Leaders and Followers are People Too!

  Amongst leadership studies and the plethora of theories, it is important not to forget that both leaders and followers are individuals.  Organizations can be dissected and examined but the actual action of leadership must still happen in a person to person capacity.  This leads to the necessity of exploring the act of leading individuals.  Wren's text utilizes excerpts from Hughes, Ginnett, and Curphy's book, Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Leadership, to discuss the importance of leading the individual. 
  The first excerpt focused on the idea of motivation of the individual.  The importance of motivation was shown by the polling of employees who believed they could give up to 20 percent less effort at work without anybody noticing and they could also give 20 percent more effort without anybody noticing (Wren 1995).  It is proposed that 40 percent gap can be bridged most easily through proper motivation of the employees.  Motivation is ascribed to be influenced by three different theories: the need theories, the cognitive theories and situational approaches.  In need theories, motivation is piqued by fulfilling basic needs of the individual.  The idea is that an employee or follower is more apt to be successfully motivated when their basic needs are being met and even some higher needs are being fulfilled.  In cognitive theories, they are concerned with satisfying the conscious thought processes followers utilize when deciding on personal motivation.  This is more of an intellectual approach to motivation.  Finally, situational approaches can be generalized as placing the emphasis of motivation specifically on the situation that the follower is found in.  The leader is flexible in their motivating tactics in order to react to the constantly changing environment.  
  Next, the examination of power, influence and influence tactics was conducted in order to discuss how to bring about change after motivation of followers.  As defined by Hughes, Ginnett and Curphy, power is described as the potential to influence another person.  Influence is the ability to change an individual or group's attitudes, values, beliefs or behaviors due to the use of influence tactics.  Influence tactics are therefore the actual actions and behavior utilized to create the change.  There are identified five sources from which a leader can influence their followers: expert power, referent power, legitimate power, reward power, and coercive power (Wren 1995).  Expert power can be held by anyone holding the power of knowledge and this is notable because knowledge is blind to class or social standing.  Referent power is found in the strength of relationships between a leader and followers that can be utilized to exact influence.  Legitimate power is solely dependent on an organizational role.  This type of power is typically given to an individual by someone in a higher level of legitimate power.  Reward power is most often exhibited by someone also holding legitimate power because reward power involves the ability for an individual to give a reward based off of performance.  Finally, coercive power is the opposite of reward power because it is the influence of a negative consequence for undesirable action.  Given these avenues of power, there is outlined methods for influence tactics.  These include rational persuasion, inspirational appeals, consultation, ingratiation, personal appeals, exchange, coalition tactics, pressure tactics and legitimizing tactics.  
  William Wilberforce has become famous for being able to forge the path to the abolition of slavery and subsequent reformation of morals in England.  In order to do this, Wilberforce exerted multiple influence tactics in order to pass the bill that he believed in (Guinness 1999).  These tactics were useful because Wilberforce displayed many of the modes of power that Hughes, Ginnett and Curphy outline.  Wilberforce is an ideal example for being able to utilize both the innate and given power by use of influence tactics in order to influence individuals who in turn influenced a nation's course of morality.  
  The office of leadership is one that requires lifelong learning.  This section of Wren's text was saturated with theory and practical outlook on the role of leading individuals.  As I move forward into positions and arenas that inherently require leadership of some form, the ability to learn about, evaluate and critique different theories and ideas about leadership is invaluable.  And, so it begins...

Guinness, O (1999) Character Counts.  Grand Rapids: Baker Books
Wren, J (1995) A Leader's Companion. New York: The Free Press