Transcript Slide 1

OK Let’s try again:
 Name, how you wish to be
addressed?
 Given what you understand
about the course so far,
what do you hope to learn?
 Share something that will
help us know you.
?
Form Groups
Mill and find
others or they will
find you.
We have 20
enrollees so we
need 4 groups of 5.
Choose a point
person.
Meet in groups
 1. What makes sense about
the course so far or looks
good to you?
 2. What’s not clear? Anyone
else got it figure out?
 3. How can we "make sure
"info flows freely" and "how
will we deal with conflict or
differences, with each
other, or with the
instructor"?
 Pick a point person
Norms to encourage the
free flow of information that
will allow us to disagree. We
will:
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1.Respect each other's ideas and
encourage differences of opinion.
2. Be hard on ideas but not people.
3. Share the blame if class sessions go
wrong or if our learning plans are
ineffective.
4. Share the recognition and rewards if
our class goes well.
5. Encourage each other to take part in
planning and decision making about the
means to achieve the ends, both
individual, group, and those of the prof.
6. Offer support and assistance to each
other.
7. Listen to each other.
8. Discuss our feelings openly and
honestly.
9. Come prepared so we are all on the
same page.
10. Be here and be on time so we can
begin together.
11.
12.
13.
Do you agree?
“Most working teams I have known, in
school, on my job, or elsewhere have
been high performing, well lead, effective,
and satisfying experiences.”
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Strongly agree
Agree
Partially agree
Neutral
Partially disagree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
Shared
Inquiry
Starts with
asking really
good
questions
Wisdom: Asking
good questions
“Judge others
by their
questions rather
than by their
answers.”
Voltaire (16941778)
Teams at work have more talent
and experience, more diverse
resources, and greater operating
flexibility than individual
performers.
A good question of shared
inquiry is:
So why do so many work
teams either struggle
unpleasantly toward
an unsatisfactory
conclusion-or, worse,
crash and burn shortly
after launch?
What ‘cha think? So let’s
inquire a while?
A Couple of Main Ideas
 Find and act on the best
knowledge and evidence
based empirical findings
not just on someone else’s
“best practices.”
 Deal with vexing half-truths
such as: “Leaders are in
control and ought to be.”
Small Group Discussion
 Any formal training about
groups/teams?
 Books about teams or team
leadership you have read
and liked?
Pick a Title
Which Truth?
Leading Teams
 It’s not all intuition and
“best practices.” Better
evidence can lead to better
leadership performance
 There are smarter, more
“evidenced ways” to think
about and understand
leadership and better ways
to “lead” teams.
BUT ONE THING FOR
SURE
You can’t learn just
by watching and
talking about it;
you’ve got to do it.
 "How vain to try to teach
youth, or anyone, truths! They
can only learn them out of their
own fashion, and when they get
ready...A man thinks as well
through his legs and arms as
his brain. We exaggerate the
importance of the
headquarters." (Henry Thoreau,
Dec. 31, 1860)
Small Group Discussion:
Leadership Experience?
Where have you
been asked to lead
teams?
 Where do you
hope to lead?
Have You a Leadership
Development Plan?
A Systematic
Approach
 Experience change,
complexity & learn
to tolerate
ambiguity
 Who should
participate with you
in your
development?
 Role of mentors
 Finding feedback
 Variety of
experiences
 Presentation (oral
and written) skills
 Comfort with
conflict
Learning from
Experience
 Showing up at the
“table”
 Making
connections
 Moving up
 Value of crosscultural
 Watching others
 Political and
volunteer
organizations
 Keeping a
log/diary
 Writing/rewriting
your obituary
Whom do you read and
then trust about effective
leadership?
Making sense of “it” is
tough
 Too many “experts”
 Little integration
 Inconsistent claims
Applying Occam’s Razor
Cut out all the
“crappy” books
about leadership
It’s a big task. Need a
book about leadership?
 http://www.leadershipnow.
com/leadershop/titleindex.
html
 The latest:
http://www.leadershipnow.
com/leadershop/index.html
The Happy Foot of the
Head Penguin
 http://www.leadershipnow.com
/leadershop/031236198X.html
 Question: If we are so sure we
know what “it” is, why are
there so many different ideas
about what you need to know if
you wanted “to get you some?”
 Leadership books keep rolling
off the presses as if their
authors had something new to
say. A significant new theory of
leadership hasn’t been
advanced in years, and there
are few serious research
findings to report. Yet authors
keep churning out books.
Want one of mine? Sells for $35.00; publisher
gives us $4.50 a copy which Bob and I split.
(That’s why I’m still working and our
publisher retired to Florida.) It has empirical
research to support the assertions.
http://www.amazon.com/ExecutiveLeadership-Nonprofit-OrganizationsExecutiveBoard/dp/1555423345/ref=pd_sxp_f
_pt/105-5214866-7220446
Hot off the press: half baked?
From the “flyer”: Quote for the flyer: Structured
so it can be read in time chunks, consistent with
the ’60-Second’ proposition.”
From the Same Author
It helps to have “seven”
since the success of Stephen Covey
Opps: Make That Eight
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, was
extremely successful and has sold over 15 million copies
worldwide since first publication in 1989.
More from Franklin
Covey
http://www.franklincovey.com
/fc/library_and_resources/
mission_statement_builder
Get Real!
About “best practices.”
Possible new title: will
it sell?
How I
Blew It!
A difficult proposition to
support or measure
 "Trust is the essence of
leadership."
--Colin Powell
Another Self-Confirming Behavior:
You gotta know when to hold ‘em; know
when to fold ‘em; know when to walk
away and know when to run.
Trusting
is like
playing
poker
Toward evidenced based
leadership research
 Definition murky
 Many assertions; little
evidence
 Messy problems
 Better standards can be
used
 Empirical studies, little
added since 1970’s
 Now mostly war stories or
exhortations
For certain: There’s no
leadership without others
Two Big Questions
 How do people explain or
try to understand a leader’s
behavior?
 What kinds of errors do
people make when
explaining or trying to
understand a leader’s
behavior?
The Basic Premise
Behavior is to be understood as
a function of:
Individual, Situation
B = (f) I, S
(I)
Individual Dispositional
attributes/”personality/traits (values,
attitudes, experience, education, etc.)
(as they interact with)
(S) The Situation
as the individual makes
sense of
(understands) it.
First Leadership Studies: The
Search for the Right Stuff
(dispositions) thru the 1950s
 Emphasis on
B= (f) Indiv.
Situation
traits,
not
 Assumes that a finite number of
individual traits of effective
leaders can be found
 intelligence
 personality
 physical characteristics
 Relies on research that relates
various traits to certain success
criteria
 Research findings were
contradictory
Assumptions
 People are born with
inherited traits.
 Some traits are particularly
suited to leadership.
 People who make good
leaders have the right (or
sufficient) combination of
traits.
Early research on leadership
was based on the psychological
focus of the day
 people have inherited
characteristics or traits
 attention was placed on
discovering these traits, often by
studying successful leaders
 underlying assumption that if
other people could also be found
with these traits, then they, too,
could also become great leaders.
 if particular traits are key features
of leadership, how do we explain
people who possess those
qualities but are not leaders?
 minimized the impact of the
situation
Traits Studied Associated
With Leadership
Effectiveness
Intelligence
Personality
Abilities
Judgment
Decisiveness
Knowledge
Fluency of speech
Adaptability
Alertness
Creativity
Personal integrity
Self-confidence
Emotional balance
and control
Independence
(nonconformity)
Ability to enlist
cooperation
Cooperativeness
Popularity and
prestige
Sociability
(interpersonal skills)
Social participation
Tact, diplomacy
Shortcomings of the Trait
Theory of Leadership
 The list of potentially important traits is
endless
 Trait test scores are not consistently
predictive of leader effectiveness
 Patterns of effective behavior always
depend largely on the situation
 The trait approach fails to provide
insight into what the effective leader
actually does on the job
 Hindered by methodological problems
 Problem connecting abstract trait
and how it “shows up in behavior”
 Can’t examined traits one-at a-time
 If traits matter, it is probably a
constellation of interacting traits
which can’t be reduced to single
traits, thus very difficult to study.
The fundamental
attribution error
 Janet and Michael go on a
date and, at the end of the
evening, he promises to
call her tomorrow.
Tomorrow comes along, but
Michael doesn’t call. In
thinking about this
situation, Janet might come
up with different
explanations for his
behavior. What are some
possible explanations for
Michael’s behavior?
Causal attributions
 Internal attribution: Explain in
terms of something about the
person, e.g., traits (e.g., Michael
is rude and unreliable)
 External attribution: Explain in
terms of something about the
situation (e.g., Michael couldn’t
call because he’s in the hospital
and unconscious)
Pick Up Most Leadership
Books and You Find Most
Authors Make Same Error
 Fundamental attribution
error: the tendency to
overestimate the impact of
internal, personality causes
(traits) and to
underestimate the impact
of situational causes when
explaining leadership
behavior.
“The romance of
leadership”
The tendency to over
emphasize I>S
 Leaders get more credit
than they deserve
 Leaders get more blame
than they have earned
http://management.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=man
agement&cdn=money&tm=14&gps=393_545_1020_541&f=20&su=p284.
21.140.ip_p554.2.150.ip_p284.2.420.ip_&tt=2&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A
//www.aflcio.org/corporateamerica/paywatch/ceou/
U of Mo salaries
http://www.columbiabusinesstimes.com/index.php
In 2005, the average CEO of a Standard & Poor's
500 company received $13.51 million in total
Compensation.
The Corporate Library’s 2006 CEO Pay Survey,
The Corporate Library, September 29, 2006
AN IDEA CENTRAL TO
THIS COURSE
We will guard
ourselves religiously
from making
The
fundamental
leadership
attribution error
Two attributional biases
 Fundamental attribution
error
AND A SECOND ONe
 Actor-observer differences
How We Try to Explain
Our Own Behavior
 People moderate their
behavior by how they
understand the
circumstances of the
situation as they
find it.
Actors/Observers
Tend to Attribute Causality
Differently
THE OBSERVOR
The OBSERVOR infers causes of
others behavior from the attributes
of the actor.
ACTOR
ACTORS infer causes of own
behavior from the situation.
We (as an observer)
tend to see other
people’s behaviors as
being caused by their
personal dispositions,
while perceiving our
own actions as due to
situational factors.
Hence the Second Error:
Causal Attribution, The
Actor/Observer Difference
The actor/observer
difference is the
tendency to see other
people’s behavior as
dispositional caused, but
focusing more on the
role of situational
factors when explaining
one’s own behavior.
Example: Have You
Been There?
 Imagine you are working on a
group project and one of the other
students does not complete her
part.
 Your view: She’s lazy,
inconsiderate, not motivated.
(internal, personal)
 Her view: I’m taking 5 classes,
working 30 hours/week, my
boyfriend cheated on me, and my
grandmother just ran off with a 25
year old fellow. (external,
situational)
 You tell the prof you don’t like her
bad “attitude.”
 She tells the prof, “all I want is a
C.”
The Actor/Observer
Difference
One reason for the
actor/observer difference is
perceptual salience (figure
vs. ground): actors notice
the situations around them
that influence them to act,
while observers notice the
actors.
The actor/observer difference
also occurs because actors
have more information
about themselves than do
observers.
Actors and Observors
 A and O rely on two
fundamentally different
sources of info
 One external (O); the other
internal (I)
 No wonder its so hard to
gain agreement about who
“messed up?”
GET THIS!
THE
FOLLOWING
IS A KEY TO
THIS
COURSE
THE TWO BASIC
PREMISES for BMA516
Leading Teams
Get these and the rationale
for how this course is
taught will be understood:
Avoid the Fundamental
Leadership Attribution
Error
To Lead Teams, Work on
the Situation Rather than
Trying to Fix the
Individual(s)
End:
Objective of the Course
 Identify the key
situational conditions
that YOU can put in
place to increase the
likelihood of team
success-regardless of
you “personality” or
preferred style of
operating.
The Big Five Situational
Factors a Leader Can Do
something About (According
to Hackman)
 Create a Real Work Team
 Provide Compelling
Direction
 Build Structure to Foster
Not Impede Teamwork
 Tweak to Provide
Organizational Support and
Resources
 Arrange for or Provide
Expert Coaching
Ends: Dick
Means: You and Your
Group

The four groups will to a large extent
determine the Means to achieve the End.

The Way (means) we will do this is:
 For you to read assignments
carefully in timely manner (when
they are assigned)
 By writing and discussing Shared
Inquiry questions, insightfully
 By group designed “learning
activities”
 By prof led occasional theoretical
input and other activities
 For you to work on your own
behavioral change goals
“Leading” 516 for me is to
structure, support, and
guide our class by
 enhance the social processes
essential to collective learning
 build shared commitment, help
develop our skills, and identify
task-appropriate coordination
strategies
 help troubleshoot ways we are
engaging each other, problems we
are having with each other and
the course
 spot emerging opportunities, and
finally
 capture our experiences with
each other and help translate
them into shared knowledge