Hello,
Many thanks to all those who responded to the below request for ideas about information seeking by leaders. The responses were incredibly helpful and a true act of kindness!
Below the request is a summary of the responses for your perusal.
Also, please let either of us know if you think there are other materials which are relevant to this topic. We are especially interested in when leaders seek information from subordinates. There seems to be more research on leaders seeking information from other departments or outside the organization, but less on when they look to their followers for information. Perhaps this is because followers don't have very much useful information?
Appreciatively,
Dr. Niels van Quaquebeke
http://www.rsm.nl/home/faculty/academic_departments/organisation_and_personnel_management/faculty/faculty/quaquebeke_niels_van
Dr. Will Felps
www.rsm.nl/wfelps
Hello
We need your help. We are trying to find any research that can help us to understand when, why, and which leaders seek information. This might be information about their environment, task, or followers. So far, we've been unable to find much except for research on leader feedback seeking and the classic work by Vroom & Yetton on leader decision making. Do we know more than this about leader information seeking leaders? For example, why do some leaders ask their followers lots of questions, whereas others seem to just tell followers what to do? When do leaders "measure twice and cut once" versus when do they "fail forward"? These seem like basic questions, so they are most likely products of my own lack of knowledge about the literature. Please help relieve us of such ignorance. What should we read to understand information seeking by leaders?
Also, we would be happy to compile any responses for those interested.
Appreciatively,
Dr. Niels van Quaquebeke
http://www.rsm.nl/home/faculty/academic_departments/organisation_and_personnel_management/faculty/faculty/quaquebeke_niels_van
Dr. Will Felps
http://www.rsm.nl/home/faculty/academic_departments/organisation_and_personnel_management/faculty/faculty/felps
FROM George Graen, Lmxlotus@aol.com
Excellent questions about "leadership style". We find that team leaders enact two fundamentally different and conflicting styles. One we call "Leadership Sharing" and the alternative we call "Charismatic Directing". These two styles were described in two chapters from LMX Leadership: The Series: Sharing Network Leadership, 2006 by Michael W. Kramer and George B. Graen (chapters one and two). Kramer describes
these two communication strategies using ethnographic methods and Graen elaborates these two styles (strategies) in terms of leader-member excellence (LMX). If you would like copies of these two chapters, please send me your request.
As requested, I have attached chapters from LMX Leadership: The Series, Volume IV, Sharing Network Leadership.
Unfortunately, the EC concept of leadership is heavily weighted to the charismatic director behavior, whereas, the American concept is heavily weighted toward the team model of sharing information, influence, and risk. The EC model assumes that the person in a leaders position has all of the answers to all of the questions that may emerge during a mission. The American model admits that the person in this position doesn't have all the answers and should ask and listen to followers. Clearly, the rules that apply to these two concepts of leadership are very different. We find that those who can develop leader-member excellence with their team members do so with outstanding results. My research agrees with your instincts. I suspect that many of those who end up with the "don't ask, just tell" style cannot achieve the alternative. They need our help.
For reference... I refer you to Birgit Schyns and Karin Sanders work on "Solidarity". Their results suggest that (in the EC) national industrial relations and the powerful influence of unions on labor market law and collective agreements render the "ask and respect" strategy infrequently practiced. In our time of the onset of the "Knowledge Era's" discontinuous changes in markets, this structural impediment may be disastrous to our EC relatives. American corporations (also) have a long way to go before we can call their management "ask and respect leadership".
FROM: Peter Bryant pbryant@ihug.com.au
I recommend the following article for a specific theoretical insight:
KARK, R. & VAN DIJK, D. (2007) MOTIVATION TO LEAD, MOTIVATION TO FOLLOW: THE ROLE OF THE SELF-REGULATORY FOCUS IN LEADERSHIP PROCESSES. Academy of Management Review, 32, 500-528.
This article is based on the work of social psychologist, Tory Higgins (Columbia B-School). His work helps to explain why some people are more creative and exploratory in search among other behaviors. In their AMR article, Kark and Van Dijk apply this work to leadership.
Also, I certainly agree that active listening is an important component of entrepreneurial leadership. I've seen it encourage initiative, exploration and team building, which are all critical capabilities in entrepreneurial environments. I think that entrepreneurial leadership is especially suited to analysis in terms of practice, sense-making and cognitive framing. If so, then asking (as opposed to telling) is fundamental, because these attributes can't simply be required or instructed. They develop from inter-personal interactions within organizations.
These two articles exemplify this approach for me:
Smith, W. K., & Tushman, M. L. 2005. Managing strategic contradictions: A top management model for managing innovation streams. Organization Science, 16(5): 522-536.
Barley, S. R., & Kunda, G. 2001. Bringing work back in. Organization Science, 12(1): 76-95. Who write (p.88) that "research on work practices emphasizes actions and interactions over attributes and structures, bringing work back into organization studies may focus more sustained attention on the dynamics of organizing."
FROM: Jlbess1@aol.com
Information is the life blood of successful organizations. ALL good leaders seek information. Look at the literature on environmental scanning and cross boundary interactions. Any person not seeking information who is in a formal position of leadership won't be there long!
FROM: Dr. Mark Peterson [mailto:mpeterso@fau.edu]
Greetings. Why do leaders look for information in various places? One answer is cultural differences in social structures consisting of role senders, rule systems, and norm systems that have various historical roots. Another is differences in the particular events that any given leader faces at different times. The attached are some of the main papers developing that perspective. The main theory book including a more explicit comparison to Vroom and colleagues is Leaders, Organizations and Culture (Peter B. Smith and Mark F. Peterson, Sage Press, 1988).
FROM: Bradley Agle [mailto:AGLE@katz.pitt.edu]
Daft and colleagues published a paper in the 1980s on environmental scanning by executives (I think by CEOs). This is the macro version of information seeking.
Daft, Richard L., Sormunen, Juhani & Parks, Don (1988). "Chief Executive scanning, environmental characteristics, and company performance: an empirical study." Strategic Management Journal 9 (2), 123-139.
FROM: Edward Wellman [mailto:ewellman@bus.umich.edu]
Although it is a bit dated, Mintzberg's The Nature of Managerial Work contains a lot of interesting information about how leaders seek information, who they seek it from, what kind of info they get, and how they use it to make decisions and influence the direction of their organizations. In particular, check out chapters 3 and 4.
FROM: Jay Carson [mailto:jcarson@MAIL.COX.SMU.EDU]
There is a rich literature on boundary spanning behaviors in teams (Gladstein, 1984; Ancona, 1990; Ancona & Caldwell, 1992) that looks at how teams seek information and interact with their environments. There is also a great piece by Druskat & Wheeler (2003) that looks at boundary spanning behaviors by external leaders of self-managing teams. The classic 1987 ASQ piece by Manz and Sims on self-managing teams also looks at leadership behaviors and explores why external team leaders might not always seek information, as well as the types of questions they might ask when they do.
I would also suggest looking at literature on coaching (Wageman, 2001; Hackman & Wageman, 2005; Morgeson, 2005) that examines when leaders intervene directly versus taking a more supportive role.
FROM: Gary Yukl
The subject is very broad, because it can include seeking information from subordinates (info for task decisions, or about their preferences and needs), seeking information from peers and bosses, seeking information about events outside of the organization (customer preferences, competitor actions, technological, economic, and political developments, etc.). The type of information sought is also affected by the leader's level and function.
(With respect to seeking information from subordinates), I think you can still see examples of information gathering from subordinates in behaviors such as consultation with subordinates on decisions for which they have relevant information, encouraging subordinates to identify problems that need to be resolved and to make suggestions on how to improve things in the work unit, encouraging subordinates to share with the leader relevant information they obtain from their networks of contacts outside the unit, and finally encouraging subordinates to talk about their career interests and desires for skill development.
FROM: Niels van Quaquebeke
If you ask the wrong question, of course, you get the wrong answer. We find in design it's much more important and difficult to ask the right question. Once you do that, the right answer becomes obvious.
Amory Lovins
He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.
Chinese Proverbs
He who is afraid of asking is ashamed of learning.
Danish Proverb
There are no foolish questions and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions
Charles P. Steinmetz
The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.
Thomas Berger
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Albert Einstein
FROM A PAPER BY Chun We Chui: http://informationr.net/ir/7-1/paper112.html
"What may be gleaned from the research that has been completed so far on environmental scanning? A terse summary may include the following observations:
1. Situational dimensions: the effect of perceived environmental uncertainty. Managers who perceive the environment to be more uncertain will tend to scan more. Environmental uncertainty is indicated by the complexity, dynamism, and importance of the sectors comprising the external environment.
2. Organizational strategy and scanning strategy. An organization's overall strategy is related to the sophistication and scope of its scanning activities. Scanning must be able to provide the information and information processing needed to develop and pursue the elected strategy.
3. Managerial traits: unanswered questions. Little is known with confidence about the effect of the manager's job-related and cognitive traits on scanning. Upper-level managers seem to scan more than lower-level managers. Functional managers scan beyond the limits of their specializations.
4. Information needs: the focus of environmental scanning. Most studies look at scanning in various environmental sectors: customers, competitors, suppliers, technology; social, political, economic conditions. Business organizations focus their scanning on market-related sectors of the environment.
5. Information seeking: source usage and preferences. Although managers scan with a wide range of sources, they prefer personal sources to formal, impersonal sources, especially when seeking information about developments in the fluid, market-related sectors.
6. Information seeking: scanning methods. Organizations scan in a variety of modes, depending on the organization's size, dependence and perception of the environment, experience with scanning and planning, and the industry that the organization is in.
7. Information use: strategic planning and enhanced organizational learning. Information from scanning is increasingly being used to drive the strategic planning process. Research suggests that effective scanning and planning is linked to improved organizational learning and performance.