s contingency model, and have begun to explore the type of leadership style that leaders use with each group member. These dyadic-level approaches add a second layer of information about leadership to the more common group-level analysis (Yammarino & Dansereau, 2008; Yammarino et al., 2005).

9-4c. Participation Theories

Some leaders do all the leading—they, and they alone, make decisions, dole out assignments, supervise work quality, communicate with other groups, set goals, and so on. Such leaders adopt a command-and-control leadership style; they give the orders and subordinates carry them out. Other leaders, however, share their leadership duties with the group members. Beers, for example, set the general goals for the company, but she was careful to remain in the background during some meetings—especially those involving the development of creative pitches to prospective or current customers. In those meetings she deliberately adopted a participatory leadership style.

Autocratic versus Democratic Leadership

Kurt Lewin and his colleagues Ronald Lippitt and Ralph White conducted one of the earliest laboratory studies of interacting groups to determine the relative effectiveness of a democratic, group-centered approach to leadership versus an autocratic, leader-centered approach. As mentioned briefly in Chapter 2, they arranged for groups of 10- and 11-year-old boys to meet after school to work on various hobbies. In addition to the boys, each group included a man who adopted one of three leadership styles (Lewin, Lippitt, & White, 1939; White & Lippitt, 1960, 1968):

The authoritarian, or autocratic, leader took no input from the members in making decisions about group activities, did not discuss the long-range goals of the group, emphasized his authority, dictated who would work on specific projects, and arbitrarily paired the boys with their work partners.

The democratic leader made certain that all activities were first discussed by the entire group. He allowed the group members to make their own decisions about work projects or partners and encouraged the development of an egalitarian atmosphere.

The laissez-faire leader rarely intervened in the group activities. Groups with this type of atmosphere made all decisions on their own without any supervision, and their so-called leader functioned primarily as a source of technical information.

In some cases, the boys were rotated to a different experimental condition, so they could experience all three types of participation.

The three types of leadership resulted in differences in efficiency, satisfaction, and aggressiveness. As Figure 9.6 indicates, the groups in the study reacted to the autocratic leader in one of two distinctive ways. Some groups accepted the leader’s control and became very submissive. Although these groups were aggressive if the autocratic leader was replaced with a more permissive one, when he was present, the group members worked hard, demanded little attention, only rarely engaged in horseplay, and closely followed his recommendations. Several other groups with an autocratic leader, in contrast, rebelled aggressively against the leader’s control. These groups were as productive as the democratically led groups if the leader was present (see “work” in Figure 9.6), but once the leader left the room, productivity dropped significantly. Members of groups with an autocratic leader displayed greater reliance on the leader, expressed more critical discontent, and made more aggressive demands for attention. Democratic groups tended to be friendlier and more group-oriented. Overall, the boys preferred democratic leaders to the other two varieties.

The results of Lewin, Lippitt, and White’s 1939 study of authoritarian, democratic, and laissez-faire leaders. The investigators identified four different “leadership climates” in the groups they studied: autocracy with aggression, autocracy with submissiveness, democratic, and laissez-faire. The autocratic and democratic leaders were more productive than the laissez-faire groups, but the autocratic groups were less productive when the leader left the room. Other findings suggest that the democratic groups were more cohesive.

These findings suggest that, at least in terms of productivity, a directive, autocratic style can be as effective as a participatory, democratic style. In terms of interpersonal relations and member satisfaction, however, the democratically led groups were superior to all others. These findings also indicate that the laissez-faire leadership climate—group anarchy—was the least effect in both task and relational terms. These groups were unproductive, disorganized in their activities, and prone to loafing. As a methodological aside, the findings should also be interpreted with caution because the laissez-faire condition was not originally included when Lewin and his team designed the study. But when one of the experimenters was unable to enact the democratic style correctly and instead just distanced himself from the groups, the investigators relabeled the leadership style he used as laissez-faire leadership (White & Lippitt, 1960, p. 21).

Shared Leadership

Lewin, Lippitt, and White’s (1939) findings suggested shared leadership is as effective as centralized leadership. Such decentered leadership models go by many names—co-leadership, collective leadership, democratic leadership, delegated leadership, empowerment, peer leadership, self-leadership, shared leadership, team leadership, and participatory leadership—but underlying these various models is a common emphasis on breaking the leader’s monopoly on power, influence, and authority in the group and distributing responsibility for core leadership functions to all the group members (D’Innocenzo, Mathieu, & Kukenberger, 2016).

When people think about leadership, they tend to assume that it is concentrated in a single position rather than distributed across a group. In consequence, groups sometimes move away from shared leadership to more vertical forms of leadership—with an up–down form of organization rather than side-to-side and up-and-down (Pearce, Conger, & Locke, 2008). However, if the members’ reactions to their work are a key factor in maintaining and evaluating success, a participatory approach will be superior to a more leader-centered method (Miller & Monge, 1986). As Stogdill (1974) noted after reviewing more than 40 studies of various leadership methods that ranged along the participation continuum, satisfaction with the group seems to be highest in democratic groups, as opposed to autocratic and laissez-faire groups. Shared methods of leadership are also more effective in smaller rather than in larger groups and are well-suited to organizations that rely on small, self-directed teams or networks of distributed, relatively independent employees (Vroom & Mann, 1960). Groups often share leadership when making decisions and when organized to function as a team; we will reexamine issues related to participatory leadership in Chapters 11 (Decision Making) and 12 (Teams).

Followership Theory

If leadership is not concentrated in a single person but shared across the group, then knowing who is in the group becomes as important as knowing who leads it. Even though group members are often described with words that lack the potency of the word leader—they are followers, subordinates, assistants, or merely reports—the group depends as much on the actions of those who accept others’ influence as it does on those who provide guidance and direction (Uhl-Bien et al., 2014).

But just as bad leaders are mixed with the good ones, so followers vary in their effectiveness. Robert Kelley (1988, 2004), an organizational researcher and consultant who has closely examined the nature of followership, asks two basic questions about followers: Are they active or passive, and are they independent or dependent? First, the best followers are committed to the group and their role within it; they are actively engaged in their work rather than passive and withdrawn. Second, effective followers can be self-reliant, when necessary. By definition, they follow the leader, but they must also be able to exercise their independence and monitor themselves and their progress. Ineffective followers are overly dependent on the leader, and they are unable to think for themselves. Kelley, by considering these two aspects of followers—the degree of active engagement and independence—identifies five types of followers:

Conformist followers (yes people) are active and energized, but they are devoted to the leader; they do not think to question the leader’s directions and will defend him or her vigorously.

Passive followers (sheep) follow the lead of others, but without great enthusiasm or commitment. They put time into the group and will eventually finish their assignments, but they must be continually monitored or they will simply stop contributing.

Pragmatic followers are the rank-and-file members of the group; they are not clearly active, passive, conforming, or independent, but make up the group’s basic, and essential, workforce.

Alienated followers are not committed to the group or its goals, in part because they steadfastly maintain their independence from others’ influence. They are often sullenly silent, but when they speak they are critical of their fellow members for remaining true to the group, and they question the leader’s choices. They often think of themselves as the rightful leader of the group and refuse to invest in the group or its activities until they are accorded their rightful position.

Exemplary followers (stars) are actively engaged in the group, but they do not simply do what they are told. If they have issues with the leader’s position, they express their dissent openly, but constructively. The leader can delegate responsibilities to them, and they can be trusted to complete the task with an enthusiasm that springs from their concern for the group’s interests.

The leader’s task, suggests Kelley (1988, 2004), is to transform the followers into exemplary followers, using any means possible. Groups with “many leaders,” he concludes, “can be chaos. Groups with none can be quite productive” (1988, p. 148)—so long as these followers are exemplary ones who are actively engaged in their work, treat one another as colleagues, and engage in constructive debate with their leaders.

9-4d. Transformational Leadership

Charlotte Beers is no ordinary CEO. She does not just set goals and plan future initiatives, but she inspires and excites those who work for her. When she stepped down as CEO at Ogilvy she volunteered to assist the U.S. State Department craft communications that would improve U.S. relations with other nations. She then sought to help women learn more about leadership by writing about her experiences and insights, and publishing them in her book titled I’d Rather Be in Charge (Beers, 2012). She does not seek to lead people, but to transform them.

Charismatic Leadership and Change

Effective leaders contribute substantially to their groups by structuring and facilitating the completion of tasks and also by providing members with relational support. But leaders also face a third set of responsibilities: transforming the group so that it achieves more, both in terms of performance but also members’ growth and satisfaction. The leader who maintains the group’s status quo is a good leader, but an excellent leader will elevate the group.

Early theory pertaining to transformational leaders focused on their charismatic qualities. Such leaders, through the force of their personality, their spoken words, and their dynamic presentational style, profoundly affect others. Max Weber (1921/1946), as noted in Chapter 8, used the word charisma to describe such leaders, for they seem to possess a “divinely inspired gift” that sets them apart from other, more commonplace leaders. Charismatic leaders inspire others, often by expressing ideas that are both appealing and easily understood. They tend to act in ways that provide their group members with a model that they can emulate (Conger, 2011).

But it was political scientist James McGregor Burns (1978) who set forth the basic assumptions of the transformational approach to leadership in his book Leadership. Burns argued that most leaders engage primarily in what he called transactional leadership. The follower and the leader cooperate with one another in the pursuit of a shared goal, but their relationship is based on the exchange of resources that can include time, money, help, and instruction. Transactional leadership “occurs when one person takes the initiative in making contact with others for the purpose of an exchange of valued things” (Burns, 1978, p. 19). It is “pursuit of change in measured and often reluctant doses” (Burns, 2003, p. 24). The only thing that unites the leader and follower are the resources that are exchanged. In contrast, transformational leadership “occurs when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to high levels of motivation and morality” (1978, p. 20, italics in original). Burns believed that transformational leaders not only change their groups, organizations, and societies, but they also transform themselves and their followers.

Measuring Transformational Leadership

Industrial organizational psychologist Bernard Bass (1997), drawing on Burns’s work, identified the components of both transactional and transformational leadership and contrasted these two methods with laissez-faire leadership. Most leaders, Bass suggests, are transactional: They define expectations, offer rewards, “formulate mutually satisfactory agreements, negotiate for resources, exchange assistance for effort, and provide commendations for successful follower performance” (Bass, 1997, p. 134). Transformational leaders, however, go beyond rewards and punishments. These leaders tend to be self-confident and determined, and their communications with their followers are usually eloquent and enthusiastic (Yammarino & Bass, 1990). In contrast to both transactional and transformational leadership, some leaders adopt a passive/avoidant, or laissez-faire, style. They point out members’ failings or ignore problems until they become dire.

Bass and his colleagues developed the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) to measure these key components of transformational leadership (Avolio & Bass, 1995; Bass, 1997). As summarized in Table 9.3, transformational leadership includes four basic components: the so-called 4Is of idealized, inspirational, intellectual, and individualized consideration. Transformational leaders stand for something and make their position clear to others in the group. They challenge others to join them in their pursuit of exciting endeavors, but at the same time, they provide each member with individualized support and consideration. They are, in a word, charismatic.

Table 9.3 The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire

Transformational Leadership

Idealized influence Expressing one’s conviction clearly and emphasizing the importance of trust; taking stands on difficult issues and urging members to adopt their values; emphasizing the importance of purpose, commitment, and the ethical consequences of decisions.

Inspirational motivation Articulating an appealing vision of the future; challenging followers with high standards, talking optimistically with enthusiasm, and providing encouragement and meaning for what needs to be done.

Intellectual stimulation Questioning old assumptions, traditions, and beliefs; stimulating in others new perspectives and ways of doing things, and encouraging the expression of ideas and reasons.

Individualized consideration Dealing with others as individuals; considering individual needs, abilities, and aspirations; listening attentively and furthering individual members’ development; advising, teaching, coaching.

Transactional Leadership

Contingent rewards Providing rewards to followers contingent on performance, recognizing achievements, and providing direction and positive feedback; defining expectations, arranging mutually satisfactory agreements, and negotiating for resources.

Management by exception (active) Supervising followers’ performances and intervening if they detect failures to reach goals or maintain standards.

Avoidant/Passive Leadership

Passive management by exception Being uninvolved in the group activity until a serious problem occurs; not taking action until mistakes are brought to their attention.

Laissez-faire Do not accept responsibility for the leadership role; often absent when needed; ignoring their followers’ requests for help; not making their views and values known to others. According to Bass, these individuals are not leaders.

SOURCE: Paraphrased from Bass, B. M. (1997). Does the transactional–transformational leadership paradigm transcend organizational and national boundaries? American Psychologist, 52, pp. 133–134.

The MLQ also includes, however, measures of two other approaches to leadership: transactional leadership and passive (or avoidant) leadership (see Table 9.3). Transactional leadership is more routine, traditional leadership, for it involves monitoring members’ behaviors, providing them with rewards and corrections as needed, and stepping in only when errors have occurred (management by exception). Passive leadership does not, in many cases, even qualify as leadership, for the so-called leader is so uninvolved with the group and its members that he or she does not meet the role requirements of a “leader.”

Both transactional and transformational leaders are more effective than passive leaders, but groups working with transformational leaders often achieve the best results of all. A meta-analytic review of 87 studies concluded that transformational leadership was more strongly associated with followers’ job satisfaction, satisfaction with the leader, motivational levels, performance quality, and ratings of the leader’s effectiveness than transactional leadership—although transactional leadership predicted these positive outcomes as well. Passive forms of leadership were unrelated to these outcomes or were negatively related (Judge & Piccolo, 2004). Meta-analysis also suggests that women tend to be more likely to use transformational styles of leadership, whereas men are more likely to enact laissez-faire and transactional styles (Eagly et al., 2003; Eagly & Johnson, 1990). Cross-cultural research supports Bass’s (1997) belief that the transactional–transformational distinction applies across all world cultures. Last, confirming the idea that “there is nothing so practical as a good theory” (Lewin, 1951, p. 169), leadership training programs based on the model have also proven to be a relatively effective means of improving performance in businesses and other organizations (see Dvir et al., 2002).

9-4e. The Future of Leadership

The future promises many changes in the nature and application of leadership principles. As organizations continue to become more decentralized—flatter rather than hierarchical—leadership methods will likely shift from leader-centered approaches to group-centered ones. Also, the increase in the use of information technologies likely will also change the way leaders interact with their followers, as traditional forms of leadership give way to new forms of e-leadership (Avolio et al., 2009; Coovert & Burke, 2005). Increases in diversity across groups will also create challenges for leaders, particularly if they must adapt their methods and style to match the varied needs of heterogeneous work groups (Klein et al., 2011). Leaders of the future will not only be leading individuals, but also the many subgroups that exist within their groups and organizations (Pittinsky, 2010).

The future may see increased numbers of women rising to positions of leadership in groups and organizations. As noted earlier, male and female leaders differ to a degree in their basic approaches to leadership, but the sexes are equivalent when it comes to providing members with task orientation and relational support (Eagly, Karau, & Makhijani, 1995). However, given that women tend to be participative and transformational leaders rather than autocratic, laissez-faire, and transactional leaders and given that these styles are more effective methods of leadership, as prejudicial biases give way to fairer promotional practices, the Charlotte Beers of the world will become the standard rather than the exception.

Resources

Chapter Case: Charlotte Beers

Charlotte Beers at Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide by Herminia Ibarra and Nicole Sackley (2011) is a Harvard Business School case study that describes the leadership methods and decisions made by Charlotte Beers as the Chief Executive Officer and chairperson of a global corporation.

I’d Rather Be in Charge by Charlotte Beers (2012) is one leader’s personal philosophy on leadership, interspersed with examples of leadership triumphs and practical advice.

The Nature of Leadership

Leadership by Michael Hogg (2013) is a comprehensive but compact review of the major theories examining leadership emergence and effectiveness.

Leadership in Organizations by Gary Yukl (2013) is a masterful integration of theory, research, and application of leadership studies in businesses and organizations.

Theoretical Perspectives

Leadership: Theory and Practice by S. Alexander Haslam, Stephen D. Reicher, and Michael J. Platow (2015) examines the major approaches to leadership taken by scholars in their study of leading and following, beginning with Plato and ending with contemporary perspectives.

Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies, edited by Robert J. House, Paul J. Hanges, Mansour Javidan, Peter W. Dormfan, and Vipin Gupta (2004), describes in detail this monumental study of cultural values and people’s perceptions of leadership.

Women and Leadership

“Social Identities and Leadership” by Crystal L. Hoyt (2014) is a concise review of research examining sex differences in leadership style and effectiveness, with a focus on the impact of sex stereotypes on biases against women as leaders.

Through the Labyrinth by Alice Eagly and Linda L. Carli (2007) examines closely the findings from hundreds of studies of women and leadership, including trends in biases against women as leaders and differences between men and women in their leadership styles.