Chapter 5: Roles and Leadership in Groups

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Chapter 5 Roles and Leadership in Groups
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Chapter 5 Objectives

• Explain roles in groups
• Identify different types of group roles
• Discuss the role emergence process
• Explore how members gain and retain group
  membership
• Discuss how to be an effective leader in groups

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Task Roles

• Initiator-Contributor
• Information Seeker
• Opinion Seeker
• Information Giver
• Clarifier-Elaborator
• Coordinator
• Secretary-Recorder
• Director
• Devils Advocate

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Maintenance Roles

• Supporter-encourager
• Harmonizer-tension reliever
• Gatekeeper-expediter
• Feeling expresser

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Self-Centered or Disruptive Roles

• Stagehog
• Isolate
• Clown
• Blocker
• Fighter-controller
• Zealot
• Cynic

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Role Fixation

• Involves acting out a specific role and only that
  role
• Can occur when an individual moves from one group
  to another or even when he/she stays in same
  group
• Advice demonstrate flexibility, avoid disruptive
  roles, be experimental

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Effects of Roles

• Expectations attached to roles have a definite
  influence on group members perceptions
• Role reversal affects how role players are
  perceived
• Role status nurtures stereotypic perceptions of
  males and females
• Role conflict results in leaving an organization,
  decreased involvement, etc.

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Types of Roles

• Formal positions assigned by an organization
• Informal emerges from group transactions
• Task focus on productivity
• Maintenance focus on social dimensions of the
  group
• Self-centered or disruptive

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Leadership

• Is a social influence process
• Requires followership
• Implies changepeople expect leaders to get
  things done
• Can be transformationalcan inspire, uplift, and
  mobilize
• Is a transactional power relationshipleaders
  influence followers and vice versa

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How Not to Become a Leader

• Being late or missing meetings
• Being uninformed about a problem facing the group
• Being apathetic
• Dominating conversation
• Listening poorly
• Being rigid and inflexible
• Bullying group members
• Using offensive language

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General Pattern of Leader Emergence

• A group selects a leader by a process of
  elimination
• Quiet members are among the first eliminated
• Those who talk a lot without making much sense
• Those who express strong, unqualified assertions
• Those who are uninformed, unintelligent,
  unskilled
• Those who are bossy or dictatorial and those
  whose communication style is irritating

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Group Leader Selection

• In general, groups accept as leader the person
  who provides the optimum blend of task efficiency
  and sensitivity to social considerations

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Retaining the Leader Role

• Three primary qualifications
• Demonstrate your competence as a leader
• Accept accountability for your actions
• Satisfy group members expectations
• A leader must demonstrate competence and
  satisfy group expectations on a continuing basis
  or loyalty may disappear

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Perspectives on Leadership

• Traits Perspectiveleaders are born, not made
  perspective
• Styles Perspectiveautocratic, democratic, and
  laissez-faire
• Situational Perspectivethree variables
• Guidance and direction a leader provides
• Amount of relationship support a leader provides
• The readiness level in performing a task or
  function that followers demonstrate

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Hersey and Blanchard Model of Leadership Styles

• Telling stylehigh task, low relationship
• Selling stylehigh task, high relationship
• Participatinglow task, high relationship
• Delegating stylelow task, low relationship

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Functional Perspective

• Certain functions must be performed for a group
  to be successful
• Two categories
• Leader as completer viewpointleadership is an
  adaptive role
• Vital functions viewpointleaders perform vital
  functions different in kind or degree from other
  members

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Situational Leadership

• The key to relationship effectiveness is
  matching the appropriate style to the group
  environment

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Vital Group Functions a Leader Can Perform (1 of
2)

• Group procedures
• Plan agenda
• Handle housekeeping details
• Prepare for next meeting
• Task requirements
• Initiate a structure
• Seek information
• Give information
• Offer opinions

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Vital Group Functions a Leader Can Perform (2 of
2)

• Social needs
• Facilitate involvement and communication
• Harmonize
• Express feelings
• From the functional perspective, leadership is
  a shared responsibility. The leader is not solely
  responsible for how the group functions.

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Communication Competence Perspective

• Ultimately, effective leadership depends on
  competent communication.
• Leadership is an adaptive process.
• Leaders set the emotional tone for the group.
• There is a simple, one-word test to detect
  whether someone is on the road to becoming a
  leader. The word is we.