Leadership-Interview-Transkript - Sozialpsychologie - Goethe ...

positive safety climates. And that, in fact, relates to the extent to which they have accidents.
The other…
Rolf van Dick: Did you study soldiers that went to Afghanistan or elsewhere?
Frederick Morgeson: We studied a transportation unit and it was basically the people that
moved all the heavy equipment around. If you would need a tank in Iraq, those people would
bring you a tank to Iraq. And we found that if you have a positive relationship with your
leader and if he created a positive safety climate you’d had the crucial greatest amount of
citizenship behavior around safety and effectiveness.
Rolf van Dick: Ok…
Frederick Morgeson: But I think, the other piece that I’ve experienced more as a professor
of a Business School, is the extent to which a leader can move an organization forward or not.
And, sort of most my experiences are that most leaders are sort of status quo. And so you just
sort of move sideways, you never go up and you never go down, it’s very much lack of
innovation. And, I think, good leaders have a vision, good leaders move organizations
forward and that’s a component which I think is really important.
Rolf van Dick: That almost answers my next question, how you would characterize effective
leadership. Would you say that what you just mentioned - moving the organization forward -
is the most important distinction between a leader and a manager?
Frederick Morgeson: Well, certainly the ‘vision’ part of leadership is a distinguishing
feature, but from my standpoint it doesn’t make a big distinction between leadership and
management. For me, an effective leader does a number of things, and I focus more onto the
behavioral components as opposed to the attributes of a leader, although I think there’s one
key attribute which I’ll mention at the end. The first thing is that they are really sensitive to
their followers’ needs. So, to the extent that a leader understands what the followers need
from them and then provides that, and the trick as a leader is, that everyone who follows you
is different. Trying to understand what those unique needs are of those people is I think a key
leadership role. For people that are professionals, they’re often quite autonomous and able to
work on their own, so for me, the leadership role is a little different. One is a sort of a
resource – to what extent can I as a leader get resources that help my followers being
successful. Another key role is to manage the boundary between the leader and the broad
organization, that is preventing things from affecting your followers or coordination across
units or across people. Another thing that I think is super-important is the idea of opportunityproviders,
so they’re out there scanning the environment looking for opportunities for their
followers and the best leaders really figure out ways that are consistent with what followers
want to accomplish in their professional life and giving them those opportunities. And
probably the characteristics that I would think of is trustworthiness, that you really do what
you say. That’s really important because trust is a foundation for high-quality relationships.
Rolf van Dick: Ok, so you think a leader needs many of those things and the best leaders
have all of them, do you think that people can learn that? Are leaders born, or made?
Frederick Morgeson: Well, the easy answer is yes, they’re born and they’re made. Research
is suggestive that about 30% of leadership is sort of a genetic component, a born component.
So, 70% is made or developable. And, I mean if you think about what leadership is – it’s
influence, it’s engaging in certain kinds of behaviors – those are things that you can learn. I