“Teach and institute leadership” was among W. Edwards Demings’s 14 principles of quality control. Moreover, the importance of leadership training was implicit in many of his other principles, such as the need to set up a climate for innovation and to remove barriers that rob people of pride in workmanship. Between 1980 and 1998, the Kellogg Foundation funded 31 community, high school, and college projects to test and support models of leadership development for young adults. Evidence was obtained that such programs were effective in developing the leadership potential of participants which persisted (Zimmerman-Oster & Burkhart, 1999). During the years that followed, Kellogg carried on the effort with higher education organizations, professional associations, and other institutions (Foster, 1998). The Kravis Leadership Institute identified 49 institutions with formal academic training in leadership. Of 10 of these, all had community service requirements and most offered specific courses in leadership (Ayman, Adams, Fisher, et al., 2003).
Approaches. Wren (1994) proposed a model course for teaching leadership drawn from history, political science, philosophy, psychology, and anthropology. McGill and Slocum (1994) suggested learning to lead from modeling mentoring, managing, and monitoring learning—“the most powerful ways that leaders can exert influence on the behavior of people in their organization” (p. 7). Leaders themselves learn in a variety of ways, such as (1) modeling themselves after esteemed persons; (2) adopting an implicit idea about what to do and trying to do it; (3) observing how to solve a problem as an opportunity for experience; and (4) seeking truth through observation, conceptualization, deduction, and/ or experimentation (Bennis & Goldsmith, 1997). Six organizations, including the World Bank, General Electric, and Shell International, were studied, from a total of 35 organizations, and identified by a surveying research team as having the best practices in developing leaders. These best practices were (1) leadership development has been aligned with corporate strategy; (2) leadership development has mixed educational and business interests; (3) the particular competencies and characteristics of successful leaders in their own organization have been defined; (4) development of leaders is emphasized, rather than recruitment from outside; (5) action learning and real-time business issues are the basis of leadership development; (6) leadership development is linked to succession planning; (7) leadership development is supported by top management throughout the success of the effort; and (8) evaluations of the leadership development effort, from quantitative to anecdotal, are ongoing (Fulmer & Wagner, 1999). B. Lee (1996) added that leadership development programs should focus on universal principles of vision, trust, and feedback, the core of personal change. It should be a continuing rather than a onetime process. The design of leadership learning in the postindustrial world must reflect advances in technology, globalization, and societal developments. The design should emphasize process, action, discovery, virtuality, and practical outcomes (Fulmer, 1997).
C. M. Cox’s (1926) study of 300 eminent historical personages noted the appearance among them in childhood of leadership traits of intelligence, self-confidence, and assertiveness. Likewise, Barton (1984) commented that as children, those who subsequently became community leaders displayed greater-than-ordinary role diversity, flexibility in dealing with others, and other signs of leadership potential.
Nature or Nurture? “Are leaders born or made?” has been the age-old question. Indeed, one’s genes contribute to one’s intelligence and activity levels, which in turn contribute to leadership. As noted in Chapter 5, according to comparisons of identical and fraternal twins, heritability plays a significant role. Childhood experiences make their mark. Developing facility with language is of consequence to leadership. To some extent, leaders are “born” and developed at an early age. But at the same time, much can be done with children’s development, education, and training to “make” them leaders. Understanding the performance of leaders requires an examination of their family background, early childhood development, education, and role models, along with the social and political learning experiences, informal and formal, that they personally encounter as an adult that shape their performance as leaders.
Personal and Sociological Differences. Differences in individual development formed the basis of a theory of transformational leadership by Kuhnert and Lewis (1987), who proposed that such leadership reflects the mature adult development of personal standards and transcendental values in the leader. In contrast, those who pursue only transactional approaches have been arrested at lower levels of development that are built around their own needs, feelings, and interpersonal connections.
Rejai and Phillips (1979, 1988, 1996, 1998) studied the development of 135 revolutionary, 50 loyalist, and 45 military leaders from four centuries and four continents. They concluded that the three kinds of leaders were remarkably similar in sociodemographic backgrounds, psychological dynamics, and situational conditions regardless of time, place, culture, and national frontiers. The leaders tended to be (1) native-born men; (2) born into a political or military family; (3) mainstream in ethnicity and religion; (4) well educated; (5) urbanized, cosmopolitan, and widely traveled; (6) stimulated by relative deprivation of the values and status they sought; (7) culturally marginal in norms; (8) vain and egotistical; (9) either a nationalist or an imperialist; and (10) verbally and organizationally skilled. Nevertheless, some differences also appeared. Revolutionaries were more likely to be from the middle class (50%) than the upper (20%) or lower class (30%). They were motivated by a sense of justice, subscribed to a spartan lifestyle, and resisted colonization and occupation. Loyalists were uniformly nationalistic and patriotic but lacked a commitment to social justice. They were mainly upper or middle class. Their fathers held prestigious occupations. Military leaders were likely to be born in rural areas before becoming urbanized. They distinguished between their own people as good and other people as bad. In more recent times, they were most likely to come from the middle or lower class.
Organizational Differences. A 1997 survey of 540 organizations, ranging in size from 50 to 2,000 employees or more, obtained findings indicating that “leading edge” firms, compared with ordinary firms, spend more money on training and tend to be leaders in technology. They are more likely to make use of newer practices such as 360-degree feedback, individual feedback, mentoring, and coaching. Successful organizations, compared with unsuccessful organizations, use more learning technologies and are influenced more by innovative training. The health care industry had the highest rate of employee training (82%). Ninety-three percent of the 540 organizations engaged in management and supervisory skills training, and 63% provided for executive development. The management and supervisory training were almost equally split between inside and outside courses, but executive development was mainly outside. Management and supervisor training included conducting employee appraisals, implementing rules and policies, managing projects and processes, planning, and budgeting. Computer literacy and applications were also important. Executive development included leadership, envisioning, strategic planning, policy making, and goal setting (Anonymous, 1998).
Changes in management and leadership development need to reflect the challenges of the postindustrial world, the changing marketplace, and new technologies. Globalization and the changing workforce will require more sensitivity to diversity and community and more interpersonal competence (Conger, 1993a).
Chapter 30 alluded to the persistence of leadership tendencies from childhood to adolescence and from adolescence to adulthood. This chapter looks at the factors that contribute to such persistence. Adult development appears to follow along the lines described in theories of childhood development. For instance, the constructive developmental theory of Kegan (1982) focused on a series of developmental experiences in adolescence and adulthood. Kegan and Lacey (1984) showed that the theory could be applied to adult leadership development. As do children, adults continue to learn to integrate new information into schemata of subjective and objective reality that influence their maturing behavior. As an individual develops, subjective understanding becomes objective. Development occurs in stages of differentiation and integration of empathy and principled decision making. At lower stages, little empathy is shown for another person’s perspectives and feelings. The individual is self-oriented. At the middle level, the individual is guided by principles of relationships and interaction with others. At maturity, the individual is guided by principles of integrity, fairness, and trust. The theory explains the emergence of transformational leadership (Kuhnert & Lewis, 1987). Lucius (1997) validated the theory empirically for 32 military cadet undergraduate juniors. Four interviewers rated the cadets’ demonstrated initiatives, peer rankings of esteem, and the cadets’ responses to the Rest (1986) Defining Issues Test of stages in moral development. Constructive development significantly correlated .34 with the cadets’ demonstrated initiatives, .35 with their esteem, and .34 with their moral development.
The succession, tenure, and performance of owners and coaches of National Basketball Association teams appear to go through stages of disruption, learning, and stagnation. Disruption is most prevalent when coaches are changed during the season (Giambatista, 2004). According to Quinn (1988) and Dryfus and Dryfus (1986), managers and leaders evolve in five stages, from novice to expert. The novice learns facts and rules to be followed. With some experience, the advanced beginner in the second stage starts to pay attention also to basic norms and values in the situation. In the third stage, competence as a leader, the complexity of the task is appreciated, and a large set of cues is recognized. Calculated risks are taken. Reliance on rules begins to disappear. In the fourth, proficiency, stage, rules, calculation, and rational analysis are replaced by an unconscious, fluid, and effortless flow. Finally, in the fifth or expert stage, the leader uses a holistic recognition based on a full understanding of the situation. Cognitive maps are mentally programmed. The leader has an intuitive grasp of the situation and can change strategies as cues change.
The Adams family illustrates family influence in the dynasties of leaders who continue for a number of generations. John Adams, founding father and second president of the United States; his son John Quincy, the fourth president; his grandson Charles Francis, congressman and diplomat; and his great-grandson Henry played leading roles in politics, literature, and journalism (Brookhiser, 2002). The two presidents Roosevelt, Theodore and Franklin, and Franklin’s wife, Eleanor, were cousins from an elite New York family. They fought against the economic privileges of their own class, championed reform and progressivism, and transformed the political landscape of America. Franklin and especially Eleanor also played important roles in the creation of the United Nations. Other American dynasties have been the Kennedys—brothers John, Robert, and Edward, their father (an ambassador) and grandfather (a mayor), and their sons (state and federal representatives); the Longs of Louisiana—Huey, Earl, and Russell (governors and senators); and the Bushes—Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut; his son the forty-first president, George Herbert Walker Bush; his grandson the forty-third president, George W. Bush; and George’s brother, Florida governor Jeb Bush. The Nehrus and Gandhis are well-known examples from India. In dynastic dictatorship, political power and position are passed on to spouses, siblings, and children, as occurs in hereditary monarchies. Family influence in Britain was examined by C. J. Cox and Cooper (1988). They found that successful British managers in larger “blue-chip” organizations came from high-status public school (that is, U.S. private school) and “Oxbridge” backgrounds; those in smaller and local firms attended grammar (U.S. public) and professional schools. Of course, the British hereditary monarchy ensures family influences on its royalty.
Each girl in H. H. Jennings’s (1943) sociometric analysis1 was asked to describe the different members of her family and to name the member whom she most closely resembled. The leaders (in terms of sociometric choice and offices held) were found to identify themselves with the member of the family whom they described as sociable, reliable, and encouraging. Nonleaders identified themselves with the family members who they said tended to express discouragement, anxiety, and worry.
Birth Order. Childhood and adolescent relationships at home result in tendencies of some to emerge as a leader during these formative years. Of significance are birth order, family size, family socioeconomic status, and parental treatment. Some studies, such as Day’s (1980) analysis of promotion of 116 health care professionals, found that being either firstborn or lastborn was conducive to advancement, compared with being born in between. To explain such results, theorists attributed different personality developments to the eldest and youngest children and those born in between. Compared with his or her siblings, the oldest child in a family was thought to be less dominant, less aggressive, less self-confident, and less inclined toward leadership because of the inexperience and insecurity of the parents with their firstborn child and the need for the oldest child to adjust from an only-child family to a family in which attention toward children is divided (Goodenough & Leahy, 1927). Nonetheless, the firstborn has the advantage of more early interaction with adults and adult language. As was noted in Chapter 31, firstborn children are also likely to be given family responsibilities earlier and are expected to mature faster. In comparison with their siblings, youngest children were reported to be more disobedient, more persistent, and more likely to be pampered and helped when help is no longer necessary, as well as disregarded when family or personal decisions are to be made (Hurlock, 1950). In all, taken by itself, it would seem that birth order may or may not make a difference, depending on other aspects of family life, such as the family’s income, parental expectations, a full-time working mother, and so on. In low-income families or families with working mothers, the firstborn, particularly girls, tend to be given considerable responsibility for caring for their siblings early on.
Family Size. Maller (1931) found that the tendency of a child to work in a group for a group goal, rather than alone for an individual prize, is greatest among children with three or four siblings and is less among children of smaller or larger families. Cooperativeness was rated highest among children from families with the optimal number of children, but persistence was greatest among children from the larger families.
Treatment by Parents. Jane Addams, Clara Barton, the Mayo brothers, William E. Gladstone, Robert E. Lee, Woodrow Wilson, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington are among the many historical leaders whose lives illustrate the significance of either a mother or father in determining the career of the future leader (Bogardus, 1934). Among more recent political leaders, parents, particularly mothers, have had a strong positive influence on the development of the leadership potential of their children. Using the Multifactor Leadership Survey (Bass & Avolio, 1991) and the Life History Survey (Owens & Schoenfeldt, 1979), Avolio (1994) obtained significant correlations of .20 and .19, respectively, between their parents’ interest in the development of 182 leaders from various sectors of a community and the leaders’ inspirational and individually considerate leadership. Leaders are likely to have had parents who allowed more independence and freedom and were less punitive and critical (Snell, Stokes, Sands, et al., 1994). A review in Britain by C. J. Cox and Cooper (1988) found that as children, successful managers had to make use of their own resources and take responsibility for themselves and others. Often they were separated from their parents for schooling or other reasons. Again, Cox and Jennings (1995) found that successful senior executives and self-made entrepreneurs tended to have had a childhood of adversity. Mary Kay Ash, founder and CEO of Mary Kay Cosmetics, is an American example. However, a comparison of children reared in orphanages with children reared by parents suggested that parental interaction was important in fostering childhood leadership behavior. H. H. Anderson (1937) found that nursery school children who were living with their parents interacted more with others and initiated and attempted more leadership than did children from a nursery in an orphanage. But I did not find a statistically significant relationship between college students’ success as leaders in initially leaderless discussions and the extent to which each of their parents had been considerate of them or had initiated interactions with them when they were children (Bass, 1954a).
B. M. Bishop (1951) noted that when interacting with a neutral adult, children tend to transfer to the new situation the pattern of interaction they have developed with their mothers. If their mothers are directive, interfering, and critical, the children tend to be inhibited, reluctant, or noncooperative in their interactions with others. If negativism and rebellion against authority are fostered in interactions with parents, they will be reflected in aggressive behavior against others, such as fighting, threatening, and boasting. Or they may result in a withdrawal into fantasy. The normal maturing child can accept parental and school authority and is cooperative with his or her family and teachers (L. B. Murphy, 1947).
Children from homes in which the children participate in decisions were found by A. L. Baldwin (1949) to be more active, socially outgoing, intelligent, curious, original, constructive, and domineering. C. T. Meyer (1947) concluded that sociability and cooperativeness were greater when parents were clear and consistent, explained decisions to their children, offered opportunities for decision making, had rapport with their children, and better understood their children’s problems. Summers (1995) added that warm, supportive, nurturant, conscientious parents who set rational expectations give rise to offspring who are mature for their age, socially responsive, friendly, purposive, and achievement oriented, all characteristics of potential leaders. On the other hand, authoritarian, demanding, physically punitive, and un-sympathetic parents give rise to children who are withdrawn, discontented, distrustful, and lacking in social responsibility. Indulgent, neglectful, overprotective parents who deny their children opportunities to experience risks and mistakes commensurate with their maturity seem to restrict their children’s development. Such children may, as adults, exhibit irresponsibility, carelessness, overconfidence, and other characteristics that are likely to interfere with their success as leaders. Experiences of success and failure that promote the learning of social skills, of what can and cannot be done in most groups, are missed by such children.
Parents who neglect or ignore their children create a pattern of behavior in children that is also likely to interfere with their leadership potential (except possibly in an antisocial group, such as a group of delinquents). Such children often exhibit symptoms such as stealing, lying, cruelty, and other attention-getting behavior. Rejected children are often distrustful, are strongly motivated to seek praise, and feel persecuted and indulge in self-pity (Bass, 1960). Conformity was more the norm in 1960 than in 2005. At that time, respect for authority was taught more by parents. Questioning of authority is now more common.
Conflicting demands by the mother and father promote behavior in their children that is detrimental to the children’s effective and successful interaction with others. The most nervous behavior in children occurs when parents issue conflicting negative demands. Disobedience is greatest when parents issue conflicting positive demands (Meyers, 1944). Consistency from parents and the high standards set by them may be important clues to the early development of future leaders.
Attachment to Parents. Attachment theory holds that attachment figures, usually parents, create either a secure or insecure model of relations of self and others. Relations are seen as positive by secure children and negative by insecure children (Bowlby, 1982). Securely attached individuals generally trust others and are comfortable with being close to others. Secure children, as adults, are more likely to exhibit transformational leadership. Popper, Maiseles, and Kastelnuvo (2000) demonstrated this with 86 Israeli cadets in three courses for police officers. The correlation, corrected for social desirability, was .31 between secure attachment and the combined transformational leadership score for charisma, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration, and ranged from .21 to .36. For those insecurely attached to their parents (ambivalent, dismissive, and fearful), the comparable correlations ranged from 2.04 to 2.30. Popper (2000) assumes that socialized charismatic leaders will be adults with secure attachments as children. They are likely as adults to be more self-assured and self-esteemed. Personalized charismatic leaders are more likely to have had an avoidant attachment from their parents. As adults, they do not have a keen interest in others. They are reluctant to maintain intimate relationships. If narcissistic, they seek admiration, which does not require closeness and intimacy.
The Importance of Strong Mothers. In the late 1980s, about 25% of American children were being raised by one parent—in 90% of these cases by the mother, who was divorced or had never been married. The divorced or unwed father may still play an important amicable role, but one may speculate that if single parenthood results in a strong mother and a weak or absent father, the pattern replicates the family conditions that gave rise to many prominent world-class leaders, whose fathers were weak, absent, or died early. Many of the modern U.S. presidents’ fathers were business failures. The importance of maternal authority was noted in Chapter 31 (Bronfen-brenner, 1961). Dominant mothers whose sons remained attached and close to them figured in the lives of Presidents Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Douglas MacArthur, Winston Churchill, Henry Ford, and Robert Moses, as well as many Mafia leaders (Odom, 1990) and Benedict Arnold. Consistent with this, interviews with 30 CEOs who were selected because of their success as business leaders found that they tended to have strong role models. Most of these models were their mothers, not their fathers (Piotrowski & Armstrong, 1987). V. and M. G. Goertzel (1962), reviewing case histories in Cradles of Eminence, found that 109 mothers of 413 eminent men and women of the twentieth century were described as dominating, overwhelming, determined, and strong-willed. But only 21 fathers were so described. Rather, 384 of the fathers were described as failure-prone, improvident, alcoholic, and/or deserters of their families. Freud was quoted as saying “A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror, that confidence of success that often induces real success” (Jones, 1953, p. 5). For 24 British prime ministers between 1804 and 1937, 15% and 66% had lost a father in childhood due to death or divorce. The same was true for only 2% of the population as a whole (Iremonger, 1970). Zaleznik (1992) noted that the leaders he analyzed suffered from “father deprivation” due to the father’s detachment, absence, or unavailability.
Parents as Models. W. A. Anderson (1943) showed that parents’ leadership behavior was a model for their children. In a rural New York area, Anderson found that the social participation of an individual is a family tendency. If the father participated, so did the mother. If both participated, the children usually did also. Keller (1999) showed for 78 college seniors (a majority were women) positive correlations between their prototypical or implicit model of leaders and how they described their parents’ leadership behavior. The correlation with their idea of a prototypical leader’s charisma and how they described their mother’s charisma was .32. For their father, the comparable correlation was .28. For the trait of tyranny, the correlation with the implicit leader was .31 for the father and .27 for the mother. For the trait of dedication, the figures were .31 for the father but only a nonsignificant .08 for the mother. For the trait of sensitivity, the figures for father and mother were positive (.16 and .10).
Family Status. To add to what was said in the preceding chapter about the importance of socioeconomic background to the emergence of leaders in different countries, the father’s occupation and background make a distinct difference in whether their sons emerge as loyalist political leaders such as Ngo Dinh Diem, Fulgencio Batista, Lázaro Cárdenas, and Jacques Necker, or as revolutionary political leaders such as Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, Pancho Villa, and Maximilien Robespierre.2 A comparison of 50 loyalist leaders with 50 revolutionary leaders by Rejai and Phillips (1988) found that the loyalists’ fathers were much more likely than the revolutionaries’ fathers to have been government officials, military officers, bankers, industrialists, professionals, or members of the landed gentry. Children from higher-class family backgrounds were also likely to have had a wider range of experiences. Prior to the advent of universal education and class mobility, upper-and middle-class family backgrounds were ordinarily requisite for the emergence of leaders even of the proletariat. As was concluded in Chapter 4, socioeconomic status contributes to one’s emergence as a leader, and, as was noted in Chapter 33, the middle and upper classes generally provide a majority of the world’s future managers. Until recently, America’s labor leaders seldom came from working-class backgrounds. Leaders of the “workers’ ” revolutions, from Lenin to Castro, came from middle-class, not working-class or peasant, backgrounds. Orlans (1953) observed that many of our great presidents (such as Washington, Jefferson, and both Roosevelts) came from an aristocratic class, from a background that provided them with a great deal of opportunity to examine and evaluate new ideas as well as the freedom to pursue a political career. Despite the high status of one’s family, children can feel relatively deprived in what they want. Such children may grow up to become more successful as leaders than those who are overprotected and pampered.
Parental Standards. Avolio (1994) reported that the moral standards of parents correlated .16 and .20 with inspirational and considerate leadership when their children became leaders as adults. Day (1980) compared 58 health care professionals who were promoted and 58 who were not. Those who were promoted were much more likely to express a recurring theme in interviews about having had a family background that emphasized a strong work ethic. Gibbons’s (1986) in-depth interviews with transformational and transactional managers found that the transformational executives were much more likely to describe parents who set high educational standards and provided a family life that was neither extremely lavish nor extremely disadvantaged. And in the just-mentioned study of 30 CEOs, Piotrowski and Armstrong (1987) found that of those who discussed their childhood, most said that they had had favorable family conditions during childhood and adolescence. In line with these findings, Hall (1983) observed that charismatic leaders were given more responsibilities as children and felt a lot of respect from their elders. As may be seen most clearly with Charles de Gaulle’s childhood, conviction, ideology, and the need to restore la gloire de la France were instilled in him by his early family life just after the ignominious defeat of France by the Germans in 1870. The values and goals of the future French leader were strongly affected for life (Hoffman & Hoffman, 1970).
Leadership was more likely to be displayed by elementary-school boys whose parents instilled high standards as well as granted them responsibilities and scope for independent action (Hoffman, Rosen, & Lippitt, 1960). Consistent with this finding, Klonsky (1983) noted that occupants of leadership positions on boys’ teams had parents who made more demands for achievement and provided more discipline accompanied by more maternal warmth. Girls who became team leaders were given more responsibilities by their families but less parental warmth. Parental ambitions may also direct the child toward social success and influence. A family atmosphere of high-quality relationships with parents and siblings also makes a difference (Bass, 1960). Leaders are more likely to make the transition into adolescence without the pains of separation from family, without a sense of becoming isolated, and without the need to compensate for feelings of helplessness (Levinson & Rosenthal, 1984).
Murphy (1947) suggested that adult performance in groups was likely to be affected by children’s security or anxiety, developed in their relations with other children in school. The emergence or reinforcement of authoritarian or democratic tendencies was a matter of respect for others fostered in school or neighborhood, frustration or happiness in peer groups, and/or feelings of being respected or excluded from school and social groups.
Practice in leadership is afforded by both school and outside activities. Such experiences in solving problems can enhance a person’s esteem with other members of the group. They provide opportunities to interact with the opposite sex in a socially approved manner and enable the individual to learn more about following, cooperation, competition, and leading others. Adolescence affords the developing leader the opportunity to learn to change his or her behavior as situational demands change to maintain success and effectiveness in interactions with others. Social proficiencies learned during adolescence can foster an individual’s success in interacting with others as an adult. Social and athletic proficiencies may make a difference in an adolescent’s success as an adult leader, depending on the adult environment. The social graces, etiquette, and grooming learned in childhood and adolescence may also prove significant. Finally, experiences in extracurricular activities and dating afford opportunities to practice and transfer leadership and to see the success or failure of different attempts to lead (Bass, 1960). Gibbons’s (1986) transformational managers had a lot of experience as leaders in high school and college. Likewise, Hall (1983) noted that charismatic leaders reported more childhood experiences as leaders. Extracurricular experiences in high school tend to predict subsequent leadership activities in college and in military academies (Yammarino & Bass, 1989a). Participation in varsity sports in the naval academy is also predictive of subsequent success as a naval officer (Atwater & Yammarino, 1989). Parents’ and teachers’ guidance and enlarging of responsibilities can be important to the developing leader. The encouragement of intellectual self-exploration and increasing equalization of power relations with parents and teachers will also contribute (Bass, 1960).
Marginality. After examining the childhood environment of 15 twentieth-century world-class charismatic leaders, Willner (1968) concluded that almost all were socially and psychologically at the margins of several classes, religions, or ethnic affiliations. For example, Kemal Atatürk, the founding father of modern Turkey, grew up at the borders of the Christian Greek and Muslim Turkish cultures. The 15 leaders were also likely to have plural identifications that gave them multiple perspectives, a more flexible view of society, and ways of communicating with and responding more convincingly and empathically to a broad spectrum of people. This heterogeneity in background was likely to be augmented by a wider range of experience, by the mobility of the family, and by the exposure to various environments during childhood and adolescence.
Illustrating the shaping of future leaders was Britain’s educational system. The leaders and administrative officials of the British Empire at its zenith received from their public schools, such as Eton and Harrow, a general education in self-discipline, teamwork, and group loyalty that created an aura of command and habits of superiority with “a facade of crisp decisiveness.” Their classical education included nothing about modern science, technology, modern languages, or the social sciences. Little attention was paid to innovation and creativity. Skill in and capacity for social role taking, a sense of self-esteem and a need for achievement were sufficient to create reasonably effective leaders and officials for the world arena (Burns, 1978). The 1,200 members of the Indian Civil Service, most of them British, were of this elite. Their public school and university education had imbued them with a contempt for moneymaking and corruption, pride in the ideals of fair play and open justice, and the sense of duty to make improvements and maintain an efficient and properly recorded administration. “They were Plato’s guardians—a caste apart, bred and trained to be superior” (Lapping, 1985). But they were also handicapped by the class consciousness instilled in them by family and schooling.
The satisfaction of future leaders with their educational experiences in school correlated with all four components of the leaders’ transformational leadership, ranging from .19 to .24 (Avolio, 1994). Higher occupational attainment was predicted by very high academic standing and positive attitudes towards high school teachers (Snell, Stokes, Sands, et al., 1994). Large-scale efforts to provide leadership training for high school students have been conducted by the American Management Association, the Center for Creative Leadership, the 4-H program, and other organizations that are interested in the development of young people. Athletic teams, interest clubs, and student government provide leadership experiences. A formal source of leadership training and practice in high school is the 3,000 Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps programs (Funk, 2002).
It was among educators in primary and secondary school settings that evaluative research on leadership education first appeared. For example, Fretwell (1919) gave elected leaders in junior high school responsibility for managing athletic and playground activities. A leadership club was formed to plan and discuss the activities. Fretwell concluded that such experience provided opportunities for leadership and initiative. In the same way, Mayberry (1925) observed that participation in student government provided training in social purpose, initiative, and cooperation.3
Controlled Experiments. Eichler and Merrill (1933) asked each member of high school classes to rate the others on leadership. Experimental and control groups were paired on the basis of the ratings. Experimental groups were given lectures on leadership methods or participated in discussions about leadership. New ratings were then collected. The experimental groups gained more than the control groups in such ratings of leadership, but not to a significant degree. Similarly, G. G. Thompson (1944) studied nursery school children under two programs. In one, the teacher acted in an impersonal manner and gave help only when needed. In the second, the teacher took an active part in play and helped the children to adjust to one another. The children in the second group showed significant gains in ascendance, social participation, and leadership. McCandless (1942) studied two residential groups of boys in a training school. Both began with adult supervisors, but the experimental group became self-governing. Sociometric ratings of intermember popularity were highly correlated with dominance at the beginning. Four months later, the most dominant boys lost in popularity in the experimental group but not in the control group. Zeleny (1940b) compared recitation and group discussion as methods of teaching sociology. Students in the discussion classes gained more in dominance and sociability than did those in the recitation classes and recorded slightly greater gains in knowledge of the subject. Again, Zeleny (1941, 1950) gave student leaders instruction in techniques of leadership and guided practice in the use of these techniques. Students found the training interesting and thought it helped them adapt better to the social demands made on them.
Importance of a College Education to Career Success. A college degree, a college education, and socioeconomic status are confounded in their effects on the subsequent emergence of persons in managerial and leadership positions. Nevertheless, there is value in the actual education beyond just being identified as a college graduate. In the Management Progress Study (Bray, Campbell, & Grant, 1974), 274 college graduates who had been hired for first-level management jobs at AT&T and 148 who had been hired without college degrees participated in a three-day assessment center. The college graduates were judged by the assessors to have a higher potential for middle management. After 20 years, the modal college graduate had reached the third level of management, but the modal noncollege graduate had reached only the second level of management. Furthermore, those who had come from better-rated colleges were at a higher level of management (Howard, 1986). This finding was consistent with a correlation of .32 between the ranking of the universities from which 80 Japanese graduates came and the appraisals for their potential for promotion that they received after three years (Wakabayashi & Graen, 1984). Altemeyer (1966) compared engineering and science majors with students in the fine arts during their four years matriculating at Carnegie Mellon University and found that the engineering students, who were likely to be future leaders in industry, increased in analytical ability but decreased in imagination. The reverse was true for the arts students.
Education for leadership is implicit although not always explicit in higher education. College catalogues often mention as one of their important missions preparing the future leaders of society. Cleveland (1980) argued that “equipping minds for leadership ought to be what’s ‘higher’ about higher education.” According to the results of a survey,
Between 500 and 600 campuses are paying attention to developing their students as leaders, either in the classroom or in extracurricular activities and programs [that] … originate either in a student development office or in direct student initiative. The academic courses … draw mainly on social psychological and management studies … and the liberal arts … humanities and social sciences. (Spitzberg, 1987, p. 4)
Community leadership education is often an important aspect in two-year community colleges (Gardner, 1987).
Examples. LeaderShape, a curriculum-based leadership development program, was conducted in 2002 for 2000 participants at 31 colleges and universities across the United States. A pre-post study by Thoms and Blasko (undated) at Penn State–Erie University showed that LeaderShape increased general transformational leadership skills and the ability to create organizational vision. An unusual leadership educational effort focused on gifted children to help them to perform better as leaders. Familiarity with the characteristics of leaders, creativity, and divergent thinking were followed by role playing, observing, and analyzing the leadership of others. Then came practice in exercises and real-life leadership experiences (Black, 1984). At the College of Wooster, in addition to formal course work, students spend three to five days observing national leaders on the job. A consortium of universities in North Carolina conducts a fellows program that includes summer internships and attendance at an annual leadership training program at the Center for Creative Leadership. Mentoring programs are provided at the University of California at Irvine. The ethical responsibilities of leadership are stressed in a sequence of courses at the University of San Diego (Spitzberg, 1987). Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government sponsors leadership education with faculty scholars and government leaders in residence. Binghamton University’s School of Management offers a three-course sequence on the individual, the group, and the organization at undergraduate and graduate levels. An integrated four-year undergraduate leadership studies program is offered at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond. In addition to coursework in leadership, Claremont McKenna College provides a job shadow program for students to learn leadership by following around business, health care, or government managers and executives on the job (R. E. Riggio & H. R. Riggio, 1999).
College student leadership data from 10 institutions were followed from 1994 to 1998. Self-reports from 875 students participating in leadership courses and activities sponsored by the Kellogg Foundation were compared with students from nonparticipating colleges. The results indicated that participating college students increased their ability to set goals, sense of personal ethics, and willingness to take risks, along with leadership motivation, skills, and understanding. Also increased were multicultural awareness, community orientation, and civic responsibilities (Astin & Cress, undated). Top American universities such as Stanford, Harvard, and U.C. Berkeley offer programs in leadership (Riggio, un dated).4 Olson (undated) described 49 undergraduate programs in leadership at institutions such as Rice, Kansas State, and Northwestern. Five programs offered majors, 21 offered minors, and 23 offered concentrations and certificates. Telephone interviews about 10 of the programs indicated that: (1) all but one had been established in the 1990s; (2) all were interdisciplinary, comprising three or more courses; one, at least, experiential; another, a capstone seminar to integrate the coursework; and (3) community service was required in all 10 of the programs. Student internships were included in 80%; senior projects were required in 50%; and faculty-student research was conducted in 40% of the programs. Some common practices in the 10 undergraduate programs were (1) self-assessment and reflection, (2) skill building, (3) problem solving, (4) intercultural understanding, (5) outdoor leadership, (6) self-initiated and self-sustained learning, (7) mentoring, (8) community involvement, and (9) public policy. In 1992, the Jepson School of the University of Richmond was the first to start a Bachelor of Arts in Leadership Studies. It integrated cognitive, affective, and behavioral leadership learning with a developmental component of leadership effectiveness. Studies combine academic knowledge with experiential learning during four years in which the student progresses from novice to expert (Klenke, 1993).
Professional School Education. Increasingly, schools, of business, education, administration, social welfare, health, and government are providing graduate education in leadership and related behavior and skills to increase the students’ capacity to exert personal influence, make proper use of power, motivate others, negotiate and mediate effectively, and take initiatives. The American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business completed a ten-year project to assist schools of management in pro-grammatic efforts in this regard (Zoffer, 1985). Orpen (1982) showed that MBAs had achieved a higher level of position and salary after five years than had a matched sample of non-MBAs. Hurley-Hanson, Wally, Sonnenfeld, et al. (2003) examined the career attainment of a first cohort of 540 managers and a second cohort of 968 more recent arrivals in the same firm. The prestige of their school forecast career attainment in the first but not the second cohort. However, possessing an MBA was associated with career success. Baruch and Bell (2003) obtained survey responses from more than 300 managers indicating the value they had received from graduate management education. Competencies and skills gained were associated with internal and external criteria of their career success. Nonetheless, whether the 100,000 MBAs annually awarded and the education associated with the MBA degree are of consequence to careers remains unknown. The schools face increasing competition from one another, as well as from distance learning—instruction over the Internet—and in-house corporate training programs (Jones, 2000). Their value is still questioned (Pfeffer & Fong, 2002).
Crawford, Brungardt, Scott, et al. (2002) reviewed more than 40 university degree programs and found that colleges and universities were increasingly serving non-traditional students. They were also making more use of distance learning.
Executive Education Programs. The business schools at Harvard early in the twentieth century and the University of Pittsburgh in the 1940s pioneered postgraduate executive education programs. They are now commonplace in colleges, universities, and individual free-standing institutions in the United States and abroad. Experienced executives are on campus for extended periods of time. Military, government, and nonprofit executives attend these programs along with business executives. The Center for Creative Leadership provides one-week or longer courses in leadership to more than 20,000 managers and executives in the United States and abroad each year.
Military Institutions. The U.S. military academies invest a considerable amount of their students’ time in education for leadership. Students begin by learning to work effectively in highly disciplined subordinate roles before being given positions of increasing leadership responsibility. These opportunities for leadership are experienced in their campus lives and in summer field and sea settings. These experiences add to the formal study of the subject, observational study, self-study, and reflection. The students’ development as leaders is appraised periodically, and feedback is provided for remedial efforts (Katz, 1987; Prince, 1987). The intellectual content in the teaching of leadership in the behavioral science departments of the U.S. military academies requires the students to use higher-order cognitive skills such as the discovery of conflicting assumptions and values. Students need to apply logic to identify what is happening in the task facing the leader in a problem or case, account for what is happening, and formulate and apply what the leader should do in the situation (Shulman & Jones, 1996). Atwater, Dionne, Avolio, et al. (1999) followed 236 Virginia Military Institute cadets from entrance to graduation. Data from the first year on cognitive ability, physical fitness, and prior leadership experience predicted who subsequently rose to be formally appointed leaders in the fourth year and to be effective leaders. Physical fitness and moral reasoning increased with time, but self-esteem did not. These results were consistent with empirical findings in the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force military academies.
Education for leadership occurs in the context of the current stage of development in which the leader is found. On the basis of analogies from developmental learning over the adult life cycle, Bryson and Kelley (1978) suggested that adult leaders go through stages, just as children do. Ideally, a developmental learning process occurs in which capacities and skills that are gained in one stage should prepare the adult leader for new and bigger tasks and responsibilities in later stages. An adult should learn to be a leader by receiving appropriate feedback while serving as a leader and be promoted to higher levels of leadership responsibilities because of past performance as a leader and promise of future performance.
The development of executives is a logical progression over time. The nature of this progression and how to manage it needs to be understood. The progression of abilities needs to be specified. There should be a conceptual linkage between leadership at lower levels of an organization and at more senior levels. The executive’s development can be conceived of as a process of acquiring successively more complex cognitive maps and other necessary competencies over time. As the skills required for successful operation at a higher level are accumulated, the executive becomes ready to move to that level (Jacobs & Jaques, 1987). However, there may be innate limits on the conceptual and cognitive skills that can be developed through education and experience.
Increasingly recognized is the need for managers and leaders to engage in continuous learning, both for their own sake as well as for their organization. Learning and teaching are part of their job, particularly if they are in industries with rapidly changing technologies, processes, products, services, and markets or in agencies facing new regulations, new problems, and new demands. With managers likely to engage in several successive careers and two retirements (in countries without mandatory retirement) instead of one organization over the working years, maintaining learning skills will be essential for continuing career success. Continuous learning is helped by a development orientation (Maurer, 2002), belief in self-efficacy (Maurer, 2001), taking advantage of new on-the-job challenges (Ohlott, 1998), and realistic knowledge of one’s own competencies (Maurer & Tarulli, 1994). According to a survey of 906 managers in 50 different positions in a telecommunications firm, competence in continuous learning is needed, particularly about networking, company service, technical problem solving, and dealing with information and subordinates. Frequent and important tasks were seen most to require continuous learning. Information gathering and synthesis, dealing with subordinates, and technical problem-solving design correlated most highly with the need for competence in continuous learning (Maurer & Weiss, 2003). Continous learning and the ability to learn quickly have become essential for career success with the need to make several career moves as a result of the reduced opportunity to rise in one organization over one’s working life (Hall & Mervis, 1995). Competence in continous learning calls for a development orientation, motivation to expand one’s skill or knowledge (London, 1983), and being challenged by the opportunity to learn new ideas and ways (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). There is a need to know one’s strengths, weaknesses, and need for self-development and to do one’s best (Maurer & Tarulli, 1994). One must be able to replace routine old-role behavior with more complex new-role behavior (Hooijberg & Quinn, 1992). One must also be aware of new competencies required in rapidly changing environments, know how to learn these new competencies, and embed the knowledge in the organization to increase its adaptability (Briscoe & Hall, 1999). Continous learning contributes to increased productivity and the ability to meet organizational goals (Van Velsor, 1998).
Paradoxically, the additional power that accrues with rising status in the organization may increasingly inhibit continued learning. Rising power may bring about reduced negative feedback from colleagues. It may also bring about greater monopolization of discussions and decisions by the leader, induction of fear in others by the leader’s aura of power, distancing of relationships with others, isolation from below, and exemption from appraisal by others. All these problems can be avoided by the rising executive’s consciousness of them and their effects (Kaplan, Drath, & Kofodimos, 1985).
Technical and professional competence often tend to be valued over competence as a supervisor and leader. The successful engineer who moves into a management position or the successful teacher who becomes a school principal frequently continues to focus on the technical aspects of the work to be done and does poorly in getting colleagues to function at their full potential (Kotter, 1985b). Subsequent progress in management appears to be much more a matter of general higher education than specialization in business, engineering, social science, or the humanities. For example, little difference in the level achieved after 20 years at AT&T was found among those who entered the firm with different educational majors (Howard, 1986). Although engineering majors earn higher grades than do nonengineering majors while they are midshipmen at Annapolis, they do not appear to perform any better as leaders when they subsequently serve as naval officers (Yammarino & Bass, 1989).
Most managers have been introduced to computer-mediated communications technology, but many managers and executives still need to develop specific skills in using computers, the Internet and intranets, as described in Chapter 29, when they want to engage in distance learning, use specialized new programs in computer decision making, and lead virtual teams, to avoid being dependent on more computer-literate assistants. It is now common for executives, when traveling, to carry their own laptop computers with them or to use publicly available computers. Many such training programs are available on the Internet and company intranet and can be used by managers as they have the time to do so. Testing and feedback can also be provided online (Spreitzer, 2002).
Development of Leaders to Use Computer-Mediated Communications. Virtual leaders, as detailed in Chapter 29, have to learn how to quickly diagnose what is happening based on a limited amount of information from a follower and to be of assistance if needed (Thompsen, 2000). Informal learning from chance, unscheduled encounters with followers, such as in the lunchroom, is lacking. Lack of such spontaneous interactions makes it necessary for the virtual leader to learn how to keep abreast of what is happening in the distant follower’s site and to develop a close personal relationship with the follower (Cooper & Kurland, 2002). The virtual leader may find it useful to make more unplanned e-mails and telephone calls inquiring about how things are going (Speitzer, 2002). Virtual leaders must eschew joking and sarcasm to avoid being misunderstood by the distant follower. The leaders need to carefully verify their interpretations of communications to avoid ambiguities. They and their distant followers need to learn how to use and interpret symbols in e-mails that can be used to express emotions (Spreitzer, 2000). Leaders must develop a willingness to spend more time in reaching consensus with followers because it may be more difficult to reach closure (O’Mahoney & Barley, 1999). Virtual leaders can be developed by giving them assignments to be members of a virtual team. They can learn how to use computer mediation for brainstorming and decision making. They will need to learn to give discretion to distant followers and do without continuous monitoring of followers. But they can learn to use archived recordings of virtual meetings to assess follower contributions and progress. Organizations and virtual leaders need to formulate and control privacy policies so followers are assured that computer-mediated communications are safe for sharing concerns. Organizations can provide distant personnel with company portals and intranet to provide access to all necessary information about career opportunities. Virtual leaders need to establish expectations for distant followers about the criteria for judging their performance. Mutual trust between leaders and distant followers is essential (Spreitzer, 2002).
Developing Leaders of Virtual Teams. According to reviews by Cascio (2000) and Spreitzer (2002), to build cohesive virtual teams, the leader must learn how to create a shared mental model to provide a shared sense of purpose (London, 2000). Virtual leaders help virtual team members to overcome a sense of isolation by beginning communications about the team, its mission, and its members and their competencies (Cascio, 2000; Moreland, 1999). The leaders need to transmit a clear, inspiring vision and ensure that members are kept up to date on what is going on in the organization. Group norms must be set to guide interactions. The leaders need to have learned and transmitted a role model for establishing and adhering to the rules and expectations for working together, about schedules, and appropriate response times. They also need to be sensitive to cultural and individual differences and how the team can take advantage of these differences.
The education and development of adult leaders require the combined efforts of the individual and the organization. The development of adult leaders is largely a matter of self-development, abetted by opportunities provided by the organization. An individual needs a personal awakening to enhance effectiveness as a leader. Our leadership is an expression of who we are. Thus, to grow as leaders, we need to grow as persons (Cashman, 1998). Federal Express provides a program, LEAP (Leadership Evaluation and Awareness Process), to aspiring managers to examine their interests and aptitudes for management (AMA, 1990).
Avoiding Obsolescence. Both individual motivation and organizational stimulation are involved in the avoidance of managerial and professional obsolescence. An individual’s need for achievement and opportunities for organizational participation were the two most important among 12 possible determinants for avoiding obsolescence, according to a survey of 451 U.S. Air Force officers and civilian personnel (Shearer & Steger, 1975). To avoid obsolescence, Shearer and Steger deemed experience to be more important for managers and continuing education more important for professionals. Managers also need to maintain clear perspectives about their organization. For instance, those who work in senior civil service positions in the government must understand the historical, social, and political context of their jobs. The Federal Executive Institute for training senior managers places a heavy emphasis on this objective (Wood, 1985).
The Need for Flexibility. Careers need to fit purposes that are aligned with the organization’s strategic direction. At the same time, managers should be flexible in the face of shifts in opportunities and conditions. They need to be flexible about making tentative choices and evaluations that are subject to revision, to engage in multiple small careers at low levels, to experience a few plateaus in career advancement, to continue on to new challenging assignments, to take risks, and to experience small failures (Gaertner, 1988).
The alignment of career and organization has become much more difficult as organizations change internally to cope with the changes occurring in a turbulent environment and societal change. As Conger (1993b, p. 203) noted, organizations are facing “heightened competitive pressures.” Genentech reduced the time from ten to seven years to introduce the first engineered successfully therapeutic anticancer drug, which rose to over a billion dollars in sales, but it soon faced 18 firms hoping to gain FDA approval to introduce competing drugs. From 2001 to 2003, it instituted extensive organizational, strategic, and cultural changes to position its hematology business unit for continuous and rapid growth (Ahn, Adamson, & Dornbusch, 2004).
Many people experience difficulties in their attempts to adapt their careers to organizational restructuring, downsizing, delayering, hierarchical flattening, teaming, and outsourcing. No longer can they count on one career with one organization. They need to take charge of their own careers by being more versatile in their skills, accepting change, remaining flexible, and being ready to adapt to new technologies and job requirements. They can expect a career of working sequentially for a number of different organizations. The informal employment covenant between organization and employee and the loyalty to each other has been corroded. “Responsibility for career development must lie with the individual, not the organization” (Brousseau, Driver, & Larsson, 1996, p. 52).
Career Planning. Effective career planning is interactive. Career development is enhanced by the joint efforts that develop leaders’ resilience in the face of adversity. An organization can encourage such resilience with feedback and positive reinforcement. The developing leader needs career resilience, career insight, and career identity. These are furthered by creating and implementing a vision of his or her future in the context of expectations about the organization’s future. Contingency plans are needed to maintain flexibility (London, 1985). Thus 77 middle managers who were judged by a higher-level committee to be more adaptive to changing role demands demonstrated more openness to different ideas and used simpler decision-making processes than did those who were judged to be less adaptive. They were higher in self-esteem and presumably more likely to attempt leadership (Morrison, 1977).
Expectations reflect promotion to higher levels or the failures to do so. For example, the expectations of all 270 managers whose careers at AT&T were studied measured annually over 20 years declined sharply during the first five years of employment. However, after the fifth year, the expectations of those who subsequently attained fourth-to sixth-level executive positions by the end of the 20-year period turned around and began a steady movement upward. The expectations of those who attained only third-level positions after 20 years remained about the same after the fifth year, while the expectations of those who ended their 20 years at the first or second levels of management continued to decline steadily after the fifth year (Howard & Bray, 1988).
The prospective leader’s behavior develops in concert with those who are directly above and below him or her in the hierarchy. The leader may develop different inter-locking behaviors with each of his or her subordinates. Along with a general normative relationship, the roles played by both will be worked out for designated situations (Graen, 1976). The quality of this leader-member exchange early in one’s career contributes to one’s successful movement up the corporate ladder later on. Early promotion is an important predictor of future success (E. H. Schein, 1985).
Latitude and Challenges. Of particular consequence will be the latitude granted subordinates, the leader’s support of subordinates’ activities, and the leader’s attention to subordinates’ development (Graen & Cashman, 1975). Challenging assignments provided early contribute to one’s success at subsequent stages of one’s career as a manager (Vicino & Bass, 1978). Bray and Howard (1983) found that only 30% of the college recruits at AT&T who were predicted to reach middle management actually attained it eight years later if they had not experienced a challenging job early on. Of those who had been predicted to fail to reach middle management, 61% attained it if they had earlier experienced a more challenging job.
Quality of Relation. The superior-subordinate exchange develops into a role relationship that may rigidify or be flexible, depending on a variety of individual and organizational factors. Some people engage in role-making experiences; others do not. The quality of the relationships becomes even more important to one’s success in a career than one’s initially tested ability. According to a 13-year panel study by Wakabayashi and Graen (1984) of 85 Japanese college graduates, those who had higher-quality vertical superior-subordinate exchange relationships in their first years of employment, as reflected in their speed of promotion and bonuses, were most likely to demonstrate greater progress at seven and 13 years of employment. Those with a lower tested ability on entrance to their firms could make up for it in their advancement by early higher-quality dyadic relationships.
Travel Experiences. The importance of travel experiences to the development and personal change of political leaders has been overlooked. When Rejai and Phillips (1988) contrasted 50 loyalist political leaders with 50 revolutionaries, they found that travel experiences reinforced the politicization of the loyalists that had begun at home and in school. For the revolutionaries, travel was radicalizing and transforming, and helped them to develop standards against which to measure their own countries. However, travel may become of less consequence in a world linked by television and instant communication.
As already noted, careers depend on both the individual and the organization. In some kinds of organizations, only one route is open. One must enter at the bottom to climb to the top. For example, entry into the U.S. military officer corps requires admission to and graduation from a military academy, ROTC, or an officer candidate school. Promotion is from within; a direct transfer from civilian life to a high-level position in the military is not possible (except during wartime). Career paths in business and industry are much less circumscribed. As noted in Chapters 31 and 32, women and ethnic minorities who become senior executives are less likely to rise through the ranks of line management and more likely to emerge into top management from staff, technical, or professional careers inside or outside the organization. Union leaders can come from the rank and file, from staff professional service, or directly from the outside (Schwartz & Hoyman, 1984). Educational leaders ordinarily begin as teachers. Loyalist political leaders are much more likely than revolutionary leaders to have been employed in governmental service early on (Rejai & Phillips, 1988).
Careers of U.S. Presidents. Currently, voters pay little attention to the job experience of candidates for the most important job in the world, president of the United States. Although candidates talk much about it, voters are more attentive to the emotional uplift provided by the candidates, party identification, and the credibility of their promises. Nonetheless, 10 of 14 presidents since 1898 who had been state governors were elected, compared to four who had been in Congress. Presidents who have had experience as state governors tend to earn higher ratings for their performance as leaders and crisis managers than do those who have served as senators or representatives.
Career Mobility. Mobility is valued. Managers measure their success in terms of their rate of mobility and advancement. They fear stagnation if they remain too long in one position (Veiga, 1981). Rapid organizational change has led to more movement of managers within and between organizations (Brousseau, Driver, Larssen, et al. 1996). It used to be unusual for a manager to be fired. Poor performers “were locked in an office and the key thrown away until retirement.” Now, with organizations in a more turbulent and competitive market, managers may find themselves out of a job. Unemployed, they may need to start a new career in another organization or start their own organization. But mobility may be deterred for many individual and organizational reasons. Older people may feel less mobile and more concerned about their job security (J. Hall, 1976). They are likely to perceive themselves as less marketable. Company benefits that cannot be transferred will hamper the consideration of job changes (Albrook, 1967). Community ties also inhibit one from moving away, which may be required when one changes jobs. Other deterrents to geographic mobility are a spouse’s career requirements and children’s educational needs. Veiga (1983) studied the mobility of 1,216 managers in three manufacturing firms. The average time the managers spent in a particular position, as expected, was affected by their own perceived marketability, the value of company benefits, and the importance of job security, and somewhat less by their and their families’ ties to their communities. Dissatisfaction with their current position, as expected, increased the managers’ willingness to consider changing employers. Likewise, in a study of 283 managers by Campion and Mitchell (1986), such dissatisfaction predicted the managers’ resignation from managerial positions and from the organization. But quitting was also predicted by lack of socialization into the firm, lack of adjustment, unmet job expectations, and being under more stress. With a survey of almost 4,000 U.S. Air Force personnel, a good percentage of whom were noncommissioned officers, Watson (1986) showed that both opportunities elsewhere and commitment to the U.S. Air Force were important. The lack of commitment and the availability of civilian opportunities together correlated .74 with thoughts of leaving the Air Force and searching elsewhere. The lack of commitment and thoughts of leaving combined to correlate .79 with intentions to leave the Air Force, and these intentions correlated .71 with actual quitting.
Mount (1984) surveyed 483 managers of a multinational corporation who were working in the same metropolitan area about their job satisfaction and whether they were establishing their career, advancing in it, or maintaining a well-established career. Managers who were getting established were more satisfied than those who were further along in their careers.
Career Change. Low current satisfaction may be a reason for changing careers. For example, engineers who are seeking more important and better-paying positions shift into line management or become responsible for training, quality control, or research. The change is ordinarily a promotion within the same organization (Bain, 1985). They are more likely to switch into management if they have entrepreneurial, affiliative, and assertive interests. They are less likely to switch if they have strong investigative and artistic interests (Sedge, 1985).
Better opportunities may cause people to change careers. Thus, whether U.S. Air Force officers intend to remain in service or become civilians depends on how attractive they viewed civilian life and how oriented they were toward their occupation (O’Connell, 1986). Personnel may become alienated from their current organizational and professional responsibilities as a consequence of violated and unmet expectations; loss of satisfaction with colleagues; and changes in their own beliefs, interests, values, and maturation (Korman, Wittig-Berman, & Lang, 1981). But Schein (1996) argued that the choice of career is a matter of motivation. Persons are anchored to careers by personal interests and values. The work itself may be the anchor. They prefer to advance in a career in their own technical or functional competencies. Management may be the anchor, as they are motivated by being able to take calculated risks and achieve common goals. They may be anchored in a preference for stability and security, be willing to conform, and be socialized into an organization’s values. They may enjoy entrepreneurial activities and moving from project to project. They may prefer a career that provides autonomy and independence. They may be dedicated to a cause or pure challenge and winning in competition. Or they may want a career that makes for a satisfying lifestyle.
Careerism. Managers who were on a career plateau (a long period without promotion) were found to have timed their career moves less adequately than did those who did not experience such plateaus (Veiga, 1981). For the highly ambitious, it is argued, career development is enhanced by the ability to move within three to four years into different areas of management and leadership in different organizations. Such movement is seen to pay off in more rapid advancement to higher organizational levels. For the ambitious, concern for career advancement takes precedence over loyalty and commitment to their current organization (Feldman, 1985). Such careerism is a serious threat to organizational effectiveness. Feldman sees in it anticipatory dissatisfaction with jobs that do not contribute to the advancement of one’s career, lack of involvement in one’s job and loyalty to one’s organization, increased job turnover, inauthentic interpersonal relationships, and absorption in self-interest.
Career Success. Career advancement in an organization may be due to unusual talents, reputation for excellent performance, or sponsorship by a champion in senior management. Some managers are singled out early for rapid promotion. They are high flyers who are identified as having a lot of managerial talent. Since they have been identified as talented, subsequent self-fulfilling prophecy maintains their high-flying evaluation. Their career moves are planned for them to reach senior management while still young (Hirsh, 1985). McCall (1998) agrees that developing managers into high flyers is a responsibility of leadership, which must to provide opportunities for learning on-the-job through challenging assignments and experiences so that their talents can grow. Baltes and Dickson (2001) theorize that leaders with successful careers, when faced with limited resources, will optimize their choices. For instance, they reward subordinates selectively for meritorious performance. Faced with functional losses over time, such as losses in market share or of valued employees, they compensate with impression management. Or there is the example of the young employee promoted rapidly from line employee to senior management who walks into the CEO’s office and asks, “Okay, Dad, what do I do next?” Career success can be a matter of family connections.
Career Failure. Careerism may result in fast-track rapid promotions and short-term job assignments but derailment later at higher levels because of failure to develop competencies to perform at higher levels of management and to align self-interests with the needs of the organization (Kovach, 1986). According to a comparison by their superiors of 86 successful senior managers and 83 who had been derailed, Lombardo, Ruderman, and McCauley (1987) found that the termination of career advancement was seen to be due to personal flaws that did not show up quickly as the fast tracker moved from one assignment to another but became visible only when higher-level complexities were faced. These managers may not have been politically astute, able to think strategically, or able to make high-quality decisions in the face of ambiguous conditions, or they may have lacked leadership competencies. Also, the derailed managers were more likely to be abrasive, untrustworthy, and unstable. Early remedial action, feedback, coaching, and mentoring might have helped some of those who were sidetracked. Along with personal development, haphazard, short-time job-hopping needs to be discouraged. Instead, systematic moves are needed to increase one’s experience in various aspects of an organization, with successive broadening increases in responsibility lasting up to two years (Reibstein, 1986). Leaves of absence can prove costly to a manager regardless of the reason, whether due to illness, family responsibilities, education, or the call to active duty of a military reservist or a member of the National Guard. Among 11,815 managers, leaves of absence subsequently resulted in fewer promotions and smaller salary increases (Judiesch & Lyness, 1999).
Costs to the Organization. Careerism among an organization’s personnel can create a heavy burden, in both the private and public sectors. For example, careerism was seen by Hauser (1984) to degrade the effectiveness of the U.S. military services. In peacetime, there is an absence of lateral entry from higher-level civilian positions into the military, which results in a shortage of credible challenges to whatever is the conventional wisdom in the military. Careers tend to be short. The ideal officer is a generalist, not a specialist. Transfers are frequent; advancement is rapid for many. Coupled with early retirement, the transitory aspects of military careers contribute to conformity and avoidance of risks. These tendencies are further reinforced by the military’s centralization of evaluation and “whole man” concepts of promotion.
A career in a bureaucracy can be hurt by one bad mistake. Career-oriented managers have to avoid “rocking the boat.” Few dare to be whistle-blowers who may be ostracized or lose their jobs. As a consequence, the organization may suffer from failure to uncover a serious problem.
The Kellogg Foundation invested heavily in its National Fellowship Program under the assumption that leadership skills can be taught, learned, and developed. Leaders can benefit from exposure to diverse ideas, cultures, and approaches to problem solving and time for disciplined reflection (Sublett, 1995–96, pp. 1, 2). The widespread belief in leadership training was noted by Alpander (1986), who found that more than 80% of the first-level supervisors in 155 Fortune 500 companies are asked to attend in-house training programs of one to four hours at least once a year; 75%, programs that last 5 to 12 hours; and 37%, programs that last 13 to 40 hours. Almost all the supervisors participate in such a longer program at least once in five years. Thirty-four low-performance Indian employees and their 12 supervisors showed improvements in pre-post assessments from a program that featured an awareness effort followed by personal workshops for the low-performing employees and training for the supervisors in mentoring, counseling, and supervision. The employees improved in overall job performance, discipline, adaptability, morale, interpersonal relations, and self-esteem (Subramanian & Rao, 1997).
Without taking the trouble to examine the available research, critics continue to argue that leadership training lacks theoretical or empirical grounding, is seldom evaluated, and is faddish, depending more on faith than on facts (Rice, 1988). Following a comprehensive review, Latham (1988, p. 574) strongly disagreed:
The scientific leadership training literature is not dominated by fads. … [S]elf-regulation techniques, Leader Match, role motivation theory, LMX, and double-loop learning have been systematically evaluated for more than a decade, and their evaluation is on-going … these leadership training programs are grounded in theory … the training programs have been subject to repeated investigations; and … the training has been evaluated empirically. Many of the evaluations included follow-up data collected from three months to five years subsequent to the training. Moreover, the dependent variables for evaluating the training programs included observable behaviors.
Numerous scientific comparisons of trained and untrained managers have been completed to ascertain the extent to which the trained but not the untrained managers changed their attitudes and behaviors, used what they learned, and contributed to more effective operations of their organization. Nevertheless, it may be that the perception that there has been little evaluation of leadership training is due to the large amount of training that occurs and the extent to which most such training is evaluated cursorily by asking the trainees how satisfied they were with the experience. So although the number of published research comparisons is large, it seems small in contrast to the actual amount of training that is provided. The large body of published research provides confidence in the theoretical underpinnings and factual substantiation of the conclusions reached. We have come a long way from the earliest reports of leadership training in industry and the armed services, which were primarily statements about the value of leadership training, descriptions of programs, and discussions of problems.5
Are the returns on investment worth the costs of training? Keith and Gresso (1997) found a higher objective profitability for the firms among 57 Fortune 500 organizations that used newer training methods. Watson Wyatt Worldwide (Anonymous, 1999) completed an analysis of the increase in market value for three and five years of 405 large companies linked to their improvements in their human resources, much of it associated with their leadership. Greater shareholder value accrued 10.1% from improved recruiting excellence; 9.2% from improvements in clear rewards and accountability; 7.8% from enhanced teamwork, workplace collegiality, and flexibility; and 4.0% from the increased integrity of its communications. But increasing the amount of general training programs and 360-degree feedback resulted in reduced market value. General training was thought to prepare trainees for their next job rather than their current one.
What do managers say they want from a training session? An unexpected answer was obtained by one study. Using Kirkpatrick’s 1959 rubric for valuing training (content applicability and importance), Lingham (2003) found, to his surprise, according to regression analysis, that managers regarded gaining new knowledge as four times as important as the applicability of the learning.
Whatever the education or training effort, its effectiveness in improving leadership performance depends first on identifying what needs improvement and then demonstrating or helping trainees or students learn how to change their perceptions, cognitions, attitudes, and behavior. Experiences must be provided in which the trainees can exhibit the appropriate leadership. Instructors, observers, and other trainees can give the trainees feedback about the adequacy and effects of their efforts (Bass & Vaughan, 1966). But much hinges on the correct identification of the trainees’ needs for learning. Moreover, there are two other necessary prelearning conditions: the trainees’ desire to know and the trainees’ sense of role (Akin, 1987). The organization will benefit if the leadership training begins at the top and works its way downward. Karseras (1997) suggests that this is even more important when transformational rather than transactional leadership is being taught. Dealing with what learning is needed has to be continuing. Competence in the activity is an important aspect of performing well as a manager, according to 906 incumbents in 50 different managerial positions in a telecommunications company. Leadership training calls for more than just learning concepts but concepts that are put into practice in observable behaviors that can generate feedback from others (Howard & Wellins, 1994, p. 33). Needs assessment must reflect the extent to which the organization has been delayered, networked, and increased in horizontal relations (Bartlett & Goshal, 1997).
Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches. The assessment of needs can be initiated in the organization from the top down or from the bottom up. An illustrative top-down approach began with informal meetings with senior management to identify the training and developmental needs of British social work managers. Priorities were then established among the 15 identified skills by the 66 managers below them. Sharp differences had to be taken into account between the openness of the subordinate managers and their superiors (Leigh, 1983). The training requirements for transformational leadership by high-flying middle managers in financial institutions in London were identified by 20 senior training managers. They cited the need for enhancement of coaching skills, creativity, production and communication of vision, generation of trust and respect, and a balance in risk taking (Karseras, 1997). An illustrative bottom-up approach began in a large Texas human resources agency with a survey of 636 subordinates’ evaluations of the supervisory styles of their immediate superiors. From these evaluations, a plan for improved supervision was extracted (Russell, Lankford, & Grinnell, 1984). The importance of using both superiors’ and subordinates’ assessments of needs was seen in a survey of approximately 7,000 first-and second-level white-and blue-collar supervisors that found the supervisors to be overly confident about their own human relations skills (Bittel & Ramsey, 1983). Supervisors have biased perceptions of consideration; subordinates’ descriptions tend not to be as favorable as the supervisors’ self-descriptions (Weissenberg & Kavanagh, 1972; Bass & Yammarino, 1989). At the same time, the supervisors were much less confident about how well they could stimulate improvements in productivity.
Training officers differ considerably about the appropriate source of the assessment of their needs of their higher-ups or their subordinates. The previously mentioned 155 training officers in different Fortune 500 companies were surveyed by Alpander (1986) concerning the training needs of first-line supervisors. A third of the respondents thought that the need of a given supervisor for training should be decided by his or her immediate boss; 18% felt the decision should be made by higher-ups; and 14%, by the staff. Others mentioned volunteering and various forms of joint decision making. Clearly, some combination of sources makes the most sense. Peterson and McClear (1990) conducted a multilevel, multi-method approach of felt needs for training, starting with 23 senior managers who completed career plots for themselves and listed critical incidents of effective and ineffective middle managers that showed they were more in agreement than they thought. In both methods, they averaged 50% of their time using human skills and the other time split between using technical and conceptual skills. The average human skills at work for critical incidents were judged as close to 60%, with 40% again split between technical and conceptual skills. The results were consistent with a survey of the 449 usable responses of midlevel and lower-level managers. They ranked “acting consistently and inspiring subordinates” among the first three most important training needs. Included by management levels in the first ten training needs in importance were emphasizing performance, communication, planning, and organizing.
Needed Contents of Training and Development Programs. Although one might argue that some of the contents of most or all of the preceding chapters should be included in leadership training, the programs are much more limited. For instance, Alpander asked the training officers to indicate what should be and has been included in first-line supervisory training programs. According to the officers and 155 respondents, the content actually included in their own first-line supervisory training programs was as follows: how to feed back the results of performance evaluations to employees (92%), how to delegate (90%), how to improve listening skills (83%), how to improve personal leadership effectiveness (80%), and how to encourage and obtain subordinates’ participation in decision making (74%). At least 70% also identified as most representative of the content of their training program: how to make the work environment conducive to self-motivation, how to improve the quality of the product, how to ensure that established goals are perceived as realistic and relevant by employees, how to assign specific duties to employees, and how to assist employees to understand their role in relationship to the company’s overall objectives.
Programs to teach particular concepts and models of leadership such as those described in earlier chapters clearly include content about the concepts and models being taught. Many of these will be discussed later. Joynt (1981–1982) expressed an additional educational requirement for managers: they need to learn how to do research and become “intelligent consumers.” They need to be able to examine which theories are relevant and applicable to their own circumstances and which are not.
Accentuate the Positive. Thirty years before Martin Seligman (1998) pointed out the advantages of positive psychology in place of emphasizing the negative approach to stimulating and guiding behavior by reducing needs, Don Clifton stressed concentrating on one’s strengths rather than weaknesses. Building on personal strengths rather than managing around weaknesses was a direction in training supported by interviews with 2 million managers in 63 countries by the Gallup Organization. Remediation of weaknesses is not strength-building. The greatest room for growth is not in the areas of greatest weaknesses, but rather in strengths. Strengths include talents that often appear early in life. They reflected what we will strive for, what we do best, what work gives us the most satisfaction, and what we can learn most quickly. Gallup provided a standardized instrument, the StrengthsFinder, to assess strengths in terms of 34 themes from achiever to woo (the desire to win over other people to your side) (Buckingham & Clifton, 2001).
Luthans, Luthans, Hodgetts, et al. (2001) accented the positive in a formalized program (PAL) of four components of would-be effective leaders: realistic optimism, emotional intelligence, confidence, and hope. Confidence and self-efficacy from previous successes and vicarious modeling of other successful leaders moved leaders to choose stretch goals, perseverance, and resilience. From hope came a sense of agency or determination to succeed in achieving selected goals and the belief in the ability to generate alternative ways to reach the goals
According to Schneider (2001), realistic optimism called for (1) being lenient about past failures to meet expectations and accepting what cannot be changed; (2) appreciation for the present, concentrating on the positive aspects of the current situation; and (3) opportunity seeking for the future. The leader’s assignment was a challenge rather than a problem. Seligman (1998) added that when faced with a severe challenge the leader needed to deal with self-defeating beliefs by identification, reflection, and diagnosis to prove the belief inaccurate according to reliable information or to replace the disturbing belief with a more constructive, accurate one.
Emotional intelligence was considered in Chapter 5 as a complex trait. But it can also be a state of mind. Faced with problem situations, leaders can learn to cope effectively by using emotional intelligence. Goleman (2000) suggested that emotional intelligence was central to effective leadership. Emotionally intelligent leadership, self-aware and empathic, creates a climate of trust.
Training may not be needed as much as a change of facilities, resources, or organizational policies. Organizational policies and practices may be at fault, not the performance of individual leaders. The burden for improvement should not be shifted to individual managers, who will be frustrated only because their attempts to improve themselves do not matter as long as the organization as a whole remains unchanged (Dreilinger, McElheny, Rice, & Robinson, 1982).
Off-the-job leadership training can be obtained from didactic and experiential training. Didactic training includes lectures and readings. Experiential training includes discussions and role playing. Games and simulations can be used along with management in-baskets to provide scenarios of mock or real situations. Computer-assisted interactive programs can be applied, as well as much less structured sensitivity training. Stimulated by social learning theory, behavior role modeling can provide an integration of didactic and experiential approaches.
Among the methods to be examined here, lectures are the least popular with training directors (Carroll, Paine, & Ivancevich, 1972). Nonetheless, a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of management training programs by Burke and Day (1986) found that lectures had a positive value. Discussion groups are relied on heavily in most leadership programs even when many lecture, film, and other didactic presentations are used. Lectures (or their off-the-job leadership training surrogates—films, audio programs, videotapes, video discs, Web-based programs, and television) can arouse audiences, provide information, and stimulate thinking. These prepared programs have the advantage of making use of master lecturers and performers, carefully worked-out scripts, and standardization and development based on evaluative tests.
Audiovisual aids to lectures have improved greatly in the past half century. Close detail can be shown. Animation and special effects can be put to good use. Music and artwork can provide desired emphases. Interviews with real model leaders can be presented. But without an interactive program, the easy interaction of discussion is absent. A broad range of leadership cases is found in the library of 80 films at Hartwick College drawn from great works of drama, philosophy, history, and biography. Participants write down the leadership issues and themes they observe, which are then discussed (Clemens, 2000). Films and videotapes are also prepared with vignettes to illustrate behaviors fitting with concepts of leadership such as the four factors of transformational leadership (Bass & Avolio, 1992).
Most comparisons of lecture versus discussion approaches to instructing leaders to change their ways of behaving suggest that lectures and surrogates are more effective if combined with guided discussion of the issues in small groups, particularly if attitudes have to change before the new ways of leading are accepted and adopted by trainees. Discussion provides experience in working with others to reach decisions (L. A. Allen, 1957). The experience can promote the potential leadership of the members by preparing them to use group discussion to reach effective decisions. Again, Riegel (1952) suggested that case discussions, in particular, can provide experience in objective ways of thinking about common leadership problems. The need to study issues in terms of possible causes and effects is emphasized. Trainees exchange and evaluate each other’s solutions to such problems. They develop an awareness of the need for more than single, simple answers to complex problems.
Maier (1953), among others, demonstrated the effectiveness of training using problem-solving discussions. He compared the performance of 176 trained supervisors with 144 untrained ones. The supervisors with eight hours of training in groups were found to be more likely to bring about acceptance of change in their groups. Argyris (1965) used lectures and case discussions in the laboratory training of senior executives. No significant change followed the lectures, but some measures of skill in interpersonal relations improved after the case discussions.
Discussions may be ineffective poolings of ignorance, or they can be adequately stimulated, directed, and provided with resources to promote learning. Mann and Mann (1959c) compared the effects of free-discussion groups and task-directed groups on behavior as described by members. Members of task-directed discussion groups changed significantly more than did those in free-discussion groups in friendliness, desirability as a friend, leadership, attainment of goals, cooperativeness, and general adjustment. Nevertheless, numerous reports failed to confirm the expectation that discussions were more effective than lectures. Early on, DiVesta (1954) compared lectures and group discussions as vehicles for training in human relations and found them to be equally effective. However, the discussion groups did show slight gains in favorable attitudes toward initiating structure. Mahoney, Jerdee, and Korman (1960) compared case analyses, group discussions, and lectures as methods for training in management development and likewise found no significant difference among the methods. All the groups gained in a test of knowledge as a result of practice.
Both Discussions and Lectures Can Be Useful. Experiments have focused on the wrong issue. Discussions and lectures are suitable for different objectives, different situations, and different personnel. As a result of a research survey on leadership training, Filley and Jesse (1965) developed a set of hypotheses setting forth the conditions under which more didactic, trainer-oriented, training and more discussion-like, trainee-oriented, training are effective. Burke and Day’s (1986) meta-analysis found that both lectures and a combination of lectures and discussions could be useful in management education. House (1965) studied the attitudes of 43 managers toward trainee-oriented (more discussion) and trainee-oriented (more lecture) training and found that 24 preferred a combination of the two methods, while 12 preferred trainee-oriented and seven preferred trainer-oriented training.
Discussions reinforce lectures. Discussions are useful when a lecture needs clarification and amplification. Learning from a lecture or surrogate is facilitated if it is followed by small “buzz groups” to share opinions, raise questions, and consider alternatives. The conclusions of each buzz group can be be shared with the other buzz groups and the trainer. This promotion of two-way communication increases trainees’ motivation and enables them to test their understanding. Teleconferencing makes it possible for one instructor to lecture or to conduct training discussions with groups of leadership trainees at different sites. However, what is needed for such teleconference training is ways to maintain the trainees’ attention in the absence of personal contact with the trainer. The trainees have to be willing and able to communicate back to the distant trainer and to learn from what has happened in other groups. High-quality graphics are also required, and a face-to-face meeting with the trainer is desirable (Smeltzer & Davey, 1988).
Various methods of social and behavioral adjustments, developed by psychiatrists and social and clinical psychologists, were adapted to the training of leaders. Psychodrama and sociodrama, originated by Moreno (1955) in the 1930s, require participants (alone or with other actors) to act out various leadership problems under different conditions of audience participation in discussion groups (Lippitt, Bradford, & Benne, 1947). Role playing is a variant. It requires one member to play the role of leader and other members to play the roles of followers. The purpose of playing a role, rather than reading or talking about a solution to an interpersonal problem without a script, is to improve learning and retention and to promote transfer from the learning situation to the leadership performance on the job. Bradford and Lippitt (1952) suggested that interpersonal skills may be hard to teach by providing only verbal or intellectual reasons for behaving in a certain way without actually helping to produce the ability to behave in the desired way. Didactic approaches, by themselves, may reduce successful leadership behavior by adding to anxiety rather than to understanding.
Benefits. Role playing quickly became one of the most popular leadership training methods. Many possible uses were seen for it. Trainees could practice what they eventually had to do. Role playing could serve as a diagnostic technique. Group discussion following the role playing might focus on examining specific interchanges experienced in the role plays. Different ways of solving problems could be tested by role players. Other trainees could gain vicariously from observing the success or failure of various attempts during role plays. Standards could be set for handling specific situations (J. R. P. French, 1944b).6
As expected, Lonergan (1958) and Lawshe, Brune, and Bolda (1958) observed that participants in role playing tended to regard it as beneficial in increasing their understanding of human relations problems. Furthermore, the latter found that about twice as many participants preferred the leader role to the follower role. Similarly, Mann and Mann (1959a, b) demonstrated that experience in role playing improved role-playing ability, as judged by the individual, other role players, and observers. When they compared ratings of participants’ behavior during role playing and group discussions, they found that the participants improved more in interpersonal adjustment after role playing than after group discussion.
Role playing appears to add to leaders’ skills in dealing with human relations problems. For example, Solem (1960) arranged for small teams drawn from 440 supervisors to meet either in 22 case discussion groups or in 23 multiple role-playing exercises. They role-played or discussed one of two problems concerning either the assignment of a new truck to a crew of utility repair personnel or how to change a work procedure. When role-playing the new-truck problem, a participant took the part of the crew’s supervisor and another acted as a repair employee. In the new-truck case discussion, the teams talked about solutions to the problem. The change-of-work-procedure problem was handled similarly as a role play or case discussion. Among the role-playing teams, 46% developed integrated new solutions to the problems. That is, instead of assigning the new truck to the employee with the oldest truck, they replaced the oldest truck but enabled each employee to switch to a newer truck. But only 15% of the case discussants did likewise. More integrated solutions were also developed for the role played change-of-work procedures than for the case discussion.
Contingencies. The positive effects of role playing depended on a variety of circumstances. For instance, Lawshe, Bolda, and Brune (1959) studied five groups under different conditions of feedback. They found that role playing and subsequent discussion increased the participants’ sensitivity and orientation toward employees when the participants were required to criticize their own performance and when the human relations point of view was presented to them in a strong, emotional manner. Similarly, Harvey and Beverly (1961) found that role playing had a significant positive effect on changes of opinion, but authoritarian participants gained more from role playing than did those who were not authoritarian. However, Elms and Janis (1965) found that counter-norms were accepted to a high degree only under conditions of overt role playing (as opposed to nonovert role playing) and only if large monetary rewards were paid. Trittipoe and Hahn (1961) studied participants in role-playing groups and problem-solving groups. Both observers and followers rated participants higher in role playing if they also rated them higher in problem solving. In turn, those who were rated higher in both were rated higher in leadership and class standing.
Some experiments that were less favorable to role playing were also completed. Mann and Mann (1960) compared the experience of participants in role-playing and task-oriented groups. Contrary to their hypothesis, they observed that participants in the task-oriented problem-solving groups changed more in leadership and general adjustment than those in the role-playing groups. In addition, Hanson, Morton, and Rothaus (1963) found that role-playing situations involving the evaluation of followers’ personality traits induced a critical posture in the leader and a submissive role for followers, whereas working on a problem in goal setting and planning permitted followers to be more active. In a study of 200 military officer trainees, Tupes, Carp, and Borg (1958) noted that the ability to play roles was not related to ratings of leadership effectiveness but to personality scores. In the aforementioned experiments, both role reversal and multiple role playing were used extensively.
Role Reversal. When supervisors appear to be unable to appreciate the views of subordinates, they may be asked to play the role of subordinate while someone else plays the role of supervisor. Supervisors in such role reversals may gain insight into what is affecting their subordinates. Furthermore, having to verbalize an opposing position promotes the shift toward that new viewpoint (Bradford & Lippitt, 1952; Speroff, 1954).
Multiple Role Playing. An audience is divided into small teams, and each team member receives instructions to play a particular role. Following the role plays within each team, the audience reassembles and shares experiences (Maier & Zerfoss, 1952). The different teams can be given different instructions, and the effects of these differences on what occurs during the interactions among the players are then revealed during the critique by the audience after the groups reassemble as a whole.
Role Playing Combined with Video Feedback. Video feedback of role plays has become commonplace in leadership training. Illustrative of the use of video replay was a training program of American overseas advisers. They viewed a video of their interactions with an actor who was trained to play the role of a foreigner. The trainees’ performance was critiqued as they watched the video. Learning was more effective and was retained longer in the videotaped role-playing group than in a control group that only read the training manual about the same issue (P. H. King, 1966).
Ivancevich and Smith (1981) compared role playing and videotaped feedback with a lecture and role playing without videotaping and with a control group without training. They evaluated the performance of 60 sales managers in dealing with their sales representatives in clarifying goals, openness, giving information, and supportiveness in simulated goal-setting interviews before and after training. In addition, surveys of the 160 sales representatives three months after training found that improvement had indeed been greatest for the managers who were trained with video feedback in clarifying goals and supportiveness. But role playing without video feedback was as successful as role playing with videotaped feedback in improving openness and the giving of information. And according to the representatives, both training groups of managers did equally better than the control group in giving feedback and challenging the representatives. The sales representatives in the trained groups also did better than the sales representatives of the control group of untrained managers in increasing orders they received per sales presentation, but no differences were obtained in the new accounts generated by the sales representatives of the trained and untrained groups of managers. In all, video feedback following training appeared to do as well as or better than traditional role playing in improving the managers’ performance in its effects on the sales representatives. Both trained groups of managers generally showed such improvements in contrast to the untrained control groups of managers. Videotaping provides models for role plays. Models in supportive environments are important for learning desired performance from role playing (Sims & Lorenzo, 1992).
Availability. Role plays can be packaged for self-administration by the role players.7 For example, Shackleton, Bass, and Allison (1982) provided participants with a booklet of self-administering instructions that made it possible for them to experience and obtain results comparing the five leadership styles: directive, negotiative, consultative, participative, and delegative—presented in Chapter 18. Packaged video programs and interactive computer programs can create highly realistic settings and role requirements for training.
Facsimiles of real organizations and managerial work are created figuratively and literally as reproductions that sample real or fictitious processes. Organizational games are simulations with rules in which one can compete with opposing players against standards. The simulations and games can be used as learning experiences, assessment, and research.
In-Baskets. Participants are given a booklet that essentially reproduces the contents of a manager’s in-basket, along with some general information about the organization in which the manager is located. Each participant has to decide what actions to take to dispose of the items before leaving on a trip (Frederiksen, 1962a, b). Good performance is associated with a good sense of priorities, planning ahead, and the appropriate use of available information (Zoll, 1969). Discussions can be held about the responses to the in-basket items. Butler and Keys (1973) reported comparisons between 33 first-line supervisors who took a traditional course on the fundamentals of supervision and 30 supervisors who carried out a series of group discussions based on their handling of in-basket items. The traditional course resulted in no significant improvement in tested knowledge on the How Supervise? (File & Remmers, 1971) or the Supervisory Inventory on Human Relations (Kirkpatrick, 1954). But the in-basket discussion group improved significantly on both instruments. Commensurate with the significant gains in knowledge registered by the in-basket participants in the next several months back on the job, their subordinates reported more changes for the in-basket discussion participants in their behavior as supervisors, particularly in their “people orientation” and in innovation on Marvin’s (1968) Management Matrix. Little or no such change was found for those who took the traditional course on the principles of leadership. Cases can be recast into in-basket tests and games. For example, ED/AD/EX, used in training programs in the United States, Spain, and India, incorporates interpersonal, strategic, and value aspects of the environment in which a school principal has to operate (Immegart, 1987).
Games and Simulations. Organizational, institutional, and business games are living cases. Trainees must make sequential decisions and then live with them (Leavitt & Bass, 1964). Outcomes from leadership performance have fairly rapid consequences. Success and failure are more fully objective and observable than is true for role playing in general. More than 30,000 executives participated in one or more of the hundred or so business games that appeared in the first five years following the introduction by the American Management Association of its Top Management Decision Simulation in 1956 (L. Stewart, 1962). The Carnegie Mellon game was an early example of a business simulation of three soap companies working in competition with each other in a common market. These prototype business games and most of their successors confront teams of players with sets of decisions that require them to decide at each successive play how much to budget for raw materials, plant, equipment, advertising, research, and labor. Computer assistance helps register the distribution of players’ quarterly expenditures and investments for each company as well as calculate their stock prices and return on assets (ROA) as they compete. Players usually need to make decisions on what prices to set for their products, whether to borrow money, and whether to build plants. They may negotiate with “suppliers” and “union officials.” When the game is used for leadership training, teams may compete against one another or against a computer model. Videotapes were made of the elected presidents of 27 “companies,” each with eight MBA students who took other management positions. The simulated companies ran for 12 quarters. Companies with transformational presidential leadership produced higher ROAs. A bankruptcy could be attributed to poor presidential leadership.
Organizational simulations such as UPPOE create leadership problems. For instance, player-managers literally have to obtain the cooperation of player-workers to produce, for a “market,” paper products made by cutting, assembling, and stapling. Players can be hired and fired; they can speed up, slow down, or strike. Tangible products and raw materials can be processed, bought, and sold (Bass, 1964).
MG 101. Closer to real management is MG 101, an undergraduate course created at Bucknell University (J. A. Miller, 1991, 1995a). Half the course time and grade is spent in the usual readings and lecture-discussions of an introductory management class. In coordination, the other half is dedicated to twice-weekly laboratories. Technical manuals are provided in accounting, finance, marketing, operations, and personnel, supported by guest lecturers. Each company organizes itself to choose and complete a real community service, such as designing and constructing a county storage and distribution center for food and clothing. Or the company chooses a business project that will be financed to produce and/or sell real items, such as T-shirts, calendars, or coffee, profitably. A business plan is prepared and presented to a board of directors for approval. The activity is completed with the presentation of a final report to a large audience of students and faculty. The course was begun in the early 1980s; by 1995, more than 4,000 undergraduates at Bucknell and other institutions had completed it (J. A. Miller, 1995b).
The Looking Glass. The Looking Glass, developed by the Center for Creative Leadership (McCall & Lombardo, 1982), is a carefully constructed simulation of the organization of a real glass manufacturer. It attempts to reproduce faithfully in simulation the required arrangements among the managers of the real company. Relevant financial data and information about products are included and must be factored into communications and decision making. Up to 20 executive positions are filled in the top four levels of the simulated glass manufacturer. The training involves a period, such as a day, to complete the simulation exercise and a subsequent period for individual and group feedback. Learning is enhanced by systematic feedback of the performance of participants in the simulation. But here there is a need to “teach for transfer,” with structure to support the transfer to the back-home job of what has been learned in the simulation, according to Kaplan, Lombardo, and Mazique’s (1985) six-month follow-up evaluation back on the job. Howell (1991) presented a case of a class of MBA students who were managing the Looking Glass Company when, unknown to Howell (the instructor), one student decided on his own to be so disruptive that he would be “fired.” Howell discussed what was learned from the case and the feedback afterward.
War Games. These have been used by the military to identify hypotheses and challenging assumptions as well as for training (Killebrew, 1998). War games can vary from board games and computer games to complex simulations with high fidelity and real soldiers in training to engage trained soldiers acting as enemies. An example is the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) at Fort Polk in Louisiana. Whole U.S. Army infantry battalions spend 11 days and nights in the field in a “battle” with a highly trained “enemy.” It is almost like real combat except that hits are registered electronically, determining “wounds” and “kills.” The platoons have to move into defensive positions, defend them, and then attack. If they are airborne battalions, they may parachute or helicopter into the area. Each platoon and unit at higher and lower levels is shadowed by a trained observer-controller, who provides coaching and feedback. After-action reviews are held frequently (Avolio, 1999).
Evaluations. Despite the widespread use of games and simulations, evaluations of them are hard to come by. However, Raia (1966) showed that a business game, simple or complex, can add more to performance on a final examination about case problems than can discussions and reading about the cases. In addition to providing training opportunities for participants, simulations and games can generate valid research about the processes used by the players and the results can suggest real-life outcomes depending on the fidelity of the simulation—that is, how accurately it matches real life.
Programmed Instruction. With this application, instruction is programmed into concrete steps. Trainees must generate or choose the correct answer to a question before proceeding to the next question. Efforts have been made to use programmed instruction to teach effective human relations. For example, the American Management Association has sponsored PRIME, a programmed textbook for training supervisors. Other examples are “cultural assimilators,” programmed texts that have been developed and evaluated to teach leadership and good human relations relevant to a designated culture (Fiedler, 1968).
It is difficult to write an effective program if what is to be taught involves shades of opinion, sensitivity to fuzzy socioemotional issues, and unclear ideas about the order of steps in which learning can take place (Bass & Barrett, 1981). Nevertheless, Hynes, Feldhusen, and Richardson (1978) obtained positive results in a controlled experimental study of a three-stage program to train high school students to be better leaders. Programmed instruction, coupled with lectures, yielded improvements in understanding and attitudes in the first stage, whereas experiential approaches failed to do so in the second and third stages. Positive effects have also been obtained with cultural assimilators (Fiedler, 1968).
Electronic Learning (E-Learning). This is learning using the Web, computers, virtual classrooms, distance learning, and/or digital collaboration. In the twenty-first century, e-learning has become the new form of correspondence course. Videotapes and films can be included as part of computer-regulated programs and can be incorporated in training as stimuli, response alternatives, and feedback.8 For instance, Decision Point: A Living Case Study is an interactive computer program that provides the trainee with a high-fidelity audiovisual simulation of the different phases of managerial experiences. It begins with the trainee being offered and accepting a position with a firm to help manage its marketing problems. Political issues arise, along with personnel grievances, conflicts among departments, and questions of credit policy. Ten decisions need to be made. In each instance, four alternatives are provided. A written debriefing is provided by the computer about the adequacy of each of the chosen decisions, along with explanations.
Preston and Chappel (1988) contrasted randomly assigned groups of undergraduates to computer-based training, computer-based training with videotaped vignettes, and group discussions with the videotaped vignettes. They found that any one of the three training methods could improve performance on tests of knowledge about principles of leadership equally well. DeRouin, Fritzsche, and Salas (2003) have offered research-based guidelines for learner control and learnerled instruction in e-learning. Learner control can include pacing, number of examples and practice, sequence of topics, and course content and context. The amount of control should be limited to that required for effective instruction. Too much control, requiring too many decisions, may distract the learner from the subject matter to be learned. Guidelines include: (1) Learners need to spend enough time to understand how much control they have. (2) Learners need to understand that learnerled instruction is challenging. (3) Help needs to be provided by self-tests and feedback. (4) Learners differ in ability and experience and how well they can e-learn. (5) Learners should be allowed to skip rather than add extra instruction about the same content. Instead, the extra time should be spent on new instruction. (6) Learners should be allowed to choose their own real contexts for examples. (7) Learners need to be able to navigate backward and forward through the training program, with key links connecting directly to all the nodes or segments. (8) All the information necessary to solve a problem in a node should be provided in that node. (9) Connections between nodes may need to be explained with text to be understood. (10) Formatting needs to be consistent throughout the program. E-learning at the workplace or school may promote self-regulated lifelong learning.
Computer-Assisted Instruction (CAI). Hausser, Blaiwes, Weller, and Spencer (1974) described computer-assisted instruction (CAI), a technically advanced version of programmed instruction, to teach interpersonal skills to U.S. Navy commanders. Using the PLATO system and an instructional programming language, TUTOR, Hausser and Spencer (1975) applied CAI to interpersonal skill training in feedback, communication, goal setting, problem solving, decision making, effective rewards and punishments, and the use of power and authority. Compared to controls who received the same pre-and posttest assessments and were involved in the same duties as recruiting officers, those who were trained with CAI learned considerably more. By 1985, a survey of Fortune 500 firms indicated that more than half of them were already beginning to make use of CAI (Hassett & Dukes, 1986).
Behavior modeling involves instructions for mastering a skill demonstrated by a competent model (live or video) of mental and physical practice, follow-up, and over-learning to assist long-term retention. It is based on social learning theory. In contrast to the more “mindless” Skin-nerian operant learning or the emphasis on insightful discovery in learning, Bandura (1977) argued with experimental support that learning is facilitated if learning models are provided with information in advance of the consequences of engaging in a specific behavior. Action can be taken with foresight. People are more attentive and active in organizing what is to be learned if they are provided with models to follow. In observational learning, anticipation of a reinforcer influences not only what is observed but what goes unnoticed. Learning from the model is increased when the consequences of the model’s behavior are highly valued. To illustrate, videotapes of a positive model of leadership, obtained by Pescuric and Byam (1996) from interview information about the skills to be learned, were followed by a one-to-one practice and feedback on how well the skills were used. Groups of learners discussed how they would use the skills on the job.
Goldstein and Sorcher (1974) showed how, in theory, this approach could be applied to training first-line supervisors. Pilot experiments followed. Results were generally supportive (Kraut, 1976).9 For instance, in an experiment by Latham and Saari (1979), for two hours each week for nine weeks, 20 supervisors engaged in training that dealt with (1) orienting a new employee, (2) giving recognition, (3) motivating a poor performer, (4) correcting poor work habits, (5) discussing a potential disciplinary action, (6) reducing absenteeism, (7) handling a complaining employee, (8) decreasing turnover, and (9) overcoming resistance to change. Each session followed the same plan after an introduction of (1) a film showing a model supervisor effectively handling a situation, followed by a set of three to six learning points that were shown in the film immediately before and after the model was presented; (2) group discussion of the effectiveness of the model in exhibiting the desired behaviors (to promote retention); (3) practice in role-playing the desired behaviors in front of the entire class; and (4) feedback from the class about the effectiveness of each trainee in demonstrating the desired behaviors. The learning points shown in the film were posted in front of the trainee who played the role of supervisor. Points to use when handling a complaint included (1) avoiding responding with hostility or defensiveness; (2) asking for and listening openly to the employee’s complaint; (3) restating the complaint to achieve a thorough understanding of it; (4) recognizing and acknowledging the employee’s viewpoint; (5) stating one’s position nondefensively, when necessary; and (6) setting a specific date for a follow-up meeting. Positive reactions to the program were sustained over an eight-month period. In contrast to 20 supervisors in a control group, the experimental trainees scored significantly higher on a test of the knowledge necessary to transfer the principles learned in class to different types of job-related problems. The experimental trainees were also more effective in role plays resolving supervisor-employee problems and in earning higher evaluations of their job performance from their superiors one year after training than were the supervisors in the control group. They had been equivalent in rated performance with the control group one month before training.
Burke & Day (1986) concluded from a meta-analysis of evaluative studies, and a review by Latham (1989) showed that behavior modeling was an effective management training method. However, Yukl (1998) pointed out the many limitations of the research and applications. He suggested that behavior modeling was likely to work better for learning concrete behavior in a specific situation rather than developing flexible, adaptive behavior in a variety of situations. More studies are needed about whether the learning facilitated actual behavioral change back on the job.
Computer-Assisted Behavioral Modeling. Because behavioral modeling has discrete components and pursues a systematic series of steps, it lends itself readily to computer assistance. CAI behavioral modeling programs have been developed to help train supervisors. In these programs, supervisors operate interactively with a computer to learn how to orient new employees, deal with resentment, resolve conflicts, inform the union of a change, and terminate employees (Development Dimensions International, 1983).
Caveat. Fox (1989) unearthed 13 reports of the positive effects of using behavioral modeling to improve supervisory skills. Yet despite its effectiveness in promoting the learning of leadership behavior, behavioral modeling may produce varied and unwanted results. Manz and Sims (1986a) contrasted three separate modeling interventions for leadership behavior. Videotapes provided models of contingent-reward leadership, contingent-reprimand leadership, and goal-setting leadership for randomly selected students assigned to 10 leader-subordinate dyads. A fourth control group did not view any tape. Pre-post measures of the three styles of leadership behavior and the controls’ performance were obtained. Overall, modeling generated significantly more improvement than was observed under the control condition. As expected, the subordinates’ satisfaction with the leader increased with increased contingent reward (.61) and increased goal setting (.35) but not with the increased contingent reprimand. Moreover, the coefficients from path analyses showed that the contingent-reward model directly promoted contingent-rewarding leadership behavior (.21). However, the contingent-reprimand model not only resulted in increased reprimanding (.16) but also reduced contingent rewarding (−.55) and goal setting (−.43). Finally, the goal-setting model failed to enhance goal-setting leadership significantly and increased reprimanding leadership (.22). Thus the theoretical basis for the modeling has to be considered in determining whether behavioral role modeling may be productive or counterproductive. Hakel (1976), Locke (1977), and McGehee and Tullar (1978) cautioned against its un-critical adoption.
In addition to behavioral role modeling to cope with specific leadership problems, there is much training in the skills that are necessary to fulfill a leader’s responsibilities adequately. Goldstein (1980) noted the continuing work on the training of raters and the improving of performance evaluations by supervisors. He also found that much of what is available for evaluating training in leadership skills, such as how to handle disciplinary problems, is anecdotal. But illustrative of controlled experimental evaluations of such training was a small sample investigation by Douglas (1977), who examined the efficacy of the systematic training of group leaders using operationally defined leadership skills in a group interaction. Compared to the leaders in an alternate placebo group, those who were trained to use both the reflective-supportive (considerate) and the command-response (directive) styles employed these styles consistently and appropriately. The trained leaders also used the associated verbal responses more consistently and appropriately than did the leaders under the placebo condition. As with Manz and Sims’s (1986a) results, another finding was that the effects on the leaders’ behaviors overlapped regardless of the theoretical orientation, which suggests that when leadership skills are being taught, there are likely to be spillover effects across skills and orientations. Training leaders in one skill, such as how to use a particular verbal response style, may reduce or increase their ability to use another leadership style. Conceivably, leaders can simultaneously increase their integration of their task and relations orientation (as advocated in Chapter 19).
It was at a social workers’ conference on leadership in 1946 that Kurt Lewin and his graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology stumbled serendipitously into sensitivity training. The conferees found the students’ observations about the interpersonal processes that occurred during the conference to be more valuable to the conferees’ learning than the formal leadership topics that the conferees had discussed. The idea took root that all participants in discussion groups could become observers and that the sharing of their observations would provide insight into leadership processes in general. In addition, participants could learn about their adequacy in interaction with others and what they might do to improve. Subsequently, the learning process was facilitated by eliminating the formal agenda before a group convened (Bradford, Gibb, & Berme, 1964).
The group leader became a trainer. And, on the surface at least, the trainer abdicated the leadership role. The social vacuum that was created as a consequence of beginning without an agenda or a group leader revealed the individual participants’ differences in ability and willingness to attempt and succeed in initiating structure. The ambiguous situation gave participants the opportunity to try out new ways of carrying out various task and maintenance leadership activities that were of use to the group. The feedback from the other participant-observers reinforced the new attempts that worked well and indicated the inadequacy of other, less successful attempts to lead. For this reason, the situation was seen as a “laboratory,” a place for experimenting.
Trainers established themselves as ambiguous authority figures, provided group members with the information needed to analyze group processes, and encouraged participation and openness. They did not structure the group discussion; instead, they threw the entire burden of initiative back on the group members. Feedback sessions were used to suggest that the participants’ demands for direction and structure from the trainer inhibited the examination of group processes and the development of insight into role relationships.
Theory. Theoretical supports for sensitivity training and its variants are diverse. In addition to Lewin’s (1939) topological existentialism, they include analytic theory, Bion’s (1948, 1961) fight-or-flight analyses, Moreno’s (1955) sociopsychological focus, Berne’s (1964) transactional analysis, Perls’s (1969) gestalt therapy, Maslow’s (1965) humanistic psychology and Argyris’s (1976) single-and double-loop learning. In single-loop learning, leaders as well as followers seek little feedback from their environment that might confront their fundamental beliefs and behavior. The beliefs are self-sealing and self-fulfilling. There is little testing of them. Leaders learn only about what is comfortable for them to discuss. In double-loop learning, they are willing to confront their own perspectives and invite others to do so. They work through blind spots. They can learn through listening and reflecting on questions around their assumptions about their roles in the organization and their own and the organization’s goals.
Variants of Sensitivity Training. Numerous variants have been developed. Sensitivity (or laboratory) training using the T-(for training) group, focused on inter personal learning during the 1950s and onward. The encounter group, which arose in the 1960s, provided a more intensive experience in openness; the self-examination of hostilities, defenses, and feelings; self-awareness; and personal growth. Also in the 1960s, personal growth programs took on a life of their own to improve self-awareness and overcome personal obstacles to developing competence in leadership (Yukl, 1998). To increase transfer of training to the work situation, team building engaged people who work as a group, along with their supervisor, as a T-group in sensitivity training, but with issues relevant to work and organization.
Sensitivity training may begin with a task and structure, then gradually become less structured. A marathon nonstop training weekend may be used. Two or more trainers who meet with a much larger than ordinary cluster group may be employed. Many organizations developed unique programs, incorporating some aspects of the sensitivity training laboratory (Morton & Bass, 1964). Actually, many of the elements of sensitivity training, such as participation and feedback, have found their way into training and human resources management in general. They also can be seen in numerous self-development programs, ranging from group therapy to the physically demanding Outward Bound challenge programs. Sensitivity training has also been instrumented so that no trainer is needed. In such a case, all instructions come from written materials or directions, or directors outside the training group (Blake & Mouton, 1964). Sensitivity programs may require three hours to three weeks. They may run with once-a-week sessions. The numerous variants of sensitivity training all attempt to accomplish one or more of the following changes in attitude or behavior by the trainee-leaders: (1) greater sensitivity to the needs and desires of followers; (2) greater openness and sharing of information; (3) greater sharing of decision-making responsibilities with followers; (4) more intimate, friendly, and egalitarian interaction with followers; and (5) less structuring, personal dominance, and pushing exclusively for productive output.
Instrumented and Packaged Sensitivity Training. The standardization of techniques can increase the reliability and reduce the variability of results with sensitivity training. Groups can undergo standardized processes that involve instrumented, self-administered, repeated questionnaires for data gathering; analysis; discussion; role plays; in-basket simulations; cases; audiotaped or videotaped instructions; and other types of experiential exercises for sensitivity training. The instruments either create a process similar to a T-group, or focus on more specific socioemotional learning experiences. Seven standards are proposed for developing such “ready-to-use” learning programs: (1) a scientific review of what is known about the processes; (2) identification of the behavioral dimensions of consequence that are to be the subjects of learning; (3) effective reinforcement; (4) reliable and valid measures of change; (5) adequate follow-up; (6) the control of necessary antecedent conditions and associated consequences; and (7) adequate norms (Bass, 1977).
Blake and Mouton (1962a) pioneered the instrumentation of sensitivity training, the “most radical innovation in T-group training” (Weschler & Schein, 1962): they removed the trainer. The managerial grid training (Blake & Mouton, 1964) that emerged was widely adopted as a substitute for sensitivity training with trainers. Self-administered instrumental training was seen to give trainees greater responsibility for learning. It was expected to be more likely to be transferred. It gave participants more respect for systematic data analysis. It was cheaper to conduct (Shepard, 1964). Its content fit with theory and research on the need and ways for supervisors to integrate task-and-relations orientation.
Berzon, Reisel, and Davis (1969) evaluated a 10-session instrumented audiotape program for self-directed personal growth groups entitled Planned Experiences for Effective Relating (PEER). They reported a positive change in self-concept. Worden (1976) found that although no immediate personality differences could be detected between the experimental and control subjects, 25 of 67 youths who were subjected to PEER reported, in a six-month follow-up, that they had made use of leadership skills learned in PEER. Similarly, Vicino, Krusell, Bass, et al. (1973) evaluated the effects of PROCESS (Krusell, Vicino, Manning, et al., 1971, 1982), a program of eight exercises (12 in the 1982 revision), self-administered by booklet, for personal and interpersonal development. A field experiment using a holdout control procedure yielded results indicating that the undergraduate participants improved their concept of themselves, were more able to see themselves as their peers did, and reacted favorably to the total experience. Similar results were obtained with 219 members of a women’s religious order.
It would seem that less expensive instrumented approaches can be substituted for the more expensive T-group without much loss of effect. Whether either approach should be included in a leadership training program must take into account the question of whether the learning, even if it has salutary effects on the individual trainee, can be applied in the real-life setting to which the trainee returns. If not, it may be that Bamforth’s (1965) solution of incorporating sensitivity training and process learning into on-the-job activities is more efficacious.
Learning Outdoors. In 1941, a large merchant shipping line asked Kurt Hahn to set up a training program to try to reduce the poor survival rate of young sailors. He created an outdoor training program structured to help individuals discover and realize the potential of their inner resources, to reflect the dangerous environment in which they operated (Anonymous, 1995a). The leadership and team development of four six-man teams of Norwegian naval cadets were enhanced considerably by four days of experience in sinking boats and survival experience with limited resources. They were challenged with a variety of military and social problems (Polley & Eid, 1990).
The Office of Strategic Services assessment staff (1948) set up outdoor physical problems for assessment purposes that were adapted to sensitivity training, team building, and personal growth. Problems for the group and its leadership included figuring out how to safely cross a deep stream or how to get the entire group over a high wall without a ladder. Each member of the group might take a turn falling off a wall, depending on the group to break the fall. These kinds of outdoor situations were adopted for sensitivity training.
In sensitivity training outdoors, participants face psychological but not physical risks such as cliff climbing with ropes, so they have novel experiences they did not realize they could do. The novel tasks and the unusual environment make for readily remembered events for discussion and feedback about performance under stress. Focus is on management competencies. Connections are made to the workplace (Anonymous, 1995b). To increase the scope and realism of training, groups are taken to the outdoors, where physical problems need to be considered. Obviously, military training groups and sports teams practice outdoors. A wilderness experience can provide safe risk taking. Team building for an intact management team was expected to accrue from the cohesiveness developed from learning to trust others, sharing risks, and overcoming challenges. Personal growth was expected to accrue from increased confidence in success in dealing with risks (Williams, Graham, & Baker, 2002). Also expected was development of commitment to the organization and awareness of mutual strengths and weaknesses (McAvoy, Cragun, & Appleby, 1997) and improved conflict management (Wagner, Baldwin, & Roland, 1991). Outward Bound is an example of a physically challenging outdoor program that involves a group in increasingly difficult physical activities such as cooperating in scaling a wall, crossing a stream, or rappelling down a cliff in real or simulated wilderness conditions. Feedback after the activity discusses feelings and behavior with implications for leadership and organizational life (Yukl, 1998). Evaluations have reported improvement back home in participants’ self-concept (Marsh, Richards, & Barnes, 1987), teamwork (Baldwin, Wagner, & Roland, 1991), and retention of personnel (Gall, 1987).
Evaluations of Sensitivity Training. Most of the research concerned with the effects of sensitivity training has attempted to determine whether change has occurred. Although testimonials do not constitute evidence of consequence, Wedel (1957) surveyed 333 former participants in sensitivity training and found that they tended to regard the training as valuable in improving their human relations skills. Nonetheless, critics continually questioned whether these objectives were being met in sensitivity-training programs. Studies of the impact of sensitivity training on trainees’ attitudes, perceptions, and behavior yielded a mix of results. Likewise, the detailed examination of the impact of sensitivity training on the groups and organizations to which the trainees returned resulted in a complex of conclusions concerning the costs and benefits of the training. Cohesiveness may be increased, but performance may be impaired. It may be difficult to transfer what is appropriate in training to what is appropriate back on the job (Bass, 1968). Generalizations about the effects of sensitivity training are made difficult because of its many variations.
Changes in Trainees’ Attitudes. Although the results have been somewhat mixed, the majority of evaluations have indicated that sensitivity training results in significant changes in interpersonal attitudes: more favorable attitudes toward subordinates, a stronger human relations orientation, and greater awareness of interpersonal dynamics. For example, Bunker and Knowles (1967) and P. B. Smith (1964, 1975) reported significant changes in the attitudes of participants as a consequence of laboratory training. Schutz and Allen (1966) found that the effects of laboratory training resulted in more changes in the attitudes and personality of those in the experimental group than of those in the control group. Tests administered before and six months after training indicated more changes in feelings and behavior toward other people and toward themselves and more changes in the perceptions of others’ behavior and feelings toward themselves than occurred for control groups. The participants indicated greater friendliness, sensitivity, and tolerance toward others after training. When Golembiewski and Carrigan (1970) conducted a mild reinforcement session one year after the initial sensitivity training of managers, they found that changes in attitudes persisted over a period of 18 months for the group that received reinforcement. But Belasco and Trice (1969b) reported that the changes associated with training alone were small, whereas training combined with testing was more effective in producing changes. The most significant changes were in morale, self-concept, and role expectations. Asquith and Hedlund (1967) administered a before-and-after questionnaire to 20 management trainees in a chemical firm. They noted that although improvements in attitudes toward human relations practices were obtained, the participants exhibited no significant changes in attitudes toward consideration, initiation of structure, supervision, or management. Blake and Mouton (1966) studied managers and union officers from the same plant and found that instrumental sensitivity training resulted in significant improvements in the attitudes of both groups. But H. B. Stephenson (1966); Biggs, Huneryager, and Delaney (1966); and Asquith and Hedlund (1967) all obtained results indicating that laboratory training produced no significant changes in attitudes toward leadership behaviors, as measured by such instruments as the Leadership Opinion Questionnaire (LOQ).10 Similarly, Kernan (1963) obtained before-and-after responses to attitude and personality items from two experimental groups and a control group but found no significant changes in the attitudes or personalities of those in the T-groups or the control group.
Changes in Trainees’ Perceptions. In line with the primary objective of training to increase perceptual sensitivity, a content analysis by R. H. Solomon (1976) found leaders’ statements of the effects of the laboratory training of undergraduates to include increased personal awareness, improved interpersonal relations, and improvements, as well as frustrations, in their leadership skills. Bass (1962b) asked members of a training group to record their self-rated moods at five different intervals during sensitivity training. He found that skepticism decreased and depression increased for a while and then leveled off, but anxiety did not increase as expected.
Several studies were concerned with changes in self-concept and in perceptions of others. T. Gordon (1955) found that leader-trainees tended to describe their behavior in terms that were similar to their conception of an ideal leader. They stated that laboratory training produced changes toward greater conformity with such ideal behavior. Burke and Bennis (1961) reported that perceptions of actual self and ideal self were closer at the end than at the beginning of training. Bass (1962a) noted significant increases in perceptual sensitivity to interpersonal relations after training. Sensitivity was positively related to peer ratings of influence in the group. But Greiner, Leitch, and Barnes (1968) were unable to demonstrate that instrumented sensitivity training produced significant changes in trainees’ perceptions. Likewise, Kassarjian (1965) reported no significant changes in orientation toward self or others as a result of sensitivity training. A central problem here is that as trainees become more sensitive to the issues and dimensions of consequence, they also become much more modest about the adequacy of their attitudes and behavior. Thus, after a week of feedback from colleagues in instrumented sensitivity training workshops about their own concerns for people and productivity, there is a sharp decline from preworkshop self-ratings about the extent to which the trainees are 9,9, highly concerned in an integrated way about the productivity of people and their well-being. Among 647 participants, 59.8% saw themselves as 9,9 before the workshop but only 13.4% saw themselves as 9,9 at the end of the week (Blake, 1986).
Changes in Trainees’ Behavior. Typical of improvements reported were those found by Boyd and Ellis (1962). Each trainee’s supervisor, two of his peers, and two of his subordinates were interviewed in the sixth week and again in the sixth month following training at the Hydroelectric Power Commission of Ontario. Controls were also interviewed in the same manner. Improvements were noted in 64% of the sensitivity trainees but in only 23% of the controls. The trainees changed more than the controls in increased listening; better interpersonal understanding; better contributions at meetings; increased tolerance and flexibility; and, to a lesser extent, self-confidence and effective expression. Similarly, Bunker (1965b) questioned trainees and their coworkers one year after participation in a laboratory training program. The coworkers reported that the participants gained significantly more than did a control group in interpersonal skills, openness, and understanding of social relationships. Likewise, Morton and Bass (1964) studied 97 managers who listed more than 350 incidents of behavioral change during the six months following an instrumented laboratory experiment in management development. The most frequently mentioned changes dealt with improved working relationships and self-understanding.
M. B. Miles (1965) obtained results showing that sensitivity training resulted in the unfreezing of participation and greater receptivity to feedback. Change was also found in consideration and initiating structure (M. B. Miles, 1960). Buchanan and Brunstetter (1959) used T-group methods to train 60 engineers in supervisory positions. Afterward, subordinates evaluated the supervisors from the trained group as being more desirable supervisors than they did those from the control group. R. Harrison (1962) asked participants in laboratory training to describe themselves and 10 associates before and after training. The trained group increased the number of interpersonal and emotional words they used to describe themselves but not others.
In another study, R. Harrison (1966) found that 115 laboratory trainees, three months after training, used more terms indicating their awareness of interpersonal relations and fewer terms expressing the manipulation of behavior. In a similar fashion, Oshry and Harrison (1966) administered before-and-after tests to middle managers. The items in which changes occurred suggested that after training, the managers viewed themselves as more human and less impersonal, saw a closer connection between meeting personal needs and getting work done, and understood that they were a significant part of the problem, yet saw no connection between their new perceptions and how to translate them into action. These effects were strongest for those who participated most intensely in the laboratory training.
Harrison and Lubin (1955b) studied person-oriented and work-oriented participants in homogeneous and heterogeneous training groups. Person-oriented members were rated as behaving more expressively and warmly and as forming stronger ties to their homogeneous group. Contrary to the hypothesis, work-oriented members were perceived as learning more than person-oriented members. Members who preferred low structure exceeded those who preferred high structure in “understanding self” and “understanding others.” The members of the high-structure group believed themselves to be capable and active in discussion but avoided the examination of interpersonal relations. Although a majority of studies have shown that sensitivity training can induce changes in behavior, the effects appear to be moderated by the personalities of the trainees.
Effects on Group and Organizational Performance. The preceding studies were designed to determine whether sensitivity training results in changes in the attitudes or behavior of the trainees themselves. The most pragmatic criterion of the effect of training, however, is whether it results in changes in the performance or responses of the groups supervised by the leaders who have received sensitivity training. Unfortunately, the outcomes are complex and multiple. Thus when Blake, Mouton, and Fruchter (1962) factor-analyzed various measures of instrumented T-group outcomes, they found that group cohesion and group accomplishment loaded on separate factors. T-groups could increase cohesion at the expense of productivity. Blake, Mouton, Barnes, and Greiner (1964) studied the management of a large petroleum company engaged in instrumented training. They concluded that the employees’ productivity increased as a result of changes in the managers toward a 9,9 leadership style after they were trained. Miles, Milavsky, Lake, and Beckhard (1965) found that sensitivity training resulted in both changes in managers’ attitudes and the improved productivity of departments. Beckhard (1966) and Kuriloff and Atkins (1966) also attributed improved operating efficiency to the effects of T-group programs. Unfortunately, the controls in these studies were inadequate. The research was conducted during a long economic up-swing when business profits were increasing in general.
The Trainee and the Back-Home Organization Differences. Zenger (1974) made a strong case for integrating the assessment of managers with their training. L. R. Anderson (1990) suggested that high self-monitors could be more successful if they were taught how to improve their social and task skills and learn how their own behavior affects their followers. They needed to learn about team building, process consultation, and ways of improving their relations with others. For instance, high self-monitors would be expected to profit more as leaders from Hersey and Blanchard’s training in situational leadership. On the other hand, Anderson suggested that low self-monitors will profit more from changing their organizational environments. They should do better by training to change their relationships upward and downward to be compatible with their own dispositions. Learning about leader match (Fiedler & Maher, 1979) is illustrative.
Lennung and Ahlberg (1975) compared the gains of 17 managers who received sensitivity training with an untrained control sample five to seven months after training. Most striking were the greater variances of the trained compared to the untrained samples in attitudes, awareness, and observed and objectively measured behaviors. This variance suggested that the effects of training depended on individual differences and differences in the work and organizational situations to which trainees returned. Schein and Bennis (1965) studied a complex of organizational and personal variables related to perceived and observed change following sensitivity training. Verified change was defined as change reported by the trainee and two associates in the organization. The security and power of the trainee’s position in the organization and unfreezing by the trainee during training were significantly related to verified behavioral change. Prior anticipation of change by the trainee was negatively related to verified change.
Composition of the Training Group. The composition of sensitivity training groups has figured strongly in evaluative experiments. Illustrating this type of experiment, Harrison and Lubin (1965b) studied participants in groups that were homogeneous or heterogeneous in the personal attributes of the members. The finding that most learning occurred in heterogeneous groups was interpreted as suggesting that members’ feelings of cohesiveness and emotional satisfaction may not be appropriate criteria for evaluating the effects of training groups, since ordinarily, much more conflict tends to be experienced in heterogeneous groups once the polite facades have been removed. On the other hand, a number of commentators and a survey of participants and their superiors by Williams (1982) strongly advocated the need for a women-only management course in which many of the more subtle issues of socialization, discrimination, harassment, and influence can be discussed more openly than when both men and women are participants and instructors.
Attributes of the Trainer. Psathas and Hardert (1966) obtained results indicating that trainers in sensitivity training groups formulate implicit norms that indicate to members what the groups’ norms should be. Thus the trainers play a significant role in determining the groups’ values and norms. According to C. L. Cooper (1969), participants in sensitivity training tended to identify with the trainers when they thought the trainers were attractive. As a result, they became more like the trainers in attitude and behavior as training progressed. Zigon and Cannon (1974) found similarly that students in group discussions whose appointed leaders were seen as genuine and respected were more likely to transfer what was learned in the groups. Rosen, Georgiades, and McDonald (1980) found that the gain in a multiple-choice examination of leadership knowledge and principles among 39 groups of U.S., British, and Canadian trainees from the profit and nonprofit sectors was correlated with the instructors’ experience (.31) and professional academic training (.20), specific training to teach the course (.65), and the status of the instructor as an outside professor or consultant (.59). Also contributing to the gain were the support provided by the organization (.38), the price paid for the course (.37), and the number of hours allocated to the course (.45).
Bednar and Heisler (1985) contrasted 38 more effective and less effective industrial training instructors who described their own communication styles. The instructors’ effectiveness was judged by their management and professional trainees. Instructors who were judged more effective saw themselves as more open, dramatic, animated, and relaxed than those who judged themselves less effective. They also thought they left more of a lasting impression about what they had said and how they had said it.
Casualties. The trainer was likely to be particularly important to the outcomes of sensitivity training. Much of the rationale for instrumented self-guided training is based on the known variance in outcomes that are due to differences in trainers’ motivation and skills. The amount of learning was similarly affected by trainers. Lieberman, Yalom, and Miles (1973) studied 206 trainees led by different types of encounter group trainers. They found that casualties among trainees were greatest (12%) when the trainers were autocratic, aggressive, charismatic, and con vinced of their own beliefs. Other types of trainers with high casualty rates were impersonal, uncaring trainers (11%); highly controlling trainers (10%); and laissez-faire trainers (8%). On the other hand, there were few or no casualties when the laboratory was trainerless and conducted by instrumented audiotape or when trainers were benevolent, caring, group-oriented, or participative. Learning was also likely to be greater with such trainers. Learning correlated 2.33 with casualty rates, contrary to the expectations of those who see value in making the learning a highly stressful experience.
Caveat. Many published studies of sensitivity training have ended in mixed evaluations. Problems remain in the transfer of sensitivity training to the back-home situation. Sensitivity training also raises ethical concerns.
Mixed Conclusions. Friedlander (1967) compared four work groups that participated in team training with eight similar groups that did not. The trained groups improved in problem solving, mutual influence, and personal involvement more than did the control groups. But there were no significant differences in changes in interpersonal trust, the approachability of leaders, or the evaluation of training sessions. Weschler and Reisel (1959) studied a sensitivity training group over a period of one year. An emotionality index increased steadily through 30 sessions, but group productivity varied from week to week. Less salutary effects of sensitivity training on effectiveness and productivity were seen by Mosvick (1971), who analyzed eight studies of scientists and engineers that used control groups. In four of the studies11 the subjects were trained by lectures and discussions. In the four other studies,12 the groups were given T-group training. Mosvick found that the standard methods of training in human relations were more effective than were the T-group methods with technically oriented supervisors. Similarly, in a massive analysis of field data, D. G. Bowers (1973) found strong indications in 23 organizations of less positive effects of T-group training on the subsequent improvements of the organization’s performance, in contrast to survey feedback without the T-group experience. Despite the plethora of empirical research on the effects of sensitivity training, Goldstein (1980) complained about the absence of an adequate theory to account for the various results, such as those reported by P. B. Smith (1975, 1976), who had concluded that it is not known if the effects occur in all types of groups, why effects are detected with some measures but not with others, and why certain effects occur at all.
Additional evidence suggested that sensitivity training may improve the relations within a group at the expense of impairing the group’s subsequent performance of a task. For example, Deep, Bass, and Vaughan (1967) studied 93 business students who were assigned to simulated companies to play a business game. Some had undergone sensitivity training as intact groups 15 weeks earlier, while others came from diverse sensitivity training groups. The intact groups performed significantly more poorly than did those composed of separately trained members, but they described themselves as higher in cooperation and openness. In the same way, Stinson (1970) studied five control groups, five groups trained as intact teams, and five composed of members assigned to different training groups that were equated on the basis of gross profits earned in a prior business game. The fragmented and control groups outperformed the intact groups in gross profit but declined in cohesiveness, whereas the intact groups were highest in cohesiveness but lowest in productivity. Likewise, Underwood (1965), in a study of 15 training and 15 control groups, found that the T-groups changed more than did the controls, but training had an adverse effect on productivity. Hellebrandt and Stinson (1971) reported similar findings.
To a considerable degree, the belief that organizational productivity increases as a result of sensitivity training tends to rely on inadequately controlled studies. When controls are more adequate, sensitivity-trained groups and their trainees may prove no different or less productive than control groups (Weschler & Reisel, 1959). Subsequent group learning and problem solving may be lower under some previously sensitivity-trained leaders but not among others (Maloney, 1956). Reviews by House (1967, 1968) and findings presented by Goodall (1971) agreed that sensitivity training induces changes, particularly in attitudes, but it can also induce anxiety, confusion, and uncertainty.
Buchanan (1969) found that only two of 66 analyzed studies made adequate use of control groups. However, from a review of the literature, Campbell and Dunnette (1968) concluded that laboratory training did change behavior in the laboratory, but there was less conclusive evidence for the transfer of such training to the job situation. P. B. Smith (1975) was able to collect a sufficient number of studies that had satisfactory controls, repeated measure designs, and a minimal duration of 20 hours of training. Unfortunately, the pretest sensitization of participants and the raters’ awareness of who participated in training could still not be controlled in most of these studies. Although Smith found 78 reports of significant effects of training on one or more scores after training, only 31 studies employed designs that assessed the persistence of the effects. But 21 studies did report long-term effects, supporting the conclusion that a high degree of cohesiveness usually appeared at the end of sensitivity-training groups (Stinson, 1970). However, the impact on productivity is more problematic, depending on individual differences (Cooper & Levine, 1978) and the back-home circumstances to which the training is to be transferred (Argyris, 1969; Bass, 1967c).
Problems in the Transfer of Sensitivity Training. Pugh (1965), among others, called attention to the problem of transferring what is learned in the artificially contrived T-group setting to the real world. Thus Oshry and Harrison (1966) found that the new diagnostic orientations that middle managers learned during sensitivity training could not be converted into action back on the job because the managers saw no clear connection between their new perceptions and their jobs. To promote the positive transfer of training, Bass (1967c) advised that in parallel with sensitivity training groups, simulations of the back-home organization involving supervisory, managerial, and organizational issues should be brought into the training laboratory. Bamforth (1965) went farther. As a consequence of the failure of the within-plant T-group members to transfer their learning to on-the-job problems, Bamforth changed the role of the T-group trainer to that of a consultant to regularly functioning, formal work-group meetings. In these meetings, he helped the groups to recognize their boss-subordinate difficulties, anxieties about using or not using authority, relationships with colleagues, role classifications, difficulties in communication, resistance to the disclosure of initially unrecognized dynamics, and other sociopsychological problems. To prevent fade-out of the effects of an off-site team-building program, A. R. Bass (1983) organized regular private follow-up meetings between the supervisor and each subordinate. The 135 participants who had such individual follow-ups with their supervisors exhibited less loss of learning than did 71 controls who did not have such individual follow-up meetings.
Ethical Concerns. K. F. Taylor (1967) charged that sensitivity training is based on questionable objectives: development of group cohesiveness, confidence in compliance with the norms of the training culture, and disruption of the trainees’ personal integrity. Similarly, Lakin (1969) questioned the ethical basis of laboratory training on the ground that untrained and improperly trained trainers are often employed. Also, the method takes advantage of group pressure to impose the trainers’ values on the trainees, uses scapegoating, and demands for consensus and conformity to accomplish its objectives. It invades the individual’s privacy. The sensitivity-training experience can be a highly stressful one for some participants. It may result in psychological casualties. However, these are infrequent and controllable with an ethical training staff. But the slight risk of such occurrences needs to be offset, from an ethical point of view, by large benefits for most other participants (Cooper, 1975).13 Sensitivity training is a double-edged sword: participants can learn how to be more empathic and understanding of others, but they can also learn how to be Machiavellian, how to disguise their true feelings, and and how to promote a false sense of confidence in their leadership.
According to Hultman (1984), since leaders are action-oriented, the educational methods used should stress action, not theory. The methods employed should reflect the participants’ working conditions. Particularly if the leaders and managers have considerable power, opportunity must be afforded them for reflection on their style of leadership. The leaders and managers may confuse power with leadership and fail to lead others because of their power and interest in maintaining their power (Maccoby, 1982). In the same vein, J. G. Anderson (1984) argued that leaders can learn to identify their own work-place behaviors that help or hinder them in reaching their goals. They can be systematically aided in this endeavor with appropriate methods. Leadership learning and development may occur during the performance of regularly assigned duties and may be as effective as formalized training programs.
Training for leadership in any organizational context can be provided in many different ways. Individuals may receive training on or near their jobs. They may be coached by their immediate superiors. They may be given guided job experience on a planned basis. They may train as understudy-assistants to those in a higher position. They may serve a formal management apprenticeship or internship. They may rotate through a variety of jobs by planned transfers. They may be placed in a special trainee position or be given special project assignments. They may be provided feedback from surveys and process consultation. They may learn leadership from self-study, special assignments, on-the-job coaching, mentoring, and attendance at meetings of professional associations (Phillips, 1986). Most important, they can learn from their experiences.
It is evident that much learning can accrue from experience. J. B. Hunt (2000) commented on how much the travel experiences of John Quincy Adams, Frederick Douglass, and Jane Addams as young adolescents or young adults had influenced their perspectives, self-confidence, leadership skills, and sense of purpose. Other world-class leaders significantly affected in similar ways by their travels as youths were Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, Theodore Roosevelt, Benjamin Franklin, and John Kerry. Parks (1996) found that 72% of more than 100 leaders oriented toward the public good had had travel experiences as young adults. Bennis and Thomas (2002) suggested from interviews with 43 leaders that a pivotal experience was crucial to their careers, sometimes with a mentor, sometimes climbing a mountain or doing some other extreme physical activity.
Members of the En glish Institute of Personnel and Development are encouraged to document and reflect on their key learning experiences. These are shared with peers to foster their personal development by exposing them to wider perspectives and new ideas (Beardwell, Evans, & Collard, 1998). Among the experiences managers listed as major influences in their development were working with a wide variety of people, early overall responsibility for important tasks, achieving results, leadership opportunities, wide experience in many functions, being stretched by immediate bosses, and having a manager who acted as a role model early in their careers (Margerison, 1980). According to Lombardo (1986), 86 senior executives who were interviewed were able to list 286 key events in their careers that generated 529 lessons. The findings from these lessons, as well as from interviews with more than 300 executives, suggested that although everyone appears to value learning from mistakes, successful executives admit making them. Unsuccessful executives try to hide or deny their failures or blame them on others. It is necessary for successful executives to understand what went wrong, to accept the consequences, and to avoid similar circumstances in the future. High performers drew many more lessons from these events than did low performers. They learned skills and attitudes that they needed to overcome obstacles to complete their work. Involvement with others forced an examination of their personal values. Failures led successful managers to confront their own limitations. Five types of assignments were seen to have special importance for the development of managers: project assignments, line-to-staff shifts, start-ups, fix-its, and assignments involving a major change in scope.
Developmental Opportunities. Rudman, Ohlott, and McCauley (1988) surveyed 346 midlevel managers and executives from nine Fortune 500 companies to identify and classify the on-the-job developmental opportunities they had experienced. The 103 descriptive items were correlated with global ratings of the jobs’ developmental potential and then factor analyzed. Particularly important to development were a supportive boss and opportunities to establish personal credibility. Having to deal with intense pressure and with responsibilities for down-sizing were also seen as important opportunities. These sources of development were linked to from 5 to 31 specific lessons unearthed by Lindsey, Holmes, and McCall (1987) that were learned from the opportunity. For example, learning how to be comfortable with ambiguous situations appears to accrue from the lesson learned in holding a job for which there is an absence of strategic direction.
Interviews and questionnaires with 41 New York Telephone managers revealed numerous on-the-job events and developmental opportunities that provided important lessons. A quarter to a half of the respondents mentioned increased responsibilities, special projects, exposure to role models, self-initiated activities, and learning from negative experiences as being most salient for their learning of skills and broader perspectives (Valerio, 1988).
Copeman (1971) collected detailed experiences from 109 CEOs about the experiences they felt had contributed most to the development of various competencies, such as their ability to negotiate or formulate policies. On-the-job assignments, such as taking charge of a division or serving as assistant to the president, were often mentioned. Similar results were reported by Davies and Easterby-Smith (1984) for 60 British managers. A study at Honeywell (1981) indicated that on-the-job experiences were the primary source of development of much managerial knowledge, skill, and ability, including effective decision making, problem solving, communication, delegation, empathy, resolution of conflicts, knowledge about business, knowledge of the products, business, trends, and knowledge of costs. Baxter (1953) found such on-the-job opportunities for learning to be as effective as formal supervisory training.
To examine the development of junior-to senior-grade U.S. Army officers, Mumford, Marks, Connelly, et al. (2000) assessed the leadership skills of officers who were serving at six grade levels. They tested knowledge about leadership, complex problem-solving skills, solution construction, creative thinking, and social judgment. It was assumed that it might take as much as 20 years of experience for a senior officer to develop the skills to solve a novel, ill-defined organizational problem. Also assumed was that the kinds of experiences that promoted learning at one hierarchical level could be different from those at another level. Such level effects were seen when expertise learned at a lower level was required for dealing with complex problems at a higher level. Twenty types of experiences were identified, ranging from combat and negotiation to administration and systems maintenance. For instance, between junior and midlevel officers, the increase in required complex problem solving involved in boundary spanning correlated .32 with performance. For the changes between midlevel and senior level, the correlation was .29. Higher scores in creative problem solving, social judgment, systems skills, and expertise in leadership were seen as officers moved into more responsible assignments. As Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, et al. (2000) theorized, different aspects of expertise and leadership skills need to be mastered at different grade levels. Senior officers generally require more in dealing with critical incidents and creating higher-quality solutions to ill-defined leadership problems.
Relevant Experience. Not just any experience will do. Bettin and Kennedy (1990) rated the previous work and training experiences of 84 U.S. Army captains rated for relevance to their current positions. Relevance of experiences was found to be the most important predictor of their current leadership performance. Time in service and number of positions previously held did not matter. Avery, Tonidandel, Griffith, et al. (1999) used the statistics from the 1997–1998 National Basketball Association’s Official Guide and the NBA Register to determine the effect of four types of experience of 29 NBA coaches on the percentage of games won by their teams, controlling for team ability from rankings of team members. Regression analysis indicated that the previous years of experience in coaching NBA teams was relevant (p < .06) but the years coaching non-NBA teams was unrelated to games won in the 1997–1998 season. The coach’s years of experience as a player was also predictive of games won (p < .02). Another significant predictor was years of experience in the stressful playoffs (p < .01).
McCall and McCauley (1986) summarized other features of jobs that help develop leaders. Important characteristics are assignments with broad responsibilities, troubleshooting assignments, early experience in leadership positions, and staff positions at corporate headquarters. Also valuable are assignments with project task forces and newly created departments. In addition, career development is enhanced by working in the mainline functional areas that are central to the organization’s business (Kotter, 1982a). Moreover, although moving among important job assignments is essential, sufficient time has to be spent in an assignment for it to contribute to the development of one’s career (Gabarro, 1985).
Lindsey, Holmes, and McCall (1987) examined the extent to which job assignments differ in their developmental potential by identifying the kinds of experiences that more than 400 executives said provided them with lessons and changed them. For instance, one experience the executives thought made a big difference in their development was their move into staff jobs, such as business or product planning, that forced them to develop new ways of thinking about some strategic element of the business. These jobs often involved exposure to top executives and the executives’ assignment to corporate headquarters. (This is despite the tendency to view staff positions as less powerful and important as stepping-stones to higher line positions.14)
Learning and Development from Challenging Assignments. Jobs enhance development if they are challenging. Challenges can be set up as assignments for learning leadership (Lombardo, 1985), since experience seems to be the best way to learn leadership (McCall, Lombardo, & Morrison, 1988). Exxon managers whose entry-level jobs provided such challenges were more likely to be seen as meritorious six years later (Vicino & Bass, 1978) than were those whose jobs did not provide such challenges. In the AT&T assessment program (Bray & Howard, 1983), candidates with assessed potential were more likely to reach middle management if they were assigned challenging jobs. In a questionnaire survey of 118 managers, McCall and McCauley (1986) found that assignments involving overcoming the past and dealing with inadequate, resistant staffs contributed to perceived growth as a manager. The less experienced the manager, the more the assignment was seen to have the potential for development.
McCauley, Ruderman, Ohlott, et al. (1994) created and validated the Developmental Challenge Profile (DCP), which assessed the jobs of 692 managers for the components which were challenging and developmental for the managers. It was assumed that on-the-job learning was most likely to occur when managers were faced with these components. They provided learning opportunities to try out new behaviors and to reframe old ways of thinking or acting. Novel, ambiguous situations and situations with incompatible demands are illustrative, as are demands to take action with feedback about the action. Challenging situations can also provide motivation to learn to be more competent, to earn a significant reward, or to avoid a negative outcome. The most central of the 15 factored scales of developmental challenges were developing new directions, inherited problems, problems with employees, managing business diversity, job overload, influencing without authority, and lack of top management support. The scales correlated with reports of on-the-job learning and how the job incumbents felt about them.
Challenges can be too great. Assignment to a difficult boss appeared to detract from a job’s developmental value for a manager. Challenging assignments may fail in their utility for development because of inadequate feedback and an insufficient variety of assignments (Lindsey, Homes, & McCall, 1987).
Meta-challenge. Vaill (1996) postulated a learning premise that might be called a “meta-challenge.” Given the rapidity of change in the physical, economic, political, and social forces on organizations in many industries, managerial leadership is not learned, it is learning. In real time, a condition is faced by the leader that is problematic for the objectives being pursued. Changes in conditions and objectives as well as resources may be difficult to predict. Leaders needs to adapt their skills as each new problematic situation evolves. Leaders are continually confronted with new problems, ideas, techniques, possibilities, and limits and must remain in a learning mode to deal with them. They need to avoid the error of military planners who ignore new developments and plan for the last war. Learning from each new experience followed by feedback, review, and reflection may contribute to insight, wisdom, and intuition.
In the 1930s, Reginald Revans (1982) pioneered action learning, which combined training with learning from experience and carried it forward into the 1990s. Barker (1998) profiled Revans’s career from a physics student assisting Einstein, Thompson, and Rutherford to management consultant and business school dean. With action learning, projects in the field are coordinated with skill-training seminars conducted by a facilitator. For instance, the managers in training may role-play how they might have better handled problems that arose in the field. Action learning concentrates on developing interpersonal and cognitive rather than technical skills for dealing with complex organizational problems. Seminars are held periodically to discuss, analyze, and learn from the project experience. New skills learned in the seminar compete with the old habitual routines, so the transfer from training sessions needs repetition and generalization, promoted by asking participants to write down new situations in which the transfer will be effective (Yukl, 1998, p. 481). The Federal Aviation Administration organized the Leadership Linkages program, which promoted action learning by providing FAA supervisors with a choice of six of 13 structured projects to be completed in conjunction with skills learned in classroom leadership training. An experienced manager coached and advised the supervisor about the project task and gave insights and feedback to the supervisor. Afterward, both debriefed the performance (Marson & Bruff, 1992).
The after-action review in the military of leaders with the groups they lead illustrates using experience as a basis for learning. The review is a debriefing by all those involved that looks back at an experience. It is a discussion directed toward examining how the leader, the group, and its individual members could improve by providing each other with positive and negative feedback about what they did well and what they could improve on in their skills and actions. They might consider the most effective way they could have reacted, what skills and equipment were missing, and how good the coordination with units was. Lessons can suggest new training efforts.
Learning from One’s Superior. Superiors are likely to have a positive influence on their subordinates’ managerial styles (Marshall & Stewart, 1981), as was noted earlier in describing the “failing dominoes” effect (Bass, Waldman, Avolio, & Bebb, 1987). Subordinates are more likely to model their own leadership style on that of their superiors if they perceive their immediate supervisors to be successful and competent. Aspiring military cadets are likely to select for role models those superiors whom they believe are charismatic (Clover, 1989). Also, they parallel their superior’s occupational values if they think their superiors are considerate (Weiss, 1978). At Illinois Tool Works, managers were trained to train others in leadership skills (Cusimano & Stalcup, 1993).
One of the oldest and most favored developmental programs used by business, industry, and the military rotates managers and management trainees through a set of job assignments, each held from six months to several years. The jobs provide experience in and familiarity with various functions of the organization, various markets, and various locations. Personnel may rotate as assistants to managers and executives in charge of different units, or they may take charge themselves as they move from one unit to another. Yukl (1998) noted that rotation tends to follow a pattern regardless of the developmental needs of the learner and be similar for each rotating manager. Or the rotation may be more carefully individualized to satisfy familiarization as well as organizational purposes. Rotation may come with promotion. It may be limited to high flyers.
Rotation can have negative effects. Nonrotators and supervisors may resent the continued burden of training newcomers to their unit. It may entail heavy personal and moving costs and relocations of families, particularly if overseas assignments are involved. It may occur at the expense of initially poor performance as the rotator learns the new work. The change of management could also be detrimental to the unit (Cheraskin & Stevens, 1994).
Coaching refers to guidance and feedback about specific knowledge, skills, and abilities involved in a task, the performance of a job, and the handling of assignments; mentoring refers to advising and guiding education, relationships, and career development. A coach is likely to be one’s immediate superior or a consultant or staff member, although peers can coach each other. Staff professionals and subordinates may also serve as coaches.
A mentor is likely to be an immediate supervisor of the protégé but may be found at higher levels in the organization or outside the organization among those with more experience and influence than the protégé. Immediate supervisors serve as mentors for their protégés in about half of all mentoring programs. Peers may mentor one another. For instance, one director in a British firm may pair with another to provide a focus on personal development (Beardwell, Evans, & Collard, 1998).
Some of the differences in coaching and mentoring are that coaches provide support and help managers and executives to analyze, improve, and practice; mentors provide career advice and opportunities for skill development on the job, identify needs for improvement, and promote the protégé’s reputation (Yukl, 1998, p. 102).
Coaches and mentors need to respect their protégés and have self-awareness, credibility, and empathy. They need to listen actively and react verbally and nonverbally that the protégés are being understood. They need to ask questions to verify understanding and to encourage further explanations (Anonymous, 1997). The relationship with the coach or mentor may be informal or formally assigned. Of a random sample of 246 corporate staff interviewed by telephone by Douglas and McCaully (1997), 60 formal coaching and mentoring programs were reported in 52 firms. In 22 firms, the programs were for new managers; in 18, they were for high flyers. They were less frequently arranged for senior managers. Larger firms were more likely to use them.
Effective Coaching. The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush (1981 to 1992) ran up huge budget deficits, as has the administration of George W. Bush since 2001. In 1999, partway through the Bill Clinton administration, Larry Summers—a world-class academic economist but a novice in financial markets and rough around the edges—replaced the financially astute fiscal disciplinarian Robert Rubin as Secretary of the Treasury. The succession was greeted with a 200-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Yet much of the large surplus seen in 2000 at the end of the Clinton administration could be attributed to Rubin and his coached successor and protégé, Summers (Hirsh, 1999).
Coaching is likely to work well if the learner can identify with the coach and the coach provides a good model, if both the coach and the learner are open and trusting with each other, if both accept responsibilities fully, and if the learner is provided with suitable rewards and recognition for his or her improvement (H. Levinson, 1962). In addition, coaches are more effective if they set clear standards, appreciate their learner’s interests and abilities, practice delegation coupled with appropriate follow-up, and encourage learners to complete assignments (Good-acre, 1963). Coaching thrives in a climate of confidence in which trainees respect the integrity and capability of their coaches. Coaching is expected to take greatest advantage of the possibilities of individualized instruction. It can concentrate on the specific problems that learners find hardest to deal with. It can attend to the specific performances that learners find hardest to improve. It may provide the kind and quality of feedback that can have a great impact on learning (Mace, 1950).
Mills (1986) asked 207 subordinate managers to use a 25-item questionnaire to describe the coaching practices of their immediate superiors. The practices that emerged emphasized (1) self-development and self-discovery, (2) offering constructive ways to improve, (3) conducting regular coaching interviews, (4) good listening, (5) delegating and challenging subordinate managers to perform, (6) and setting realistic standards. All these coaching behaviors contributed to the subordinate managers’ satisfaction with the coaching. Coaching was likely to be ineffective if relations between the coached learner and the coach were ambiguous because the learner did not trust the coach; the coach regarded the learner as a rival; the learner’s need for dependence was ignored; the coach was intolerant or did not allow sufficient time for coaching; the coach withheld information to maintain power or to feel more secure; or the coach was hostile toward the learner (Tannenbaum, Kallejian, & Weschler, 1954).
Experimental Evaluation of Coaching. Several experiments provided evidence that, as expected, coaching could improve leadership performance. Wexley and Jaffee (1969) compared 10 control groups, 10 groups with approval of the leader “as is” after the first session, and 10 groups with early coaching of the leader. Both observers and followers reported significant changes in the coached leaders in the direction of greater human relations orientation. Maloney (1956) reported that group cohesiveness and participation but not group learning were improved when a leader followed a precisely coached method for implementing discussion.
Some individuals profited more from leadership training than did others. Klubeck and Bass (1954) studied 140 women from seven sororities who were divided into 20 groups composed of one member from each of the seven sororities. The groups engaged in leaderless discussion problems. Observers rated each girl on leadership, influence on the discussion, and other behaviors. The average leadership ratings were used to rank the women from first to seventh in each group. Between the first and second leaderless group discussion sessions, some of the women were given private instruction on how leaders behave. Women who were initially ranked higher in leadership profited more from training than did those who ranked lower. Coached women who initially ranked third in their groups gained significantly more than did those who received no coaching. Coached women who initially ranked sixth in their groups did not gain significantly more than those without coaching.
Edelstein (2001) described the success of a 12-session yearlong coaching program for 37 executives. But no control was reported. After 360-degree assessment with and feedback from the Management Factors Survey and discussions with staff and boss, learners developed a plan (which was also shared) for their current position or for transition to a position of increased scope and responsibility. Plans were implemented with logs of activities and experiences. The executives were coached in flexibility to manage as situations varied. Following experience with their revised management behaviors, they were again assessed 360 degrees and surveyed on the perceived benefits of the program. The pre and post-360-degree assessments showed statistically significant increases from 4% to 9% in avoiding premature closure, soliciting and openness to feedback, taking a corporate perspective, working as a team player, learning from experience, synthesizing data and finding solutions, delegating effectively, and utilizing empathy constructively. The increase in making good decisions was problematic. All the executives said the experience was valuable to extremely valuable. None said the coaching failed to change their managerial behavior, but 3% said the change had faded over time. Consistent change was perceived by 83%.
Effective Mentoring. In a majority of cases examined, the mentors of the protégés are their immediate supervisors (Roche, 1979; Burke, 1964; Ragins & Sandstrom, 1990). The other mentors may be of higher rank or in the same or different units of the organization. Kram (1983) described the process involved in 18 mentor-protégé relationships as beginning with phased-in initiation, followed by cultivation, separation, and redefinition. During the process, the mentors provided protégés with sponsorship, exposure and visibility, coaching, counseling, protection, friendship, and challenging assignments. The mentors acted as role models and as a source of acceptance and confirmation.
The intention of 607 state government supervisors to be mentors and the barriers involved were not affected by whether they were men or women. Willingness to mentor (strong intentions and weak barriers) was correlated with educational level. Age was unrelated to perceived barriers. Nevertheless, older supervisors revealed little intention to mentor. Supervisors with experience as mentors or protégés were more willing to mentor. Internal locus of control, upward striving, and quality of the relationship with prospective protégés contributed to the willingness to serve as a mentor (Allen, Poteet, Russell, et al., 1995).
Mentoring tends to be paternalistic in that it provides a role model for the protégé to follow (Levinson, Darrow, Klein, et al., 1978). Mentors use their greater knowledge, experience, and status to help their protégés and do more than merely act supportive or give advice. They may assist in the organizational visibility and advancement of the protégés by informing higher-ups about how good a job the protégés are doing (M. C. Johnson, 1980; Shapiro, 1985).
A survey of 1,736 managers at Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program found that women were more likely than men to have mentors, perhaps because they had more desire for a mentor. Woman with mentors perceived more sponsorship, guidance, and networking. Men with mentors saw more opportunities for contact with senior management. Promotion of protégés with less than four years and more than 10 years of tenure was enhanced if their mentor was of the opposite sex (Bachman & Gregory, 1993).
Sosik, Godshalk, and Yammarino (2004) completed WABA analyses of 217 pairs of mentors and protégés who worked full-time in firms in 11 different industries. The protégés were also part-time MBA students. Data were collected by mail from the mentors and directly from the protégés. Almost half the mentors were supervisors of the protégés. Measures of the mentors’ transformational leadership (by self and protégé) and learning goal orientation, expected career success, career balance, and developmental relationships were also collected from mentors and protégés. The results indicated that transformational leadership of mentors, learning goal orientation, expected career success, expected career achievement, and developmental relations were based on differences between individuals. But differences between the dyads were also involved. Mentors and protégés were in agreement about the mentor’s transformational leadership.
Benefits of Mentoring. Of 122 persons who had recently been promoted, two-thirds indicated that they had mentors (M. C. Johnson, 1980). Mentored personnel earned higher overall compensation than did those without mentors (Roche, 1979). Personnel with mentors in a large health business firm believed they had more career opportunities, promotions, security, and recognition than did those without mentors (Fagenson, 1989). Zey’s (1984) more than 100 interviews with middle and senior managers found about a third reporting that their careers had benefited from the opportunity. The popularity of mentoring reflects the interest, both of individual employees and of their organizations, in the career development of individual employees (Clutterbuck, 1982b; Collins & Scott, 1978).
Mentoring can help to retain subordinates. It is likely to increase the subordinates’ self-esteem and satisfaction with their work and with the progress of their careers. Shelton (1982) noted that protégés were recognized as more promotable by organizational leadership. Mentoring can also help protégés to cooperate in joint efforts (Hunt & Michael, 1983) and to use their intelligence more fully to make a contribution to the organization’s success (Fiedler & Leister, 1977a). Mentoring provides time for some executives to develop an understanding of the mixed messages they are receiving about their roles and performance. Mentoring is particularly helpful to executives who have recently shifted from technical or professional positions to managerial business positions (Hyman & Cunningham, 1998).
The mentors’ own advancement is facilitated if their replacements are considered to be adequately prepared to step into their shoes. Advancement is also facilitated if the performance of developing subordinates is used as a criterion for evaluation and reward by the mentors’ superiors (Jennings, 1967a). In addition, mentors accumulate respect, power, and future access to information from individuals they have helped to develop. They spread their influence elsewhere, both inside and outside their organization, through their former protégés. Successful mentors are also likely to gain esteem among their peers (Kram, 1980). Mentoring can be a creative, satisfying, and rejuvenating experience for the mentors (Levinson, Darrow, Klein, et al., 1978).
Mentors can inform protégés about how the organization works (Johnson, 1980) and about the uses of power, integrity, and the artistic and craftsmanlike elements in effective management (Zaleznik, 1967). They can help women protégés, in particular, to integrate their career and family responsibilities. Mentors are particularly important to the success of the careers of women managers without family connections in the firm (Kram, 1980). At the same time, mentoring appears to be more helpful in the early careers of young managers and college faculty members from higher socioeconomic backgrounds (Whitely, Dougherty, & Dreher, 1991). A survey of 1,320 faculty members (43% female, 57% male) was conducted by van Emmerick (2003). Fifty-eight percent had mentors. Having a mentor was significantly but weakly related to intrinsic job satisfaction (.17), career satisfaction (.13), increased personal accomplishment (.11), lack of emotional exhaustion (.10) and depersonalization (.11). Regression analyses showed that after controlling for sex, hierarchical level, working status, role conflict, and work pressure, the modest relations remained significant. In a sample of 1,334 U.S. Army officers, 81% reported having had at least one mentor. Of these, 85% had provided career or job guidance; the remainder, psychological or social support. Immediate supervisors formed 68% of the mentors. In a two-year period, mentoring was found to contribute to commitment and reduced turnover (Payne & Huffman, 2005).
Conditions for Effective Mentoring. Numerous publications (see, for example, Tyson & Birnbrauer, 1983) have laid out the prescriptions for good mentoring. But there have been some changes in the past 30 years that need to be taken into account. Earlier, more women needed mentoring and the mentors were more often men. Cross-sex mentoring was the rule rather than the exception. More women mentors have now become available as they have risen in rank and seniority, and same-sex mentoring may now be more effective. As Claw-son (1980) observed in 38 superior-subordinate relationships, some mentor-protégé arrangements work well, while others do not. Effective mentoring requires executives who can tolerate emotional interchanges and who are able to accept conflict as a dispute over substance, not as a personal attack (Zaleznik, 1967). Sosik and Lee (2002) theorized that effective mentorship depends on the mentor’s ability to help solve complex social problems that occur in a protégé’s career.
In addition to being sufficiently empathic to the needs of protégés, according to Levinson, Darrow, Klein, et al. (1978), mentors should be older and have about eight to 15 years more experience than their protégés. The authors argued that a greater disparity in age results in a generation gap that interferes with mentoring, while less disparity gives rise to a peer relation rather than a mentoring relation. Bowen and Zollinger (1980) suggested that mentors should be of the same sex, if possible (although female mentors were likely to be scarce at that time). Nevertheless, male mentors reacted more favorably to female protégés, particularly if the female protégés were unmarried, but they were more willing to act as mentors toward married than unmarried men. Mentors were also more favorable toward protégés whom they regarded as good in job performance.
Hunt and Michael (1983) argued that mentors should be highly placed, powerful, and knowledgeable. They needed to be executives who would not be threatened by their protégés’ potential to equal or surpass them. Such mentors would be more effective, since individuals value the positive feedback they receive from those they esteem much more than that from those they do not value (Bass, Wurster, & Alcock, 1961). Protégés place a premium on feedback from mentors who are higher in authority and whom they believe are experienced, knowledgeable, and esteemed (Bass, 1985a).
Successful competent and considerate mentors were believed to serve as role models for their protégés. Results from studies of leader-subordinate modeling (Adler, 1982; Korman, 1976) suggested that protégés would model themselves after mentors if they regarded the mentors as competent and if they believed their mentors were in control of the protégés’ paths to valued rewards and to organizational advancement. Furthermore, protégés were more likely to model the leadership styles of their mentors if the mentors were easy to identify with and personally attractive to the protégés (Bass, 1985a). Sosik and Godshalk (2000) found that mentors who overrated their transformational leadership, compared to their subordinates’ ratings of them, exhibited less effective mentoring than those mentors who were more accurate in self-awareness. Mentors had to take the protégés’ feelings into account as a valued person sharing the relationship (Gold & Roth, 1999). In addition to self-awareness, to be effective mentors needed to be familiar with the networks of influence in the organization to be able to serve as sponsors of their protégés (Ibarra, 1993). In two organizations with mentoring, the best time for mentoring was seen to be early in the protégé’s career. But for 129 former protégés, only modest benefits were seen by them, nor did they increase with how long the relationship lasted. However, the benefits were greater if the mentor was influential and in greater contact with higher-ups (Arnold & Johnson, 1997).
Clawson (1979) listed the characteristics of superiors that were likely to contribute to the subordinates’ ability to learn a lot from their superiors. Effective superiors who acted informally as coaches and mentors more often were relations oriented and even tempered, tolerated ambiguity, valued the organization, liked the protégés, and respected the protégés’ intelligence. Effective superiors saw themselves as teaching, setting examples, being directive and instructive, providing clear feedback, and avoiding being too critical. The superiors, as effective coaches and mentors, took the time to understand their subordinates, listen with understanding, and provide new perspectives, and they sponsored subordinates with higher management. Clawson’s subordinates were likely to say they learned a lot from their superiors if they, the subordinates, were also more relations oriented, if they respected and liked their superior and perceived themselves in the role of a learner dealing with relevant assignments. Subordinates showed their interest by responding enthusiastically and adaptively to the superior’s guidance; similar requirements and benefits were suggested for effective cross-sex mentoring (Clawson & Kram, 1984)—women managers were thought to need and benefit more from mentoring from men (Warihay, 1980). (Perhaps this is less of an issue in 2008.) Women managers found male mentors useful because the women were less likely than were men to have access to information networks (Rosen, Templeton, & Kirchline, 1981). They still may need to learn their way around a male-dominated organization with male-oriented norms and standards of behavior (Noe, 1988). However, more recently, when 138 MBA students returning from international internships were mentored by either men or women, the protégés were less likely to receive task-related, social-related, or career-related support if they differed in sex or nationality (Feldman, Folks, & Turnley, 1999). While women still experienced less benefit from formal mentoring than did their male counterparts, they did earn more afterward if they had male rather than female mentors (Ragins & Cotton, 1999). Career mentoring was more beneficial to early career progress for those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds.
Formality of Programs. Mentoring programs may be formally organized or remain informal. In the formal program, mentors are matched with protégés by third parties. Informal matching occurs when mentor and protégé select each other. Ragins, Cotton, and Miller (2000) surveyed 1,162 protégés working as engineers, journalists, and social workers who had been mentored in formal programs or informally. Informal mentoring was much more beneficial. Informal mentors provided more coaching, challenging assignments, and increases in the protégé’s visibility. They were more likely to become supportive friends, facilitate social interactions, and act as role models. Protégés were more satisfied with their informal mentors and received more compensation than formally mentored protégés. Ragins and Cotton (1999) suggested that informal mentoring was favored because protégés chose, as their mentor, a person whom they thought was expert and well connected; protégés and mentors could more readily identify with each other; and mentors could choose protégés they thought had more potential. Additionally, informal mentoring could last for years, while formal mentoring lasts for less than a year; mentors may choose to join the formal effort because of commitment to the organization, not the protégé. Full trust may be missing in the formal relationship. Formal programs tend to concentrate on short-term career goals; informal relations, on long-term career objectives. Ragins, Cotton, and Miller (2000) pointed to the need to formally recruit skilled and motivated mentors, train the participants, and create a satisfying organizational environment for the mentoring relationship. Cunningham (1993) suggested that in order to be successful, a formal program needs to have top management support, careful matching of mentors and protégés, an extensive orientation program, clearly stated responsibilities for mentors and protégés, and criteria for the frequency and duration of contact between them. These points were supported empirically by Lyons and Oppler (2003), who found that the satisfaction of 565 protégés with a formal mentoring program in a U.S. federal agency was determined more by the frequency of meetings and feedback about assignments than by demographic data.
E-Mentoring. The availability of e-mentoring or virtual mentoring has increased mentoring opportunities, flexibility, and maintenance of the relationship. Mentors and protégés do not have to be in the same location; more mentors can be available. The distractions of visual cues can be avoided. Cross-sex and cross-racial relationships can be more comfortable (Hamilton & Scandura, 2003).
Mentoring Personal Development. Learning to learn about self-reflection, self-disclosure, self-direction, self-reliance, and relationships in the work situation can be mentored (Uhl-Bien, 2003). Their expansion in meaning recognizes leadership beyond the formal and informal to include relationships with the organization and the environment (Hunt & Dodge, 2001). Personal skill development includes communicating effectively, listening attentively, solving problems, and creatively achieving better working relations. Landau and Scandura (2002) conducted a multivariable survey of the effects of mentoring on personal development learning, relational job learning, and personal skill development of 440 employees of a nonprofit hospital. More than three-fourths of the respondents were women and over half currently had mentors. Just under half of the mentors were the immediate supervisors of the protégés. Landau and Scandura concluded from regression analyses, in agreement with Kram & Hall (1996), that mentors were valuable resources for learning organizations. Mentoring provided vocational support positively related to relational job learning. Vocational support from mentors helped protégés increase their understanding of the context of their jobs, reduced the ambiguity of their roles in the organization, and increased their job satisfaction. Landau and Scandura inferred that protégés challenged by assignments that increase their exposure to other people in their organization develop a better understanding of the organization and, at the same time, increase their visibility. However, personal learning was not advanced with mentoring. Skill development depended on role modeling. Mentors needed to be proactive in fostering personal learning. Some kinds of mentoring were not beneficial to personal learning and yielded negative outcomes (Scan-dura, 1998).
Counseling. In addition to receiving coaching and mentoring from superiors and peers, subordinates may obtain counseling from staff professionals in individual and group sessions. Smith, Organ, and Near (1983) considered this behavior to be good organizational citizenship. Furthermore, leaders and managers can learn from colleagues and their own subordinates as well as from others whom they may encounter in their work (McCall & McCauley, 1986). The careers of leaders within the organization may be influenced by consultants, advisers, HR staff, and sponsors who are not necessarily coaches or mentors. Advisors can provide specific information and facilitate the solution of specific problems; sponsors can use their power to provide opportunities for experiences that are necessary for advancement (Wood & Hertz, 1982).
McCauley and Young (1993) pointed to other developmental relationships useful to a manager. Colleagues in a developmental relationship with a manager may serve in roles as (1) assignment brokers, who can arrange challenging assignments that will fit the learner’s developmental needs; (2) counselors, trusted individuals who can help deal with emotional issues and personal feelings such as frustrations or fear of failure; (3) feedback providers of information on how well the learner is doing in developing a skill or changing behavior; (4) role models, to emulate; (5) friends, for support; (6) cheerleaders, for encouragement; and (7) reinforcers, to provide rewards for progress toward developmental goals. A reinforcer may serve (1) as a “sounding board” for strategic decision making and for managing decisional uncertainties, (2) as a coach of a newly appointed supervisor who has never supervised before, (3) to help managers deal with stress, and (4) to help a team resolve conflicts fairly (Foxhall, Chamberlin, and Smith, 2002). Counseling psychologists may advise managers about the managers’ mentoring or coaching.
The considerable hortatory literature about giving and receiving feedback can be summarized as suggesting that feedback should be about the recipient’s observed behavior, not the recipient’s personality, motivation, or intentions. The receipt of adequate feedback from others and from one’s environment requires that the recipient solicit or be open to accepting it. Often the reverse is true: managers are prone to close out opportunities for learning when faced with difficult and threatening problems (Argyris, 1982). But instead of shutting out, ignoring, or denying such inputs, it is important to examine in what ways changes can be made to improve the situation. Feedback, coupled with personal reflection, can be used to expand self-awareness and to strengthen relationships with colleagues (May & Kruger, 1988). Survey feedback can be used to communicate performance expectations, set development goals, establish a learning culture, and register the effects of organizational change (Tornow, London, et al. 1999–2000). Facteau, Facteau, Schoel, et al. (1998) found an insignificant correlation of .14 between acceptance of subordinate and peer feedback of 49 supervising managers of a large public utility. On the other hand, the correlation was .54 between the perceived usefulness of subordinate and peer feedback.
Yukl (1982) fed back more specifically observable leadership behavior in 23 categories using subordinates’, peers’, and superiors’ descriptions of what they regarded as optimal behavior for effectiveness in the position occupied by the leader. Again, the focus of training was on the discrepancies between actual and desired behaviors. A similar strategy was adopted by Bass and Avolio (1989) for feeding back to managers, on an item-by-item and factor-by factor basis, their transformational and transactional leadership as seen by their subordinates. The salutary effects obtained will be discussed later. For three successive years, a sample of 148 Xerox managers received feedback on 44 behaviors from their subordinates on their management of tasks, management of change, communication, leadership, and delegation, as well as how much they involved their employees and helped to develop them. Eighty-three percent of the managers used the feedback to create action plans for improvement. Subsequently, their management style was judged by their employees to be improving (Deets & Morano, 1986).
Feedback activities are not always beneficial. A meta-analysis by Kluger and DeNisi (1996) found that performance appraisal feedback in one-third of the cases decreased performance. Atwater, Waldman, Atwater, et al. (2000) found that the performance of only 50% of the managers receiving feedback improved. Atwater, Brett, and Waldman (2003) concluded from a review of feedback studies, mainly from subordinates to their supervisors, that feedback could improve self-awareness of supervisors’ and customers’ loyalty. But negative feedback was more likely to reduce effort and organizational commitment and decrease satisfaction with the raters. Cynics were more likely to reject the results. A total of 142 supervisors received feedback about their work-unit climate, communications, and management relations from 1,450 military personnel. This was followed by action planning. When resurveyed a year afterward, the supervisors with initially higher ratings had improved; those initially lower had not.
Feedback about leadership performance on the job is crucial if learning from work experiences is to occur. This is why survey feedback from peers, subordinates, and clients, as well as superiors, based on standardized questionnaires, can play an important part in leadership development. Such feedback has been practiced for half a century in leadership training and education programs. R. D. Mann (1961) found more change in supervisors of experimental than of control departments as a consequence of survey feedback. D. G. Bowers (1973) reported that survey feedback promoted more improvement than did other developmental interventions such as sensitivity training or individual consultation.
360-Degree Feedback. Military organizations began making use of formal ratings by superiors of their subordinates in the early nineteenth century, and educational and business institutions began later on. Peer (buddy) ratings were found to be good predictors of performance by the military in World War II. It was the advent in the late 1930s of the human relations movement and group dynamics theory that called attention for leaders to get feedback from their subordinates, not only for research but also for the leaders’ own edification (Lewin, 1939). However, there are still many executives who cannot accept the idea of their subordinates rating them. It was the military who made research use of superiors’, peers’, subordinates’ and self ratings of the same leaders in a single survey report (Penner, Malone, Coughlin, et al., 1973) Comparisons of subordinates’ and self-ratings of leaders were fed back to leaders in a single report (Bass, 1976). Attention was focused on which data and discrepancies were important to try to change and how change might be attempted and evaluated. R. J. Solomon (1976) showed that such feedback could result in the improved performance of library departments supervised by department heads who received the feedback. The feedback instrument, Profile, was one of 16 multirater leadership survey programs evaluated by Van Velsor and Leslie (1991). To round out feedback, Church and Waclawski (1996) suggested that the ratings of direct reports (subordinates) also need to be added to peers’ and superiors’ data.
Feedback of ratings of a single focal leader from superiors, peers, subordinates or clients, and self, 360-degree feedback, became popular. For example, feedback information was obtained for 538 senior service providers from 4,446 coworkers and supervisors and 1,617 clients. Each source of the multiple ratings revealed different rates of rater response and ratee acceptance (Church, Rogelsberg, & Waclawski, 2000). Each type of rater could provide a different perspective on a variety of criteria of the focal person’s performance. The learning of the focal person accrues from feedback before and after self-awareness obtained from self-ratings and the survey feedback from others. Anonymity of subordinates and peers is maintained by feeding back to the focal person only the average and variance in ratings from subordinates and peers.
Facteau, Facteau, Curtis, et al. (1998) argued that 360-degree feedback will work only if the focal person finds the feedback valid. Otherwise, there is little chance than they will want to make changes in their behavior. Although we might expect that high self-monitors could manipulate the ratings, such was not the case. Higher ratings were not obtained by focal persons who attempt to manipulate others (Warech, Smither, Reilly, et al., 1998).
Dalton (1998) and Tornow and London (1998) listed the characteristics of effective 360-degree feedback: (1) Raters and ratees have been trained. (2) A plan for development can be constructed. (3) Following the plan will depend on the ratee’s boss. (3) The ratee must be ready to receive the feedback. (4) Results can be used for coaching, mentoring, training, and self-development. (5) A question remains as to whether the collected information should be shared or remain anonymous by reporting only group results to all but the ratee. (6) Adequate sample sizes make for reliable measurements. (7) There is adequate support at higher management levels (Dalton, 1999; Nowack, Hartley, & Bradley, 1999; Tornow & London, 1998). Waldman, Atwater, and Antonioni (1998) question whether many organizations use 360-degree feedback for political reasons and to create a favorable impression about their human relations. Ratings are biased if it is thought they might be used for personnel decisions instead of personal development. A supervisor may detract from his unit performance by relaxing requirements in order to maintain favorable ratings. Care needs to be taken in creating the feedback measurements and the training of the raters.
Electronic Facilitation. A near-360-degree program, Profile, was the computerized feedback of subordi-nates, anonymous descriptions of their leaders’ directive, negotiative, consultative, participative, and delegating behavior; the leader’s power to decide relative to the subordinates; and various perceptions about the organization and the group in which they worked.15 The subordinates’ satisfaction with and perceptions of the effectiveness of the leaders’ performance were also appraised. The leaders’ self-perceptions were obtained on the same variables. No peer ratings were obtained. Feedback by individual counselors or in workshops provided the leaders with a profile of the data and discrepancies from norms among their own, subordinates’, and normative descriptions of their performance (Bass, 1976).
Web-based rating and scoring facilitates 360-degree survey assessment and feedback of ratings of the same leader from subordinates, peers, superiors, and self to appear in the same report to the leader. MLQ ratings are computer-scored on effectiveness and satisfaction with the leader and items of leadership factors ranging from leadership behavior that is idealized laissez-faire (Bass & Avolio, 2002). Over 5,000 managers and professionals in diverse business, military, and educational organizations in the United States and abroad have received MLQ feedback (Bass & Riggio, 2005) and is the underlying measurement for the program, the Full Range of Leadership Development (Avolio, 1999).
Following Ellis’s rational theory of therapy, an example of theory-based training was conducted by R. E. Johnson (1980), who showed, with a controlled training experiment, that beliefs in “rational leadership” could be inculcated. Theories of vision, organizational learning, cultural consequences, and transformational leadership may be the basis of a leadership training effort. However, as Tetrault, Schriesheim, and Neider (1988) pointed out, it is necessary to separate the question of the utility of the training effort based on a theory and the validity of the theory. It is possible to observe a training program that improves the performance of the leaders even though it is based on an invalid theory or a theory about which positive evidence is lacking. In research reports, training procedures can seldom be described in complete detail. For this reason, it is difficult to determine the particular methods that participants have learned in the training that they may use to gain and hold a position of leadership. Nonetheless, a number of studies have shown that direct training in the techniques of leadership can improve trainees’ leadership and effectiveness in groups.
Early leadership training programs16 stressed increasing the supervisor’s human relations knowledge, skills, and ability, especially with reference to problems of interaction among his or her subordinates, as one of the basic goals of training. A meta-analysis by Burke and Day (1986) almost two decades ago found mixed results for the effects of management training, and only 2 of 70 evaluations considered organizational performance as a criterion of effectiveness. Rummler and Brache (1995) suggested that emphasis in developing individual leaders had shifted toward improving organizational performance. By 2000, 16 newer management development studies were found by Collins (2001) that focused on the effects of leadership development on organizational improvement that implicitly resulted from individual leadership improvement. The contents of leadership development have shifted with globalization, rapid technological change, organizational delayering, and restructuring. It is not surprising that she found strategic leadership to be the most popular, 33%, among the 54 published research studies she located. Next most frequent was employee development (20%). Only three of these published reports were of negative findings. (But for both journal editors and investigators, there is an unfortunate propensity to publish only positive findings.) Most depended on survey evaluations, but five were qualitative. Training evaluations dealt with improving attitudes, knowledge, self-perception, decision making, broader patterns of leadership behavior, and discussion leadership.
Attitudes and Knowledge. Katzell (1948) found that 73 supervisors scored significantly higher on a test of human relations attitudes (How Supervise) after an eight-week training course. Canter (1951), using the same test, studied supervisors in insurance companies. He found significant gains in scores on how to supervise, general facts about and principles of supervision, and estimates of the group’s opinion. He also found that large gains in understanding the psychological principles of supervising others and better insight into subordinates’ attitudes were obtained through supervisory training. Similarly, Good-acre (1955) and Neel and Dunn (1960) administered tests of knowledge of human relations practices to members of training groups; significant gains in knowledge were obtained in both studies. But Hand and Slocum (1970) reported no change in knowledge of human relations, self-actualization, motivation, interpersonal relations, or participation as a consequence of a training program for middle managers.
Results obtained by R. D. Miller (1969) indicated that leadership training also improved attitudes toward the importance of the leadership role. Papaloizos (1962) reported that about one-third of the participants in a human relations training program exhibited favorable changes in attitude toward subordinates. Following similar training, Mayo and Dubois (1963) found that the gain in leadership ratings was correlated positively with final course grades but not with other criteria. Likewise, Cassel and Shafer (1961) gave students direct training in human relations and leadership. Test scores revealed significant gains in leadership and social insight but not in socio-metric preference or personality tensions and needs. But House and Tosi (1963) found that a 40-week training course produced no important advantages for management trainees in job satisfaction and other measures of performance over a control group. Because of the substantive and process differences in the contents of different leadership and human relations training programs, no single generalization about their efficacy is possible.
Self-Perceptions. As noted before, programs that provide feedback purported to increase the accuracy of a leader’s self-image. Trice (1959) reported significant changes in self-perception in a trained group but not in a control group. Members of the experimental group who changed the most described themselves as more flexible after training. In a study of human relations training for middle managers, Hand and Slocum (1970) obtained results indicating that acceptance of oneself and others was significantly improved in a immediate posttest, but the significance had disappeared 90 days later. To improve self-perception was the objective of several democratic leadership training studies. Although Gassner, Gold, and Snadowsky (1964) found no significant increase between the actual and ideal self for members of either the experimental or control groups, they found that the experimental group increased significantly in knowledge of democratic leadership, but the control group did not.
Decision Making. Decision making was also often targeted for improvement. For instance, employing 83 undergraduates trained in human relations techniques and 75 who were not, Madden (1977) reported that leaders who received human relations training made significantly more accurate postdiscussion decisions than did untrained leaders, but they were no different in their satisfaction with the decision-making process.
Broader Role Patterns. Hooijberg and Quinn (1992) described a leadership development program in which leaders were taught to abandon routine roles in favor of broader ones that provided for more autonomy and bigger jobs for their subordinates and themselves. The leaders considered the customary way they did things and how they could become more effective. For instance, they could have more time for themselves for planning ahead if their subordinates could decide for themselves what supplies were needed to do their work or how absences could be handled through cross-training. The new patterns were to be tried for a period of time and then reexamined in a follow-up workshop.
Discussion Leadership. Training can also improve the likelihood that discussions will be effective. Maier (1953) demonstrated that discussion groups with skilled leaders produced better decisions than did those with unskilled leaders. Maier (1950) studied groups of foremen with a leader and three followers with and without training. The leaders of the 44 experimental groups were given eight hours of lectures, discussions, and role playing, whereas the leaders of the 36 control groups were untrained. Maier found that the trained leaders had more success than the untrained leaders in inducing their groups to accept change and compromise. Subsequently, Maier and Hoffman (1960a) demonstrated that groups with trained leaders produced discussions of higher quality than did those with untrained leaders. Again, Maier and Hoffman (1964) and Maier and Solem (1962) found that leaders who used a problem-solving approach helped their groups achieve higher-quality solutions than did leaders who applied financial incentives or concentrated on a solution. Barnlund (1955) demonstrated that trainees who were given discussion leadership training regulated participation more and exhibited a greater ability to resolve conflict in group discussions. Mere practice as a discussion leader also made a difference. Jennings (1952b) studied two groups of 20 production supervisors over 16 training sessions. The experimental group was subdivided into discussion groups to solve case problems. At the end of the first session, the emergent leaders were removed and placed in a separate group. Thus new leaders were forced to emerge in the second session. These leaders were also removed and placed in the leadership pool. Successive sessions permitted the rise of new leaders. In the control group, the appointed discussion leader presented a problem and helped the group arrive at a solution. Six months later, more members of the experimental group than of the control group were rated above average in effectiveness as leaders.
Training and education programs, both off the job and on the job, have been developed and evaluated to train individuals to be more successful leaders on the job. The University of Michigan’s pioneering survey research feedback programs reduced autocratic and increased democratic leadership behavior. Likert (1977b) summarized the many completed evaluations of the approach Vroom and Yetton (1973) created and subsequently evaluated programs that teach when various forms of participation or direction are rationally more appropriate. Blake and Mouton’s (1964) Managerial Grid Training and Hersey and Blanchard’s (1982a) situational leadership programs centered on the development of improved task and interpersonal relationships. Fiedler and Mahar (1979b) developed a program to train managers to deal with the situations they face as a function of their scores on the Least Preferred Coworker (LPC) questionnaire and summarized 12 validity studies of the efficacy of the program. Numerous programs, beginning with Fleishman’s (1953b), focused on increasing the consideration of supervisors and evaluations of the efforts. Miner (1965) trained managers in how to increase their motivation to manage. The Full Range of Leadership Development program is an attempt to develop transformational and transactional leadership (Avolio, 1999).
Eichler and Merrill (1933) and Zeleny (1941) found that students gained from direct training in democratic leadership and ways to improve human relations. In the same way, A. K. Healy (1962) noted that training in democratic leadership enabled schoolchildren to gain in carrying out the leadership role and in their sociometric scores. The status of sociometric isolates was improved in the democratic setting, as was academic achievement. Similarly, Spector (1958) obtained significant improvement in human relations attitudes among U.S. Air Force cadets as a result of such training. Bavelas (1942) trained three adult leaders in the democratic leadership of community center activities; three controls received no training. The trained leaders greatly reduced the number of leader-initiated activities and the giving of orders and increased the number of activities in which children exercised responsibility, but the control group made no such changes. Under trained leaders, the children showed more interest, enthusiasm, and initiative in planning projects.
Lippitt (1949) gave community leaders in intergroup relations a two-week workshop in democratic leadership, group discussion, role playing, and sociodrama. Both the participants and the observers reported that the trainees became more proficient in handling problems of intergroup relations as a result of the workshop. Likewise, Maier and Hoffman (1961) demonstrated that supervisors who were trained to pursue democratic solutions led groups to a more effective and creative solution of a problem in changing work methods than did those without such training. Similarly, Baum, Sorensen, and Place (1970) found that workers said they had increased in actual and desired organizational control after their supervisors had completed a course about the need for more democratic control.
Participative Leadership Training Sensitivity training was seen by Argyris (1969) as key to the development in leaders of receptivity to participative leadership. Sensitivity training, according to Argyris, moves people to become trusting and open, to experiment with their own ideas and feelings, and to own up to them. Moreover, such people can help others to become more so. Without sensitivity training, supervisors will be more inclined to remain directive in their leadership. The argument is that those who have been through sensitivity training will be more comfortable with participative approaches with their subordinates. But others believe that sensitivity training can produce more manipulative leaders as well (Bass, 1967c).
Training efforts to promote participative or directive leadership were described by A. J. Franklin (1969), Herod (1969), and House (1962). Franklin administered a test of knowledge of group theory to groups of disadvantaged youths. Test scores after training were related to the groups’ cohesiveness, but not to a significant degree. Herod (1969) demonstrated that a group-centered training program for college women resulted in the enhancement of participative leadership practices after training. At the end of four months, however, the leaders had regressed to their original positions. House (1962) trained one group in a participative style of leadership and another in a directive style. The more directive method, along with elevated course requirements, was associated with a significant decrease in trainee absences and a significant increase in the number of trainees who completed the course. In an evaluation of the Hersey-Blanchard situational leadership model, 60 executive managers completed a training course about when it was appropriate to tell, sell, participate, or delegate. After completing training, they scored significantly higher on a situational leadership examination than did a control group (Hersey, Angelim, & Carakushansky, 1982). By means of a controlled experiment with workshop supervisors, Crookall (1989) obtained positive results in a more comprehensive evaluation of a group of correctional inmates trained in situational leadership, in contrast to a control group.
Vroom-Yetton Deductive Model. Chapter 22 described Vroom and Yetton’s deductive model for choosing which leadership style to use. Seven decision rules provided guidance to the leader on how directive or participative to be. The Vroom and Yetton training program encourages trainees to see the discrepancies between their way of dealing with a set of standardized cases and the rational model’s solution. Detailed analyses are also provided to trainees in answer to such questions as: What circumstances cause the trainee to behave in a directive fashion, and what circumstances cause the trainee to behave participatively? What rules of the model do trainees violate most frequently and least frequently? Jago and Vroom (1975) also provided feedback to the focal trainees with data from their subordinates about how they think their superior would respond to each Vroom-Yetton case problem.
The Vroom-Yetton model has been found useful in teaching leaders to use different decision processes in different situations and as a way of increasing effectiveness of decisions. Training involves teaching trainees how to analyze various situations to choose the amount of direction or participation that is likely to produce that best decision. Managers who are trained to use the model are more likely to select an appropriate decision-making style (Field, 1982; Vroom & Jago, 1978). The model requires learning to make it useful in everyday situations (Wexley & Latham, 1981). Performance aids can be provided. Personal computer programs furnish instant profiles of rules violated by a decision, feasible alternatives, and qualitative effects of the decision for sets of problems of the expanded Vroom-Jago (1988) model. Nonetheless, questions about the Vroom-Yetton training model remain because of its extensive dependence on leaders’ self-reports (Schriesheim & Kerr, 1977b). Field (1979) added a number of other problems that weaken confidence in Vroom and Yetton’s conclusions, including the effects of social desirability, the lack of external validity, and the biases of experimenters (see also Tetrault, Schriesheim, & Neider, 1988).
PM Leadership Training. For P(erformance)-M(aintenance) leadership training, the ideal leader is “an adaptive perceiver of employees’ needs and a diagnostician of how these needs can be met. Feedback processes from employees to their supervisors are central” (Peterson, 1989, p. 34). Supervisors must focus on whether their behavior is experienced by employees as having sufficient planning, performance, and maintenance content. Misumi (1985) reported that a program to teach Japanese shipyard supervisors his theory of performance-maintenance (PM) leadership stressing the need for both task and relations orientation resulted in a reduction of accidents at work. Cognitive discrepancies on P and M scores between self-ratings and others’ ratings decreased. Although the morale and PM scores of nontrained supervisors dropped because of deleterious changes in the company, the PM scores of the trainees did not. Their superiors judged that the performance of 56 of the 71 trained supervisors showed considerable to substantial improvement.
Leader Match Training. According to Fiedler’s contingency model, the leaders’ effectiveness depends on the leaders’ LPC scores and on whether the situation is favorable. Since LPC is seen as a kind of invariant personality attribute, it follows that leadership effectiveness can best be increased by teaching leaders how to make situations more favorable to themselves. Fiedler, Chemers, and Mahar (1976) developed a self-paced programmed instruction workbook, Leader Match, that teaches leaders how to (1) assess their own leadership style based on their LPC scores, (2) assess the amount of situational favorability, and (3) change the situation so it matches their style.
Fiedler and Mahar (1979b) reviewed 12 studies that demonstrated the validity of the training effort. Five studies were conducted in civilian organizations, and seven in military settings. The performance evaluations were collected from two to six months after training. Some included measures before and after training. The performance evaluations of 423 trained leaders were compared with those of 484 leaders without Leader Match training randomly assigned to control groups. Partially supportive results were obtained. In Fiedler and Mahar’s (1979b) field experiment with 190 ROTC cadets, Leader Match training was administered to the cadets before they attended four weeks of advanced summer camp, where they were selected at random to serve in several different leadership positions for 24-hour periods. An analysis was completed of officers’ and peer evaluations of the cadets’ performance. The 155 male and 35 female cadets with training tended to perform better than did the 176 male and 39 female cadets in the control group.17 A meta-analysis by Burke and Day (1986) lent some confidence that Leader Match generalized in its effectiveness across situations, as measured by superiors’ ratings. In a study of the effects of leadership training on productivity and safety, Fiedler, Bell, Chemers, and Patrick (1984) combined Leader Match training, which emphasizes the need to change situations, and behavioral modeling training, which teaches leadership behavior that is independent of the situation. No attempt was made to separate the effects of the two types of training. The two training methods together increased productivity and decreased accidents. A five-year follow-up evaluation showed a continuation of the positive effects of the combined training on productivity and safety (Fiedler, Wheeler, Chemers, & Patrick, 1988).
Caveat. Schriesheim and Hosking (1978) were troubled with Leader Match because they found too many problems in the contingency model itself to warrant using it for remedial actions by specific individuals in specific situations. And Jago and Ragan (1986b) used a computer simulation to show that Leader Match was inconsistent with the contingency model. But Chemers and Fiedler (1986) argued that the wrong assumptions had been made. Jago and Ragan (1986b) disagreed. Kabanoff (1981) also noted that Leader Match was inconsistent with the contingency model and suggested alternative explanations for the results of using Leader Match. Rice and Kastenbaum (1983) inferred that the positive effects of Leader Match are due to its sensitizing leaders to the possibility that they can change their situations. Leader Match, like many other kinds of training, may exert its positive effects because it bolsters the confidence of leaders who receive the training. Frost (1986) evaluated Leader Match against an alternative training method and a control group. As with other studies, experienced managers who received Leader Match training changed their situational control in accordance with the Leader Match prescriptions. In the alternative method, trainees were also taught successfully how to change their situation control, but no mention was made of their LPC score or its implications. The performance of the trainees in this alternative condition improved in the same way as did the performance of those who received regular Leader Match training. Frost suggested that the results were due to increases in the leaders’ confidence, not to feedback about their leadership style (LPC) around which Leader Match training is organized. Frost concluded, from the results of his aforementioned experiment, that for experienced managers, at least, behavioral modeling or other methods of teaching that require leadership behavior that is independent of the situation are likely to be more effective than is Leader Match.
Leader-Member Exchange Training.18 LMX training is aimed at improving the dyadic exchange relations of leaders with members of the group. A controlled experiment completed by Graen, Novak, and Sommerkamp (1982) showed that supervisors who were specifically trained in maintaining high-quality leader-Member exchange relationships, in contrast to supervisors who received a placebo experience, improved the productivity of their subordinates more than 16%; their subordinates’ motivation and loyalty were increased, and their role conflict and role ambiguity were reduced. Similarly, Scandura and Graen (1984) found that LMX training compared to a control group improved the level of reciprocal understanding and helpfulness between supervisors and subordinates. As a consequence of LMX training, initially outgroup subordinates perceived increased support from their supervisors. The weekly productive output and job satisfaction of the subordinates were also increased.
Cogliser & Scandura (2003) suggested that LMX relations could be improved in the line of hierarchy between each leader and each follower if (1) each leader develops and communicates to followers a vision consistent the organization’s; each follower becomes a leader in the next level below and passes the vision on to the followers in the level below; (2) the leader’s behavior is consistent with the organization’s values; (3) the leader’s values are consistent with the organization’s and are communicated clearly to the followers; (4) each leader has a teachable point of view that is communicated candidly with followers; (5) each leader is a role model for followers; and (6) at every level, each leader and follower become more effective in their relationships.
Efforts here have been twofold, to show, first, that supervisors’ attitudes toward initiation and consideration, as measured by the LOQ, can be changed with training and, second, that this change can also be measured by the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ). As was noted in Chapter 20, coercive elements were involved in earlier versions of the SBDQ and the LBDQ. As a consequence, reductions in initiation and increases in consideration were sought in training.
The results of numerous controlled experiments using the LOQ and the LBDQ to measure improvements have been mixed. Comparisons were difficult because of the extent to which the training itself varied in emphasis, quality, and extent, for there is no single standardized program about how to teach leaders to change their initiation and consideration. Stroud (1959) reported that after training, supervisors were described by their superiors as more considerate Fleishman (1953b) and Harris and Fleishman (1955) examined the initiation and consideration scores of 39 International Harvester supervisors following a training program. The supervisors’ consideration scores increased in means and variances, but the supervisors maintained their heightened consideration scores only if they returned to superiors who were similarly higher in consideration. At the same time, the questionnaire was administered to a control group of supervisors who had not taken the course. Compared to the controls, the trainee group exhibited more of a reduction in initiating structure and more of an increase in consideration.
Fifty supervisors of an Australian government railway department were randomly selected and assigned by Tharenou and Lyndon (undated) to receive training, and 50 were similarly selected and assigned to a control group. A two-week residential course trained participants in the skills of planning and relating. Measures of consideration and initiation were obtained before and after training from the supervisors, as well as from 100 male subordinates of the supervisors. Compared to those of the untrained controls, the trainees’ self-rated and subordinate-rated consideration and initiation were both increased. Similarly, Deitzer (1967) studied experimental and control groups of district sales managers in an insurance company before, four weeks after, and 12 weeks after a training program to increase consideration and initiation of structure. The experimental group outperformed the control group after training on all criterion variables—the number of new agents recruited, the volume of new policies sold by the agent working under the manager, and the like. The managers’ consideration was positively related to the volume of sales, both 4 and 12 weeks after training; the managers’ initiation of structure was related to sales 12 weeks later. However, Bendo (1984) failed to find any significant changes in the LBDQ scores of 126 supervisors who were subjected to Leader Effectiveness Training, a standardized training program. However, in the aggregate, training programs can increase considerate behavior in leaders, as measured by the LBDQ. And when the measurement of initiation includes coercive behavior as with the SBDQ, reductions in initiation can be brought about with training.
Savan (1983) contrasted trained and control groups of supervisors and found that a simulation exercise dealing with initiation and consideration conducted between immediate pre-and postmeasurements failed to shift LOQ scores. Nevertheless, six months after training, there was a notable improvement in the job performance of the trained supervisors compared with the control group. On the other hand, Painter (1984) measured the LOQ scores of public welfare supervisors and their subordinates’ descriptions of the supervisors on the LBDQ two months before and after training in interpersonal skills but failed to find any significant effects of the training. Likewise, in a similar pre-post LOQ measurement of 40 restaurant managers and LBDQ assessments of them by their 380 subordinate employees, Anghelone (1981) was unable to find much change in the attitudes or performance of the managers as a consequence of a management training program.
Hand and Slocum (1972) conducted a training program to raise supervisors’ consideration scores; 18 months later, they found the supervisors’ job performance more highly rated as a consequence. Biggs, Huneryager, and Delaney (1966) found that a two-week training course resulted in more favorable attitudes toward consideration and less favorable attitudes toward initiating structure. Carron (1964) also obtained data indicating that supervisors became less strongly oriented toward structuring and authoritarianism as a result of a training effort. Schwartz, Stillwell, and Scanlon (1968) studied two groups of insurance supervisors, one of which whose score moved toward more consideration and less emphasis on production after training and the other of which moved toward more initiation of structure. And although Herod (1969) and M. B. Miles (1965) obtained results from a training program that produced a more considerate attitude toward group processes, they found no significant change in attitudes toward consideration and initiation of structure. Carron (1964) noted that although attitudes toward initiation of structure and authoritarianism decreased immediately after training, no significant changes were apparent 17 months later. Ayers (1964) found that feedback did little to enhance the effects of training, as measured by changes in attitudes toward consideration and initiation of structure. Similarly, H. B. Stephenson (1966) observed that the training of 449 management trainees in management development produced no significant change in their attitude scores on the LOQ initiation of structure and consideration.
Stogdill (1970) developed a set of films, each depicting one of four different patterns of LBDQ-XII leadership behavior: consideration, initiation of structure, tolerance of freedom, and production emphasis. The films were shown to 35 sorority presidents. Each film was followed by a discussion period that was designed to induce insight into the whys and wherefores of the patterns of behavior. Leaders were described by five sorority members before training and three months after on the LBDQ-XII. The results suggested that leadership behavior was more logically related to the performance of groups after training than before. Stogdill and Bailey (1969) showed the four films to small groups of boys in three vocational high schools, along with a fifth film on representation. After seeing each movie, the groups discussed the supervisor’s behavior. The investigators found that the discussion of the movies exerted a favorable effect on the groups’ responses to supervision. In another experiment, Stogdill, Coady, and Zimmer (1970) attempted to influence students’ attitudes toward the different supervisory roles by using the films. The results suggested that discussion of the films affected the students’ adjustment to supervision. Insight and understanding facilitated favorable responses to supervision.
Training Motivation to Manage. By means of a lecture, Miner (1961b) successfully increased the favorableness of the attitudes of 72 research and development supervisors, as measured by the Miner Sentence Completion Scale,19 to accepting responsibility for their leadership role above and beyond their professional roles. He further reported that training resulted in more favorable attitudes to supervisory work. He obtained a small positive correlation between favorable changes in attitudes to and changes toward more effective supervisory performance (Miner, 1960b, 1965). Finally, both college students and business managers who took a course with Miner (1965) improved their attitudes toward the acceptance of responsibility and authority and the willingness to initiate remedial action. Five years later, the business managers who had taken the course had significantly better promotion records than did a control group.
Miner (1988) reviewed previous research on training to increase the motivation of managers and noted its uniqueness in emphasizing how to deal with ineffective subordinates. He further argued that the effectiveness of other training programs, such as Leader Match or behavioral modeling, as seen in Frost’s (1986) experiment, depended on their sensitizing trainees to the management role.
Although specific behavioral skills can be taught in training and actresses have been taught how to display charismatic behaviors in laboratory situations (Howell & Frost, 1988), the emphasis in developing charismatic-transformational20 leaders needs to be on education and development, not on skill training alone (Avolio & Gibbons, 1988). Gibbons (1986) reported that in contrast to managers who were transactional, managers who were nominated by their colleagues and described by their subordinates as transformational on the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire said that their performance primarily reflected their whole integrated person, not specific skills taught in brief workshops that may or may not fit their deeply held values and self-concepts. Transformational leadership requires a broad educational process. Such leadership cannot be manipulated; it must be a joint search for truth by the teacher and the students in which the students are moved “to higher stages of moral reasoning and hence to higher levels of principled judgment” (Burns, 1978, p. 449). The persona or aura of a leader who is more likely to be seen as charismatic can be learned by being optimistic and passionate in generating enthusiasm, using the body language of a charismatic with appropriate gestures and stance, and inspiring appropriate emotions in followers (Richardson & Thayer, 1993). Fidel Castro learned to imitate Benito Mussolini’s speech making in gestures and stance to captivate his audiences.
Feedback is essential in programs of education in transformational leadership, as in many other management development approaches. In this instance, the feedback from colleagues is about one’s transformational performance as a charismatic, inspirational, individually considerate, and intellectually stimulating leader and how much one practices the transactional processes of contingent reward and management by exception (Bass & Avolio, 1989). Discrepancies between self and colleagues and self and norms are used to generate ideas and plans for improvement. In an illustrative program, feedback of MLQ results was used to increase the transformational leadership behavior of 250 executives and their direct reports (including the chief executive officer and top four levels of management) of a large Canadian financial institution (Howell & Avolio, 1989). In this program emphasis was also placed on examining the organization’s culture as it is and envisioning what it and its goals and objectives should be.
Concentration on developing followers was seen by Dvir (1998) as making the difference between charismatic and transformational leadership, though they have many attributes in common. Charismatic leaders, particularly self-serving ones, are interested in exploiting their subordinates, not developing them, while Dvir saw that the development of followers is at the core of transformational leadership. Followers are developed into leaders. Bass (1985a) found charisma to be the largest among the factors in transformational leadership, accounting for 66% of it. House and Shamir (1993) preferred to see the two concepts integrated as charismatic-transformational. In the education and training effort, meaning is provided about organizational considerations. Long-term strategies are articulated, along with how implementation is to be achieved. New organizations are considered, along with rearrangements of social roles and networks (Tichy & Devanna, 1986). Personal and organizational visions are shared, along with their planned implementation in organizational planning simulations or by a review and discussion of testimonials of what leaders have said about how they do it (Kouzes & Posner, 1985).
Experimental Evaluations. Controlled experiments have been completed in correctional institutions, industry, colleges, and the military. Crookall (1989) compared the transactional and transformational leadership training of shop work supervisors of the Canadian correctional service. The supervisors were employed for their trade skills and supervised the shop work for inmates, who are ordinarily low in education and motivation. Twenty of the supervisors completed a three-day program on the Hersey-Blanchard situational leadership model (Hersey & Blanchard, 1977). Another 20 supervisors received three days of education about transformational and transactional leadership (Avolio & Bass, 1989). Still another 20 supervisors served as an untrained control group. The situational leadership training was seen by the supervisors and their bosses as a review of good basic supervisory practices; the transformational leadership training was considered to be more of a personal development experience. Three months before training and three months after training of the supervisors, the inmates were rated on their work habits and productivity. Both groups of inmates with trained supervisors significantly improved, but not those of the control group. The length of the inmates’ voluntary stay in the shop programs increased by 50% for both sets of trained supervisors and remained unchanged for the control group. Pre and post changes in inmates’ case descriptions prepared by their case managers who did not know about the training experiment registered significant improvement in the inmates’ personal growth and development, but no changes occurred for the control group. However, only the transformational program significantly improved the inmates’ citizenship behavior and respect for the supervisors. No significant reduction in disciplinary offenses was reported in any of the three groups, although the inmates’ supervisors reported the need to intervene less often as a consequence of training. They also reported less contraband, sabotage, and complaints from inmates about the staff. In addition, transformational leadership education resulted in dramatic changes in some of the supervisors. One supervisor changed from a chronic complainer to a problem solver. Another had inmates asking to be assigned to him for the first time in ten years. Complaints about another supervisor for being boring and repetitive were no longer made. And a fourth supervisor broke with the tradition of his discipline to take the lead in introducing computerized equipment.
The results of this experiment suggest that transformational leadership education is not a substitute for situational or transactional leadership training. Rather, as is argued elsewhere (Bass, 1985a), transformational leadership can augment transactional leadership. Training in situational leadership can profitably be followed by education in transformational leadership. Gillis, Gitkate, Robinson, et al. (undated) completed an MLQ questionnaire study in the same correctional system using 35 shop work instructors, 143 inmates, and seven managers of the instructors. The managers reported that supervisors with transformational training were more effective in obtaining extra effort from the inmates. Inmates who rated their supervisors as transformational rather than transactional had more positive attitudes and work motivation. They were also more punctual. As expected, supervisors rated as laissez-faire generated lower inmate motivation and job involvement, and less extra effort.
Barling, Weber, and Kelloway (1996) conducted a oneday training workshop in transformational leadership for nine managers, along with four booster sessions on a monthly basis. They were compared with a control group of 11 managers. All were rated by their subordinates before and after the training of the nine managers. A multivariate analysis of variance accounted for significant effects in subordinate ratings in transformational leadership when trainees were compared with controls.
Kirkpatrick and Locke (1996) conducted an experiment to simulate visionary and charismatic leadership for 282 student participants. High-quality envisioning increased trust in the leader and shared attitudes with those in the vision, and had a minor impact on participants’ performance. Implementation of the vision with task cues also had an impact on performance, but charismatic communications influenced only affected perceptions of charismatic leadership.
Popper, Landau, and Gluskinos (1992) evaluated the effectiveness of a three-day training program in transformational leadership for Israel Defense Forces cadets with surveys over 18 months. Most of the cadets said that the program was inspiring and important and that they would try to implement what they had learned when they became commanders. This was followed up in a controlled experiment by Dvir (1998). As part of an Israeli infantry officer course, the experimental cadets completed workshops in transformational leadership while the controls completed an eclectic leadership program as usually taught by consultants and trainers. As the 49 cadets assumed the role of platoon commanders, data were collected about their performance from themselves, their 46 company commanders, their 89 NCOs, and 724 recruits. Objective tests were completed after the training of 40 of the 49 platoons, each led by one of the trainees as platoon commanders responsible for the development of the performance of their recruits. The platoons led by the experimentals were significantly better on all the objective tests: written light weapons, practical light weapons, physical fitness, obstacle course, and shooting after exertion. The recruits led by the experimentals, but not the controls, correlated significantly in the development of attitudes closer to those of the NCOs. The attitudes of the experimentally led recruits shifted toward a more collectivistic orientation, active engagement in the task, perceived effectiveness of the platoon commander, and perceived similarity to the leader.
Organizational Vision Training. Thoms and Greenberger (1998) provided training in organizational vision, a component of transformational leadership. The 111 participants were 58 men and 53 women, all but two at management levels ranging from first-line supervisor to CEO. Visioning ability was judged from writing about a future image of the organizational unit the participant managed. Visioning ability correlated with positivism and future time perspective. Mean results improved from 3.5 to 4.0 from before to after the training for the trained managers, compared to a group of 50 control participants who attended a management program of the same length in personnel law. The controls’ mean results changed from 3.4 to 3.5. The differences between the changes in the trainees and the controls were highly significant.
Trainees are motivated to attend, to learn from training courses, and to transfer the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) they have learned to their work when they see that positive transfer from training to their job will be beneficial to them. It has further been suggested that trainees will be motivated to learn about leadership if (1) they are confident about using what they have learned, (2) they are aware that the new KSAs are appropriate to their job, (3) they believe the new KSAs would be helpful in dealing with job demands (Noe & Schmitt, 1986), (4) they respect the reputation of the trainers or the training organization, and (5) they value the managerial training courses and would recommend them to peers (Facteau, Dobbins, Russell, et al., 1995). Also important to trainee motivation are perceived task characteristics that facilitate or block the transfer of training such as new equipment. Social support may also make a difference (Noe, 1986). Particularly salient is the support or lack of it by the trainee’s immediate superior (Clark, Dobbins, & Ladd, 1993). Additionally, trainees’ belief in their self-efficacy mediates the effects of training (Saks, 1995).
Switzer (2003) surveyed the motivation of 93 managers of a large nationwide insurance company before training. In agreement with hypotheses, pretraining motivation correlated .48 with the perceived reputation of the training program; .39 with perceived managerial support; and .55 with self-efficacy. Noe’s (1986) model of requirements for effective training suggested that leadership trainees need to believe in the assessments of their strengths and weaknesses. They must value the outcomes of training and believe they can achieve the outcomes. They must believe that the training fits with the resources they have available on the job and that the organization will support them if they make use of their learning. Differences in trainees’ motivation figured in Gruenfeld’s (1966) report that participants who paid part of their tuition devoted themselves more intensely to the program, found it more difficult, and benefited more, as measured by a rating scale and test of values. Avolio and Bass (1998) demonstrated that 66 managers improved MLQ subordinates’ ratings from before to after a training program, but only on those transformational leadership factors they said they would try to improve.
Motivation and readiness to learn about leadership and development as a leader can be seen to evolve in stages. Borrowing from the Prochaska, DiClemente, & Norcross (1992) model of stages in the therapeutic process, Harris and Cole (1999) proposed a four-factor model of stages for which they developed a 21-item factored survey questionnaire: (1) pre-contemplation (“I don’t have any leadership development needs”), (2) general contemplation (“It might be worthwhile to work on improving my leadership skills”), (3) specific program contemplation (“Maybe this leadership development program … will help me to become a better leader”), and (4) action (“I am actively working on my leadership shortcomings”). Between 75 and 80 managers and engineering project heads in a manufacturing division in an MNC in the southeastern United States completed the survey as they attended different sessions of the training program. Using five anchors from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree, the mean responses for the four factors were as follows: precontemplation = 1.76; general contemplation = 4.25; specific program contemplation = 4.20; and Action = 3.68. Readiness to change correlated −.56 with pre-contemplation, .70 with general contemplation, .63 with specific program contemplation, and only .29 with action. Only those at the specific and general contemplation stages tended to specify needing to learn about managing conflict, budgeting, quality management, visionary leadership, and team building but not stress management.
The Learning Organization. Senge (1990) described the ideal learning organization. Motivation to learn and adaptivity to changes in conditions arise when (1) previous fragmentary thinking becomes systematic thinking, (2) personal visions are continually clarified and reality is seen objectively, (3) competition between members becomes cooperation in helping each other to excel, (4) reactivity becomes proactivity, (4) thinking about inquiry and advocacy becomes open to influence by others, and (5) shared visions arise through dialogue. The members become communities of commitment (Kofman & Senge, 1993). Newkirk-Moore and Backer (1998) studied the commitment to strategic planning of 157 small financial businesses as gauged by the frequency senior managers in the firms attended strategic management training programs. The frequency of attendance was significantly related to greater return on stockholders’ equity.