Video Transcript: Week 1

hello class. So welcome to leadership theories. I'm really looking forward to working with you over these next 12 weeks. I think we're going to have a lot of fun, and before we start any journey, I think it's important to tell you a little bit about myself. So my name is Matthew, and I have an undergrad in psychology. Have a Master of Business Administration. I have another Master's degree in aeronautics, and I have a doctorate degree in organizational leadership. So I've been studying leadership as part of my academic career since 2007 in formal ways. You know, studying a little bit my undergrad, a little bit in my two master programs, but really in a formal way. I've been studying leadership since 2007 when I became my when I began my doctorate program, and then I concluded that 2012 so as far as work goes, I've worked for the government. I've worked for large, very large corporations, one of the largest in the United States actually, and globally, I've worked for startups, particularly in the RV travel space, which I'll talk about more as we get further in the class. And then I've also worked in education. So I've worked in for several institutions in education as well. So I take all these experiences and I'm going to use them, use those examples as part of this class. But before I get into the material the class, which we'll start with the definition of leadership, I just want to open us in a word of prayer, and I want to just give this class and our experience here to God. So let us pray, Heavenly Father, thank You for each person in this class. Thank you that they want to learn about leadership, and specifically learn about leadership during Lord, I pray that you will bless our time together, that you will give me the words that they need to hear so they can further the kingdom. And likewise, you will show them a clear path that how they can use this and how they can help use this information to form their Christian worldview and then ultimately further the kingdom of God. So pray you'll bless our time together and just thank You, Lord for this opportunity, and thank you for each person in this class in Jesus name Amen. So thank you so much. So we're going to start by talking about the definition of leadership. And there are a bunch of different ways to conceptualize what leadership is, right? So there, when you think about a definition, as I said, there's no one definition of leadership, and really it's because leadership is so complex. I think a lot of people, they put leadership on this pedestal. I think there's a pedestal, Oh, it's over here. There's a pedestal over here. Just believe me on that. But they put leadership on this pedestal, and they think that, oh, in order to be a leader, you have to reach this pedestal and then exceed it. And that's not true. Leadership is something that anybody is, and it can be and is, if you think about it, you maybe, maybe at work, you don't have the formal role of a leader, or you don't have that formal title. But think about the kind word you say to a person in break room, or think about the in your home life, in your personal life, in with your friends, with your family, with others, you do have incredible influence, and that is part of what the definition of leadership is. So it's, it's very, very complex, but it, but it involves influence, and normally, even though there's this theory of self leadership, which we'll talk a little bit about in this class, but it doesn't only involve influence, but involves more than one person, right? It involves groups. It involves involves common goals, and it involves a process. So in this book that we're that we're using, there is a definition in here, and I should have had it prepared ahead of time. That's the other thing that you'll see about me, is I kind of, you know, I kind of not always ready to go. So please forgive me for that. But most of the definitions that are common definitions is, is something that it talks about authentic leadership or spiritual leadership, or servant leadership or adaptive leadership, and all those definitions have those components, which is common, goals, works in groups, involves influence, and is a process. So as we think about that, and we think about the definition, we need to think about those kind of things, remember, and this will be you might see this question again. So you're going to hear me say that a few times that influence is one of the key components of any definition of leadership. So so if you maybe have a quiz or something, hopefully you get that question right. So in addition, in addition to those, there are things that there are leaders and there are followers. And just because you're deemed a leader in certain situations does not mean that you cannot also be a follower in other situations, right? So even the leader of a company, even Tim Cook, who's the leader of Apple, he may be the CEO, the head leader at Apple, but in his personal life, he may be a follower. And I think we see this a lot in certain situations as well. I know a lot of my friends are pastors, and they also have a job. So when they're a pastor, they're the leader of that church, but in their other job, they're a follower. And I think that we're if we think about that in those terms, when we think about our own lives, I think we're very comfortable with going into the leadership role, into the follower role, and kind of shifting in between those and that's what makes the concept of leadership so complex, because there's this shifting that occurs naturally throughout The whole experience. So that's something to think about. Excuse me. I cough a lot, so you'll have to forgive me for hearing that throughout the class as well as we talk about leadership, one of the things also that we need to talk about is trait versus process leadership, and we're going to get more into what trait leadership is. But for this, let's just talk about how those with a trait personality believe in born leaders or natural leaders, and this was one of the first forms of leadership that really came out when we started studying definitions of leadership, it talked about that trait approach, meaning, if you're a leader, then you're going to have these certain skill sets, excuse me, you're going to have these certain attributes, and that's what's going to make you special, and that's what's going To make you a leader. Now that was the the initial one. Maybe there's a unique physical factors such as height. And this is kind of interesting, because if you look at the height of all US presidents, generally US presidents are pretty tall. And I think especially if we look at US presidents now, especially in the age of media, in the age of TV, radio, and or not radio, but in the age of TV and pictures and digital photography and those things, you'll notice that that presidents are very tall, so unique physical factors, unique personality factors. A lot of people think that the best leaders are very extroverted, meaning that they're they have no problem getting out in front of a crowd and talking to a bunch of people and engaging with a bunch of people. That has actually been proven to be wrong. Actually, a lot of leaders are introverted. I'm certainly considered a leader in some ways, and I'm very introverted. I know it's hard to believe, but it's true. And then other characteristics, like people who are highly intelligent, they become the best leaders. And that's what trait trait theory, and you can think of it if you think of traits like, you know, characteristics. That's what trait theory says that you have to have certain attributes in order to be a good leader. Remember that that this kind of leadership, it limits leadership to just a few people, right? Because not everybody. I'm certainly not six foot four. I'm not even five foot eight, right? You know, a lot of people are, you know, not as tall or not as smart or not as whatever, as gifted as they need to be to be a leader. But we, we, I think we all intuitively know that anybody can be a leader and anybody can have that influence. So the trait theory is important because we're talking about it, and that's the foundation of how this evolution of leadership theory has evolved, but it certainly does not make it the only way that leaders operate, and it certainly does not mean you have to have some characteristics to be a leader. So so then there's this other viewpoint, that there's a process, viewpoint that says that a definition of leadership is more more about a phenomenon, and it's more contextual. And what that means is that, because it's more contextual, and we'll talk about what that means a little bit later, is that means that leadership is available to everybody, and you can. Observe people who are good leaders, their behavior, and you can learn from those behaviors. And on the other side, you can learn from bad leaders, right? We're going to talk a lot about a bad leader in my life, and what we can learn from that person, and then. And then, also remember what we talked about when we talk about the definition of leadership. It's about influence. It's about common goals, it's about groups, and it's a process. And that definition is a lot more consistent with what we're going to talk about in this class than what we would talk about if we're using specifically the traits approach. Remember, we're going to address the traits approach. We're going to talk about it, we're going to talk about the theories. But this is not a this is not a philosophy that I believe is 100% correct when it comes to leadership. Interestingly, what's really interesting about that is the leadership theories that are out there right now. Most of them do take the trait approach, which is really fascinating, because I guess it's easier to talk about the attributes of a leader and what makes up a good leader, than to actually talk about the process, which is incredibly complex, right? Leadership? There's we're gonna get into. It's called complex, adaptive leadership later, much later in our in our course here, but, but it's incredibly complex. Leadership is incredibly complex, and it involves a bunch of factors that are internal, both in the person and external. You know, there's undue influence coming from all different places. So those are, those are some of the things that we're going to address. There's also this concept of assigned versus emergent leadership. So assigned leadership. And I believe you'll see this question again as well, is leadership is empowered by holding a formal position, and if you think about that, the title of Chief Executive Officer, that is a formal assigned role. There's also this concept of emergent leadership, which is based on other how other group members respond to them. So you have your formal leader, and then you have the people that everybody goes to when they need something, and that is a leader as well, but it's not an assigned leader. It's just everybody knows and wants to follow that person. So they have incredible influence. Remember that term again, influence. Influence. Influence. Influence. Remember that, that when you're talking about an emergent leader, when you're talking about somebody who people just naturally want to go to, that's not the formal leader, remember that there's a bunch of different factors as why people want to do that. Right? One is communication, if you're if you're involved, if you're informed, if you seek others opinions, if you look for new ideas, if you're firm but you're not rigid, people want to follow people like that. People want to follow somebody who they know what they're thinking. You know, I think that could get you in trouble. Certainly that gets me in trouble on my life, because I tend to be very open, but but people want to want people who have positive communication patterns. They also need to understand that people follow those that that then that have certain factors, right? If somebody is more intelligent, generally, people want to follow that person. If somebody is dominant, normally, people will follow the dominant person. And if somebody is really confident, normally people want to follow them as well. So when we talk about Trait Theory and we talk about traits, you know, these are traits, communication, dominance, intelligence, confidence, those, those things may play a factor. But remember, there's also all these biases, right? And these biases exist. For instance, you know, If a man says something that is perceived very differently than if a woman says the same thing, where a man might see be seen as dominant, or a man might seen as a forward thinker, you know, a woman might be seen as over aggressive or overpowering. So you know, when we're talking about leadership, we're talking about these theories. One of the things that I'm going to challenge you to do, and I challenge myself with every day, is to get rid of all preconceived notions and try to think of leaders in a variety of roles, right? Because, because I think this has been proven, and it has been proven, but women are just as capable as a man is to be successful in an organization. And you think of female CEOs and female leaders and and they're they're doing oftentimes better than their male counterparts in leading a company. So that's something that I want you to think about, that that there's these gender bias perceptions that exist that are just simply not correct, right? So let's, let's remove any biases that we have as we approach leadership and gender is just one example. Remember that that power is part of the way to influence. So there are certain roles that naturally yield a lot of power. And if you, if somebody says, Hey, I'm a blank, think of what that blank is, then they naturally have a lot of power, which means that they automatically have influence. So I will give you an example during the covid 19 pandemic, the global pandemic, doctors were somebody who had a lot of power and had a lot of influence. So if your doctor said, wear a mask, you would wear a mask because you would believe that their system was based in science, which would, that would make you wear a mask, and then, you know, that's one example. They had that influence. Now I'm not here to discuss the politics of that all. I'm not here to discuss whether it's good or bad thing. I'm just talking about from an influence standpoint that people with certain positional power or certain roles automatically have power preacher, right? The pastor of a church automatically has a lot of influence and a lot of power because they are the pastor of the church they were ordained by God, right? Let's see. You know, I think when we're talking about those who wield power over them, we sometimes think of them naturally as leaders, and that isn't always the case. So remember that, that there's theorists out there, like Kellerman is one that says that the power of leaders is diminished, and just because people are in roles doesn't make them automatically, all knowing. And there's things technology that has allowed that to change. So I'll give you an example from my personal life. So I am known as somebody who's going to fact check people on Google, which isn't really a good thing to be known for, right? I mean, I'm the person who's going to tell you you're wrong. That's probably not a good thing, but what's going to happen is, if somebody says something interesting, like, I was at a work dinner probably about a year ago, and somebody made an interesting statement. It was about a band or something, or the name of a song, or, like, what the song was about. I forget, but I immediately, I just pulled out my phone and very quietly, just did this and just looked it up, and what that person was saying was wrong. Now I didn't point it out to him, but you can see here, as somebody who would think that they are an authority, their power has been dismantled, diminished, because I can check and see if what they're saying is accurate, and that's something to consider, is when we talk about influence. Influence is earned in certain ways, but it but you know, initially, you know, when I started this class, I gave you my my credentials, but you're going to see over this class whether I actually have lived up to those credentials, my PhD in organizational leadership, studying it since 2007 or if I don't, and that's and that's going to be for you to decide. And as a follower, what I'm saying is, as a follower, you have incredible power. You have more power than you even realize you have, because you can make a choice whether you want to follow somebody or whether you do not want to follow them, and that is a powerful place to be in. You have the choice. You have the ability to choose who you're going to follow and who you're going to not follow. And as a leader, because of that, you have an awesome responsibility, an awesome responsibility, to make sure that you are the kind of leader that others want to follow. It's about influence, okay? So we can talk about all these different kind of, these different kinds of power. And we're going to just, I'm just going to mention a couple of them, and then we're going to move on. Then we're going to talk about traits. So French and Raven, there are these theorists that came out, and they said there's different types of power. One is called referent power, and that that's, that's somebody you like, right? Like, Oh, I like that guy. Yeah, I would follow him because I like him, because he's a nice guy, or I would follow her because she's really nice, right? I like her. Those that's referent power, expert power is based on competence. So we talked about doctors earlier. So my doctor, she will tell me to do X, and I'm going to do what she says, because she's my doctor. There's legitimate power, which is with formal authority. So an example of that would be if my president, not of the United States, of my workplace, were to come to me, or my CEO of my other workplace were to come to me and say, Hey, do this. Then that's a type of power. And I'm going to answer yes, ma'am, yes, sir, and I'm going to go do it right. There's reward power, and that's based on ability to provide words to rewards to other. So, you know, I may not. Be the person who determines the raises in my my area, but if people think that I have the power to reward them for their performance, then then that gives me power, which gives me influence, right? And then there's coercive power, which is your ability to penalize or punish. So I'm gonna I'm gonna give you influence, and I'm going to give you power, because you can, you can ruin my life, economically, socially, whatever. There's also information power, and that's derived, derived from wanting to have that need. So this has removed a lot of information power, but not completely, because in organizations, there's somebody that's always in the know, and that person has incredible power. So before we move on to Trait Theory, I just want to be very, very clear that that it's up to you to decide. But there are toxic forms of leadership, and there are people who engage and through have influence, through coercive power, and they influence others in a negative way. And we can think of a lot of social examples. We can think of a lot of personal examples we can think by in the workplace. Here's what I would ask you. What I would ask you is to really think about what your leader is, and if your leader is coercive, then you should really find something else to do, because if somebody is wielding their power through coercion and through negative influence, then that is not a very good thing. So let me just make sure I covered everything. Yep. So, so the last thing I'm going to say is, as we go through this, remember that there are different types of leadership. Everybody leads differently, and that is perfectly okay. And as we go through all these different leadership theories, starting with trade approach, which remember looks at attributes as we start with that, and then we move on, just remember that you as a person, can decide what leadership theory works for you, which one makes sense to you, and you you, my friends, have the power to to choose what is works in your organization and what doesn't? So I'm going to be kind of clinical with my presentation. Certainly, there are certain leadership theories that I have studied throughout my life that I that I have a certain affinity for, but I'm going to try to remove that as we discuss these different theories. So let's start with the trait approach. So this is, as I said, this is the leadership approach that basically all leadership theories have stemmed from. And this started in the early 20th century. Sometimes you're going to hear this theory called the great man approach and trait theory. And the great man is the exact same thing. And what that means is that there's certain things, characteristics that people possess that make them a great leader, right? And we already talked about some of those, intelligence would be one, height would be another, and I would never be a good leader based on my height. You know, there's all kinds of things, I guess, if I lived in a different country, maybe, but not in the United States. But there are others traits that exist out there that make people really good. So this is where this theory started with, in the minute in the mid 20th century, there's this guy. We'll talk about him a lot. His name was Stogdill, and he reviewed the literature, and he said that there is no no traits out there that exist that differentiate leaders across different situations, basically saying, Hey, everyone, we've been studying this for 50 years, and we have gotten it wrong. There are no traits that exist that are better than others. And everybody says, Man, and that's okay. We're going to keep studying it. So if you ever get into the real theories of leadership, you're going to find that there's a lot of people out there that that that still study the trait and still try to prove good leaders have these attributes. Bad leaders have these attributes, and they try to make it a black and white situation, which it's not. But when Stogdill, when he did this, he said that that leadership roles are different from average group members, and there's eight, kind of eight leadership roles and competencies that are different, and then he gets to send them more. So we'll start with the first state, intelligence, alertness, insight, responsibility, initiative, persistence, self confidence and sociability, and we and we can see those right. Remember, if we go back to the definition with influence and we think about sociability, if somebody is a very, let's say they have a very grading personality and and they, you know, they have certain social characteristics that make them very off putting. Then people, they're not gonna have a lot of influence. People aren't going to want to follow them. So you can see where sociability where sociability comes in self confidence. If somebody is constantly down on themselves, even in the workplace, well, if you can't even read yourself, why would I want to follow you? Right kind of one of those things. So he went, he took that, and then he came back, and he said, Wait, I didn't take a very balanced approach. Let me look at this again. And then, and then he came up, and he said, there's 10 traits that are positively associated with leadership. So what are those? In fact, you know what I'm going to do. We're going to bring these up on the big screen, and we're going to talk about them individually. So let me switch the screen. There we go. And forgive me, because I have a bunch of other stuff up there we go. So one of the things that so we'll talk about is drive for responsibility and task completion. And I think you can see that where a lot of people want to work through people that that that are task responsible, vigor in persistence and pursuit of goals. That's something else, like somebody who is not going to give out, they're not going to burn out, they're going to keep going, somebody that's willing to take risks, somebody that is going to exercise initiative. And we've talked about that, well, we will talk about initiative a lot, self confidence, willingness to accept consequences of their decision, readiness to absorb interpersonal stress, willingness to tolerate frustration in the way, and then the ability to influence other people. There's that word, again, influence other people's behavior, and then the capacity to structure social interaction systems with the purpose at hand. Now let's talk about that last one, because a lot of people may not know what that means, capacity to structure social interaction systems to the purpose at hand. What that means is being able to engineer different ways of talking to people in order to have influence in order to get that task accomplished. Right? So an example of this is, you know, an example of this would be in one of my workplaces. All of us are completely remote, 100% remote. So are we able to structure a system to where we can work with each other? So in this case, we have, it's called slack, and we use Slack to communicate. In another one of my situations and another one. We have a hybrid model where most people are remote, but not everybody, and we use teams as a tool in order to structure some work. But that isn't always successful, right? Because my one leader, or somebody in my organization is not good with technology. She does not have to know how to use this computer at all, and because of that, that has caused some problems with how we're able to socially structure things and make sure that we're interacting in order to accomplish the task. So that's something to consider as well. Not everybody is good at that. There's a lot of people out here. Man came out in 59 and said that dominance is important. Extroversion is important. Conservatism is important. There's somebody who came out in 91 and said integrity is the most important, confidence and cognitive ability and task knowledge, all those are really important. And I don't want to really get into all those. You can read those in the chapter, and kind of through the other readings, and see those in the videos. But what I want to say is, what I want to focus is on focus on is Stogdill had it right? There is no way that one reader is going to have every attributes in every attribute in every situation. And therefore we have to approach anybody who says, in order to be in order to be a really good leader, you have to be smart, we have to approach that with a grain of salt, because that may not be true. Just because you are really smart, it does not make you a good leader. And trust me, I know some really smart people who are some of the worst leaders I've ever met in my life. And conversely, I know people who would be considered to have lower than average intelligence who are some of the best leaders I've ever met in my life. So you can't look at all these traits and say, Oh, well, that's what makes a good leader. But there are things I think as Christians that do make us good leaders. And I just wanted to focus on something that Kirkpatrick and Locke said, and that's integrity. And I think as Christians, integrity is way important to being a good leader. We follow that Pastor because we think that pastor is a man of God or a woman of God, but we follow that person because they are a person of God, integrity is incredibly important in the Christian life. So as we talk about trait approach, I'm talking about formal organizations and formal organizational theory. But remember, as we talk about these things, as you read them in the book, as Christians, you know integrity matters. And in order to influence people, integrity matters a lot. So there's, there's been a lot of research out there that says that intelligence, self confidence, determination, integrity and sociability are the most important factors that that emerge when we're talking about leadership theory. But as we talked about, that may not always be the case. One of the terms that we're also going to learn about is emotional intelligence. And what emotional intelligence is, it's how people perceive and express emotions, and they use those emotions to facilitate thinking, to understand how to reason with emotions and then manage relationships. So for instance, just a few minutes ago, I was sharing a very personal thing with one of my co workers, over, over, teams, over over a virtual meeting, and it was three or four people, and the one person, as I'm, you know, sharing some things that are very important to me and very sensitive to me, goes, Yeah, we can't do anything with those. I think we need to end the meeting. You know, that was not a high degree of emotional intelligence that was displayed there. And actually, I'm quite disappointed in that, but that's okay. I mean, not everybody's perfect all the time, right? So that would be an example of emotional intelligence and why it's important. So what are the why? Why is trait approach? Why is that been so important? Why do people gravitate toward this kind of a leader is something special? It's because people think that leaders are special. They and they've seen all this research that exists out there that says you you know 10 Ways to make you a better leader, or 10 skills you must have, or 10 traits that you have to be a leader, or 10 whatever that make you a great leader. And people want to hear that. They want to hear about the 10 things, and I even talked about the 10 skills that leaders need to have, and I'm very open about, you know, if you're a leader, you should have certain characteristics, but that doesn't mean that that's the only way to lead. And as we talk about the trait approach as we as we apply that for a personal life, you know, one of the things that I will say is that it gives us a really good roadmap for how we can be a better person in our own personal development. So if we see that a leader needs to have a great level of empathy, and we're not very empathetic, maybe it gives us pause and say, I want to be a great leader, so I want to learn empathy, and we learn empathy, and we incorporate that, we assimilate that in our leadership skills, then maybe we do become better leaders. So that's just something for you to consider, something for you to think about, and that is the trait approach, and that is kind of the definition of leader. That is the definition of leadership, kind of because there is no one definition, but that is the definition of leadership, and that's what we're going to talk about over these next few modules. And we're going to have some supplemental videos, and we're going to have some other things that are going to help us with that. So one last thing, I just want to give you a couple other things just to help you. So think about this. Remember leadership is a process. Remember that leadership occurs in groups. Remember that leaders and followers have a mutual purpose together. Remember that that coercive power is about punishing others. Remember that that identification and liking of a leader is referent power. So those are just some things to think about as you continue to move through this module. And now let us close in prayer. Heavenly Father, thank You for this time together. Lord, thank You for the ability to talk about these different kinds of leadership, and especially trait leadership. Lord, one of the things I love is that you made each person in the world unique, just like, just like, you know, a piece of sand, every single one is different, just like a snowflake, each one is unique, each one is different. And you made us all different, Lord. And because of that, you know, we made, you made us have the ability to influence others and be leaders in roles that that maybe are traditional, maybe aren't, or maybe are culturally acceptable, maybe aren't, and you've given us those abilities, Lord, and I just thank you for that. So Lord, you know, as we, as we think about the trait style leadership as we as we as. To think about that, and as we assimilate that in our own lives, I pray that we'll walk away from here thinking of ways that we can be a better leader for you Lord in Jesus name, we pray. Amen. Thank you all so much, and I'll see you back here next week.