Chapter Sixteen - Additional Resources

THE TASK OF THE INTERVIEWS

INVESTIGATING LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOUR IN ORGANIZATIONS

Imagine that the interviewers are researching leadership behaviour in organizations, to try to understand what are the most effective forms of leadership behaviour in named institutions in Macau, and why.

It is assumed that the interviewers do not work in the same institutions as those in which the interviewees are working. The imaginary purpose of the interviews is to gather as much information about, and evaluate, the leadership behaviour in the organization. This is a topic which might yield some interesting insights into the processes of interviewing. The task of the interviewers, therefore, is to find out as much as they can about the following from the interviewees (there may be other items that you wish to add here, which is fine):

1. Who are the leaders;
2. What the leaders actually do;
3. How effective the leaders are in their organization;
4. What are the particular strengths and weaknesses of the leaders in the organization;
5. Where the leaders are particularly effective and ineffective in the organization;
6. The style of leadership that the leaders use (e.g. command-and-control, dictatorial, consultative, democratic, hierarchical);
7. How effective the leaders are at relating to their colleagues;
8. How effectively the leaders motivate colleagues;
9. How effectively the leaders devolve responsibility to colleagues;
10. How well they lead in times of crisis or if difficult decisions have to be taken;
11. What are the effects on the staff of the leader’s behaviour in the organization.

Clearly, in the time available it may not be possible to address all of these issues, and that does not matter, as the interview topic is only a focus for learning about the process and conduct of interviews.

The tasks of the interview are also to elicit examples from practice in the organization of the issues being discussed, what the leadership behaviour is, and to identify why the leaders behave in the way that they do.

The interviewers will need to plan in advance how they are going to conduct the interviews and how to pose suitable questions.

Each group for each interview will need to decide and indicate the kind of organization or institution that is being discussed in the interview. It will be assumed that, for each interview, all the interviewees in each group work in that organization. For each interview the interviewees are middle or junior managers for group one, and senior managers for group two. The interviewees will also need to decide the kind of leadership behaviour/style/roles/tasks that takes place in the organization (e.g. is it strongly hierarchical, is there a command-and-control style, are the senior managers aloof/friendly/bullying/coercive/persuasive/sociable/task-focused/people-focused and so on). The interviewees will need to decide the kind and extent of information that they wish to give (e.g. are they going to be self-protective/open and honest/negative/ positive/not wishing to disclose bad things/full and frank/commenting on other people/are there going to be some silent and some talkative interviewees in the group?).

So, both parties will need to plan these interviews, and ten to fifteen minutes will be given before each interview for this to be planned.

Each interview should last around fifteen to twenty minutes, after each interview we will have maybe 20-30 minutes’ discussion of that interview.