Exploring the relationship of leadership skills and knowledge to leader performance

The criterion-related validity of constructed response measures of complex problem-solving skills, social judgment skills, and leader knowledge is examined with respect to two criteria of leader effectiveness: leader achievement and quality of solutions to ill-defined leadership problems. Core aspects of the leader capabilities model are tested using these measures in a series of hierarchical regression analyses. Results indicate that constructed response measures of key leader capabilities account for variance in leader effectiveness and provide initial validation evidence for a central part of the theoretical model. The problem-solving, social judgment and knowledge measures account for significant variance in leadership criteria beyond that accounted for by cognitive abilities, motivations, and personality. Initial evidence also suggests that complex problem-solving skills, social judgment and leader knowledge partially mediate the relationship of cognitive abilities, motivation and personality to leader effectiveness. Implications and generalizability of the results are discussed in light of a related civilian leadership study conducted within the U.S. Department of Defense.     

Leadership skills for a changing world: Solving complex social problems

Leadership has traditionally been seen as a distinctly interpersonal phenomenon demonstrated in the interactions between leaders and subordinates. The theory of leadership presented in this article proposes that effective leadership behavior fundamentally depends upon the leader's ability to solve the kinds of complex social problems that arise in organizations. The skills that make this type of complex social problem solving possible are discussed. The differential characteristics and career experiences likely to influence the development of these skills also are considered along with the implications of these observations for leadership theory and for the career development of organizational leaders.     

Cognitive skills and leadership performance: The nine critical skills

Over the years, a growing body of evidence indicates that certain cognitive skills are a critical determinant of leader performance. In the present effort we show that application of these skills is typically founded in case-based knowledge. Subsequently, we identify nine key skills people in leadership positions employ when working with case-based knowledge to address leadership problems: 1) problem definition, 2) cause/goal analysis, 3) constraint analysis, 4) planning, 5) forecasting, 6) creative thinking, 7) idea evaluation, 8) wisdom, and 9) sensemaking/visioning. Individual and situational contingencies shaping effective application of these thinking skills is discussed. In addition, the implications of findings bearing on leader thinking skills for leader assessment and leader development are considered.     

Development of leadership skills: Experience and timing

To develop organizational leaders we need to understand how requisite skills are acquired over the course of people's careers. In this article, a cross-sectional design was used to assess differences in leadership skills across six grade levels of officers in the U.S. Army. Increased levels of knowledge, problem-solving skills, systems skills, and social skills were found at higher grade levels. Certain skills and experiences, however, were found to be particularly important at certain phases of leaders' careers. These findings are used to propose an organization-based model of skill development. Implications of this model for leader development programs are discussed.     

Führungskulturen an der Universität: Feedbackinstrumente als Schlüssel zur Personalentwicklung

Management culture at German universities. Guided feedback as an instrument to develop leadership skills In future, universities will be fundamentally more exposed to national and international competition than they are today. The challenges for Germany’s universities arising from this are increased by the reform pressure towards a modernization of the governmental administration. On grounds of these new tasks and challenges, inner-organizational changes as well as the development of a leadership responsibility and further training of the employees’ social skills are necessary. Therefore up-to-date personnel development belongs to a university’s modernization program. At the Berlin University of Technology appraisals by subordinates are practiced in order to design a fair leadership culture. The crucial factor for this is the professor’s and administration manager’s identification with their leadership role. For a further process consultation the adoption of coaching is recommended.     

Incorporating social networks into leadership development: A conceptual model and evaluation of research and practice

Multilevel and relational views of leadership are expanding the focus of leadership development beyond individuals' knowledge, skills, and abilities to include the networked patterns of social relationships linking members of dyads and larger collectives. In this review, we present a conceptual model explaining how three distinct approaches for network-enhancing leadership development can improve the leadership capacity of individuals and collectives. We then present a review of the leadership development literature and the results of a survey of 282 practitioners to assess the extent to which these approaches have been examined in research and implemented in practice. Our review revealed that leadership research and leadership development practice are outpacing leadership development research in terms of incorporating networks. We aim to spur future research by clarifying the targets, objectives, and underlying mechanisms of each network enhancing leadership development approach in our conceptual model. Further, we identify additional literature, not traditionally considered within the realm of leadership development that may help advance empirical examinations of these approaches.     

Development and evaluation of cognitive and metacognitive measures for predicting leadership potential

This article describes the development of an on-line computer-based cognitive and metacognitive skill assessment battery (the MLE) designed for assessment and development of high-level executives. The reliability and validity of the skill measures were calculated on a sample of senior officers at the National Defense University, Industrial College of the Armed Forces. Significant criterion-related validity of the MLE assessment battery was obtained, which confirmed the hypothesis regarding the importance of these skills for solving problems involved in high-level executive leadership. The special importance of metacognitive processing and solution construction skills was confirmed.     

The evolution of leadership: Leadership and followership as a solution to the problem of creating and executing successful coordination and cooperation enterprises

This paper proposes that leadership and followership are not just evolved solutions to the problem of coordinating what to do once a group exists. Rather, leadership and followership also solve the problem of creating a group in the first place. Creating a group is a problem of meta-coordination: coordinating with others about what to coordinate about. Of all possible bases for coordinating or cooperating, only a tiny fraction will be embraced by others, and smaller fraction still will be successfully implemented and executed. No one individual has enough information to solve this problem on one's own. Leadership and followership solve this problem by creating a social marketplace, in which leaders propose possible coordination and cooperation enterprises, and followers evaluate and choose among these offered possibilities. This marketplace—in which different individuals propose and evaluate different coordination and cooperation enterprises—solves the problem of meta-coordination by exposing possible enterprises to the broader social market, which serves as a selective or culling regime. Leadership and followership are evolved information-processing roles within this social marketplace. Consequently, understanding the evolutionary psychology of leadership and followership requires understanding the challenges and opportunities inherent in this market dynamic. The present paper analyzes the tasks that must be carried out to successfully navigate this dynamic. This task analysis predicts a number of novel information-processing functions for the roles of leadership and followership, and suggests that leadership and followership are a broader set of phenomena than currently conceptualized. This broadened conceptualization has a number of important implications for future research, and suggests that leadership and followership may have played a more central role in the evolution of human coordination and cooperation than has been appreciated.     

Effective Leadership in Superior-Subordinate Dyads

Abstract

This paper describes and experimentally demonstrates the main tenets of an operant theory of leadership. Leadership is characterized in the current paper as involving problem solving operant behavior (Cerutti, 1989; Skinner, 1969) in a social context (Skinner, 1953). The theory was assessed under two experimental analogs modeled from generic formal organizational bureaucratic leader-follower role relations. Under a minimal leadership contingency (MLC) leaders and followers in N = 4 dyads interacted via button pressing and trigger pulling responses, respectively, and they received feedback on counters located on response panels in their separate rooms. Under the MLC every leader button press added a point worth money to one of the follower's counters but the leader received no points worth money based on follower responses. A leadership contingency (LC) was identical to the MLC except that for every 19th follower trigger pull the leader received a point worth money. As anticipated, high rates of leader-follower interaction evolved in all dyads under the LC and appreciably lower rates occurred under the MLC as leader button pressing extinguished under the MLC with repeated exposures to the two contingencies presented in ABABAB fashion. Results were discussed in terms of the theory and data as they may be related to assessment and maintenance of leader-follower interactions and performance in OBM lab and field experiments.     

The Effectiveness of Different Representations for Managerial Problem Solving: Comparing Tables and Maps

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) enable decision makers to view tabular data geographically, as maps. This simple yet powerful visual format appears to facilitate problem solving, yet how it does so is not clear, nor do we know the types of problems that benefit from this representation. To begin to understand the contributions of geographic representations over tabular representations, we conducted a three-factor experiment in problem solving. The experiment contained two different representations (map and table), three different geographic relationships (proximity, adjacency, and containment), and three levels of task difficulty (low, medium, and high). We found that maps generally produced faster problem solving than tables, and that problem-solving time increased with task difficulty. Most importantly, for the proximity and adjacency geographic relationships we found that maps kept problem-solving time low, while tables tended to increase time dramatically. However, we found that the number of knowledge states for each task explains performance times quite well and is a useful tool for understanding performance differences and interaction effects. As tasks become more difficult, representing them as maps generally keeps the number of knowledge states small, while for tables, the number of knowledge states increases dramatically. Correspondingly, problem-solving times increase dramatically with tables, but not with maps. In sum, as difficulty increases, maps are more effective for problem-solving tasks. Using maps, the tasks are simplified using visual heuristics that keep problemsolving times and error rates from rising as quickly as they do with tables.     

The influence of higher order cognitive capacities on leader organizational continuance and retention: The mediating role of developmental experiences

The relationship between cognitive capacities and retention or turnover has received scant attention in the extant literature. The few findings that have been reported show mixed to no linear effects of general mental ability on organizational continuance. In this study, we examined the association of more specific higher order cognitive capacities including complex problem solving skills and divergent thinking with officer continuance in the U.S. Army. We also tested the role of developmental experiences as a partial mediator of this relationship. Our sample included 640 officers who completed measures of these skills and of their career experiences in 1992–1993. To this sample, we added years of service from date of commissioning to 2008, as well as data on whether officers experienced particular assignments considered to be challenging and developmental. Our findings support the association of complex problem solving and divergent thinking skills with leader continuance. We also found that this effect is partially mediated by challenging developmental experiences. Thus, we provide stronger evidence than in prior studies for a linear relationship between cognitive abilities and continuance in an organization.     

Leadership development as identity formation: middle managers’ leadership learning from MBA study

This article challenges often unquestioned understandings within human resource development (HRD) of leadership as comprising knowledge and skills and leadership development as involving the transfer of such knowledge and skills from formal interventions to workplace performance. Using the notions of leadership as identity and learning as a process of identity formation, the article reports qualitative research showing how a case-study group of middle managers in a sector of the economy undergoing unprecedented turbulence, UK local government, developed a sense of themselves as leaders and how a key HRD intervention, a corporate MBA, facilitated such identity development. In particular, the article uses situated learning theory to examine how informal communities of practice associated with Master of Business Administration (MBA) study provided a forum for identity building of equal developmental value to the formal MBA curriculum. The implications for future HRD research are established and suggestions made for the re-design of HRD interventions to best enable identity-work.     

The Emergence of Hypertext and Problem Solving: An Experimental Investigation of Accessing and Using Information from Linear versus Nonlinear Systems*

Past research suggests that problem solving and/or decision behavior can be altered and improved by the changes in the way information is accessed and displayed. Also, researchers have found that the usefulness of different information display formats are contingent on the characteristics of the problem task. This research investigated the impact on problem solving when accessing and using information from linear and nonlinear systems. Also, the research investigated problem-solving performance of linear and nonlinear systems when applied to different combinations of problem tasks. In a laboratory setting, linear and nonlinear systems were developed to conduct this experiment. This experiment used 64 graduate business students in a two-factor repeated-measures design employing a multivariate analysis of variance to analyze the data. Repeated measures were conducted to analyze the experimental group under both linear and nonlinear treatments. The findings from the study support the notion that the nonlinear system resulted in superior problem solving and higher levels of user satisfaction than the linear system. Specifically, the nonlinear system enabled users to make faster and more accurate decisions on perceptual problem tasks than did the linear system. For analytical problem tasks, users performed faster with the nonlinear system; however, there was no significant difference in accuracy. User satisfaction was higher with the nonlinear system under both perceptual and analytical tasks.     

How transformational leadership works during team interactions: A behavioral process analysis

Transformational leadership is generally considered helpful for team functioning. However, the social dynamics underlying the benefits of transformational leadership remain elusive to date. To understand how and why transformational leadership can foster team functioning, this study focuses on leader–follower communication dynamics during team interactions. From the perspective of leadership as social problem solving, we argue that transformational leadership is linked to functional team problem-solving processes because transformational leaders use solution-focused communication (mediator model). In a sample of 30 videotaped problem-solving team meetings from two organizations, we coded transformational leadership style and the verbal behavioral interactions of leaders and team members over the course of their entire meetings (30,128 behavioral units in total). Multilevel results showed that transformational leadership was positively linked to functional problem-solving communication by team members. This positive relationship was mediated by leaders' solution-focused communication. Moreover, at the micro-level of conversational dynamics within the meeting process, lag sequential analysis revealed that leaders' ideas and solutions triggered subsequent solution statements by team members and inhibited counterproductive communication by team members, such as running off topic, criticizing, or complaining. We discuss theoretical and methodological implications for conceptualizing dynamic leader–follower processes as well as managerial implications for leading effective meetings in organizations.     

Relational Leadership Theory: Exploring the social processes of leadership and organizing

Relational leadership is a relatively new term in the leadership literature, and because of this, its meaning is open to interpretation. In the present article I describe two perspectives of relational leadership: an entity perspective that focuses on identifying attributes of individuals as they engage in interpersonal relationships, and a relational perspective that views leadership as a process of social construction through which certain understandings of leadership come about and are given privileged ontology. These approaches can be complementary, but their implications for study and practice are quite different. After reviewing leadership research relative to these two perspectives I offer Relational Leadership Theory (RLT) as an overarching framework for the study of leadership as a social influence process through which emergent coordination (e.g., evolving social order) and change (e.g., new approaches, values, attitudes, behaviors, ideologies) are constructed and produced. This framework addresses relationships both as an outcome of investigation (e.g., How are leadership relationships produced?) and a context for action (e.g., How do relational dynamics contribute to structuring?). RLT draws from both entity and relational ontologies and methodologies to more fully explore the relational dynamics of leadership and organizing.     

Web 2.0 support for individual,group and organizational learning

This article explores how Web 2.0 interactive technologies are valuable for generative, learner-driven, instructor-facilitated virtual learning processes integrated with work tasks for solving problems and coping with challenges. This is in contrast to the earlier generation of one-way technologies that is traditionally used for adaptive, instructor-driven online learning programs for skills and knowledge training, and communicating corporate policies and procedures. Learning professionals need to be open to encourage employees' experimentation with new software tools and techniques, value technology gatekeepers in their organization and promote informal learning.     

Greedy algorithms for the profit-aware social team formation problem

Motivated by applications in online labor markets, we study the problem of forming multiple teams of experts in a social network to accomplish multiple tasks that require different combinations of skills. Our goal is to maximize the total profit of tasks that are completed by these teams subject to the capacity constraints of the experts. We study both the offline and online settings of the problem. For the offline problem, we present a simple and practical algorithm that improves upon previous results in many situations. For the online problem, we design competitive deterministic and randomized online algorithms. These are complemented by some hardness results in both settings.

     

影响新创企业绩效的创业团队因素研究

如何提升新创企业绩效是创业实践和研究的核心问题。创业团队对新创企业的绩效有着决定性的影响,本文从创业团队的视角出发,对如何提升新创企业绩效的问题进行研究。论文对已有研究进行全面的梳理、总结和评论,发现已有研究主要从创业团队构成和合作过程两方面解释新创企业绩效。论文指出,虽然团队构成决定了创业团队的化学成分,但要形成有助于团队化学反应的合作过程,需要有团队制度作为前提条件,否则团队合作关系容易被破坏。因此,本文提出创业团队治理是影响新创企业绩效的重要因素。在此基础上,本文综合团队构成、团队合作过程和团队治理三个维度,建立了影响新创企业绩效的创业团队因素模型,并指出未来研究的重要方向。     

虚拟团队关键成功因素模型构建与实证研究

在对虚拟团队相关文献深入检索与分析的基础上,归纳、提炼出影响虚拟团队成功的15项关键因素,构建了虚拟团队关键成功因素三维(目标、成员、沟通)模型假设;通过对国内12家IT企业的问卷调查,收集到242条有效数据;利用描述性统计分析对15项关键因素进行了验证,利用R型因子聚类分析对三维模型假设进行验证,结果表明15项关键成功因素体现在目标一致性、信息技术能力、成员素质、领导能力和沟通协调能力五个维度上;最后,从这五个方面出发,给出了提升虚拟团队绩效的针对性策略.     

Well begun is half done: Toward an understanding of predictors for initial training transfer

As organizations face a rapidly changing marketing environment, they have an increased investment in training programs that aim to improve employees’ hard skills to successfully execute tasks and soft skills for healthy social relationships. Although managers question the transfer problem in hard- and soft-skills training, researchers have limited knowledge on this topic. This study focuses on improving the initial training transfer, an essential phase of the transfer process. Specifically, drawing on signaling theory, we introduce training characteristics (i.e., training content validity and transfer design) as the antecedents. This study also assesses the potential underlying mechanisms by examining the roles of training engagement and training criticality. Using a sample of 182 employees enrolled in a typical hard- and soft-skills training program (i.e., quality management training), we test a mediation model. As expected, the results indicate that both training content validity and transfer design positively impact initial training transfer. Furthermore, the links between training characteristics and initial training transfer are mediated by training engagement and training criticality. This study contributes to the research on initial training transfer by exploring training characteristics as the antecedents and integrating the research on transfer and personal attitudes under hard- and soft-skills training.