Top-Management-Coaching in mittleren Unternehmen

Top-Management-Coaching in mid-sized companies The author discusses coaching of business leaders in mid-sized companies. These companies appear to be under considerable pressure to professionalize at times regarding their understanding, functions and instruments of leadership and management, — unlike their technical and product know-how. Due to the strong personalization of leadership in mid-sized companies, this professionalization can only take place if the business leaders build up an adequate understanding of leadership by alternating self- and business reflection. A coach can be of great help, acting as a sparring partner by combining the ?personal perspective“ with the ?functional perspective“. A prerequisite on behalf of the coach, aside from his competence in individual and interaction psychology, is however the ability to transport himself into the specificities of a mid-sized company and its management as well as profound knowledge of the management of complex sociotechnical-economic systems.     

Narcissistic leadership

Narcissism—a personality trait encompassing grandiosity, arrogance, self-absorption, entitlement, fragile self-esteem, and hostility—is an attribute of many powerful leaders. Narcissistic leaders have grandiose belief systems and leadership styles, and are generally motivated by their needs for power and admiration rather than empathetic concern for the constituents and institutions they lead. However, narcissists also possess the charisma and grand vision that are vital to effective leadership. We review and critically assess the theoretical and research literature on narcissistic leaders in order to understand the potential positive and negative consequences of their leadership, the trajectories of their leadership, and the relationship of narcissism to established models of leadership. We conclude that the study of narcissistic leaders is inherently limited in scope, and propose a new definition of narcissistic leadership in order to reframe the discussion and better incorporate the topic of narcissism into the field of leadership studies.     

Reconciling identity leadership and leader identity: A dual-identity framework

Research exploring the powerful links between leadership and identity has burgeoned in recent years but cohered around two distinct approaches. Research on identity leadership, the main focus of this special issue, sees leadership as a group process that centers on leaders’ ability to represent, advance, create and embed a social identity that they share with the collectives they lead—a sense of “us as a group”. Research on leader identity sees leadership as a process that is advanced by individuals who have a well-developed personal understanding of themselves as leaders—a sense of “me as a leader”. This article explores the nature and implications of these divergent approaches, focusing on their specification of profiles, processes, pathways, products, and philosophies that have distinct implications for theory and practice. We formalize our observations in a series of propositions and also outline a dual-identity framework with the potential to integrate the two approaches.     

Transformational Leadership Education and Agency Perspectives in Business School Pedagogy: A Marriage of Inconvenience?

We critique transformational leadership education in university business schools based on a literature review, a study of the websites of 21 leading business schools, and an analysis of two presentations to business school students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University by the former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch. Our critique draws attention to the unresolved tension between two motivating ideas that underpin much teaching in business schools: collective interest ideas that permeate transformational leadership education; and self-interest ideas derived from agency theory. Transformational leadership tends to be depicted as a process by which leaders exert a 'top-down' influence over the activities of others, while simultaneously asserting that their organizations have a common purpose and pursue a collective interest. We highlight the risk that business schools are producing graduates who will attempt to appeal to common needs (guided by precepts of transformational leadership) but who will simultaneously enact contradictory performance management systems (guided by agency theory). We encourage business school educators in leadership to adopt approaches which are more critical, relational and reflexive. We suggest some general directions for an alternative leadership prospectus, based on followership, the promotion of critical upward communication within organizations, and the recognition of leadership as a contested, discursive and co-constructed phenomenon.     

Turnaround leadership core tensions during the company turnaround process

How leaders turn around declining performance is a significant issue for companies, their employees, their customers, their shareholders and, more generally, society. Leadership influence during times of change is well recognised in the literature; however, leadership during a turnaround is more complex and less understood. In-depth examinations of the role and activities of turnaround leaders have received insufficient attention in the literature to date. Specifically, studies have not investigated, in-depth, the tensions that leaders face during a turnaround process. To begin addressing this gap in the literature, we utilise case studies of four companies to examine the core tensions leaders experience, when they occur during the turnaround process and how they are managed. We frame our focus on leadership tensions in three prominent domains in the literature, leadership change, leadership assertiveness and strategic orientation. Our findings identify and detail the management of six core tensions that leaders experience across a five-stage turnaround process model. We conclude that effective turnaround leadership is less about particular skill sets or ‘types’ of leaders for different stages of the recovery process, and more about their ability to purposefully navigate and balance apparently conflicting activities within these tensions. We discuss the implications of these findings for theory and practice.     

Servant leadership,employer brand perception,trust in leaders and turnover intentions: a sequential mediation model

The study aimed to examine the impact of the servant leadership style on employee turnover intentions by investigating the sequential mediating effects of employer brand perception and level of trust subordinates have in their leaders. Results of the study were obtained by analysing data collected from 253 employees working in Indian organizations. The results fully support the hypotheses proposed in the study, illustrating that perceived servant leadership style is negatively associated with employee turnover intentions. Further, servant leadership-turnover intentions relationship is sequentially mediated by employer brand perception and the level of trust subordinates have in their leaders. The study also found that only the servant leadership style followed by leaders was not enough to directly influence the level of trust employees placed in their leaders. A positive and strong employer brand perception emerged as an important mechanism that helped servant leaders gain the trust of their followers. The theoretical and managerial implications are further discussed in the light of these findings.     

Leadership for organizational adaptability: A theoretical synthesis and integrative framework

One of the biggest challenges facing leaders today is the need to position and enable organizations and people for adaptability in the face of increasingly dynamic and demanding environments. Despite this we know surprisingly little about this topic. In this paper we provide a theoretical synthesis and integrative review of research from strategy, organization theory, innovation, networks, and complexity to provide a framework of leadership for organizational adaptability. Our review shows that leadership for organizational adaptability is different from traditional leadership or leading change. It involves enabling the adaptive process by creating space for ideas advanced by entrepreneurial leaders to engage in tension with the operational system and generate innovations that scale into the system to meet the adaptive needs of the organization and its environment. Leadership for organizational adaptability calls for scholars and practitioners to recognize organizational adaptability as an important organizational outcome, and enabling leadership (i.e., enabling the adaptive process through adaptive space) as a critical form of leadership for adaptive organizations.     

How leadership matters: The effects of leaders' alignment on strategy implementation

Research has confirmed that leader behavior influences group and organizational behavior, but we know less about how senior leaders ensure that group and organizational members implement their decisions. Most organizations have multiple layers of leaders, implying that any single leader does not lead in isolation. We focused on how the consistency of leadership effectiveness across hierarchical levels influenced the implementation of a strategic initiative in a large health care system. We found that it was only when leaders' effectiveness at different levels was considered in the aggregate that significant performance improvement occurred. We discuss the implications of these findings for leadership research, specifically, that leaders at various levels should be considered collectively to understand how leadership influences employee performance.     

论发掘和培养具有国际竞争力的高级管理人才

领导班子的管理水平高低对一个组织的生存和发展至关重要。而领导的核心即最高行政长官的表现与一个企业的命运直接相关。这一点已为众多的管理实践所证明。这也是为什么许多大的跨国公司和国际组织不惜重金从世界各地网罗顶尖管理人才。中国目前最缺乏的应该是具备国际竞争力的高级经理人才和高级专业管理人才。文章分析和论述这些人才产生的条件和特征,吸引和留住这些人才的环境和方法,以及培养这些人才的机制。文章最后对国内有关政策和措施进行一般评价,并提出一些政策性建议。     

Knowing me,knowing us: Personal and collective self-awareness enhances authentic leadership and leader endorsement

In the present research, we examine how two aspects of leader self-awareness — namely, leader awareness of their (a) personal identity and (b) collective (group) identity — influence perceptions of authentic leadership and leader endorsement. Study 1 provides experimental evidence that (a) leader personal self-awareness has a somewhat stronger impact on perceptions of their authentic leadership than leader collective self-awareness, but that (b) leader collective self-awareness has a stronger impact on leader endorsement. These findings are replicated in a second field study with political leaders, and in a third experimental study with workplace supervisors. Results suggest that for leaders to be seen as authentic and garner support, they need to be seen as aware not only of who they are as individuals, but also of who they are as members of the collective they seek to lead. Implications for theories of the nature of self, authenticity, and leadership are discussed.     

Toward an emergent Asian behavioural model of perceived managerial and leadership effectiveness: a cross-nation comparative analysis of effective and ineffective managerial behaviour of private sector managers in India and South Korea

ABSTRACT

This Type 4 (emic-and-etic) indigenous cross-case/cross-nation comparative study compares the results of two Type 3 (emic-as-emic) indigenous replication studies of effective and ineffective managerial behaviour carried out within private companies in India and South Korea respectively. The method used was ‘realist qualitative content analysis’ involving inductive open and axial coding. Of the Indian findings 100% were found to be convergent in meaning with 94.43% of the equivalent South Korean findings. This has led to the identification of a two-factor emergent Asian behavioural model of perceived managerial and leadership effectiveness comprised of 16 positive (effective) and 6 negative (ineffective) generic behavioural criteria. These criteria could be used in both countries to critically review and improve extant, or develop new, competency-based management/leadership development programmes. The research findings lend no support to claims that national culture has a major impact on managerial and leadership practices, styles, and effectiveness.     

Ethical leadership supports safety voice by increasing risk perception and reducing ethical ambiguity: Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic

Misconduct by business and political leaders during the pandemic is feared to have impacted people's adherence to protective measures that would help to safeguard against the spread of COVID-19. Addressing this concern, this article theorizes and tests a model linking ethical leadership with workplace risk communication—a practice referred to as ‘safety voice’ in the research literature. Our study, conducted with 511 employees from UK companies, revealed that ethical leadership is positively associated with greater intention to engage in safety voice regarding COVID-19. We also find that this association is mediated by relations with the perceived health risk of COVID-19 and ambiguity about ethical decision making in the workplace. These findings therefore underscore the importance of good ethical conduct by leaders for ensuring that health and safety risks are well understood and communicated effectively by organizational members particularly during crises. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our study and highlight further opportunities for future research to address the ethical dimensions of leadership, risk management, and organizational risk communication.     

We don't need more leaders – We need more good leaders. Advancing a virtues-based approach to leader(ship) development

This conceptual article advances a virtues-based approach to developing good leaders and good leadership. Virtue and discrete virtues are gaining traction within leadership scholarship, but there remains a lack of clarity regarding exactly what virtue is and precisely how virtues inform leadership. To address this, we articulate a clear conceptualization of how virtue informs good leadership in multiple domains. We also elucidate five synergisms of virtues-based leadership development, including how a virtues approach accounts for leadership effectiveness and ethics; how virtue and leadership are both learnable; the relationship between virtues, character, and leadership; the unity and universality of virtue; and how virtue serves as the linchpin between the individual and the common good. Three trajectories for virtues-based leadership development are described. This article has implications for the study and practice of developing good leaders(hip). Limitations and future research directions are discussed.     

In learning mode? The role of mindsets in derailing and enabling experiential leadership development

In comparison to the vast literature on leadership theories, concepts, and behaviors, relatively less is known about why leaders often learn little from their leadership experiences, as well as how to support them in doing so. We propose that leaders learn more from their challenging leadership experiences when they are in learning mode, defined as intentionally framing and pursuing each element of the experiential learning process with more of a growth than a fixed mindset. We describe how the extent to which leaders are in learning mode stems from salient mindset cues and guides whether they work through the experiential learning process with a predominantly self-improvement or self-enhancement motive. We theorize about several other likely mediators and moderators of when being in learning mode will manifest in experiential leadership development. Practical implications at the micro, meso, and macro levels, as well as within management education are outlined.     

Ethical leadership and follower organizational deviance: The moderating role of follower moral attentiveness

The literature on ethical leadership has focused primarily on the way ethical leaders influence follower moral judgment and behavior. It has overlooked that follower responses to ethical leaders may differ depending on the attention they pay to the moral aspects of leadership. In the present research, we introduce moral attentiveness as an important moderator for the relationship between ethical leadership and unethical employee behavior. In a multisource field study (N = 90), we confirm our hypothesis that morally attentive followers respond with more deviance to unethical leaders. An experimental study (N = 96) replicates the finding. Our paper extends the current leader-focused literature by examining how follower moral attentiveness determines the response of followers to ethical or unethical leadership.     

Daily transformational leadership and employee job crafting: The role of promotion focus

Transformational leaders are expected to challenge their followers to take greater ownership of their work, allowing the leader to align followers with tasks that enhance their performance. In the present study, we hypothesize that transformational leadership is positively related to followers' job-crafting behaviour – proactive behaviour aimed at optimizing job demands and job resources. Moreover, we argue that followers' promotion focus (i.e. being driven by growth and development needs) positively moderates this relationship. Data were collected from 107 employees from Norwegian knowledge-based organizations (response?=?93.2%). Participants responded to a general questionnaire and five daily diary questionnaires (total N?=?535 occasions). The results of multilevel analyses revealed partial support for our hypotheses. Followers' day-level perception of their leader's transformational behaviour was positively related to followers' day-level job crafting in the form of increasing structural and social resources. Moreover, daily transformational leadership was particularly beneficial for job crafting when followers scored high (vs. low) on the trait promotion focus. We conclude that transformational leaders can encourage their followers' use of job crafting, and that employees' promotion focus facilitates this effect.     

Solving the crisis: When agency is the preferred leadership for implementing change

Glass-cliff research shows that female leaders are preferentially selected in a crisis to signal change and not for their leadership qualifications. In parallel, the management literature urges for agentic “masculine” leadership to turn around organizations in crisis. We hypothesized that, regardless of their gender, agentic leaders should be preferred to communal leaders if leadership qualifications and actual change potential motivate leader selection. Three experimental studies demonstrated that agentic (vs. communal) candidates were perceived to match poorly-performing (vs. strongly-performing) companies. This effect was accounted for by perceptions of agentic candidates' higher suitability, higher task-orientation (versus person-orientation), and higher change potential. We discuss that women face ambiguity as to why they become leaders in crisis contexts: because they are perceived as signaling change, stereotypically linked to their gender, or for their perceived agentic qualities as leaders. In contrast, men become crisis leaders due to their perceived agentic change potential.     

The diversity gap in leadership: What are we missing in current theorizing?

Relational models of organizational inequalities offer numerous insights around the role of micro, meso and macro processes that drive differential progress of diverse individuals into senior leadership roles. We propose that the Bourdieusian relational framework of capital, habitus and field, and Bourdieu's conception of symbolic violence, provide a powerful explanatory lens for understanding the continuing lack of diversity among our corporate leaders. In applying this framework, we highlight critical shortcomings in current conceptions of leadership development and significant implications for leadership theory. We highlight the ways in which gendered and racialized structures are created and reinforced preventing access to opportunities for corporate leadership to diverse individuals. Future leadership theorizing needs to place greater attention upon the context in which development occurs, how valuable capital comes to be prescribed, as well as the forces at work in generating structures that perpetuate differential access to the capital necessary to progress as leaders.     

Unintended agency: Impression management support as a trigger of institutional change in corporate governance

In this paper we describe an emergent process of institutional change in which institutional entrepreneurs are unintentional contributors to the change process. Our theory suggests how change in the predominant institutional logic of corporate governance at public U.S. companies resulted not from deliberate attempts by corporate leaders to change the criteria by which governance is evaluated, but from the cumulative efforts of top executives to provide “impression management support” (IM support) for individual leaders of other firms. We first discuss how IM support has spread among corporate leaders through generalized social exchange. Then we suggest how individual leaders, in seeking to persuade journalists about the quality of corporate leadership at particular other firms, tend to invoke evaluative criteria that deviate from the prevailing institutional logic of governance. We further suggest how the rhetoric of IM support instigated a cascading social influence process that has contributed to changing perceptions about corporate governance among a broad range of other corporate stakeholders. We discuss the implications of our model for sociological perspectives on corporate governance and the corporate elite. Finally, we consider how the occasional negative commentary by corporate leaders about their peers, in combination with IM support, helps to sustain the credibility of the social system in which leaders, journalists, and other information intermediaries operate.