Leadership

Transformational Leadership Series.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology that Abraham Maslow proposed in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation,[1] which he subsequently extended to include his observations of humans’ innate curiosity.

Maslow studied exemplary people such as Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass rather than mentally ill or neurotic people, writing that “the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy.”[2] Maslow also studied the healthiest one percent of the college student population. This subjectivity troubled even Maslow himself. In his book, “The Farther Reaches of Human Nature”, Maslow writes, “By ordinary standards of laboratory research…this simply was not research at all. My generalizations grew out of my selection of certain kinds of people. Obviously, other judges are needed.”

While Maslow’s theory was regarded as an improvement over previous theories of personality and motivation, it had its detractors. For example, in their extensive review of research that is dependent on Maslow’s theory, Wahba and Bridgewell [3] found little evidence for the ranking of needs that Maslow described, or even for the existence of a definite hierarchy at all. Chilean economist and philosopher Manfred Max need has also argued that fundamental human needs are non-hierarchical, and are ontologically universal and invariant in nature – part of the condition of being human; poverty, he argues, is the result of any one of these needs being frustrated, denied or unfulfilled. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is often depicted as a pyramid consisting of five levels: the four lower levels are grouped together as being associated with Physiological needs, while the top level is termed growth needs associated with psychological needs. Deficiency needs must be met first. Once these are met, seeking to satisfy growth needs drives personal growth. The higher needs in this hierarchy only come into focus when the lower needs in the pyramid are satisfied. Once an individual has moved upwards to the next level, needs in the lower level will no longer be prioritized. If a lower set of needs is no longer being met, the individual will temporarily re-prioritize those needs by focusing attention on the unfulfilled needs, but will not permanently regress to the lower level . For instance, a businessman (at the esteem level) who is diagnosed with cancer will spend a great deal of time concentrating on his health (physiological needs), but will continue to value his work performance (esteem needs) and will likely return to work during periods of remission.
References
A.H. Maslov, A Theory of Human Motivation, Psychological Review 50 (1943):370-96.
Maslow, Abraham (1954). Motivation and Personality.
Wahba, A; Bridgewell, L (1976). “Maslow reconsidered: A review of research on the need hierarchy theory”. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance (15): 212-240.

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Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is a prime example of a collective appeal for the nation to adapt to transformational leadership principles. Transformational leadership is a leadership when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality. The term was first coined by J.V. Downton in 1973 in Rebel Leadership: Commitment and Charisma in a Revolutionary Process.

James MacGregor Burns (1978) first introduced the concepts of transformational and transactional leadership in his treatment of political leadership, but this term is now used in organizational psychology as well. According to Burns, the difference between transformational and transactional leadership is what leaders and followers offer one another. “Transforming leadership… occurs when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality. Their purposes, which might have started out as separate but related, as in the case of transactional leadership, become fused. Power bases are linked not as counterweights but as mutual support for common purpose. Various names are used for such leadership, some of them derisory: elevating, mobilizing, inspiring, exalting, uplifting, preaching, exhorting, evangelizing. The relationship can be moralistic, of course. But transforming leadership ultimately becomes moral in that it raises the level of human conduct and ethical aspiration of both leader and led, and thus it has a transforming effect on both.” (p. 20)

Transformational leaders offer a purpose that transcends short-term goals and focuses on higher order intrinsic needs. This results in followers identifying with the needs of the leader. The four dimensions of transformational leadership are idealized influence (or charisma), inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individual consideration.

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Video 2 in the Transformational Leadership Series I. Comparing the similarities and contrast between leadership and management roles.

The word leadership can refer to:

The ability “to get people to follow voluntarily.”
Those entities that perform one or more acts of leading.
The ability to affect human behavior so as to accomplish a mission designated by the leader.

The word leadership can refer to:

The ability “to get people to follow voluntarily.”
Those entities that perform one or more acts of leading.
The ability to affect human behavior so as to accomplish a mission designated by the leader.

Leadership is a quality an individual may possess. One can categorize the exercise of leadership as either actual or potential:

actual – giving guidance or direction, for example: a teacher being a leader to a student, as in the phrase “the emperor has provided satisfactory leadership”.
potential – the capacity or ability to lead, as in the phrase “she could have exercised effective leadership”; or in the concept “born to lead”.
Leadership can have a formal aspect (as in most political or business leadership) or an informal one (as in most friendships). Speaking of “leadership” (the abstract term) rather than of “leading” (the action) usually implies that the entities doing the leading have some “leadership skills” or competencies.

other categorisation from a 1939 study by Kurt Lewin suggest 3 types of leadership:

Authoritarian Leadership (Autocratic)- provides clear expectations for what needs to be done
Participative Leadership (Democratic)- the study found that style is generally the most effective. Democratic leaders offer guidance to the group, but also participate in the group and allow input from other members.
Delegative (Laissez-Fair)- Researchers found that children under this type of leadership were the least productive of all three groups.

The verb manage comes from the Italian maneggiare (to handle — especially a horse), which in turn derives from the Latin manus (hand). The French word mesnagement (later ménagement) influenced the development in meaning of the English word management in the 17th and 18th centuries.[1]

[edit] Theoretical scope
Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933), who wrote on the topic in the early twentieth century, defined management as “the art of getting things done through people”.[2] One can also think of management functionally, as the action of measuring a quantity on a regular basis and of adjusting some initial plan; or as the actions taken to reach one’s intended goal. This applies even in situations where planning does not take place. From this perspective, Frenchman Henri Fayol[3] considers management to consist of five functions:

planning
organizing
leading
co-ordinating
controlling
Some people, however, find this definition, while useful, far too narrow. The phrase “management is what managers do” occurs widely, suggesting the difficulty of defining management, the shifting nature of definitions, and the connection of managerial practices with the existence of a managerial cadre or class.

One habit of thought regards management as equivalent to “business administration” and thus excludes management in places outside commerce, as for example in charities and in the public sector. More realistically, however, every organization must manage its work, people, processes, technology, etc. in order to maximize its effectiveness. Nonetheless, many people refer to university departments which teach management as “business schools.” Some institutions (such as the Harvard Business School) use that name while others (such as the Yale School of Management) employ the more inclusive term “management.”

Speakers of English may also use the term “management” or “the management” as a collective word describing the managers of an organization, for example of a corporation. Historically this use of the term was often contrasted with the term “Labor” referring to those being managed.

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