Most effective Leadership & Management Styles & approaches

Do you want to be a leader or a manager? In attempt to differentiate the terms ‘leadership’ and ‘management’, Kent (2005:1012) explored the following characteristics:

Adair’s Action-Centered Leadership model (2006) described leadership as an action to

Figure 1 Action-Centered Leadership,
adapted from Adair (2006)

meet the needs of task, team maintenance and individual. Contrarily, Drucker (1986) argued management is a task to fulfil a purpose, create productivity and manage social impacts. Although both involves a goal, business theories often associate leaders with ‘future’ and ‘influence’ and managers with ‘planning’ and ‘doing’ (Radcliffe 2012, Mullins 2016).

The two terms might have different literature meanings, but managers and leaders should be the same person (Witzel 2013). It is crucial to integrate both skills to effectively manage subordinates. From my previous blog, as a leader Ursula Burns demonstrated great ethics in Xerox. However, it was her technical expertise which truly earns her respects from subordinates (Byrnes 2009). Without knowing how to manage the company she would not have been as successful.

Tannenbaum and Schmidt (2009) explored possible ways to manage subordinates using different degree of power. Exerting higher degree of authority demonstrates ‘tell’ and ‘sell’ leadership whereas ‘consult’ and ‘join’ grants subordinates greater freedom. Telling is not necessarily wrong. The most crucial difference between good and bad management is that a successful manager is sensitive to organisational environment to adjust his leadership behaviour appropriately (Marx 2015).

Figure 2 Continuum of manager-non-manager behaviour, adapted from Tutor2u

An example of bad leader who failed to balance ‘command and control’ and ‘consultative and participative’ leadership is Martin Winterkorn, former CEO of Volkswagen (VW). Check out below for a brief of what happened in 2015.

Winterkorn was ranked the 58^th most powerful people in 2014 (Forbes 2017). He successfully transformed the brand and revived few of VW’s most troubled subsidiaries (Davidson 2009). VW’s annual sales exceeded Toyota in 2011, with nearly doubled profit (Economist 2012). From his engineering experience, he was deeply involved in VW’s technical management and quality control (Plummer 2015). Applying House’s path-goal theory (1971), Winterkorn demonstrated a directive and achievement-oriented leadership behaviour. As a leader, he had great vision for a promising future. As a manager, he was equipped with industry expertise to manage the business and set plan. But why did he fail?

To achieve a goal, it is not only important to manage and plan for future, but also to support subordinates and encourage them to participate in decision-making (House 1971). It was reported that during one of Winterkorn’s visit to a factory, he publicly criticised the engineers for exceeding a company standards by just less than 1mm (Cremer and Bergin 2015). Winterkorn overused his coercive power to influence subordinates, leading to a culture of distance, respect and fear. Subordinates were afraid to admit failure and report wrong-doing, which later led to the diesel-emissions scandal (Ewing and Bowley 2015).

I do respect Winterkorn’s devotion to VW after watching a video of him inspecting a new Hyundai car model. He showed a great passion to the industry with his amazing attention to details. Comparing to Ursula Burns, they both showed a touch of authoritarian leadership style during reconstruction of the business. However, Ursula Burns adjusted the leadership style appropriately to the societal change led by her awareness on the ethical responsibility of leaders. She later demonstrated more servant leadership style by showing high integrity, stewardship and humility through publishing blogs, public charity works and interview. There is no doubt that Winterkorn has had good intention for the company, though lack of humility and empathy limited a relationship of trust and cooperation with subordinates for sustainable success. It once again proved the importance of ethic and social awareness in leadership.

I agree a great manager should adapt his leadership style according the company’s culture. There should not be a fixed set of personality traits which a good leader must have (Haslam et al. 2011). A great manager should make use of different tools available to influence different subordinate, for example the Five Power theory by French and Raven (1993). Different people might respond differently.

Personally, to be honest I am very motivated by rewards. If I am my own manager, I would probably give myself a perception that I would receive a pay rise if I work harder. It did happen to me a year ago at Barclays, but it was unfortunately an empty promise. Obviously, this would be a misuse of reward power. I would absolutely agree that my manager was showing improper unethical behaviour but it is another story J. Nevertheless, I would love to hear which power triggers you the most? Let me know in the comments.

References

Adair, J. (2006). Leadership and motivation. London.

Anon, (2017). Forbes. [online] Available at: https://www.forbes.com/profile/martin-winterkorn/ [Accessed 21 Jun. 2017].

Byrnes, N. (2009). Ursula Burns: An Historic Succession at Xerox. Bloomberg Business Week.

Cremer, A. and Bergin, T. (2015). Fear and respect: VW’s culture under Winterkorn. Reuters.

Davidson, A. (2009). 1000 CEOs. London: DK Pub.

Drucker, P. (1986). Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices. London: Heinemann.

Ewing, J. and Bowley, G. (2015). The Engineering of Volkswagen’s Aggressive Ambition. The New York Times.

Haslam, S., Reicher, S. and Platow, M. (2011). The new psychology of leadership. Hove, East Sussex [etc.]: Psychology Press.

House, R. (1971). A Path Goal Theory of Leader Effectiveness. Administrative Science Quarterly, 16(3), p.321.

Ibarra, H. (2017). When a leader is not a manager and other modern myths. Financial Times.

Kent, T. (2005). Leading and managing: it takes two to tango. Management Decision, 43(7/8), pp.1010-1017.

Marx, T. (2015). The impact of business strategy on leadership. Journal of Strategy and Management, 8(2), pp.110-126.

Morgan, J. (2015). Why All Managers Must Be Leaders. Forbes.

Mullins, L. and Christy, G. (2016). Management and organisational behaviour.

O’Leary, J. (2016). Do Managers and Leaders Really Do Different Things?. Harvard Business Review.

Plummer, R. (2015). VW boss Martin Winterkorn’s rise and fall. BBC.

Radcliffe, S. (2012). Leadership plain and simple. Harlow.

Raven, B. (1993). The Bases of Power: Origins and Recent Developments. Journal of Social Issues, 49(4), pp.227-251.

Tannenbaum, R. and Schmidt, W. (2009). How to choose a leadership pattern. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press.

VW conquers the world. (2012). The Economist.

Witzel, M. (2013). Leaders and managers should be one and the same. Financial Times.