Leadership & Decision Making
Written exam (100%) 1u30:
a) Statements: This part consists of correct or incorrect statements that should be correctly identified by the student
as correct or incorrect.
b) Open questions: This part consists of two open questions (one about the leadership part and one about decision-
making) in which students demonstrate their developed knowledge and ability to apply the course materials to a
given group or organizational problem.
EXA:
- 20 correct/incorrect statements (! be mindful, it may be a word that is incorrect) 20p
- 2/3 open-ended questions on leadership 10p
- 2/3 open-ended questions on DM 10p
How can you systematically think about your development as a leader? W1
Why is it not enough to read one (or several) books to become a great leader?
- No universal, one best way to lead or one enduring and integrative theory of
leadership
- Lack of an accepted formula (many approaches to leadership tend to be one-
dimensional focused on a small part of the puzzle)
- Organizations are looking for competence, not a list of attributes
o Successful leaders have different styles; unique styles + equifinality rules (=
equally effective but different ways to achieve the same outcome)
The field is still dominated by practitioners and others of uncertain motives who often
assert that they can prescribe the answer on how best to develop leaders and
leadership in organizations, or promote the use of assessment instruments of suspect
validity to diagnose leadership needs
DEFINITION
Leadership is the process of influencing other(s) towards the realization of a shared goal
(Antonakis & Day, 2017; Bastardoz & Day, 2021)
Notes:
▪ You do not need to have a position of authority (or formal power) to
be a leader.
▪ What is the difference between a leader and a manager (or someone
holding a position of formal power in a hierarchy, frequently referred
to as “formal leaders”)?
• Manager can be a leader and manager can also not be a leader
• As a manager you are expected to lead, but it does not make
them a leader by definition (employees ≠ followers)
• Formal position does not define you as a leader
, ▪ Where is leadership located within the organization?
• Leadership can be found everywhere in the company
“Are leaders born or made?”
“Leaders are made, they are not born; and they are made just like anything else has been made in
this country – by hard effort. And that’s the price that we all have to pay to achieve that goal, or any
goal.” Vince Lombardi (Green Bay Packers coach)
“Few abilities are inherited. The majority of the more important abilities are learned and developed
in interaction with others. This is especially true for such abilities as leadership. There are no born
leaders” (Argyris, 1957)
▪ Leaders are born: two factors
o Psychological factors:
▪ Personality (being extroverted doesn’t make you a leader)
▪ Cognitive capacity (being smarts helps with decision-making, but leadership
requires more than IQ)
What makes you a leader? How we reflect on life lessons; we learn from our experiences
(born part, we cannot really change, however, the made part can be learnt => Leadership
development is not easy)
Becoming a better leader means doing an inspection of who you are, what skills am I
lacking,… => reflect on your OWN
What we know about leadership
1. Leadership is a dynamic influential process, not a position or a static label
a. Authority ≠ Leadership
b. You can have a formal authority role and be no leader you can be a leader
without having any formal authority
c. Leadership requires social interaction between people (Day, 2012)
2. Leadership can be developed (see Avolio, Reichard, Hannah, Walumbwa & Chan,
2009). We are not born leaders or followers; however, we are not all equal (e.g.,
personality, cognitive capacities).
a. Different leadership behaviors and styles (meta-analysis showed TFL
(transformational leadership) and TSCTL (transactional leadership) can be
developed/trained ( Avolio et al., 2009)
3. Effective leader behaviors / styles are context-specific (Oc, 2018) such that it always
depends. Change the context and effective leadership behaviors change.
a. Leadership shaped by:
i. Task, team, organization
b. No universal style
c. Effectiveness = situational (Argyris, 1957)
4. Women and men are equally effective as leaders (see Alice Eagly’s work)
a. No major gender differences in emergence/effectiveness
, b. Women may score higher on listening, empathy (predictors of effective
leadership)
5. Many leadership practices are universal, and some are culturally-specific (GLOBE
studies, Hofstede’s work)
a. Traits like integrity, charisma, team-orientation = universally valued
b. Meaning of traits = culture-dependent (e.g., being charismatic in US vs.
Belgium)
6. Being a leader contains certain pitfalls (e.g., power, ethics) (Keltner, Gruenfeld &
Anderson, 2003)
a. Leaders may feel powerful, less empathetic
b. Risk of stereotyping, ethical drift
c. Power affects social sensitivity
State of leadership research
- 66+ theories published since 2000 (Dinh et al., 2014)
- Each offers valuable insights for leadership development
- No single “best” theory — most have some empirical support (Day, 2012)
- Leadership = contextual, not one-size-fits-all (Quick & Wright, 2011)
- Research began with trait-based approaches in early 1900s
Leader development
Leadership training vs. development
Leadership training (to develop skills/knowledge):
• Set of systematic learning initiatives designed to enhance specific job-relevant
knowledge (what you know), skills (what you can do), and attitudes (what you think
or feel about it) - KSAs.
• For example, leaders should know how to recognize when employees need
their emotional support, have the communication skills to convey their
understanding and discuss solutions, hold empathic attitudes, and be
motivated to act accordingly
• Highly structured: you learn, you adapt, …
• Leadership training is often used for education in response to new policies or
technologies, to remediate performance of leaders and/or their teams, when
, indices of business performance are declining, and whenever change is
involved, The goal of leadership training is to add new skills to an established
or emerging leader’s skill repertoire, provide the knowledge to use the skills
appropriately, and adopt the attitudes necessary to adapt and apply them on
the job.
5 recommendations
1. Conduct a systematic analysis of the KSAs for leader success (needs analysis). Because
there are so many different leadership KSAs, researchers have grouped them into four
main types of required skills that should be targeted in training interventions:
intrapersonal, interpersonal, business, and leadership.
2. Choose scientifically validated training initiatives and evaluate their effectiveness.
3. Make it easy for learners to apply training back to the job by removing barriers to
motivation and transfer.
4. Base the design of training on multiple formats with opportunities for practice and
feedback to enhance learning.
5. Help the training stick by providing resources, opportunities for on-the-job practice,
and incentives that make it easy to use newly acquired KSAs.
Leadership development (how you perceive yourself: what are the characteristics you
would use to identify yourself):
• One of the reasons for leadership development initiatives is to nudge people out of
their comfort zones to acquire new ways of being an effective leader. As compared
with relatively straightforward skills acquisition through training interventions,
leadership developmental initiatives take on more complex and holistic challenges
associated with changing the inherent behavioral tendencies (some have called this
personality) of human beings.
5 recommendations:
1. Leverage work experiences for development
2. Provide access to feedback and support
3. Use evidence-based processes for structured reflection
4. Facilitating changes in self-views
5. Give it time to work
“Compared with relatively straightforward skills acquisition through training interventions,
leadership developmental initiatives take on more complex and holistic challenges associated
with changing the inherent behavioral tendencies of human beings”
, Leader development
Developing as a leader:
• Across the entire lifespan (Day et al., 2009)
• All individuals do not experience or benefit in the same ways from the same
experience (Day & Sin, 2011; Day & Thornton, 2018)
Informal rule of “70-20-10” (Bennis & Thomas, 2002; Lombardo & Eichinger, 1996; McCall,
2010):
70%: Challenging assignments (e.g., job transitions, unfamiliar responsibilities, obstacles)
20%: Developmental relationships (e.g., coaching, mentoring, feedback programs)
10%: Coursework and training (e.g., reflection, personal development, “knowledge”)
1. Challenging assignments:
Based on interviews with 191 senior leaders (McCall, Lombardo & Morrison (1988). The
analyses of the executives’ stories yielded five categories of key developmental experiences:
• Challenging assignments: New job or task that stretched the executive because it was
new, complex, or demanding
• Other people: Both positive and negative role models (mostly bosses and others high
in the hierarchy)
• Hardships: Setbacks and failures that generated a sense of loss and aloneness
• Coursework: Formal training and academic programs (only 6.2%)
• Personal life experiences
2. Developmental relationships:
Important to build a mentor / coaching network:
• Lester, Hannah, Harms, Vogelgesang, and Avolio (2011) observed that leaders' self-
efficacy and leadership performance can be enhanced by a comprehensive
mentorship program.
• For leadership development, networking is especially vital for knowing who to turn to
for problem solving resources, exposure to others' thinking that challenges basic
assumptions, and developing social capital that can increase support (Day, 2001)
3. Course-work and training:
• Time spent “in the classroom” contributes to development in unique ways, including
giving participants exposure to new ideas, new behaviors to practice, time to reflect,
and opportunities to connect with other leaders (McCall, Lombardo, & Morrison,
1988)
Written exam (100%) 1u30:
a) Statements: This part consists of correct or incorrect statements that should be correctly identified by the student
as correct or incorrect.
b) Open questions: This part consists of two open questions (one about the leadership part and one about decision-
making) in which students demonstrate their developed knowledge and ability to apply the course materials to a
given group or organizational problem.
EXA:
- 20 correct/incorrect statements (! be mindful, it may be a word that is incorrect) 20p
- 2/3 open-ended questions on leadership 10p
- 2/3 open-ended questions on DM 10p
How can you systematically think about your development as a leader? W1
Why is it not enough to read one (or several) books to become a great leader?
- No universal, one best way to lead or one enduring and integrative theory of
leadership
- Lack of an accepted formula (many approaches to leadership tend to be one-
dimensional focused on a small part of the puzzle)
- Organizations are looking for competence, not a list of attributes
o Successful leaders have different styles; unique styles + equifinality rules (=
equally effective but different ways to achieve the same outcome)
The field is still dominated by practitioners and others of uncertain motives who often
assert that they can prescribe the answer on how best to develop leaders and
leadership in organizations, or promote the use of assessment instruments of suspect
validity to diagnose leadership needs
DEFINITION
Leadership is the process of influencing other(s) towards the realization of a shared goal
(Antonakis & Day, 2017; Bastardoz & Day, 2021)
Notes:
▪ You do not need to have a position of authority (or formal power) to
be a leader.
▪ What is the difference between a leader and a manager (or someone
holding a position of formal power in a hierarchy, frequently referred
to as “formal leaders”)?
• Manager can be a leader and manager can also not be a leader
• As a manager you are expected to lead, but it does not make
them a leader by definition (employees ≠ followers)
• Formal position does not define you as a leader
, ▪ Where is leadership located within the organization?
• Leadership can be found everywhere in the company
“Are leaders born or made?”
“Leaders are made, they are not born; and they are made just like anything else has been made in
this country – by hard effort. And that’s the price that we all have to pay to achieve that goal, or any
goal.” Vince Lombardi (Green Bay Packers coach)
“Few abilities are inherited. The majority of the more important abilities are learned and developed
in interaction with others. This is especially true for such abilities as leadership. There are no born
leaders” (Argyris, 1957)
▪ Leaders are born: two factors
o Psychological factors:
▪ Personality (being extroverted doesn’t make you a leader)
▪ Cognitive capacity (being smarts helps with decision-making, but leadership
requires more than IQ)
What makes you a leader? How we reflect on life lessons; we learn from our experiences
(born part, we cannot really change, however, the made part can be learnt => Leadership
development is not easy)
Becoming a better leader means doing an inspection of who you are, what skills am I
lacking,… => reflect on your OWN
What we know about leadership
1. Leadership is a dynamic influential process, not a position or a static label
a. Authority ≠ Leadership
b. You can have a formal authority role and be no leader you can be a leader
without having any formal authority
c. Leadership requires social interaction between people (Day, 2012)
2. Leadership can be developed (see Avolio, Reichard, Hannah, Walumbwa & Chan,
2009). We are not born leaders or followers; however, we are not all equal (e.g.,
personality, cognitive capacities).
a. Different leadership behaviors and styles (meta-analysis showed TFL
(transformational leadership) and TSCTL (transactional leadership) can be
developed/trained ( Avolio et al., 2009)
3. Effective leader behaviors / styles are context-specific (Oc, 2018) such that it always
depends. Change the context and effective leadership behaviors change.
a. Leadership shaped by:
i. Task, team, organization
b. No universal style
c. Effectiveness = situational (Argyris, 1957)
4. Women and men are equally effective as leaders (see Alice Eagly’s work)
a. No major gender differences in emergence/effectiveness
, b. Women may score higher on listening, empathy (predictors of effective
leadership)
5. Many leadership practices are universal, and some are culturally-specific (GLOBE
studies, Hofstede’s work)
a. Traits like integrity, charisma, team-orientation = universally valued
b. Meaning of traits = culture-dependent (e.g., being charismatic in US vs.
Belgium)
6. Being a leader contains certain pitfalls (e.g., power, ethics) (Keltner, Gruenfeld &
Anderson, 2003)
a. Leaders may feel powerful, less empathetic
b. Risk of stereotyping, ethical drift
c. Power affects social sensitivity
State of leadership research
- 66+ theories published since 2000 (Dinh et al., 2014)
- Each offers valuable insights for leadership development
- No single “best” theory — most have some empirical support (Day, 2012)
- Leadership = contextual, not one-size-fits-all (Quick & Wright, 2011)
- Research began with trait-based approaches in early 1900s
Leader development
Leadership training vs. development
Leadership training (to develop skills/knowledge):
• Set of systematic learning initiatives designed to enhance specific job-relevant
knowledge (what you know), skills (what you can do), and attitudes (what you think
or feel about it) - KSAs.
• For example, leaders should know how to recognize when employees need
their emotional support, have the communication skills to convey their
understanding and discuss solutions, hold empathic attitudes, and be
motivated to act accordingly
• Highly structured: you learn, you adapt, …
• Leadership training is often used for education in response to new policies or
technologies, to remediate performance of leaders and/or their teams, when
, indices of business performance are declining, and whenever change is
involved, The goal of leadership training is to add new skills to an established
or emerging leader’s skill repertoire, provide the knowledge to use the skills
appropriately, and adopt the attitudes necessary to adapt and apply them on
the job.
5 recommendations
1. Conduct a systematic analysis of the KSAs for leader success (needs analysis). Because
there are so many different leadership KSAs, researchers have grouped them into four
main types of required skills that should be targeted in training interventions:
intrapersonal, interpersonal, business, and leadership.
2. Choose scientifically validated training initiatives and evaluate their effectiveness.
3. Make it easy for learners to apply training back to the job by removing barriers to
motivation and transfer.
4. Base the design of training on multiple formats with opportunities for practice and
feedback to enhance learning.
5. Help the training stick by providing resources, opportunities for on-the-job practice,
and incentives that make it easy to use newly acquired KSAs.
Leadership development (how you perceive yourself: what are the characteristics you
would use to identify yourself):
• One of the reasons for leadership development initiatives is to nudge people out of
their comfort zones to acquire new ways of being an effective leader. As compared
with relatively straightforward skills acquisition through training interventions,
leadership developmental initiatives take on more complex and holistic challenges
associated with changing the inherent behavioral tendencies (some have called this
personality) of human beings.
5 recommendations:
1. Leverage work experiences for development
2. Provide access to feedback and support
3. Use evidence-based processes for structured reflection
4. Facilitating changes in self-views
5. Give it time to work
“Compared with relatively straightforward skills acquisition through training interventions,
leadership developmental initiatives take on more complex and holistic challenges associated
with changing the inherent behavioral tendencies of human beings”
, Leader development
Developing as a leader:
• Across the entire lifespan (Day et al., 2009)
• All individuals do not experience or benefit in the same ways from the same
experience (Day & Sin, 2011; Day & Thornton, 2018)
Informal rule of “70-20-10” (Bennis & Thomas, 2002; Lombardo & Eichinger, 1996; McCall,
2010):
70%: Challenging assignments (e.g., job transitions, unfamiliar responsibilities, obstacles)
20%: Developmental relationships (e.g., coaching, mentoring, feedback programs)
10%: Coursework and training (e.g., reflection, personal development, “knowledge”)
1. Challenging assignments:
Based on interviews with 191 senior leaders (McCall, Lombardo & Morrison (1988). The
analyses of the executives’ stories yielded five categories of key developmental experiences:
• Challenging assignments: New job or task that stretched the executive because it was
new, complex, or demanding
• Other people: Both positive and negative role models (mostly bosses and others high
in the hierarchy)
• Hardships: Setbacks and failures that generated a sense of loss and aloneness
• Coursework: Formal training and academic programs (only 6.2%)
• Personal life experiences
2. Developmental relationships:
Important to build a mentor / coaching network:
• Lester, Hannah, Harms, Vogelgesang, and Avolio (2011) observed that leaders' self-
efficacy and leadership performance can be enhanced by a comprehensive
mentorship program.
• For leadership development, networking is especially vital for knowing who to turn to
for problem solving resources, exposure to others' thinking that challenges basic
assumptions, and developing social capital that can increase support (Day, 2001)
3. Course-work and training:
• Time spent “in the classroom” contributes to development in unique ways, including
giving participants exposure to new ideas, new behaviors to practice, time to reflect,
and opportunities to connect with other leaders (McCall, Lombardo, & Morrison,
1988)
