Characteristics of the Situation

1
Chapter 15

• Characteristics of the Situation

2
Chapter Goals

• The goal of this chapter is to simply increase
  awareness of an aspect of leadership that is very
  complex.

3
Historically

• Historically, researchers maintained that the
  situation, not someones traits or abilities,
  plays the most important role in determining who
  emerges as a leader. They also believed that
  leaders were made, not born, and that prior
  leadership experience helped forge effective
  leaders.

4
More recently

• More recently, leadership theories have explored
  how situational factors affect leaders
  behaviors. For example, a leaders behavior was
  said to be depend on a leaders perceptions of
  several critical aspects of the situation rules
  and regulations governing the job role
  expectations of subordinates, peers, and
  superiors the nature of the task and feedback
  about the subordinates performance.

5
The Congruence Model is a systems model with
inputs, processes, and outputs.

• Input, which consists of the environment,
  resources, and history.
• Processes, which consist of the work, people,
  formal organization, and informal organization.
• Output, which consists of the system, unit, and
  individual.

6
Congruence Model

• The core of the Congruence Model has four
  components the work, the people, the formal
  organizational, and the informal organization.

7
Congruence Model
Cont.

• The work is what is to be done by the
  organization and its component parts.
• The people refers to the leader and followers and
  their skills, knowledge, experience,
  expectations, needs and preferences.

8
Congruence Model
Cont.

• The formal organization addresses how the level
  of authority, organizational structure,
  organizational design, lateral interdependence,
  and organizational culture affect leaders and
  followers behavior.
• The informal organization refers to its culture
  (shared backgrounds, norms, values, or beliefs.)

9
Environmental characteristics

• Environmental characteristics concern situational
  factors outside the task or organization that
  still affect the leadership process. These
  include technological, economic, political,
  social, and legal forces.

10
Summary

• Although leaders and followers behaviors are
  affected by a variety of situational factors, all
  too often leaders and followers completely
  overlook how changing the situation can help them
  to change their behavior. The most important
  point regarding situational engineering is to get
  leaders and followers to understand that the
  situation is not set in concrete, and to think
  about how they can change the situation in order
  for everyone to be more satisfied and productive.