Leadership, Change, and Organizational Effectiveness

What is leadership? Most organizational theorists agree that effective leadership is one of the most important contributors to overall organizational success. What leadership is and what leaders do to ensure team and organizational success is less well understood. Leadership as social influence. A common definition of leadership is "a process of social influence by which an individual enlists the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a task or mission" (Chemers, 1997). Some key points inherent in this definition is that the task or mission cannot be accomplished by a single person acting alone. Second, that leadership is a social and interpersonal process. Finally, that leadership acts in the service of some task or mission that is external to the group. All in all, this definition doesn't tell us much more than that leadership is about leading people. Leadership and organizational intelligence. A useful metaphor for understanding organizational and leadership effectiveness flows from the construct of intelligence. Psychologists regard intelligence as the ability to function effectively in the world. Intelligent people are those who have a store of knowledge and skills gained from experience that allow them to manage efficiently the tasks of daily life. A crucial aspect of intelligence, however, concerns the fact that the world is a dynamic and changing environment and skills and knowledge gained from past experience may not be sufficient to meet a new challenge. Effective intelligence involves using existing learning systems and sensitivity to the environment to expand, elaborate, and enhance existing knowledge to analyze new situations and develop new solutions that help to routinize the environment again. Organizations must do the same things to