PepsiCo, General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, and ServiceMaster were cited by Cohen and Tichy (1997) for having the best practices for leadership development in training and education programs both on and off the job similar to those presented above.
Management development programs usually refer to the total long-term off-the-job and on-the-job educational process; management training refers to shorter courses. A full-blown program may accomplish much more than what may be possible with shorter independent training courses. Thus Guetzkow, Forehand, and James (1962) reported that a one-year management development course changed behavior significantly more than did training courses of short duration.
Management development programs serve other organizational functions. Recruitment of personnel is facilitated if prospective applicants know that such a program is available. An organizational growth strategy can be maintained efficiently when candidates for newly opening positions are already in training. In turn, the growth strategy provides for more possibilities for promotion as a source of reward for managers at lower levels and may reduce defensive competition for promotion (Luttwak, 1976). Two of the many available management development programs are LeaderLab and Full Range of Leadership Development.
LeaderLab. The purpose of this program is to provide leadership training in action learning with realism, simplicity, relevance, the actions of leading, and the intellect and emotions involved, and the time to plan, act, reflect, and learn to learn. The program is aimed at dealing with the leadership challenges of rapid change, diversity of people and views, and developing a shared sense of purpose. Participants develop an action plan to improve their leadership, then return after three months to review their progress. Participants keep a journal. A process advisor remains in contact. A partner in the course and another partner back home help with troubleshooting, analysis, and guiding the process forward (Burnside & Guthrie, 1992).
Full Range of Leadership Development (FRLD). This is one program among many that have been created since the 1940s to teach leadership, deriving from a particular set of concepts. Other examples include the GRID (Blake & Mouton, 1964), Likert’s (1967) Systems 1 to 4, Fiedler’s (1967) program and others presented in previous chapters on styles of leadership. FRLD illustrates some of the common characteristics to be found in these programs, such as well-researched concepts that need to be differentiated by trainees, a theory to explain their connections to performance and satisfaction, measurements of progress, and feedback. FRLD has the theory, empiricism, and empirical support for differentiating between transformational and transactional leadership. FRLD introduces the MLQ model in a basic two-to three-day workshop, after which trainees are provided with their own nine-factor, 360-degree feedback of their transformational, active, and passive transactional leadership behaviors. They are provided comparisons of their own ratings with norms and ratings by others above, below, and at the same organizational level. Focus is on the discrepancies between their self-rated profile of ratings and others’ ratings. Lectures, discussions, and coaching assist the participants. Each participant prepares a leadership development plan and its implementation to practice on the job some of the learnings from the workshop. Also, they examine the obstacles that need to be overcome before they can implement their plan in their organization. In two to three months, they return for an advanced two-day workshop. This second workshop begins with sharing experiences about what new leadership behaviors they tried and how they were received. Exercises on transformational factors come next; participants in small discussion groups give feedback to one another on the factors. This peer feedback is followed by lectures and readings on ways to be more intellectually stimulating. The workshop concludes with each participant making a presentation on videotape that aims to inspire those in the envisioned organization the participant hopes to lead in two to five years. A selection of these tapes are then reviewed and commented upon in an assembly of the participants.
In the past 15 years, the FRLD program and modifications have been conducted in a variety of organizations in various locations from North America and Europe to Australia and Singapore, and industries ranging from insurance firms and automobile manufacturing conglomerates to cable companies and NGOs. In all, several thousand managers and executives in many different countries have completed the program (Avolio & Bass, 1991, 2002).
Self-ratings of transformational leadership increase from before to after training. Transactional management by exception decreases. However, those initially lower tend to show more improvement. When 43 participants from health care, education, business, government, and nonprofit agencies in a public workshop were asked afterward if FRLD had met their personal objectives, 54% said “a great deal” and 37% said “fairly much.” Similar results were obtained in response to whether FRLD had met their career objectives and their objectives for community leadership. All but 3% felt that FRLD was worth their investment in time and energy. When 213 participants were asked at the end of the overall program how satisfied they were with it, 92% were satisfied a great deal or fairly much and 89% agreed that the leadership could be applied to their development. Among 87 participants, their subordinates’ ratings from before to after FRLD, idealized influence, inspirational leadership, and intellectual stimulation factor scores increased significantly, but not individualized consideration. Management by exception and laissez-faire leadership decreased. Those with initially lower transformational leadership increased more than those with initially higher transformational leadership ratings.
For 66 trainees who returned for a follow-up session from six months to two years later, their subordinates reported significant improvements in transformational leadership data, but only on those factors that the 66 had said in their plans they wanted to improve (Bass & Avolio, 1996). The largest improvement was in the reduction of transactional management by exception and passive-avoidant leadership. Critical incident reviews following training mentioned increased inspirational leadership (e.g., communicating a clearer sense of mission), increased intellectual stimulation (e.g., determining opportunities in challenges), and increased individualized consideration (e.g., developing the ability to lead in others) (Avolio & Bass, 1993, 1994). Between 1998 and 2002, 86 managers in New Zealand completed the FRLD program. An increase of 10% to 15% in their leadership effectiveness was reported (Parry, 2003). For a review of research and applications of FRLD, see Avolio, (1999).
Much specialized effort has been devoted to training programs about how to lead scientists, engineers, technicians, entrepreneurs, military personnel, nurses, schoolteachers, sales personnel, and so on. The MBA curriculum at universities is another specialized program aimed at preparing students for general business leadership. Entrepreneurial motivation has also been promoted through achievement training. Other specialized programs prepare leaders to work with labor union members and minorities and in other cultures. Many of these specialized efforts are now discussed briefly.
Science and Engineering Leadership. Many new supervisors enter a technical firm with insufficient education in science, so remedial programs are made available for them. Although supervision and leadership often become major responsibilities for engineers and scientists as they progress in their organizations, their preparation for these responsibilities is left until they have graduated from their professional schools and are at work. Considerable evidence has been obtained that such postgraduate efforts are generally efficacious. Moon and Hariton (1958) gave 50 engineering supervisors 30 hours of instruction on methods of self-improvement and greater job efficiency. Lectures were followed by role-playing sessions in which each participant acted out problems in human relations. A questionnaire administered to 67 subordinates of the trained group and to 67 subordinates of untrained supervisors indicated greater improvement for the trained group in understanding subordinates as individuals, expressing recognition for good work, giving subordinates an opportunity to express their side of a story, and showing more interest in employees’ progress. Carton (1964) administered training over a six-month period to 23 scientists in supervisory positions using lectures, discussions, and role playing. A battery of tests was administered to the experimental group and a control group immediately before and after training and again 17 months later. The experimental group decreased significantly in authoritarianism and initiation of structure, whereas the control group did not. Mosvick (1966) examined four different training methods in a study of 55 engineers in supervisory positions. Three attitude scales and two behavioral measures were administered to experimental and control groups before and after training. Members of the trained group showed significant improvement in behavior and their ability to analyze a simulated communication conflict situation but not in their attitudes.
Educational Leadership. A school principal’s leadership is strongly connected with the school’s educational effectiveness. “Principals remain key individuals as instructional leaders, initiators of change, school managers, personnel administrators, problem solvers and boundary spanners for the school” (Portin & Shen, 1998, p. 34). But it is a difficult position, fraught with potential conflicts of goals. Principals are supposed to maximize their teachers’ ability to teach and students’ ability to learn, but they also have to deal with other diverse priorities, such as student discipline, safety, the physical plant, and the satisfaction of the students’ parents, as well as national testing, state government regulations, and school board mandates. Their accountability is increased, but their authority is downgraded. Their compensation may not match their responsibilities. Many ask to return to teaching or to leave the school system.
Turnover and population expansion require preparation of new assistant principals and principals. The shortage of principals in many California school districts, such as Glendale and Santa Monica, resulted in specialized training programs to foster the professional growth of teachers and future principals. Similar developments have occurred in New York State; the Academy of Leadership of the Center for Leadership Studies at Binghamton University assessed and trained teachers and staff members in the Full Range of Leadership Development for Broome and Tioga Counties (Bass, 2000).
Military Leadership. U.S. military officers form an elite profession with its own code and customs and its own politics and culture. They study, train, and prepare for armed conflicts, ranging from terrorist attacks to conventional national invasions. They maintain a worldwide surveillance of military threats (Morganthau & Horrock, 1984). The amount of required training in the military is also greatly increased by the demand that the military continue to be at the cutting edge of new technology, as well as by the steady stream of military personnel to civilian life who need to be replaced.
There is a heavy continuing investment in leadership training for military leaders at all levels to compare with controlled untrained comparison groups. Typical examples have compared U.S. Army squad leaders who received leadership preparation training with a control group of leaders who did not. The trained leaders received higher effectiveness ratings, their squads showed higher spirit, and their followers scored higher on proficiency tests. Descriptions by followers indicated that trained leaders initiated more structure, exercised better control of field exercises, and demonstrated more adequacy in briefing and giving information. Their subordinates were less willing to reenlist, however, and showed less favorable attitudes toward the army (Hood, Showel, & Stewart, 1967). Again, infantry graduates of schools for noncommissioned officers exceeded a control group in their rate of promotion and number of awards, but not in leadership evaluations (Rittenhouse, 1968). In another typical analysis, films of leadership situations followed by group discussion were used to train military leaders. The groups that discussed the films were more effective than the control groups in solving leadership problems (Lange, Rittenhouse, & Atkinson, 1968). Many other examples of effective military leadership training have been discussed in earlier chapters as demonstrations of various principles of consequence (see, for example, Eden & Sham, 1982; Fiedler & Garcia, 1987).
Over a thousand cadets are trained each year in the four-year leadership program at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Among a number of innovative courses are those dedicated to intellectual procedure (McNally, Gerras, & Bullis, 1996). To enhance the cadets’ cognitive skills in leadership, they learn 22 theories of leadership and apply each of them to a case requiring military leadership. Being an intelligent, thoughtful, and reflective leader is encouraged. The cadets need to identify what is happening, account for it, and formulate the action that the leader should take. Cases are actual experiences of the military faculty. The importance of understanding subordinates, peers, superiors, and the organization is encompassed in a set of systems. Individual systems focus on attribution theory (Kelly, 1955). The group system discusses organizational socialization (Van Maanen & Schein, 1979), cohesion (Cartwright, 1965), group development (Bennis & Shepard, 1965), and group decision making (Vroom & Yetton, 1974). The leadership system concentrates on the differences between transformational and transactional leadership (Bass, 1985). Integration efforts follow.
MBA Education. Education for up to two years that leads to the Master of Business Administration is broadly based in institutions that follow the guidelines of the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business. In these schools, students receive instruction in applied behavioral science, management information systems, business policy and planning, applied mathematics, and applied economics, as well as in the functional areas of production, human resources management, marketing, finance, and accounting. MBA programs have increased dramatically since the mid-1950s, when approximately 3,200 MBA degrees were awarded per year. By 1998, more than 102,000 were being awarded annually in North America (Pfeffer & Fong, 2002). Similar rapid growth has followed in Europe and elsewhere (Anonymous, 1991; Berger & Watts, 1992).
Herbert (1972) found no clear effect of MBA education on job performance. But according to Herbert (1977), 82 supervisors of MBAs and non-MBAs gave MBAs better reputational ratings on technical skills, initiative, responsibility, motivation, judgment, and problem solving but not on better human relations or supervisory skills. The results were not affected by whether the rates were in staff or line positions. Jenkins, Reizenstein, and Rodgers (1984) surveyed 110 presidents of Fortune 500 companies and 124 personnel directors from the same firms, along with 450 business school alumni, 93 deans, and 302 faculty members. They found that 57% to 60% of the respondents believed the program should focus strongly on quantitative analysis and that an even greater percentage supported an emphasis on decision making. But 32% to 45% of these samples thought that MBA programs should deemphasize short-term decision making in favor of Long-term strategic planning. The percentage who were satisfied with the extent to which leadership skills were developed among MBAs ranged from 36% to 50%. The deans, personnel directors, and alumni were more satisfied, and the presidents and faculty members were less satisfied. Satisfaction with MBAs’ interpersonal skills ranged from 28% to 46%; those in the business community were less satisfied and the academics more satisfied. Only pluralities of 21% to 43% were satisfied with the managerial skills of MBAs.
Interviews with 600 senior executives tended to be consistent with the foregoing findings. Seventy percent thought that business school education was pretty good, and 49% regarded the MBA degree as somewhat or very important to getting ahead in their own company, although 86% thought that too much theory and too little application were taught. However, Pfeffer and Fong (2002) questioned whether business schools will survive without major changes. They argued that the curricula have little relation to what is important to business. The greater success in business of graduates can be accounted for by the characteristics of the students admitted to the schools. The curricula lack the focus on practices found in other professional schools. Academic research has little effect on business. Needed are ways of integrating academic knowledge with active experience.
Executive Development Programs. Executive development is a career-long process. Zaccaro (1999) suggested that basic to any healthy organization is a climate that nurtures leaders and prospective executives. Any developmental program must attend to the cognitive and social capacities and skills required by executives for effective leadership and work performance. The cognitive competencies needed by executives include intelligence, analytical reasoning, flexible integrative complexity, and verbal and writing skills. Executives need to be able to deal with organizational contradictions, as well as with cognitive and behavioral complexity (Streufert & Swezey, 1988). As detailed in Chapter 20, the required social competencies include social reasoning, behavioral flexibility, and competence in persuasion, negotiation, and managing conflict. The ideal executive is open, curious, disciplined, flexible, self-efficacious, and a calculated risk taker, with a need for achievement and socialized rather than personalized power. Executive development is a slow process. Development of competencies should be focused on the requirements of the next higher level of position in the organization. According to interviews with 40 executives by Kaplan, Drath, and Kofodimos (1985), the criticism received and accepted by the executive is affected by job demands and the power of the executive. The need for mastery, the acceptance of criticism, and earlier history of success determine whether the executive will attempt to change. Improvement in performance will depend on the open flow of information, the ability to look inward, the ability to accept criticism, and the ability to change (Kaplan, Kofodimos, & Drath, 1987).
Formal university executive development programs lasting a few weeks to a semester or more are popular in the industrialized world. They are helping countries from Chile to Norway and formerly Communist countries to cope with the global marketing economy. Course content parallels that to be covered in the MBA program with variations, depending on the management level of the trainees, the length of the program, and whether a certificate or degree will be awarded. The programs can be made more effective with commitment from outside sponsors to continued executive development and its importance to executive career planning, the use of assessment centers21 to provide individualized developmental guidance, effective needs analysis, computer networks to link executives in their offices with university faculties, more attention to executive leadership and self-development, and an international perspective, along with custom-made programs for individual organizations (Watson, 1988). Executives need to be prepared for discontinuous change and the adoption of a “leap ahead” strategy (F. J. Brown, 2000). Zsambok (1993) designed a program for senior managers working for the U.S. Air Force that incorporated a model of effective team strategic decision making. Included in the program were envisioning time horizons, avoiding micromanaging, and using diverging and converging in situational assessment. Comparisons of trained with control groups have been promising.
Executive development programs are not for future senior executives alone. Many managers are enrolled in such programs to make contributions to strategic planning and help their organizations change from traditional ones to ones more suitable to meeting competition, taking advantage of new technological advances and the best human resources practices (Hoffman, 1996).
Fellowship Programs. Illustrative and mentioned earlier is the Kellogg Fellows Program, which is international in scope. The fellows are established leaders from governmental, educational, nongovernmental, and philanthropic institutions and agencies. They are committed to advancing social change. Kellogg supports them for a number of years to help them access individuals, organizations, and programs for further development of the leadership skills to improve people’s lives in their communities and to broaden their understanding of community change (Webb-Petett, undated).
Entrepreneurial and Achievement Motivation. Building on earlier theory and research about the need for achievement, McClelland and Winter (1969) designed workshops to instill a greater need for achievement in entrepreneurs. These workshops were conducted in developed as well as in developing countries such as Mexico and India. Black entrepreneurs in South Africa were also singled out for attention. Increasing the entrepreneurs’ need for achievement was expected to increase their willingness to expand their spheres of activity and their willingness to take on more challenges and responsibility.
The workshops involved showing how the need for achievement is revealed in its projections in the Thematic Apperception Test and how one could increase the achievement thematic content in responding to the test. Generalization about achievement and entrepreneurial activities followed. Positive effects of the training were reported (McClelland & Winter, 1969). Since the need for achievement is of consequence to management in general, achievement training has been applied to managers. Illustrative were results reported by Boer (1985) in a study of the effects of achievement training on the performance of South African factory management teams (in contrast to control teams who were not trained). Labor productivity was increased and turnover and absenteeism were reduced in the trained but not in the control groups.
Leadership of Minorities and Women. “Awareness” training, mainly for white male managers about special issues of working with women, blacks, and the disadvantaged, became commonplace following the passage of affirmative action legislation (Anonymous, 1968b). In some instances, heightened awareness produced overre-actions and backlash (L. A. Johnson, 1969). An extensively evaluated program was reported by Bass, Cascio, McPherson, and Tragash (1976). Following the identification of five factors differentiating issues of awareness of managers about affirmative action for black employees (Bass, Cascio, & McPherson, 1972), PROSPER, a self-administered program, was developed. The booklet for PROSPER that each participant received began with a pretraining assessment on the five factors. Next, a case of an insubordinate black engineer was presented, and the participants had to make in-basket decisions. Each participant then was assigned a role as one of five different managers in a firm gathered to discuss the case; each of the roles was built around one of the five factors. The participants verbalized favorable positions on one of the factors while they heard favorable information about the others. Significant increases in the scores for more favorable attitudes toward working with black employees were achieved by 2,293 managers. After three to five months, 298 managers still showed some of the increase on all five factors. Cascio and Bass (1976) further analyzed the specific role-playing effects of PROSPER and found that the results were in the direction of expectations. PROFAIR, a comparable attitude change program for supervisors of women (Bass, 1971), was developed out of a survey of attitudes toward working with women.
Special programs to train black leaders were illustrated by Katz and Cohen’s (1962) assertion training to increase self-confidence among blacks. Beatty (1973) completed a study about the training of black supervisors and the importance of their superiors’ expectations. Assertiveness training for women became popular in the 1970s. For example, Heinen, McGlauchin, Legeros, and Freeman (1975) increased the self-awareness and self-confidence of 19 of 20 women managers with such training. Numerous other programs to train women as leaders have been conducted, predicated on the supposition that women have unique problems which could be effectively resolved only through changing the organizational culture. Woman as leaders need to adjust to the organization as well. Nevertheless, a survey of 101 female and 121 male managers by Alpander and Gutman (1976) indicated that both sexes perceived similar training needs. Hart (1975) designed and evaluated a training program in leadership for adult women based on Hersey and Blanchard’s life-cycle theory. Training that focused on interpersonal skills, leadership theory, lifestyles, and the importance of motivation to being a leader resulted in increasing the self-esteem and self-confidence of the trainees in contrast to the controls. Compared to the controls, the trainees also perceived themselves as better able to make decisions, as more active, as more in control of their lives, and as having a greater knowledge of listening skills.
Development and Training of Labor Leaders. The role of union leaders handling relations with management was presented in Chapter 13. As organized labor membership in the United States has declined in the past half century, so have empirical studies of union leaders. An example of a recent study was by Skarlicki and Latham (1997), who examined the effects of training 25 union leaders on how they administered principles of organizational justice, according to 177 union members. The leaders were perceived to have increased in fairness, while the members were perceived to have increased in citizenship behavior involving the union. Forty-five years earlier, despite generally favorable attitudes toward their union local, only half of 140 rank-and-file members felt that the local was fair in assigning jobs; 18% felt it was unfair (Davis & St. Germain, 1952). Barkin (1961) noted the greater difficulty organizers had in persuading workers in the rural South to form a union compared to those in urban areas. Uphoff and Dunnette (1956) found that among 1,251 union officers, activists, and members, the members were less fully committed to the union movement. Before 1945, a majority of union leaders came from middle-class backgrounds; after 1945, 60% came from working-class backgrounds. The leaders were likely to be better educated than the rank and file but of the same religion and political affiliation. Although they might begin as blue-collar workers, leaders move on to union positions early in their careers to become professionals (Mills & Atkinson, 1945).
Samuel Gompers and John L. Lewis are the two leaders who shaped the labor movement in the United States. Their development is instructive. Gompers, as a boy, emigrated to the United States with his Dutch-Jewish working-class family from the East End of London to the Lower East Side of New York City. With only four years of education, Gompers began working as an apprentice shoemaker at the age of 10. At age 14 he joined his father as a cigar maker and as a member of the Cigar Makers’ International Union (CMIU). He remained in the union, but since it enrolled only skilled cigar makers, Gompers formed the United Cigar Makers, which included the less skilled. It became the largest local of CMIU in 1875, when the latter agreed to enroll members of families of varying skills who did their work at home in tenement apartments leased by the cigar companies. (The firms bought the production from the families.) The craft unions encouraged training members and provided apprenticeship programs in their crafts (Mandel, 1963; Neumann, 2004). That same year, Gompers became an official unpaid but successful organizer. He continued to work in a cigar-rolling factory. His education was furthered by the custom of cigar makers’ taking advantage of their quiet workplaces to hire a reader who read aloud to them from books and newspapers about current political conditions, labor conditions elsewhere in the world, and political economics. He overcame a speech impediment to become a prominent orator. He found employment again only after having been blacklisted by many employers. Unlike the national Knights of Labor, which encompassed many diverse social and political causes, he rejected the socialist movement and political agitators, and focused narrowly on “bread-and-butter issues” of wages, work hours, and benefits. In 1886, he helped found the American Federation of Labor, which aimed to control job opportunities and conditions in each craft. Each craft had its own organization. Under his leadership, the AFL had 1.7 million members by 1904. Although theoretically open to all, its membership was limited to white males. High dues built up strike funds to assist striking workers. But he required that any strike proposal be approved by secret ballot in the shop organization as well as the local union, and he came down hard on “wildcat” strikes. He tended to avoid strikes when possible, as well as involvement in political actions such as legislation for old-age pensions, employers’ responsibility for worker safety, and compulsory health insurance.
It was left to the creation of industrial unions such as the mine workers’ and automobile workers’ unions to organize around all workers in the same industry rather than the same craft. The most prominent leader in organizing industrial unions for 40 years was John L. Lewis. He was the eldest of six sons, born in 1880 to Welsh immigrant parents from coal-mining families. He had only a seventh-grade education, but he continued his education with extensive reading. He joined his father and brother working in the coal mines at the age of 15. His father was blacklisted for union activities and eventually took a job as a jail custodian. In his youth, Lewis also acted and managed a local theater and a baseball team. His acting skills stood him in good stead during his many negotiations and public appearances. Before he was 27 years old, he had also tried farming, construction work, and small business. Joined by his family, Lewis built a local power base of Welsh immigrant coal miners. He became a member of the United Mine Workers in 1907 and in 1909 became a successful union organizer. In the next 11 years, he became the secretary-treasurer and delegate to the UMWA national convention, and in 1917 he was elected president of his union local. In 1920, he was elected president of the UMWA, in which office he served until 1960, retiring at the age of 80. He successfully unionized many of the nonunion coal regions. He was a founder of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and was instrumental in the organizing of many major industrial unions, such as the United Steelworkers of America (USWA), Communications Workers of America (CWA), and United Auto Workers (UAW). He regularly advised U.S. presidents and the U.S. Congress, and challenged America’s corporate leaders. He improved health care for miners and their families with a fund that built eight hospitals and many clinics in Appalachia, paid for from UMW contracts with the coal companies that set aside royalties for a workers’ pension fund.
Lewis was a charismatic leader. He had self-taught rhetorical skills and readily quoted from the Bible, Shakespeare, Plato, and Homer. His grandiloquent oratory made him a most effective political spokesman. He was a 230-pound bear with a volcanic personality. He was a fearsome adversary, cunning, ruthless, and opportunistic, had a colossal ego, and felt his supporters wanted someone like him who could stand up to the bosses of big business. He was autocratic and considered a demagogue by many. He was a despot who expelled his rivals from his organization. But he actually pursued moderate objectives, including the right to organize labor unions, shorter work hours, prohibition of child labor, equal pay for men and women doing the same comparable jobs, and steady employment.
He was admired by business leaders and Republicans in the 1920s but switched to the Democratic Party when President Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932 with a policy promoting and legalizing collective bargaining. By 1937, Lewis had succeeded in unionizing the two largest firms in the United States, General Motors and U.S. Steel. But in 1940, when Roosevelt ran for a third term, he switched back to the Republicans. His popularity declined after 1937 and even further during the war years and afterward, when he practically shut down American industry with national coal strikes, since American manufacturing, transportation, utilities, and home heating were fueled mainly by coal. When he called out the miners in 1943, during the middle of World War II, 87% of a national sample said they had an unfavorable opinion of him. Between 1943 and 1946, there was much loss of public and political support for labor as a consequence of the strikes, which was ultimately reflected in the decline of national union membership. States passed “right to work” laws and Congress, the antilabor Taft-Hartley Act. Nonetheless, following federal intervention, the miners’ incomes and benefits were substantially increased by the strike settlements (Dubofsky & Van Tine, 1986).
Training Leaders for Foreign Assignments. Preparing managers for overseas assignments is costly, but the lack of such preparation is more costly (Tung, 1979). On the basis of surveys and interviews, Zeira (1975) suggested that multinational firms need to equip parent-country nationals and third-country nationals to serve as managers abroad. They need adequate knowledge of the complex human problems of international enterprises. They need self-confidence to adapt their leadership behavior to the needs of the subsidiary. Education, training, and assignments are needed early in a manager’s career to learn the critical nuances in international business. As parent companies expand into increasing numbers of countries, there is a need to train the executives who have to visit numerous countries for short periods of time in cross-cultural sensitivity as well as briefings on the specific countries. Those who work in multinational councils and projects need similar general as well as specific cultural training (Ezzedean, Swiercz, & Holt, 2003).
Tung (1979) found that 26 of 105 U.S. multinationals ran training programs to prepare personnel for overseas assignments. About half these programs used environmental briefings, cultural orientations, and language training. A few used culture assimilators, sensitivity training, and field experience.
Universities provide courses and curricula. Illustrative is the Global Leadership Program at the University of Michigan. Teams of students spend two weeks in a designated country to identify business opportunities. They tour businesses and meet with corporate and business leaders, visit homes and marketplaces, and use public transportation. On their return, they prepare reports. At many universities, student interns spend a semester in a foreign country to develop a business plan for a foreign firm as an action learning experience.
Seminal experiments were completed in the 1960s. Mitchell and Foa (1969) studied American leaders with non-American followers. They found that leaders were rated as more effective when they were trained in the norms of their followers. Chemers, Fiedler, Lekhyananda, and Stolurow (1966) demonstrated that training leaders in the culture of a foreign nation, as opposed to training them in the geography of the nation, resulted in higher levels of group performance and rapport in tasks involving subjects from two different cultures. L. R. Anderson (1965) trained leaders in their own culture’s style of leadership or in the style characteristic of another culture, and then assigned them to intercultural task groups. Those who were trained in other cultural styles led groups that were more effective in creativity tasks but not in negotiation tasks. In line with Fiedler’s contingency model, Chemers (1969) found that intercultural training tended to modify the situation in the direction of making it more favorable for the low-LPC (task-oriented) leader, who then showed more consideration than did the high-LPC (relations-oriented) leader.
Training Community Leaders. Training community leaders is a well-established strategy. In the late 1990s, the number of community leadership programs approached 700 (Fredericks, 1998). Among their purposes were to foster critical thinking in the public domain and to examine alternative solutions to civic problems (Reed, 1996). In five counties of New York State, the problems included youth violence, declining water resources, waste management, urban/rural competition for resources, overstressed family resources, dealing with neighborhoods at risk, and empowering community leaders (Avolio, Bass, Miles, et al., 1994). Rossing and Heasley (1987) described a design for rural and agricultural leadership training programs. Similarly, Miller (1986) detailed West Virginia University’s plan, in which its faculty contributes directly to the community. Community development was the objective of Ohio’s cooperative extension leadership workshops (Long, 1986). The Kansas Community Leadership Initiative aimed to help directors and board members of 17 local community leadership programs gain new insights and skills in personal relationships, as well as to foster improvement in leadership programs (Wituk, Warren, Heiny, et al., 2003). Increased numbers of civic leaders was a goal of 72 California civic leadership development programs (Azzam & Riggio, 2003). While 85% of community leadership programs have structured classroom instruction, they also provide familiarization visits with community institutions and meetings with prominent citizens. In addition, they work on community problems and projects. They are a form of action learning (Conger & Toegel, 2004). Leadership development programs have also been designed to prepare retirees to become volunteer community leaders (Brungardt, 1996).
Contributions to Networking. Community leadership training programs have been sparked by a national effort of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to furnish cross-fertilizing education and training grounded in workshops for prospective leaders from a single community. The trainees are drawn from local industry, government, unions, law enforcement agencies, agriculture, hospitals, and volunteer and welfare agencies. In addition to the informational learning that is possible, important lasting networks can be established across organizational boundaries that will benefit the community and its development. For instance, such a leadership educational program was provided to 227 rural citizens of Montana. Classroom and on-site experiences were both useful in enhancing the leaders’ self-image, skills, and understanding (Williams, 1981). Brown and Detterman (1987) agreed and added that participation in community leadership classes promoted increased contacts among the community leaders. In turn, Rossing and Heasley (1987) noted that involvement in public affairs was promoted by such community leadership training.
There is evidence that communities with more civic involvement and stronger local leadership have better schools, lower crime rates, more effective government, and greater sense of personal ownership (Rossing, 1998). Training programs are needed to replace retiring civic leaders. Program alumni remain active in the civic affairs of their communities. They help followers without the training experience to take on initiatives and become project leaders (Daugherty & Williams, 1997).
Azzam and Riggio (2003) surveyed by telephone 72 of 83 directors of civic leadership programs in California. The oldest program had been started in 1980. The average age of the programs was 10.7 years. Almost half of the participants came from the private sector (48%) while most of the other half came from the nonprofit (23%) and government sectors. Twenty-one percent of the programs concentrated on orientation visits and visits to local institutions. Seventy-six percent received both classroom instruction and orientation (close to the national pattern). Meetings were held usually once a month for 12 months. Alumni were followed up with newsletters (28%) and social events (45%). Alumni associations were formed by 38% that might engage in long-term projects, raise money, and advise the program.
Information was provided by Russon and Rainelt (2004) about the desired and unintended outcomes of 55 leadership development programs sponsored by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation from the 1930s onward and alternatives to approaches, methods, and data collection. By the 1960s, attendance at leadership development programs was routine for both novice and experienced managers. The National Industrial Conference Board (1963) surveyed 1,074 recently recruited college graduates who had attended management development programs sponsored by their employees. About 40% of those who had hoped that the programs would prepare them for promotion felt disappointed and regarded the programs as of little value to themselves or the company. They preferred instruction that would prepare them for the tasks of specific jobs rather than for better human relations and general management. Organizational experience made a difference. Executives with experience had a different point of view. K. R. Andrews (1966) received 6,000 replies from executives who had attended one of 39 different university programs in management development. Although about 85% saw no relationship between attending the courses and their subsequent advances in salary, the benefits they most frequently mentioned were increased understanding of self and others, greater tolerance for differences in opinion, and heightened awareness of alternative solutions to problems. Structured lectures and didactic teacher-led classwork were regarded as more valuable than unstructured group discussions and informal contacts with faculty and students. The National Industrial Conference Board (1964) surveyed 167 firms’ experience with management development. In evaluating the effectiveness of such programs, 57% of the firms expressed the belief that the programs were valuable, but only 14% reported evidence in support of this belief.22
Attitudes and Self-Reported Changes. Leadership training of some sort figures strongly in most management development programs, although training is likely to be provided in many other nonsupervisory management functions. In fact, M. W. McCall (1976) suggested that too much emphasis has been placed on leadership training and not enough on the many other varied aspects of a manager’s work, although the opposite can also be argued.
Despite the previously noted evidence to the contrary that training fails to shift Leadership Opinion Questionnaire scores (Anghelone, 1981; Savan, 1983; Painter, 1984), numerous other examples of successful changes in attitudes as a consequence of longer-term development programs have appeared. For instance, C. W. Nelson (1967) conducted a training course for top-level managers in a plant, who in turn conducted a similar course for their lower-level managers. Nelson found that not only did significant changes in attitude occur, but that a retest one year later showed that the effects persisted. Similarly, E. H. Schein (1967) demonstrated that a two-year course in management education produced a significant change in attitudes toward human relations. Valiquet (1968) reported a significant change in attitudes and behavior among managers who participated in a one-year training program. R. S. Barrett (1965) found significant change in attitudes, but not in performance, following the completion of an executive development program. Blake’s (1960) study of a management development program in Norway found that the 67 participants reported a greater understanding of other people, themselves, and social trends and more self-confidence in dealing with superiors, peers, and subordinates. Waaler (1962) studied another 194 executives in a management development program in Norway. Participants from the firms with the “best” programs, when compared with those in firms with the “poorest” programs, reported greater nearness to, warmth toward, and understanding of their employees; more informality with employees; greater predictability of behavior; more frequently letting employees know what to expect; and reduced pressure on subordinates.
Training to overcome resistance to change by developing a better understanding of change is key to bringing about organizational change. Vision 2016 was a program to directly train 2,000 senior government officials in Botswana that indirectly impacted 50,000 citizens. The program concentrated on developing “knowledge checks” to ensure that managers and their subordinates understood the change program and its implications (Washington & Hacker, 2003). Executives need to be prepared for discontinuous change and the adoption of a “leap ahead” strategy (F. J. Brown, 2000).
Personal attributes of trainees, the composition of the training group, follow-up strategies, the behavior of the trainer, the congeniality of the environment to which the person returns, and the criterion outcomes themselves affect training results.
The strength of the effects of training that are found depends on the criteria employed to assess the effects. Burke and Day (1986) completed meta-analyses of the results of 70 managerial training studies. They contrasted four types of criteria employed in the studies: subjective learning, objective learning, subjective behavior, and objective results. Subjective learning was obtained from the trainees’ self-reports about what they thought they had learned from the training. Objective learning was based on tests or measurements of learning during and after training. Subjective behavior was taken from self-reports about the trainee’s performance after training, and objective results were based on independent measures of the trainee’s performance as a consequence of training. For all four criteria as a whole, the authors concluded that managerial training is moderately effective, and that the effectiveness of training methods can be generalized to new situations.
When the measured learning outcomes were subjective, the effects were all positive for general management, self-awareness, and human relations training. Nonetheless, self-awareness and human relations training generated stronger effects of subjective learning outcomes than did general management training.
When learning outcomes were measured objectively, positive effects were also obtained for all four types of training. But training in motivation emerged as relatively most effective and training in problem solving as relatively least effective.
With subjective behavioral outcomes, the effects of general management, human relations, and self-awareness training were again all positive, and self-awareness was the greatest in this regard.
When objective results were used as criteria, the effects of training were again all positive, and human relations training showed the strongest of these positive effects.
When subjective learning outcomes were the criterion, positive outcomes were seen to have been achieved with sensitivity training, behavioral modeling, and lecture–discussion–role play or practice. Similarly, positive effects on objective learning criteria were obtained for lecture, lecture-discussion, and lecture–discussion–role play or practice. Against subjective behavior outcomes, positive effects were obtained for lecture and lecture-discussion, Leader Match, sensitivity training, behavioral modeling, and combinations of these methods. Sensitivity training and behavioral modeling demonstrated the strongest positive effects.
In all, it would seem that regardless of how training outcomes are measured, the average study reveals a positive effect. However, different types of training will emerge as stronger or weaker in effect, depending on the outcome measures employed.
To transfer to the job what has been learned during training, trainees need to be given continuing opportunities to practice what has been learned. This practice, in turn, needs to be coupled with feedback or self-reinforcement about the trainees’ practice efforts. The need for reinforcing booster programs is well recognized (Avolio, 1999). One of many examples was provided by Wexley and Nemeroff (1975), who described a self-feedback mechanism for promoting the transfer of leadership training to the job. For six weeks following training, supervisory trainees completed a daily behavioral checklist to record their supervisory behaviors. On each day, they noted whether they had (1) praised subordinates, (2) thanked subordinates for suggestions, (3) told them how they would be followed up, (4) called subordinates together to discuss mutual assistance, (5) given help as requested, (6) assigned jobs without interfering until the jobs were completed, (7) consulted individually with trainees on the job to review progress, and (8) arranged for trainees to try out and evaluate the effects of newly learned behaviors.
By the 1950s, organizational factors had been recognized to have an important impact on the effectiveness of supervisory training. These included the organizational climate, the trainee’s immediate superior, and upper management. Zaleznik (1951) explained the failure of a human relations training program to help trainees solve their work problems as due to an inadequate initial diagnosis of supervisory difficulties and to the irrelevance of the training to the problems. Sykes (1962) conducted a case study of a firm in which participants in a management development program regarded the training as unsuccessful because top management was unwilling to correct grievances and unsatisfactory conditions. Again, a deterioration in human relations resulted from an attempt at supervisory training when a program conflicted with unionism, when recruitment for a program was inadequate, and when a program itself was seen as an effort to indoctrinate a captive audience (Form & Form, 1953).
Supervisory training to increase considerate behavior resulted in a much greater shift in some trainees’ behavior when organizational conditions were taken into account (Harris & Fleishman, 1955). Baumgartel and Jeanpierre (1972) queried 240 managers from 200 different industrial and commercial firms who had participated in a management development program. The respondents indicated whether they could apply what they had learned in training depended on (1) the freedom they had to set personal goals, (2) consideration by higher management of the feelings of lower management, (3) the organization’s stimulation and approval of innovation and experimentation, (4) the organization’s desire for executives to make use of information given in management courses, and (5) free and open communication among management groups.
Immediate Supervisor. Most important to whether training modified behavior back on the job was the trainee’s immediate supervisor. F. C. Mann (1951) found that supervisors who changed more as a consequence of training in leadership (1) received more encouragement from their superiors, (2) expected greater personal benefit from training, (3) felt more secure in their relations with their superiors, and (4) felt that they had a greater opportunity to try out new ideas on the job. Consistent with this finding, Hariton (1951) observed that supervisory training increased employees’ satisfaction when the supervisors were encouraged by their superiors to use the principles they had learned in training.
Slightly later, Harris and Fleishman (1955) reported that supervisors who were trained in a human relations orientation appeared to experience role conflict when they returned to their jobs to work under superiors who exhibited a markedly different pattern of behavior. Supervisors who returned to their work after human relations training tended to endorse a more considerate attitude toward employees, and to be described by employees as high in consideration if the superiors of the supervisors endorsed considerate attitudes and behaved in a considerate manner. There was a nonsignificant tendency for supervisors to be described as high in initiating structure when their superiors exhibited a similar pattern of behavior.
Supervisors who returned from training to work under a superior who was low in consideration and high in initiating structure (including being coercive) experienced the greatest role conflict, as measured by the discrepancy between their observed behavior and their ideas about how they ought to behave. No such relationship was found for control supervisors who had not taken the training course in human relations. Thus, the supervisors’ leadership behavior tended to be highly conditioned by the attitudes and behavior of their superiors (Fleishman, Harris, & Burtt, 1955).
Haire (1948), W. Mahler (1952), and many others since have argued that for leadership training to be effective, the entire management of the organization should be subjected to the same or a similar program. It is self-defeating to train lower-level managers in an approach to leadership that is incompatible with that of their superiors.
Other Organizational Constraints. Despite the generally observed positive effects of leadership training programs, the effects can be constrained or nullified by various organizational conditions, according to an interview study by Campisano (1984). The content of the program may be irrelevant to the daily activities of the supervisor or may suffer from redundancy. Furthermore, the interviewees stated that technical competence and management structure were more critical to performance in their organization than was training in leadership skills. Steele, Zane, and Zalkind (1970) reported that perceived pressures from associates, particularly peers, reduced the trainees’ involvement (according to consultants) as their activities changed 20 months after instruction. On the other hand, Carroll and Nash (1970) reported that 45 foremen in a management development program thought the training was more applicable to the job if they were more highly motivated toward promotion, were more satisfied with the organization, and had sufficient freedom to perform their functions.
Training must often be supported by other specific organizational actions to result in the desired effects. Specific organizational practices, congruent with the training effort, need to be developed and institutionalized on the basis of a comprehensive analysis of organizational, managerial, and technical/professional needs (Dreilinger, McElheny, Robinson, & Rice, 1982). Thus a supervisory training program to reduce employee absenteeism actually lowered absenteeism only when quantitative data about the absences of the supervisors own subordinate personnel were fed back to supervisors following training (Mann & Sparling, 1956). Similarly, training programs for women managers require buttressing by encouraging senior managers to be supportive of female middle-level managers and by helping husbands to understand the importance of their support in ensuring the success of their wives on the job (Brenner, 1972).
The Need for Programmatic Integration. Van Velsor (1984) summarized what is needed for leadership training and education to have an impact. The organization must show that it supports what is to be learned. The trainee must be willing to participate in the training. The need for training must be perceived. The program should deal with relevant problems and should provide sufficient interaction with peers and valid feedback. Follow-up activities should include postsession debriefing, maintenance of alumni groups, consultation, follow-up training as needed, and reward for improvement and the application of what has been learned. The promotion of the trainees should be integrated with their development and focused on individualized needs that are aligned with those of the organization (Cunningham & Leon, 1986).
Day’s (1980) interview survey of 116 health care professionals showed that the professionals tended to connect promotion with training. Of those interviewed, 67 percent noted that following promotion, their organizations made an effort to prepare them for their new responsibilities with training (mostly on-the-job training). At the same time, Alpander’s (1986) survey of 155 corporate training officers found that less than 1% reported a direct relationship of promotion to undergoing supervisory training. However, 52% reported some indirect contribution of training to the trainees’ subsequent advancement. But 31% reported that training was of little or no consequence to promotion.
At the upper level of an organization, Hall (1986) noted the difficulties involved in connecting executive succession with the learning of individual executives. Most planned executive development focuses on tasks rather than personal learning. Classroom activities, rather than the exploitation of learning from experience, are emphasized. But such learning from educational and personal experiences needs to be integrated into planning for succession.
Bunker (1986) attributed the success of management training in Japan to the firms’ subscription to the proposition that their employees need to be developed before the firms can make a profit. Except for firms that suffered during the depressed economy in the 1990s, employees and their development are valued. Japanese firms see themselves as educational institutions engaged in learning with their employees. “The company is the business school!” Training is “just in time,” that is, it is systematically provided just as managers need new skills to take on new roles. Much attention is paid to socialization to the organization. New recruits of Japanese firms receive up to eight weeks of initial residential training. This training is followed by extensive job rotation during the next two years to develop familiarity with various functions and departments. Later on, training is provided to deal with obsolescence and burnout, along with new challenges. Training provides the basis for employees at all levels to fit into and make contributions in a consultative organizational culture.
Leadership education begins early in childhood and continues through adolescence and adulthood. Early developments contribute to a leader’s subsequent success. Of importance are one’s parents, the standards they set, and the challenges they provide, commensurate with one’s maturation. Equally important are the leadership opportunities and experiences one has in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Education also plays an important role. Leadership training and education need to be designed around what will be required when trainees and students take on leadership responsibilities.
Experiential training approaches have been favored over highly structured didactic lectures alone for leadership education and training, but new kinds of highly structured experiences, such as those provided by behavioral modeling, have demonstrated the desired training effects. Nevertheless, sensitivity training or its variants, such as team building, continues to be widely practiced. Considerable research is available about its effects.
Research indicates, not unexpectedly, that the effectiveness of training, particularly sensitivity training, depends on the trainee, the trainer, the composition of the training group, follow-up reinforcement and feedback, and particularly whether there is congruence between the training and the organizational environment for which the trainee is being prepared. Positive results depend, to some extent, on opportunities for the transfer of learning into appropriate organizational settings.
Training proceeds both off the job, such as in special seminars and workshops, as well as on the job in action learning, coaching, mentoring, and various forms of performance feedback, including 360-degree survey feedback. Well researched are the evaluations of programs to teach the various styles of leadership presented in earlier chapters. Coaching, on-the-job leadership training by the learner’s immediate supervisor, and mentoring of junior by senior executives are widely practiced. Special attention is also given to examining ways to train leaders to work effectively with minorities and the disadvantaged. Specific programs prepare people for foreign assignments. Numerous leadership and management training and education programs have their benefits and limitations.
In all, meta-analyses of available evaluative studies have provided evidence that leadership and management training, education, and development are usually effective. Effective training and education add to valid assessment in fostering effective leadership and management.