Leadership in Small Groups

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Leadership in Small Groups
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1. Leadership in action

• Is this an effective group?
• Does the leader think it is effective?
• Do the members feel it is effective?
• What specific actions influenced the level of
  effectiveness?
• Suggestions?

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2. What is leadership?

• acts of guiding, influencing, directing,
  inspiring, and/or motivating the actions of
  others to achieve organizational goals.
• Designated leader vrs. Actual leader
• Person vrs. Group Activity

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3. Sources of influence

• Legitimate power (positional or role)
• Referent power (attraction, identification,
  charisma)
• Expert power (knowledge)

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4. Leadership Theories

• Traits approach (born to win)
• higher IQ, taller, more attractive, larger
• leadership emergence approach
• Styles approach
• democratic
• Laissez-faire
• autocratic

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Theories cont.

• Contingency
• Needs of group members
• Downs Picket study (high social needs)
• Functional approaches
• Task vrs. People
• Leader as medium - assist group in creating an
  organizing scheme (rules/procedures) for problem
  solving (how - through leader)

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Theories cont.

• Specific functions
• Leaders provide sufficient info.
• Leaders enact a variety of functions
• Leaders make sense of decisions
• Leaders focus on the here-and-now
• Contingency approach (Task Relationship)
• You can not adapt (Fiedler)
• You can adapt (Hersey Blanchard)

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Theories cont.

• Communication competencies of effective leaders
• encode ideas clearly concisely
• firmly understand the groups task
• skilled in mediating info. ideas supplied by
  group (critical thinking)
• express opinions provisionally
• express group centered concerns
• respect others when they speak
• share rewards and credit with the group

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5. Distributed leadership

• a group may be able to function without a
  leader, but it cannot function without leadership
• Basic idea - group members share leadership
  functions

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6. Key leadership skills

• Leader as completer
• Equalize opportunity to participate
• Address comments to group
• Be a gatekeeper
• Actively listen to those who speak less often
• Avoid commenting after each speaker
• Request opinions of others on key issues

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Leadership skills cont.

• Stimulate critical thinking
• Focus on analysis 1st, solutions 2nd
• Encourage evaluation of info.
• Clarify assumptions, standards, criteria
• Test solutions against standards criteria

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Leadership skills cont.

• Foster meeting-to-meeting improvement
• Determine areas of improvement
• Routinely assess strengths/weaknesses
• Establish Maintain Trust
• Establish norms, stick to them
• Confront trust violators
• Be a principled/ethical leader

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Leadership skills cont.

• Promote teamwork cooperation
• Use the right pronouns
• Create symbols of group identification
• Watch out for hidden agendas
• Share rewards with all the group
• Argue about facts/issues, not personalities
• Make it fun!