Video Transcript - Week 5

Hello class. Welcome to Module five. So we are nearing the halfway point. Today we are going to be walking through one of my favorite theories. They're all my favorite, to be honest with you. But I really like this one a lot, because this is kind of a continuation of what we just discussed. And House is one of the one of the giants in the field of leadership theory. In fact, if there was a bunch of Mount Rushmore of leadership theorists, House would definitely be up there. He would even make my list, which is, I have a pretty critical list here. So this is what we talking about. You can see some words on here that you may know already from our previous discussions, but this is what we will be discussing today, and we will be going through it in a lot of detail. So before we get into it, we're going to do what we always do, and that is we're going to open in prayer. So please join me, Heavenly Father, thank You for this class. Thank you for getting us to this point, Lord. I know the work and dedication that it has taken for each of these students to get to this point, and I just want to honor that Lord. So I want to just take a moment and thank you and just say thank you Father, thank You Father, thank you for helping each student get to this point. Thank you Father, for for giving them the strength, for giving them the resources and the tools, and thank you for those in their life that are supporting them to get them to this point in their education. Thank you Father. And with that, Father, I just pray that you will open up our hearts and minds to what we're about to learn. You will help us to be able to assimilate the information in ways that will forward your kingdom in Jesus name, Amen. So as I just talked about, as with every class, we're going to define the theory, and then we're going to discuss it a little bit, and then we're going to talk about strengths and weaknesses, and then we're going to try to apply it in our own lives. So that's what we're going to attempt to do, and hopefully we will be successful. So as always, I need a moment to get organized, because I'm not organized in this, but I'm ready now. So one of the things you're going to hear this theory, this path goal theory, and this is a theory that really for the first time in our in our journey through the first five modules, this is one of the first times where we actually start considering the needs of the followers. And we consider these needs of the followers in powerful ways, right? So we specifically are learning about how leaders motivate followers and how they use this information to accomplish designated goals. So this first appeared in the 70s, House again, and then House also worked on another theory of mine that is one of my favorites, and we talk about it in international business. I think we touch on it, but that is the Javadon. It was his main author on that, and it used this theorist called Hofstede and his cultural dimensions actually mapped the proclivities of different cultures. So that was a very interesting study. But for this one, House came up with path goal theory. And what path goal theory does is, again, it talks about follower, performance and satisfaction, and it focuses on motivation, and it also focuses on the nature of work. So this one really emphasizes the relationship between a leader style, the characteristics of followers and the organizational setting. So like the last theory we just talked about, a leader has to adjust their style to the changing emotional needs are the followers. Now, when we say that changing emotional needs, sometimes people take emotional needs and that has a negative connotation, right? Because we've heard in workplaces of this person's emotional or this person is this or this person is that, we take that to be a bad thing. But when we but I'm using emotional needs, because that is what the terms that House uses. But when we think about this theory, let's remove the word emotion from it, and let's just talk about followers needs. So I just wanted to be very clear that this theory focuses on follower needs, not just the emotional needs of the follower. So that's a little bit of a distinction, but an important one, and I hope, hope you understand what I was saying there. So the the idea is that you choose state behaviors that complement or supplement what is missing in the work setting. So a leader will supply a follower with elements they think followers need to reach a goal. And that can include information or reward. So if going back to our last survey, we talked about that brand new employee that's starting, situational leadership is what I'm talking about, and in this one, we're also talking about situations a little bit. So you have that new employee that starts, and on their first day, you say, I need you to send an email to Jake. There's a movie out there. It's called The Devil Wears Prada. I don't know if anybody ever saw it, but it was about this lady who worked for an executive in a magazine, and the lady was very difficult to work for, as you can imagine by the name of the movie. But in the movie, she wouldn't give any information. She would just say, I need you to email Jake. I need you to call Matt, get Leviton on the phone, get this person on the phone, Do this, do that, right? And should we give no direction? Well, that is not what path goal theory says. What path goal theory says is, you want to motivate employees. You want to give them some information that's going to help what's missing in the work setting to make them successful. So that can include rewards, like in the movie, one of the main character, her name was Andy, played by Anne Hathaway, Andy got to go to a fashion show in Paris, and that is because she was rewarded for the work she was doing. In some instances, it may be information. So in my workplace, one of my workplaces, information, is not very free flowing, in the sense that a lot of it is kept very, very localized, because this is a new tech company, and they're working on building relationships, and I'm an outsider coming into it, so one of the things that they do to reward me is they'll give me information or rationale behind things, and that information is really helpful to me, and it helps me be motivated. So you can, you can affect motivation of employees in several ways. There's intrinsic motivations, which are those motivations that are inside you, and there's extrinsic motivations, which is rewards, like an extrinsic motivation. That that I wanted to do for my employees is I live in in a region of the country that's pretty far from New York City, and I wanted to fly my employees to New York City for lunch, one day, one year, that would be an extrinsic, extrinsic motivation and give them something to work toward. That ended up not happening because they all quit, not because of me, thankfully, but, but that didn't end up happening. But that is an example of an extrinsic word, award, reward, sorry, or more pay, or a bonus or or internal motivation is is different, is different from that somebody's intrinsically motivated. They're motivated from within, right? So way you can reward somebody that's motivated from within is to give them a day off, find out what they value, and give them that tell them they're doing a good job, and give them a big project to work on. That's ways you can motivate people intrinsically. And what path goal theory says is, you find the motivation, what motivates your employees, and then you give them that reward. You give them that payoff. So an example of that would be, you make the path to the goal clear and easy to follow through. So how do you do that? You do that through. You do that through coaching and direction. You remove obstacles or roadblocks. So say this book is a roadblock to you being able to sketch my face well as a leader, you would remove that, and then you would make getting that task done that much easier. You make you make work more personally satisfying. Like I said, you explain to somebody, Hey, I'm going to give you this project, which is going to result in 100 people being saved, or 100 people coming to having the opportunity to know Christ, right? That that makes work very personally satisfying. If I did work that led to people coming to Christ and coming to experience the joy that I have because I'm a Christian, I mean, that would make work incredibly satisfying. Now I work for secular organizations where that's not possible, and in fact, I have to be very hidden about my faith, but certainly I try to get it out there. So they can't motivate me and make it satisfying in that way, but they can find out what motivates me. In a couple of my cases, what motivates me is having people love the same RV lifestyle I do. In other cases, it's having students succeed, right? So they can find ways to make this work satisfying. So remember, we talked about motivation, but there are some separate central themes to path goal theory that are very, very, very, very important, and there are some assumptions. So the. Assumptions are, number one, that the followers are capable of performing the work. So we're assuming everybody is capable. Number two, their efforts will result in a certain outcome. We assume that. And then three, we assume that the payoff for doing their work is worthwhile. But there's a challenge, because that requires a leaders to have emotional intelligence. You may remember that from lecture one, emotional intelligence to understand what the goals are and the perceived rewards for each follower. So I have a boss again. I just want to re emphasize when I talk about bosses, I'm not talking about anybody associated with Christian leader, but I have a boss who who his idea of rewarding you is to give you a Starbucks gift card because it's easy. He doesn't take the time to find out what motivates you and what rewards you and what makes you happy. He doesn't care. What he wants is you to be used as a tool, and his way of motivating you is to take you to lunch at Olive Garden, because you can't choose where you want to eat. You can only go where he wants, or he'll give you a Starbucks gift card, which you have no say in. So this is the way my boss motivates me. And let me tell you, it's not motivating at all. So remember that when you're talking about path goal theory, it's incumbent upon the leader to take the time to find out how to reward their followers and find out how they're motivated. So what am I motivated by? I'll tell you. I'm motivated by freedom. I'm motivated by autonomy, which is same thing as freedom or very similar I'm motivated by time off. I'm motivated by certainly financially, I'm motivated but, but that takes a distant, distant backseat to the others. I tell you, when I'm not motivated to going to Olive Garden, eating eating a salad, because I'm judged if I eat anything else. And I'm not motivated by getting a Starbucks gift card because I don't drink coffee because I'm allergic to caffeine, right? So that's and you can see there's a lot of emotion surrounding that are probably a little bit too much, just a little bit of my therapy session, but, but that's what motivates me, and he needs, or anybody or she needs, to take the time to learn what motivates their employees and then to implement that. So just wanted to point that out. Now we've already talked about directive leadership, and this is similar to the telling style and the situation leadership model or the initiating structure in the Ohio State studies, which we talked about. Remember going back to the behavior section, and if you provide explicit expectations and remove ambiguity, followers will have the clarity needed to focus on their jobs. So get rid of the ambiguity. Hey, email Jake. Well, what am I supposed to email Jake? In this instance, what we're doing is we're emailing Jake's boss, Matt, and we're telling Matt that that Jake did a fantastic job helping a customer out, right? And that's and that's what we're going to do. But if I, if I leave the task ambiguous, email Jake, that leads to frustration. There's also supportive leadership, right? And leaders using these behaviors go all their way to make work pleasant, so, you know, and that gives people confidence they need to succeed. So maybe you do that by, you know, giving if somebody needs a third monitor to do their work, then you give them a third monitor. Or if somebody needs a high powered computer to do their work, you give them that, and you don't make them buy it on their own, for instance. So you know they that gives people confidence and then, and then, in addition to that, is also treating people like equals and respecting them and not having a hierarchical structure. Now, one thing I do want to pause here, and I do want to mention that, remember, these theories are coming from a very western view of the world, right? So when House did this theory, he was thinking of the western view, which is more of a flat structure in America, as opposed to the hierarchical structure which is present in other cultures. So keep in mind that when we discuss this, that we're discussing this from a western view. Excuse me, I should have turned the mic off. My apologies for that. And then participative leadership is that it's that concept of shared decision making, right? So that's taking followers and saying, Hey, I have to make a decision on this. Can you tell me what you think? Let's make the decision together. This impacts you. What can I do to support you? What does what? What is your role in this decision, and then allowing them and giving them freedom that increases group performance, because. Listen, if somebody asks me my opinion, and then they do what I say. You know, I'll tell you this. I'm going to work very hard to make it successful. And that talks about, again, about that motivation. There's also the concept of achievement oriented leadership, and that's characterized by leaders who challenge their followers to perform work at the highest level possible and seek continuous improvement. Now there's a difference here, and I want to be very clear in this distinction. So my boss, he is very achievement oriented, but not a good way. In a good way, the leader is extremely confident what their followers are capable of, and they give them challenging goals because they want them to rise to the challenge and succeed. What my boss does is he will give me a task, then he'll give my my peers the same task separately, and then he'll tell a couple people that aren't at my level, and they'll do the task, and all these people will have to work together to get this task done. Well, that's not right, right? That's not what we're talking about here. What we're talking about here is we're saying, Hey, I have 100% confidence that you can accomplish this goal. This is going to be a lot of big effort, and I'm going to need you to work really hard to accomplish this goal. So I'm going to resource you correctly. I mean, I have all the confidence in the world that you can do it, go do it, and that is going to lead to positive outcomes. There's also the need for affiliation. So some followers have a high level of need, and they want friendly and concerned leadership, so they're going to want that supportive behavior. Remember, we talked about that supportive behavior. And then there's some followers who have a preference for structure, so they want dogmatic and authoritarian leadership. And then, of course, desire for control is understanding the followers that they have control over their own destiny in the workplace and things like that. So there's the internal locus of control, and that means that people feel like they are in charge of events and external and then those are the people with external locus of control that believe in fate or outside forces control their destiny. So those with an internal locus of control, they like participative leadership, meaning everybody participates and works together. And those with an external that believe in fate or chance, they prefer a directive leadership style. So for one second, I just want to stop and kind of go back to go back to this chart. And you can see we're talking a lot through this. So we are going through the directive, the supportive, the participative and achievement oriented. You can see that on the leader side. And then if we look at the characteristic of the situations we're going to get into that but that's the level of task structure, meaning how much structure you get behind a task. We kind of talked about that a little bit with the Hey email Jake scenario versus email Jake, Jake's boss and tell Jake's boss that Jake did a good job. Then there's goal achievement, which talks about the reward system, which we kind of touched on. You know, other different people are motivated in different ways to reward and then going to the top of the screen, the characteristics of the followers, remember that this is going to result in how much autonomy you give them, how much support you give them as a leader, how much you give them is dependent on some certain factors, like needs. Like I personally do not need a lot. Just give me a task and leave me alone, but other people have a high need. In fact, we're hiring somebody right now for one of my jobs, and the first person I talked to as her references said she's going to ask a lot of questions, and that's great. That means that she has a need for really understanding the task, so as a leader, then I'm going to have to make sure that I do a good job, and I give her what she needs, and I'm able to answer a bunch of tasks and things like that. So task characteristics. Remember, these are the characteristics that impact the way the influences. Remember the design of followers, tasks which we just talked about, the authority and the primary work group. So these characteristics can be motivating itself, like if somebody asks a lot of questions, and you're always giving them the answer, and then you're encouraging them to go off and find the answers on their own, and then ask other questions that itself can be motivating people who are intellectually curious. You know, I think of one of my children, actually all My children, but specifically one child who constantly. Ask, Why? Why is this this? Why is this that? Why is this? Why is this? Why is this? Why is this? And that child is very motivated by finding answers. So I will say to him, Hey, I don't really understand how rain works. Can you tell me how rain works? And then, of course, I understand how rain works. But I'll ask him, and then he'll go do that. Or, hey, tell me about why there's yellow lines on a road, and what is that all about. Then he'll go off and find the answer and tell me so he's motivated by that. And it's same thing in the workforce, right? If you give somebody autonomy and you give them agency over their own destiny, then they're going to want to be part of that. So what are tasks that benefit from leaders involvement unclear or ambiguous tasks. Sometimes the leader can come in and provide direction repetitive tasks. So, you know, you can maintain somebody. So if your job all day is to take this post it note and move it from here to here to here that can get repetitive, so a leader can be involved there and kind of explain the importance of moving the post it note from here to here to here, also with weak or non supportive group norms. So if there's not a lot of culture, not a lot of history, there's not a lot of organizational knowledge, leader support can be really, really good. So in addition to those, just remember that that path goal theory is can be summed up in this way, and that's leaders need to support followers by helping compensate them for deficiencies in either the environment or the follower abilities. So because of that, you figure out what style, what leadership style, directive, supportive, participative or achievement oriented, works for them, and then you do it based on the characteristics of the followers and the characteristics of the situation. And you kind of meld those two together, and that leads to goal achievement, right? So what is the leader style that's needed? What are the characteristics of the follower? How are they motivated? What is the situation? How is the situation handled? And then, what? And then, how does that lead to goal achievement? So that, my friends, is is House's path goal theory, and it's a really cool theory, so I'm really glad that we got a chance to talk about it. So we we kind of talk about the strengths of it, and it's very practical, right? Of course, you find out what motivates people, and then you motivate them. Remember, that goes back to the definition of leadership, which is influence, but there is criticisms, and that's, it's complex. You got to learn what motivates your followers, each follower individually. You got to spend the time to get to know them, find out how they're motivated, and then motivate them. And that's, that's something not everybody wants to do. So that's certainly a major criticism. So how can this work in application? So basically, here's what it boils down to, most of the management, leadership and leadership training programs that you want to go, whether it's military, whether it's ministry, whether it's whatever they focus, in some degree, on path goal theory, how do you motivate volunteers to be productive members in the church. How do you how do you motivate your workers to turn an extra widget every hour? You know the the most of the theories out there is based on House. Remember if I said there was a Mount Rushmore, which is for those that don't live in the United States, Mount Rushmore has, like a bunch of carvings in a mountain of presidents, if this was the Mount Rushmore of leadership, dearest House would be on there. So before we get to the end, you know, I always like to remind you of some things to know. So remember that participative leadership is effective with subordinates who have an internal locus of control. Remember, we talked about internal and external locus. Remember that path, goal theory was designed to explain how leaders can help followers achieve organizational goals. In other words, motivated. Remember that path, goal theory is pretty straightforward. It's pretty practical. And then what are some other things? And achievement oriented style is one that the leader should respond to followers who need to excel. Remember that a leader should be equipped to help followers overcome obstacles, right? And then another one, remember that leaders who are friendly and approachable are using supportive leadership behaviors. And then one more, remember that the leaders choose from four types of leadership behaviors. So that is path, goal theory. And let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father. Thank you so much. You know it's. Wonderful as I was giving the lecture, I was thinking about how we're each motivated in different ways, and how, as Christians, we all share one motivation, and that's a love for our father and a desire to serve Him in powerful ways. And I was just thinking about that, and it just made me, you know, want to drop to my knees and just say thank you, Lord, thank you for what you have done for us, and thank you for giving us each our own uniqueness, but that can be combined into a powerful example for the kingdom of God and an example for those who do not follow You. And Lord, thank you for making us so similar yet so different in so many ways. As we conclude this module and we move into the next one, I just pray special blessing on each member of the class this week, and I just thank you for the many ways in which you bless us each and every day in Jesus name Amen. Thank you so much, my friends. And then we're going on to my next favorite theory. This is basically a class of my favorite theory. So we're but we're going on to one of my favorites, which is leader member exchange theory. We're going to be talking about the in group and out group, and I have a lot of examples for that one, so I'll see you back here for module six. Thanks.