PS391 Unit 2 Leadership Theories Paper Example

Eighteen Thousand Cases Before Sunrise: A PS391 Unit 2 Leadership Theories Paper

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

PS391: Psychology of Leadership

Unit 2 Leadership Theories Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The writer, the warehouse, the crew and every figure are composite and illustrative; the sources cited are real.

The Night

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving is the heaviest night of the year at our Columbus distribution warehouse. Grocery stores across three states want turkeys, pies and canned goods on their shelves by Wednesday morning, and the night crew had to pick and load about eighteen thousand cases, almost twice a normal shift. Eight months into my job as night-shift supervisor, I had twenty-eight people, three temporary workers on their first night and a broken conveyor on the north line.

We loaded the last truck at 5:40 a.m., twenty minutes before the deadline. Looking back at that night is a good way to test what leadership theories explain, because I did several different things, some on purpose and some by instinct.

The Trait View

Judge et al. (2002) found that the Big Five personality traits, together, are meaningfully related to leadership emergence and effectiveness, with extraversion most strongly linked. I am fairly outgoing and calm under pressure, and those traits probably helped me stay visible on the floor without snapping at anyone. But traits cannot explain why I made particular choices that night, or why the same person who made a poor decision in March made a better one in November. The trait view describes the raw material; it says little about what a leader does with it.

Transactional Leadership

Transactional leadership centers on exchanges: leaders clarify what is expected and reward people for meeting it, a pattern called contingent reward, or step in when standards slip, called management by exception. Its absence, avoiding decisions and staying out of problems, is called laissez-faire leadership.

At 9:00 p.m. I told the crew exactly what we needed: eighteen thousand cases, with every truck loaded by six. I promised that if we hit the halfway mark by 1:30, everyone would get an extra fifteen-minute break with the pizza I had ordered, and that anyone who finished their section early could leave early with full pay. We hit the halfway mark at 1:20.

Judge and Piccolo (2004) pooled the studies that measured both styles side by side. Leaders who traded clear rewards for met targets had followers who liked working for them and rated them as effective, sometimes almost as much as leaders who scored high on the transformational scales, and leaders who stayed out of problems trailed on nearly every result the authors examined.

The pizza deal was not inspiring, but it was clear, fair and kept, which is most of what transactional leadership asks.

Transformational Leadership

Bass and Riggio (2006) split transformational leadership four ways. One piece is being someone followers want to copy, which they call idealized influence. The second, inspirational motivation, is giving the work a purpose people can feel. The third, intellectual stimulation, means asking the crew to question the usual way a job is done and to solve its problems themselves. The fourth, individualized consideration, is treating each person as someone with a particular set of needs and a direction they want to grow in.

Some of that night fit. When the north conveyor broke, I did not fix the plan myself; I asked Rafael, who has worked there eleven years, how he would reroute the pallets, and his idea saved us an hour, which is intellectual stimulation. I paired each temporary worker with an experienced picker and checked on them every hour, which is individualized consideration. At the start of the shift, I said that some of these trucks were going to a food bank's holiday distribution, which was true and which several people mentioned later, an attempt at inspirational motivation.

The Component I Skipped

I did not handle a conflict well. Two pickers argued at 2:00 a.m. over who had taken whose pallet jack. I told them to sort it out and walked away to deal with the conveyor. They did not sort it out; one of them barely spoke to the other for a week. That was laissez-faire, the pattern Judge and Piccolo's results associate with the worst outcomes, and it happened when I was most stretched.

What the Crew Said

A week after Thanksgiving, I asked five people from the crew, including Rafael and one of the temporary workers who stayed on, what had helped that night and what had not. Their answers did not line up neatly with any one theory. The temporary worker said the most useful thing was being paired with a veteran picker, because she would have quit by midnight otherwise. Rafael said he appreciated being asked about the conveyor, but that he would have liked to be told ahead of time that I might lean on him, so he could plan. Two people mentioned the pizza first, which made me laugh and also reminded me that a fair exchange matters to people even on nights with a larger purpose. Nobody mentioned the food bank trucks until I asked. Asking followers what worked turned out to be the most informative part of reviewing the night, and it is something the leadership theories I read assume rather than describe.

What the Theories Explain and Miss

Each theory captured part of the night. Traits helped me stay steady. Clear exchanges kept the pace. Transformational behaviors drew on the crew's knowledge and cared for the newest workers. None of the theories, on its own, explains why I chose one approach at one moment and another at the next; that seems to depend on the situation, my stress level and what I had learned so far. Judge and Piccolo also noted that transformational and transactional leadership are strongly correlated, which fits my experience: the same night required both, often in the same hour.

What I Will Do Differently

Next peak season I will plan the transactional part in advance, as I did, but also assign a lead picker to handle disputes when I am pulled away, so that conflicts are not left to fester. And I will thank people individually, by name and for something specific, before they leave, which I forgot to do in the rush to close the last truck. I will also brief two or three experienced pickers a week ahead on the problems I expect, so that the people I lean on during the shift are ready for it rather than surprised.

Conclusion

The night before Thanksgiving tested several leadership theories at once. Judge and colleagues explain the traits that kept me steady, Judge and Piccolo show why clear contingent rewards worked and why my laissez-faire moment did harm, and Bass and Riggio's components describe what drew the crew in. No single theory explains the whole shift.

References

Bass, B. M., & Riggio, R. E. (2006). Transformational leadership (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Judge, T. A., Bono, J. E., Ilies, R., & Gerhardt, M. W. (2002). Personality and leadership: A qualitative and quantitative review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(4), 765-780. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.4.765

Judge, T. A., & Piccolo, R. F. (2004). Transformational and transactional leadership: A meta-analytic test of their relative validity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(5), 755-768. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.89.5.755