 Hello and welcome to the lecture for chapter nine, leadership. Over the next few slides, we're gonna walk you through some of the theoretical approaches and understandings of leadership, specifically how leadership functions inside the small group. All right, let's go ahead and start off with a couple of definitional things. So when we talk about leadership, what we're talking about is the way that we use communication to influence and modify attitudes and behaviors of the members of the group to help the group better meet its goals. So a couple of things to understand here at the offset. All group members provide leadership in one way or another. As we'll talk about later, good leaders try to inspire other people to be leaders. This process of influencing people and trying to reach those group goals is something that's accomplished through communication and through persuasion. Ultimately, when this is conducted correctly, the group reaches and achieves the shared goals that they have together and ultimate leadership is something that needs to be adaptable to changing conditions. So let's go ahead and talk a little bit about influence. When you see group members trying to use persuasion to modify the behaviors, they're actually using influence, right? This is the use of interpersonal power to modify the actions and attitudes of other members inside the group. Next, we're going to talk a little bit about these types of power that leaders can use to influence other group members. All right, so first on the list is that of referent power. Referent power is a type of power that comes from the ability of an individual to be liked. When people have likeability and some charisma, ultimately they tend to garner the group's support and can more easily persuade individuals inside of that. The next type of power that we sometimes see is when people can exercise information power, right? This is based on the ability of a person to control the flow of information to group members. And so as they have information and they can release the control, group members are dependent inside of that and that gives them the ability to have influence. Ecological power on the other hand comes from the ability for people to manipulate the logistics and the tasks and even the physical environment of the group. So the ability to control the order of which things happens can give people power. Reward power is a type of power that is derived from the ability to give people what they want or what they need. For example, in a class you often see teachers do this in terms of like providing grades and awarding points inside of that. The flip side of reward power is punishment power and this comes from the ability for someone to take away what members want and value. Subrelated concept of this is that of coercion and this is where someone uses the use of threats or other fear appeals to try to make an individual comply to what they want. Last on our list here is expert power and this kind of stems from an individual's perception of knowledge or skill on a particular subject. So when you see individuals have that, you can see those things take place inside of that. All right, so let's talk a little bit about leaders. In the case of talking about leadership in small groups, what we're really talking about is any person who exercises some of those interpersonal influence techniques to help the group achieve its goals. As I said before, all members can and should practice leadership. You don't have to have a title. You don't have to be a designated leader to be a leader. Ultimately, it's just your use of communication to influence individuals towards shared goals that actually allows people to lead other people inside of that. So there are two types of leaders that we tie into here. First off, we've got our designated leader and this is an individual who is appointed or elected and has a title that identifies him or her as leader. So when you have like the president of a college or the university or you have a chairman of the board or you have somebody who has been elected the head of a department, these are individuals that are designated leaders, right? In the case of many workplaces, your boss is a type of designated leader because they have something such as CEO which makes them a designated leader. The other type of leader that we talk about that we see more commonly in groups like the one that you're a part of in this course is what we'd call an emergent leader. And this is an individual that starts out at the same status as everybody else but gradually emerges as an informal leader in the eye of other groups. Typically by the end of the semester most groups in this class will have an individual or a couple of individuals that kind of have pulled ahead of the rest of the group and have started to exercise some of the skills and tasks that we would expect from leaders. But again, keep in mind that could be anybody and everybody inside the group. Okay, so a couple of things that we would expect from good leaders. One is to set goals and keep the group focused. Remember the focus of a good leader is to help the group achieve the goals of the group. Not necessarily their individual goals but the goals of the group and that they're trying to accomplish. Good group leaders create teams. So instead of just having people that are together they kind of build that interpersonal dynamic inside the group that increases commitment and gets people together. Good leaders are focused on the end game. They'll let things go through a creative process but they're always kind of focused on that solution and getting the group where they need to be. Good leaders typically inspire leadership and other people. They try to get people to rise to the occasion and take charge and help lead the group as well. And ultimately good leaders respect their role and don't abuse their power. In addition to having those traits there are also a series of expectations that group members tend to have of their leaders. One of the most common one is to kind of perform administrative duties perhaps schedule group meetings, keep logs, keep track of the group's written communication inside group discussions. They might ask that person to play the role of a moderator and keep discussions fruitful and going but also they kind of expect them to develop the interpersonal and task behaviors to make the group more solidified and more effective and give them focus and the skills they need to be successful. So there are a lot of different styles of leadership. I'm just going to briefly touch on those. We talk about the autocratic style of leadership. This is your more like heavily task focused traditional style where the decisions of the group are made solely by the leader and those decisions are decisions are a lot. This can be contrasted with the democratic style of leadership. This is where the decisions are still made by the leader but in consultation, consultation with the group. So this is an individual that's kind of still task focused but also more tied in to the socio-emotional focus of the group. This also contrasts with the laissez faire style leadership which is a more passive hands-off attitude allowing others to develop their ideas and maybe inserting themselves here or there but not as much. The transactional style of leadership involves an exchange of resources between leaders and followers and ideas but kind of less of that dominating power that we would see in autocratic styles. Transformational leadership is where a leader inspires their followers to act beyond their own self interests and to try to put themselves beyond their own individual goals and kind of seek the better goals for themselves and others. And then finally there's the charismatic style of leadership and this is where the leader has perceived extraordinary qualities and tends to kind of develop that little bit of cult of personality around them as they drive individuals towards goals and ideas. Okay, as we wrap up this conversation here are a few ethical guidelines for group leaders and so you should pay heed to these should you find yourself in a leadership role. The first one is pretty basic but important. Do not lie or be deceptive. It's important to be open and honest with your group members. Second, put the group first. The goal of being a good leader is not to put your own individual goals at the forefront but to put the group's goals first and to help the group members achieve those goals. Good group leaders and ethical group leaders are respectful of their others and they're also respectful of their position and don't take it for granted. Good group members will back up at their group members and so they will help if there's issues that arise. They will support, give information whether it is social support or emotional support or actual physical support inside them. Ethical group leaders do not see themselves as better than the other members of the group but see the others as equals and try to create that equity in between them. Ethical group leaders establish clear group policies, make sure things are well documented and clear to other individuals. And last but not least, the good and ethical group leaders follow these rules themselves and don't expect others to do what they wouldn't do on their own. All right, well that wraps up our discussion of leadership. Once again, thank you for watching and as always, if you have any questions please contact me at any of the means available to you. Thank you.