Final Exam

Leadership & Organizational Behavior

Choose and connect three of the integrative questions from this course to answer this

question: "What is the most effective way to lead?" Give me one answer, not three separate

ones, that integrates the material from three different classes. The questions up to today are listed

on the next page.

I am grading you on your ability to connect the class material together, demonstrate

understanding, and make a coherent argument. I encourage you to revisit the “depth of

understanding” slide provided in the Toolbox, as a guide.

Use Times New Roman, 12-pt font, and double-spacing.

You can use your notes and talk with each other. However, you must submit your own work.

This means your own examples and your own novel applications, if you provide them.
 Integrative Questions by Unit

 Unit 1 - Does power corrupt? 

 Unit 2 - What is the best way to improve job performance?

 Unit 3 - What is the personality and values profile of a successful leader? That is, what

personality and values do successful leaders tend to have in common?

 Unit 4 – How can you achieve lasting agreements?

 Unit 5 – What biases do you think leaders need to be most careful of?

 Unit 6 – Is it possible to persuade people without manipulating them?

 Unit 7 – What makes a story compelling?

 Unit 8 – What are your ethical obligations as a leader?

 Unit 9 – Can culture be changed? (If not, why not? If so, how?)

 Unit 10 – Should power be shared?

What is the most effective way to lead?

SELF-AWARENESS

As many things in life, the most effective way to lead starts with oneself. Self-awareness is the

most powerful tool we have to boost performance. We must embrace ourselves, accept who we

are and develop the required skills to excel at leading others, because, like George, B., Sims, P.,

et. al. (2007) discovered there are no universal characteristics people need to be born with that

guarantee becoming an effective leader.

In the article “Leadership that Gets Results” (Goleman, D., 2000), it is stated that the best leaders

excel in 5 skills of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy,

and social skill. Furthermore, when the 75 members of Stanford Graduate School of Business’s

Advisory Council were asked to recommend the most important skill for leaders to develop, their

answer was also self-awareness. This may sound very general, but some researchers (George, B.,

Sims, P., McLean, A. N., & Mayer, D., 2007) have identified a list of characteristics that true

leaders can develop over time and are critical for getting the best results and the best out of

people:

 Knowing who they are, or in other words, self-awareness.

 Showing passion for one’s purpose.

 Practicing values consistently.

 Leading with both heart and head.

 Establishing long-term meaningful relationships.

  Having self-discipline to get results.

 Developing intrinsic motivation over external financial or social rewards.

 Having a constant and strong self-development impulse.

 Demonstrating integrity that leads to long-term results.

 Combating ego and facing honest feedback to improve leading style.

 Building an extraordinary support team to help them stay on course.

 Integrating your personality among different social and professional spheres, to behave

almost as the same person: staying grounded.

We can infer from this list that self-awareness should be about discovering the following:

 My principles and values, and how they shape the way I do business and treat others.

 My purpose in life, and how does it relate to the company’s mission.

 What drives my motivation from the inside (intrinsic motivation) and is strongest than

any external factor such as social recognition or economical needs.

Leadership effectiveness is explained only 31% by personality traits, the remaining lays in how

you develop other skills that are aligned to your life purpose and life goals. In that sense, one of

the most powerful sources of self-awareness is understanding the life lessons of our most

difficult situations and darkest hours, personal and professional. Let me quote George, B., Sims,

P., et. al. (2007): “Analyzing 3,000 pages of transcripts, our team was startled to see you do not

have to be born with specific characteristics or traits of a leader. Leadership emerges from your

life story.”
INTEGRITY AND POWER

Integrity is critical, because your ability to influence people into one direction will be determined

by their willingness to follow, and nobody wants to follow unreliable leaders. In his book

“Pleno”, Simon Cohen (2020) explains the difference between being honest and have integrity:

“In a hotel, a man returns to the owner his lost wallet. In return the second man wants to send

him a gift to his home, but the honest man replies: I cannot accept it because my wife cannot

know I spent the night at this hotel”. The man was honest, but did not have integrity to behave

with honesty in all the different areas of his life.

This takes me to other subject: the source of power. When you are an inspiring leader, you can

influence people and have power over them by several means. One important source of power is

to be a Referent. People bestow you with power because they admire you or feel inspired by you.

If you have no integrity and fail to walk the talk, people will know you are a joke and will only

obey your instructions based on the power your leader role gives you (coercive and legitimate

sources).

Just like Anderson & Berdahl (2002) demonstrated, “people with a weak moral identity were

more likely to use power in their own self-interest”, therefore, self-awareness about your values,

integrity and intrinsic motivators can prevent you from joining the dark side of power.

Since the source of power can come from the rewards you can give, the actions you can coerce

because you have the authority, the expertise you show (expert), what you can inspire to others

(referent) and what the social environment allows you to do (legitimate), it is important that you
know how to combine these tools to move people in the right direction with the right motives.

For example, you must ensure you set a fair rewarding system aligned to business goals and

business ethics, but some individuals might need a coercive style when these rewards are not

appealing to them, or you can inspire to run the extra mile by simply listen to their needs and

concerns, and enable them / remove barriers to untap their performance.

I will now explore another way of getting more power but using it to develop leadership.

Company Politics is the ability to effectively understand others at work, how professional webs

work, and to use such knowledge to influence others to act in ways that help achieve one’s

personal or organizational objectives. If we can develop this skill, we can also teach it to high

potential employees in a mentor-mentee relationship (which by the way needs to be authentic

and be conducted with integrity). Leaders make things happen, and Company Politics can play a

fundamental role, so why not making sure more people know how to navigate effectively

through the organization layers and pull off their agenda?

INTEGRITY AND THE ROLE OF COGNITIVE BIAS

No matter how well intentioned we are, we can always make mistakes that are wired in our

brains and behavioral psychology. To behave with integrity, we have to deal with organizational

systems and cognitive biases that perpetuate unethical behavior. It is important to consider the

following factors:

• Indirect blindness: overlook unethical practices that are outsourced to others.

• Slippery slope: inability to notice when behavior deteriorates gradually.

• Motivated blindness: overlook unethical behavior in others if it plays in our favor or it is

in our interest to remain ignorant about it.

• Overvaluing outcomes: A tendency to overlook unethical decisions when the outcome is

good

• Goals that reward unethical behavior, such as unrealistic objectives.

• Conflicts of interest that make people ignore bad behavior when they have something to

lose by recognizing it.

NOW FOCUS ON OTHERS: ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT

Now that we have addressed how to improve our own leadership, now is time to look at the kind

of interactions with others that drive best results in this field. To the question, what is the most

effective way to lead?, we must also consider what motivates people to give their best. All

previous concepts help building a healthy work environment that can favor an affective

commitment from employees. Why is this affective commitment important? Because it creates

personal loyalty based on positive feelings toward the work. On the other hand, you want to

avoid normative and continuance commitment, which are feelings of obligation to work and

staying just because people fear to lose benefits or other perceived costs of leaving.

So how to create this affective commitment in a context of dynamic relationships and changing

environments?

LEADERSHIP STYLES AND MOTIVATION

In the article “Leadership that Gets Results” (Goleman, D., 2000), it is stated that the best leaders

excel in 5 skills of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy,

and social skill. Now, these skills are combined at different levels in different situations;

depending on those circumstances they match one of the six basic leadership styles. The top

leaders are able to switch to different styles depending on the situation, and are good at several

styles, not just one.

What I propose is to understand when to use these styles depending on the level of skill,

maturity, knowledge, self-confidence, commitment and motivation energy. It is a way to fusion

Daniel Goleman leadership styles with Ken Blanchard’s. This implies that the same person may

need different leadership styles depending on the specific situation, project or challenge they are

facing, simply because their development level is different.

Daniel Goleman styles are the following:

1. Coercive. “Do what I say”. Good for emergencies and problem employees. Not good

when you need more organizational flexibility, and neither to motivate employees.

2. Authoritative. “Come with me”. She sets the goal and let the team decide how to

accomplish it. Good for bad business situations or projects way off-target. Bad for working with

very experienced people, usually more knowledgeable than the leader.

3. Affiliative. “People come first”. Focus on praise but fails to correct poor performance.

Good to create harmony and raising up morale. Usually doesn’t offer advice and people remain

uncertain.
4. Democratic. “Everybody needs to be heard”. Listens to all parties to take a decision, so it

is good to build consensus, get fresh ideas and create flexibility, but bad for taking quick action

upon emergencies and has the risk of leaving employees feeling leaderless.

5. Pacesetting. “Perform like I do”. Sets and performs at high performance standards. Good

for self-motivated high-competent persons, but bad for people with low standards who may feel

overwhelmed and resentful for her tendency to take over a situation.

6. Coaching. “Your development comes first”. Focuses on personal development rather than

daily work-related matters. Good for people willing to change and aware of their own

weaknesses. Bad for people who resist change or do not accept feedback.

The Ken Blanchard’s Situational Leadership framework has four styles that need to be applied

depending the project, situation or goal the person is facing: S1 Directing, S2 Coaching, S3

Supporting, S4 Delegating. It is very interesting how the Coercive style matches the First Style

S1 that a manager needs when the direct report is new at a task and has a lot of initiative. The

“do as I say” style can be very effective when people need direction, but leaders need to be very

careful to use it until the person is ready for the next stage. If a manager stays too long in the

coercive style, all the initial energy the employee had will fade away, because eventually, more

skilled people will value jobs where they can grow and have more responsibilities.

The authoritative style could correspond to the Leadership Styles 3 and 4, where you need to

give support and delegate because your direct reports are very skilled and have different levels of

motivation (from low to high). However, this sounds somewhat contradictory with what

Goleman says about skilled people. Goleman explains that people more skilled than their
manager, could feel uncomfortable with this style because they might think she/he is out of touch

or just being naively enthusiastic. Therefore, in order to make this style work, the leader must be

cautions to adapt her message to the audience, and when setting a vision and energizing, use the

right words and manners to acknowledge the seniority of each team member.

Affiliative and Coaching styles can match either S2 Coaching and S3 Supporting. They all have

in common that they build a strong sense of belonging and feedback sessions are crucial.

Affiliative leaders care about emotions first, and also a S2 and S3 leaders need to provide

support at an emotional level too. S2 is about directing actions with a lot of support behind,

while S3 is about discussing things but let the direct report choose and take action while

providing enough support. Affiliative leaders are flexible and inspire, so this characteristic is also

similar in S3, but not very much in S2 where a strong direction is still needed.

Finally, S4 is about delegating. The leader does not have to support or direct in a strong way her

team. In that sense, I believe that the most effective styles to adopt in such a situation are

authoritative, affiliative and pacesetting. Democratic and coaching are not an option since the

leader now delegates those functions to her direct reports, while coercive is even contradictory to

the delegation concept, because when you delegate effectively, the decisions are made by the

person you delegated the task to, and not by you.

NEUROSCIENCE OF TRUST
I want to finish by linking Daniel Goleman leadership styles with motivation techniques that may

work better for each style. This proposal is based on the work of Zak, P. J. (2017) in his HBR

article “The Neuroscience of Trust”. In this paper, Mr. Zak shares that trust is the number one

factor that improves motivation and performance, that oxytocin is one of the main contributors to

stablish that feeling in a personal relationship, and has identified 8 management behaviors to

improve trust. Some results from his research state that high-trust companies compared to low-

trust companies, report:

 74% less stress.

 106% more energy at work.

 50% higher productivity.

 13% fewer sick days.

 76% more engagement.

 29% more satisfaction with their lives.

 40% less burnout.

The management behaviors are:

1. Recognize excellence by making it unexpectedly, immediate, personal and public.

2. Generate eustress and make your team feel challenged. This is similar to the Flow Theory

of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced like Cheek-Sent-Me-High).

3. Empower people by giving them autonomy.

4. Job crafting. Employ your unique talents and strengths to redesign your job tasks or

include new ones.

 5. Have friends. It is a fact that companies that have employees with strong personal

relationships are more productive and more profitable. You need to create the social

spaces to let people know each other and have them create those relationships voluntarily.

6. Provide or create conditions to improve professional AND personal growth.

7. Show vulnerability, because it makes you a closer human being that is trustworthy.

8. Share information: let them know what is happening in the organization, do it frequently,

be transparent and share business strategies. People value being informed.

So having said this, this is how I see leaders can use these behaviors depending on their preferred

leadership style:

1 2 3 4 Job 5 6 7 8

Recogniz Eustres Autonom Craftin Friendship Holisti Vulnerabilit Shar

e s y g s c y e

Excellenc growth info

Coercive X X X

Authoritativ X X X X X X

Affiliative X X X X

Democratic X X X

Pacesetting X X X X X

Coaching X X X X X X