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Who Are Leaders, and What Is CHAPTER 12 • Leadership and Trust 385

Leadership?

Let’s begin by clarifying who leaders are and what lead-
12-1 Define leader ership is. Our definition of a leader is someone who leader
Someone who can influence others and who has
and leadership. can influence others and who has managerial authority. managerial authority
Leadership is what leaders do; that is, it’s a process of lead- leadership
ing a group and influencing that group to achieve its goals. The process of leading a group and influencing that
Are all managers leaders? Because leading is one of the four management functions, group to achieve its goals
ideally all managers should be leaders. Thus, we’re going to study leaders and leadership
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from a managerial perspective. However, even though we’re looking at these from a
managerial perspective, we’re aware that groups often have informal leaders who emerge.
Although these informal leaders may be able to influence others, they have not been
the focus of most leadership research and are not the types of leaders we’re studying in
this chapter.
Leaders and leadership, like motivation, are organizational behavior topics that have
been researched a lot. Most of that research has been aimed at answering the question: “What
is an effective leader?” We’ll begin our study of leadership by looking at some early leader-
ship theories that attempted to answer that question.

◂ ◂ ◂ From the Past to the Present ▸ ▸ ▸

Both the Ohio State and Michigan studies added a lot to our were important for the rigorous methodology they used and
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understanding of effective leadership. Prior to the completion for increasing awareness of how important leader behavior is.
of these studies, it was widely thought by researchers and Although the behavioral theories may not have been the final
practicing managers that one style of chapter in the book on leadership, they
leadership was good and another bad. provided us with important insights
However, as the research showed, People—Task: that became the foundation of contin-
both leader behavior dimensions— Both are important gency leadership theories.
job-centered and employee-centered If your professor has assigned this,
in the Michigan studies, and initiating to leaders. go to the Assignments section of
structure and consideration in the Ohio mymanagementlab.com to com-
State studies—are necessary for effec- plete these discussion questions.
tive leadership. That dual focus of “what” a leader does still
holds today. Leaders are expected to focus on both the task Talk About It 1: Is saying that the leader’s “job” is to fo-
and on the people he or she is leading. Even the later contin- cus on the task and focus on the people too simplistic? Explain.
gency leadership theories used the people/task distinction to Talk About It 2: How did the behavioral theories serve
define a leader’s style. Finally, these early behavioral studies as a springboard for the leadership research that followed?