Leadership skills

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Leadership competence describes the ability to set goals and to influence and lead the behavior of other people in such a way that these goals are converted into results. The process from setting goals to monitoring results and the personal relationship between leaders and those being led can be designed in different ways. This is what different leadership styles describe . Leadership is a sub-area of management (in addition to planning , organization and control ). If managers are also responsible for management tasks, management and leadership coincide (see management skills ).

Importance of leadership skills

The skills (competencies) of executives are decisive for the success and the continued existence ("survival") of companies and other organizations, because executives have to make important decisions . Examples are: selection, definition and implementation of the “right” strategy , coordination of operational sub-areas (functions) such as procurement , production , research , development and sales, as well as solving unusual problems or crises. The development of leadership skills involves the following key questions: 1.) What criteria should you use to select (future) executives, i.e. which qualities , traits or personality traits must the candidates bring with them and 2.) How can you assess the skills of (current and future) ) Improve managers? In companies, management success is measured using key figure systems such as the balanced scorecard , which are derived from the interests of the above-mentioned stakeholders . Early indicators such as employee and customer satisfaction are becoming increasingly important. The prerequisite for the "correct" selection and development of executives is a reliable diagnosis of leadership skills. Research and practice have developed numerous diagnostic instruments for this purpose. The most important include the assessment center , the management audit , the 360-degree feedback , the behavioral event interview and management coaching .

history

Until the 1940s, it was believed that leadership was an inexplicable phenomenon; it is simply a gift of special “ charismatic personalities”. An exception was the Reichswehr (later the Wehrmacht ), which had already used the so-called round-table discussion, an early variant of the assessment center , in 1930 to select officer candidates . The prevailing opinion of the “innate” leadership ability meant that there was no systematic leadership development in companies. It was believed that the “right” person would prevail anyway. This opinion, which is still partly held today, is not surprising, especially since the age of industrialization was characterized by many charismatic leaders until the post-war period. In the political arena, you can count people like Mahatma Gandhi and Winston Churchill ; in the scientific field, names like Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer should be mentioned, and in business, entrepreneurs like Werner von Siemens , Henry Ford or - today - Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have shaped the ideas of successful leadership. The study of the special characteristics of these people was therefore a central topic. A statement by Joseph Schumpeter about entrepreneurs can be cited as an example for the economic sector :

"The men who created modern industry were 'whole guys' and not miserable figures who constantly wondered anxiously whether every effort ... also promised a sufficient surplus of pleasure ..."

- J. Schumpeter : Theory of Economic Development

Even today it happens that “great men” or outstanding “leaders”, especially in the media, are touted as heroes (but also as “scapegoats”) with special characteristics (or, depending on their political point of view, demonized). An example is the cult of the person of Jack Welch , although his successor, Jeffrey R. Immelt , is no less successful, but obviously invests less in public relations . As early as the 1950s , Peter R. Hofstätter commented critically on this focus on the person of the manager and the search for special characteristics of the “leader” : “The search begins, but it never ends. Sometimes the "Führer" is older than his followers, sometimes younger. One already believes to find particularly robust health in him, which one secretly calls "vital energy", but then one encounters the frail, epileptics, cripples and morphinists who are recognized as leaders. Intelligence and the extent of knowledge are not much better off. It doesn't even work with the eloquence, since even speech defects get along with the celebrities ”.

An illustration of the concept of competence

With this focus on people and their characteristics, the pragmatic aspect, namely the development of skills (competencies) to cope with everyday management tasks and challenges, is often lost. Accordingly, leadership is comparable to a craft that is not in good shape in practice. For example, Fredmund Malik says:

“In no other job is the training so bad as in management. Nobody would get on an airplane if the pilots had an inadequate training comparable to the managers. "

- F. Malik : Leading, performing, living

If one tries to draw a conclusion from the historical specialist literature on the subject of leadership skills, one comes to the conclusion that this began in the mid-1950s with the suggestion of Robert Katz, who proposed the concept of human, technical and conceptual skills for leadership development. This gave the development a pragmatic turn, which consisted in operationalizing the topic of leadership skills, i.e. making it empirically measurable and deriving concrete recommendations for action, as recommended by Henry Mintzberg , for example . The illustration on the right is intended to illustrate the concept of competence as proposed by Spencer and Carter (in addition to Mintzberg).

theory

An illustration of the term leadership

Under leadership is the direct and indirect influence behavior for the realization of goals, mostly from the objectives of the organization and the expectations of stakeholders derived. The direct influence takes place through the personal relationship between leaders and those being led, while structures such as incentive, planning and performance indicator systems exert an indirect influence on behavior. The adjacent figure tries to illustrate this.

Models and theories of leadership want to explain leadership success on the one hand and to provide recommendations for action to improve management practice or solve problems on the other. In other words: they should help in the selection and qualification of managers and junior managers. One reason for the need for such models is the strong growth of companies, especially after the Second World War, and the associated need for managers who can master the day-to-day business of management. Furthermore, it seemed less and less sensible to hope for the appearance of extraordinary personalities. In addition, there was the fact that unsuitable, power- and money-hungry people were often given high management positions and caused correspondingly great damage in the company. For example, James MacGregor Burns says:

"Today's leadership crisis consists in the mediocrity or irresponsibility of so many men and women in positions of power."

- JM Burns : Leadership

The practice, which in some cases is still common today, of promoting managers primarily based on their specialist knowledge, has also not proven itself. This practice follows the principle of appointing the best salesman as sales manager or the best engineer as production manager, neglecting the ability to deal with people, for example . These experiences made it necessary to set up a systematic, transparent management development that is geared towards the needs of the company (and not the ego of individual persons). Microsoft can be counted among the pioneers in this field . Two career paths were introduced here (dual ladder), in which highly qualified specialists and managers could earn the same recognition and remuneration.

One of the most influential theories, which has accompanied and promoted the development of leadership skills, emerged as early as the 1930s. It was the concept of leadership styles . It started with a democratic, autocratic and laissez faire style. This was followed by numerous variants, such as employee or task-oriented, participatory, bureaucratic, etc. These management styles can be combined with so-called levels of employee maturity. Depending on how committed, motivated or qualified they are, the manager should use different techniques, such as “instruct”, “delegate”, “participate” or “convince”. This is how one of the best-known theory of “ situational leadership ” by Hersey and Blanchard, used in many leadership seminars to this day, came about. However, to date there is no reliable empirical evidence that a certain leadership style is more successful than another in practice. In other words, these models aren't much more reliable than a horoscope from a scientific point of view . A key reason for this is that a leadership style is created ex ante, is largely tied to the individuality of the person and therefore cannot be imitated by third parties. After all, a management style has such a high degree of abstraction that it can hardly be learned and trained in practice.

There is no empirical evidence that certain personality traits are associated with leadership success. The study by Harvard University is an example. Accordingly, personal characteristics such as “visionary”, “energetic”, “willing to take risks”, “passionate”, “power-conscious” or “modest”, “empathetic”, “caring”, “self-confident” etc. have almost no influence on management success. Much more important is the concrete, observable behavior of the manager, as it was developed in the model of transformational leadership by Bass and Avolio . According to the German version of transformational leadership, the following behaviors are typical for successful managers:

  • Be a role model and build trust to gain loyalty (idealized influence)
  • Motivate through demanding, meaningful goals and thus increase motivation (inspirational motivation)
  • Encourage independent, creative problem solving (intellectual stimulation)
  • Promote employees individually so that they can further develop their personal strengths (individualized consideration)
  • Ensure fairness in interpersonal communication
  • Promote entrepreneurial thinking and action
  • Strengthen the ability to translate goals and opportunities into results (implementation skills).

For the empirical validation of this model, see the work of Börner, Judge, Keller or Pelz. In management development practice, attempts are made to substantiate these (and other) competencies through behavioral descriptions. It must be behaviors that lead to measurable results (competencies) and are derived from the strategic goals of the company or organization.

Application and Practice

The following trend can be seen in executive development: On the one hand, the importance of theories and models is clearly declining, and on the other hand, attempts are made to limit leadership skills to a limited number of company-specific competencies, which are operationalized by describing behavior as precisely as possible. Thus, today one can summarize leadership competence as the sum of company-specific behavioral expectations, which can differ from company to company and from hierarchical level to hierarchical level. Here are some examples:

  • Competence "result orientation" as expected behavior:
    • Take calculated risks to improve products and services.
    • Sets clear goals and deadlines for planned (interim) results.
    • Is always prepared for (unavoidable) deviations from the plan.
    • Can reliably distinguish between urgency and importance, sets clear priorities.
    • Prepares meetings and meetings so that they run efficiently and lead to meaningful results.
    • If the situation so requires, takes extraordinary or creative measures so that the tasks in his area of ​​responsibility are completed on time.
  • Competence "willingness to take risks" as expected behavior:
    • Regularly analyzes the environment with regard to possible risks and dangers for his area of ​​responsibility.
    • Is well prepared for potential risks and problems.
    • Takes responsibility for risks that have actually occurred.
    • Can weigh up opportunities and risks appropriately and is able to assess their impact on the organization (both qualitatively and quantitatively).
    • Is willing to take a personal risk if it benefits the organization.
    • Introduces suitable measures and systems to prevent possible risks from negligence, fraud, abuse or misconduct.
    • Creates a positive, constructive culture of risk taking.

The example of the competence “willingness to take risks” shows that this must be defined differently depending on the hierarchy level and strategy of the company. And every company should also define its own definition.

Economic success as a result of leadership success - conclusion

The following conclusion can be drawn from the evaluation of the specialist literature on the practice of managerial development in successful companies: In today's managerial development, it is not about general (universal) leadership skills, but rather about the fulfillment of behavioral expectations of the manager. If these expectations are clearly defined and transparently communicated by organizations or companies, managers can cope with their current (and future) tasks more successfully. In this sense, Judith Hale defines a competency as follows: “ Competencies are statements that describe the behaviors or attributes organizations want in their employees on the assumption that these characteristics correlate with results”. This assumption is probably one reason why a manager can be very successful in one company or department, while he fails completely in another task or in a different environment.

The task descriptions are mostly derived from the company's strategy or mission (task) and broken down to the hierarchical levels. This approach to leadership development has several advantages. The high potentials (junior staff) are no longer trained “in advance”, so they do not learn abstract leadership styles that they might need one day; rather, they are empowered to cope with their current and future tasks more successfully. For example, the competence “planning and organization” is compatible with many personality traits and leadership styles - from extroverted or introverted to charismatic, authoritarian, democratic, passionate or visionary - in each case it comes down to the results (e.g. efficient processes, reliable planning or committed Employees). The focus is not on the style, but on the result (measured against the goals). For example, a manager can count on more loyalty from their employees if they fulfill their role model function; she can also count on more motivation if she challenges and qualifies her employees accordingly. The illustration on the right tries to summarize this.

In summary, it can be stated that without leadership no organization can successfully exist in terms of implementing its goals. This applies to student interest groups as well as to a craft business, a university clinic or an international group. The central question is what criteria should be used to select and promote the people who (should) take responsibility for management tasks. Science (and practice) have suggested various answers. They range from “innate” characteristics of charismatic “leaders” to “heroic” personality traits and leadership styles to today's standard practice of detailed, task-related descriptions and expectations of behavior. However, none of these approaches can obviously perform a central task of models, namely to predict the success of leadership with some degree of reliability. Perhaps this is because - as Henry Mintzberg says - leadership is not just a craft, but also an art that is about creativity , passion and imagination . And this largely eludes scientific analysis. In this sense, you can compare good leadership with good music: You only recognize the quality when you listen. Because of the lack of prognostic concepts, society can only hope that as many people as possible learn leadership skills in theory and practice, and thus a larger selection of executives will emerge. A larger 'offer' has the economic advantage that one does not have to pay the managers so dearly, that one can apply more ethical selection criteria and that this increases the likelihood of discovering special talents who have mastered the art of leadership particularly well. In other words: The research on this topic cannot deliver a convincing concept and is only just beginning, despite the countless publications.

See also

literature

  • BM Bass, BJ Avolio (Ed.): Improving Organizational Effectiveness Through Transformational Leadership . Thousand Oaks, 1994
  • S. Boerner et al .: Follower Behavior and Organizational Performance: The Impact of Transformational Leadership . In: Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies , 2007, Vol. 13, No. 3
  • L. Carter et al .: Best Practices in Leadership Development . San Francisco 2005
  • MA Cusumano, RW Selby: The Microsoft Method . Freiburg i. Br. 1996
  • JH Fleming et al .: Manage Your Human Sigma . In: Harvard Business Review , July-August 2005
  • R. Fulmer et al .: Developing Leaders: How Winning Companies Keep on Winning . In: Sloan Management Review , Fall 2000
  • E. Gutenberg: Basics of business administration . 18th edition. Berlin u. a. 1971
  • H. Gardner: Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership . New York 1995
  • J. Hale: Berformance-Bades Management: What Every Manager Should Do to Get Results . San Francisco 2004
  • P. Hofstätter: Group dynamics . 12th edition. Hamburg 1971
  • TA Judge, RE Piccolo: Transformational and Transactional Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Test of Their Relative Validity . In: Journal of Applied Psychology , 2004, Vol. 89, No. 5
  • RT Keller: Transformational Leadership, Initiating Structure, and Substitutes for Leadership . In: Journal of Applied Psychology , Vol. 91, No. 1
  • R. Katz: Skills of an effective administrator . In: Harvard Business Review , January-February 1955
  • RS Kaplan, DP Norton: The Balanced Scorecard . Boston 1996
  • M. Maccoby: The Leaders We Need and What Makes Us Follow . Boston 2007
  • F. Malik: Leading, performing, living . Düsseldorf 2000
  • J. Menkes: Executive Intelligence (What all Great Leaders Have) . New York 2005
  • H. Mintzberg: Managers not MBAs . San Francisco 2004
  • N. Nohira: What Really Works . In: Harvard Business Review , July 2003
  • W. Pelz: Competent leadership . 2nd Edition. Wiesbaden 2004
  • R. Reichwald, J. Siebert: Leadership excellence, Learning form an exploratory study on leadership systems in large multinationals . In: Journal of European Industrial Training , Vol. 29, No. 3, 2005
  • RJThomas: Crucibles of Leadership: How to Learn From Experience to Become a Great Leader . Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston 2008
  • L. v. Rosenstiel u. a. (Ed.): Management of employees . 4th edition. Stuttgart 1999
  • J. Schumpeter: Theory of Economic Development . Berlin 1912
  • G. Yukl, R. Lepsinger: Flexible Leadership . San Francisco 2004
  • G. Yukl: Leadership in Organizations . 6th edition. Upper Saddle River NJ 2006

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Institute for Management Innovation: Leadership Skills accessed on August 2, 2017
  2. ↑ Stephen Robbins, David DeCenzo, Mary Coulter: Fundamentals of Management . Seventh Edition. Pearson, Boston 2011, p. 33 f. and 332 f. Wolfgang H. Staehle : Management . 7th edition. Munich 1994, p. 78; Horst Steinmann, Georg Schreyögg: Management . 6th edition, Wiesbaden 2005, p. 154 and to measure the success Gary Yukl: Leadership in Organizations. Eighth Edition. Pearson, Harlow 2013, p. 24 ff.
  3. ^ E. Gutenberg: Fundamentals of business administration . 18th edition. Berlin u. a. 1971
  4. ^ RS Kaplan, DP Norton: The Balanced Scorecard . Boston 1996
  5. ^ JH Fleming et al .: Manage Your Human Sigma . In: Harvard Business Review , July-August 2005
  6. ↑ a b c L. Carter et al .: Best Practices in Leadership Development . San Francisco 2005
  7. ↑ Max Weber explains the charismatic rule in detail in his main work Economy and Society .
  8. ^ P. Hofstätter: Group dynamics . 12th edition. Hamburg 1971
  9. ↑ a b G. Yukl: Leadership in Organizations . 6th edition. Upper Saddle River NJ 2006
  10. ^ H. Gardner: Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership . New York 1995
  11. ↑ Joseph Schumpeter : Theory of Economic Development . 9th edition of the unchanged reprint from 1934. Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-07725-3 , p. 135
  12. ^ PR Hofstätter: Group dynamics . Hamburg 1957. 12th edition 1971, p. 152 f.
  13. ↑ Fredmund Malik : Leading, Performing, Living . Düsseldorf 2000, ISBN 3-593-38231-8 , p. 55
  14. ^ R. Katz: Skills of an effective administrator In: Harvard Business Review , January-February 1955
  15. ^ Katz's Management Core Skills . iWise / Management
  16. ^ H. Mintzberg: Managers not MBAs . San Francisco 2004
  17. ^ LM Spencer: Competence at work: models for superior performance . John Wiley & Sons, 1993
  18. ↑ L. v. Rosenstiel: Basics of leadership . In: L. v. Rosenstiel, E. Regnet, ME Domsch: Management of employees . 4th edition. Stuttgart 1999
  19. ^ M. Maccoby: The Leaders We Need and What Makes Us Follow . Boston 2007
  20. ↑ G. Yukl, R. Lepsinger: Flexible Leadership . San Francisco 2004
  21. ^ F. Malik: Leading, performing, living . Düsseldorf 2000
  22. ↑ James MacGregor Burns : Leadership . In: S. Crainer: The ultimate management library . Frankfurt / Main / New York 1997
  23. ^ W. Pelz: Competent leadership . 2nd Edition. Wiesbaden 2004
  24. ^ MA Cusumano, RW Selby: The Microsoft method . Freiburg i. Br. 1996
  25. ↑ L. v. Rosenstiel u. a. (Ed.): Management of employees . 4th edition. Stuttgart 1999
  26. ↑ Waldemar Pelz: Competent leadership . 2nd Edition. Wiesbaden 2004
  27. ↑ N. Nohira: What Really Works . In: Harvard Business Review , July 2003.
  28. ↑ BM Bass, BJ Avolio (Ed.): Improving Organizational Effectiveness Through Transformational Leadership . Thousand Oaks, 1994
  29. ^ Waldemar Pelz: Transformational Leadership - State of Research and Implementation in Practice . In: Au, Corinna von (Ed.): Leadership and applied psychology. Volume 1: Effective and sustainable management approaches. Berlin: Springer Verlag 2016, p. 99 available online
  30. ^ S. Boerner et al .: Follower Behavior and Organizational Performance: The Impact of Transformational Leadership . In: Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies , 2007, Vol. 13, No. 3
  31. ^ TA Judge, RE Piccolo: Transformational and Transactional Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Test of Their Relative Validity . In: Journal of Applied Psychology , 2004, Vol. 89, No. 5
  32. ^ RT Keller: Transformational Leadership, Initiating Structure, and Substitutes for Leadership . In: Journal of Applied Psychology , Vol. 91, No. 1
  33. ^ Waldemar Pelz: Transformational Leadership - State of Research and Implementation in Practice . In: Au, Corinna von (Ed.): Leadership and applied psychology. Volume 1: Effective and sustainable management approaches. Berlin: Springer Verlag 2016, p. 99 available online
  34. ↑ The reader can carry out a self-assessment of these competencies under leadership competencies .
  35. ^ Judith Hale: Performance-Based Management. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons 2004
  36. ^ RJ Thomas: Crucibles of Leadership: How to Learn From Experience to Become a Great Leader . Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston 2008
  37. ^ J. Hale: Performance-Bades Management: What Every Manager Should Do to Get Results . San Francisco 2004
  38. ↑ Waldemar Pelz: Competent leadership . 2nd Edition. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 217 ff.
  39. ^ R. Reichwald, J. Siebert: Leadership excellence, Learning form an exploratory study on leadership systems in large multinationals . In: Journal of European Industrial Training , Vol. 29, No. 3, 2005
  40. ^ R. Fulmer et al .: Developing Leaders: How Winning Companies Keep on Winning . In: Sloan Management Review , Fall 2000
  41. ^ J. Hale: Performance-Bades Management: What Every Manager Should Do to Get Results . San Francisco 2004, p. 77; Emphasis in the original
  42. ↑ Waldemar Pelz: Put to the test: Study Transformational Leadership . In: Personalmagazin , No. 01/2013, p. 38
  43. ^ Henry Mintzberg: Managers not MBAs . San Francisco 2004, p. 92 f.
  44. ↑ See also: Waldemar Pelz: Leading competently . 2nd Edition. Wiesbaden 2014, p. 21 ff. And Gary Yukl: Leadership in Organizations . 8th edition. Boston 2013, p. 402 ff. (Chapter "Limitations in Leadership Research")