Abstract

Two questions about the time budget and leadership behaviour of managers seem to be important but do not receive much attention in current leadership research: which time strategies and instruments constitute different leadership behaviours, and how do these leadership behaviours influence the time exposure of the followers? Since time management is one of the central dimensions of leadership behaviour, these issues seem to be of a great importance. Drawing on the current literature on transformational, transactional and destructive leadership, we assess the dominant time strategies inherent in these classes of leadership behaviour. As followers react to the time strategies of their leader through adaptation of their own time use, these adaptive actions will be presented in detail. Understanding and utilising these results will help leaders to use their time according to their strategic goals and manage the time of their followers in order to develop their effectiveness and achieve maximum performance. This concept can be used to design new curricula for leadership development and training.

While there is no dissent that the factor of time is crucial for leadership, the concept of time perspective deserves more attention from leadership research. Because of limited resources, leaders often find themselves forced to choose between a long-term and a short-term orientation. The long-term perspective implies that investments are made to achieve organisational prosperity in the long run.1 It implies responsibility and sustainability of decisions and changes, and emerges more often in stable environments. The short-term orientation concentrates on immediate results and pay-offs, and cuts investments to maximise the immediate performance of the organisation. Leadership with a short-term perspective occurs more often in complex and insecure social systems. A fixation on one single orientation is extremely dangerous: an organisation that exclusively concentrates on immediate results exploits its resources; a strategy focused solely on long-term goals might not survive the first period of experimenting, mistakes and investments. Consequently the combination of both approaches is the usual strategy of companies and its leaders; however different organisations lay different accents in this combination. To achieve the necessary balance, organisations need different kinds of managers with diverse time orientations.2 These orientations result in different patterns of time use, which are exerted consciously in a goal-oriented manner. In this paper we denote these patterns as time strategies, and we aim to analyse what kind of goals can be achieved using different time strategies. On the basis of previous research,3 we assume that leaders can intentionally control and manage their time use, deploy it as a very effective management tool, and achieve sustainable effects on the organisational culture, their employee’s effectiveness and team climate.

The relationship between the concepts of leadership and time has been mainly discussed with regard to managerial activity research.4 There are numerous studies on the time budget of leaders or managersi, which investigate typical patterns of managerial work, thereby attempting to describe leadership in terms of duration and frequency of specific actions. While this line of research has produced some interesting results on the characteristics of managers’ daily work, it falls short of predicting managerial effectiveness. Therefore, leadership research has mainly taken a different focus to access the problem of leadership effectiveness. Scholars5 disclaim the detailed description of all the activities of a leader, focusing on more abstract behavioural classesii likely to affect followers’ behaviour and thereby organisational success. This approach has the advantage to link managerial behaviour to its consequences. However, it provides less information about the specific acts which constitute a certain behavioural class. As we will show in this paper, leadership behaviours and their consequences on followers can be described in terms of different time use, and can therefore be connected with specific activities.

In this context, there are two important issues to address concerning the dimension of time: 1) which time strategies constitute different leadership behaviours; 2) how do these leadership behaviours influence the time use and strategies of followers.

Classes of Leadership Behaviour

One of the most influential lines of leadership research in the last two decades refers to the model of transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership.6 Unfortunately, the model concentrates on positive or rather neutral leadership behaviours and disregards the possibility of leadership behaviour that has detrimental consequences for performance. These classes of leadership behaviour may be more or less effective in different situations but are always considered to be aimed at the success of the organisation or/and its members. The fact that leaders totally fail in their leading, actively impairing task accomplishment or pursuing personal goals diverging from those of the organisation, is mainly neglected.7 To achieve a comprehensive model of leadership, these concepts need to be supplemented by analysing the negative aspects of leadership behaviour. Einarsen and his colleagues undertook the endeavour of describing constructive and destructive leadership behaviour to generate a more complete picture of different leadership behavioural classes (Figure 1).8 The following six leadership behavioural classes will be discussed:

1. Transformational leadership implies a high level of task and people concern. This leadership class breaks down into four subcategories:
   1. Idealised influence: The leader is serves as a role model for his followers.
   2. Inspirational motivation: The leader motivates the subordinates by strengthening the team spirit, optimism and enthusiastic commitment.
   3. Intellectual stimulation: The leader encourages the followers to pursue innovative and creative ideas and does not criticise personal mistakes in public.
   4. Individualised consideration: The leader attempts to positively influence the development of the followers.
      
      
2. Transactional leadership has a high level of task concern but remains indifferent with regard of concern for people. Transactional leadership has three subcategories:
   1. Contingent reward: The leader offers material (e.g. financial bonuses) and immaterial rewards (e.g. praise) for good performance.
   2. Active management-by-exception: The leader concentrates on active observation and monitoring of his subordinates’ work with the aim to prevent mistakes, deviances and failures.
   3. Passive management-by-exception: The leader does not actively monitor followers’ performance but waits for deviances and mistakes to happen before taking corrective action.
      
      
3. Laissez-Faire leadership is a neutral, unconcerned leadership behaviour. This manager does not care about the development of the followers and the accomplishment of the tasks.
   
   
4. Tyrannical leadership is characterised by the high level of task concern in combination with a destructive conduct towards the subordinates (e.g. commanding, ridiculising, lying, or humiliating).
   
   
5. Popular-disloyal leadership: These leaders try to gain popularity on the part of his followers at the expense of fulfilling the tasks.9
   
   
6. Derailed leadership: This leader is disloyal to both their followers and tasks.

Managerial Tasks and Time Strategies

Each leader places different accents on managerial work and hence implies different amounts of time spent with certain activities. Therefore, we will now discuss what tasks are central for the different leadership behavioural classes and the time strategiesiii leaders can use to manage their time.10 This discussion is based on a synergy of theory and our own research in the fields of leadership behaviour and time management.11

Figure 1: A model of leadership styles

1. A central point of transformational leadership is a concern for people. Hence the leader spends much time talking to his followers and trying to learn more about their goals, or problems.12 It represents a leadership attitude that is rather future-oriented: the focus lies more on potentiality than on current reality. The different facets of transformational leadership inform us about the slightly different time strategies that design the organisational future. Transformational leadershipis oriented towards change13 which implies the development of future perspectives. The transformational leader develops a vision of the desired structure, products, work processes and practices in his department and implements a plan for the achievement of his goals. This strong future perspective is related to a number of consequences:14 a leader preferring this behaviour is more responsible towards his staff, seeks long-term, sustainable results and tries to avoid long-term negative consequences.
   
   
   1. Idealised influence: A very important part of charisma is confidence about the future. A charismatic leader develops multiple scenarios for the future by analysing the different situational constraints15 to describe the bandwidth of possible future states. Knowing and predicting the future has been always seen as a gift to an unusual, wise and admired person. Developing future scenarios could bestow this image upon the leader. This strategy is strongly connected with other future oriented time strategies like planning and delegating.16
      
      
   2. Inspirational motivation: Inspirational leadership is based on communication to arouse team spirit and display enthusiasm. 17
      The leader involves his followers in envisioning possible future directions and jointly elaborates more detailed future plans. Planning and visioning are his preferred time strategies. Planning is a complex time strategy, which can be handled in different ways. The inspirational leader must find the balance between inspirational visions and very differentiated and concrete plans. This balance allows for his followers to be inspired by the vision and at the same time believe in its feasibility.
      
      
   3. Intellectual stimulation: This leader is successful by means of his unconventionality, which stimulates new ideas on part of his followers. Innovation (also using innovative techniques) and reflexivity18 are strategies of time use, which result in unusual and often very effective uses of time. They imply rethinking existing time practices, building up new ways of time use and adapting one’s actions to different situations. This diversity of time use19 is especially effective in case of unexpected situations, which demand flexibility and innovative solutions. Routines or fixed plans are not completely discarded by this strategy but their effectiveness and reasonability is constantly questioned. However, these strategies are very time consuming, because innovation, creativity and reflexivity are incompressible.
      
      
   4. Individualised consideration: A main aspect of this style concerns the development and mentoring of followers20 which implies delegation. If appropriately applied, the leader develops subordinates’ skills and thereby improves the quality and effectiveness of the whole team in a sustainable way.21Nevertheless, the strategy will not achieve short-term pay off. As we know from practical experience, it takes time to instruct followers, to be interrupted by questions concerning the task and to monitor the results. It is important to note that these aspects are essential for effective delegation. In case that a leader hands over the full responsibility for a task and does not show any concern about the result, it is more appropriate to speak of laissez-faire leadership.22 At first, instruction may be more time consuming than to accomplish the actual task. However, in the long term the enhanced qualification and motivation of the employees will pay off as their experience with the task grows and the amount of necessary supervision decreases.23
      
      
2. Transactional leadership is focused on the current work process and results and is therefore presence-oriented.24 The features of presence-oriented individuals25 include a practical attitude, a focus on reality rather than on potentiality, a forceful pursuit of short-term projects but also low self-efficacy26 as well as higher degrees of fatalism and risk-taking behaviour.
   
   
   1. Contingent reward is a very rational leadership style. The followers are supposed to give their time and effort in order to receive material and immaterial rewards. This leader perceives time in its compensatory function.27 If he spends his time for developing or instructing followers, he expects to get value in the form of results in return. This rather short time perspective implies that all activities not directly task bounded or with an uncertain pay off are omitted. This time strategy could be called an exchange of time and services or ‘time-buying’.28
      
      
   2. Active management-by-exception: This behaviour implies to control final performance but also the efficiency of work.29 This strategy can be termed time-control. Mistakes and a low quality of products cost time in terms of revisions, amendments and customer complaints. By correcting mistakes before their consequences occur time can be saved on part of the leader, his subordinates and his superiors. In his work this leader concentrates on external subjects like customers, suppliers, competitors, and public. However, he is prone to disregard internal aspects like motivation and skills of the followers, employee burnout, turnover and absenteeism, as well as organisational development. Some investigations30 support the notion that the effectiveness of this time strategy highly depends on situational factors, i.e. stable market environment, an individualistic societal culture, and a hierarchical organisation with standardised tasks and well-defined performance standards.
      
      
   3. Passive management-by-exception is characterised by a lack of time investment with regard to the monitoring of follower performance and prevention of failures and mistakes. The leader prefers not to intervene before the mistake becomes obvious.31 In this case he saves time by strategically shortening his activities. This is a rather short-termed as well as risky managerial strategy with a possibly destructive long-term impact concerning both the performance of the organisation and the leader. In case that no problems occur, the leader will be rewarded by the time saved but cannot experience self-efficacy as he has not contributed to this performance. However, if failure and mistakes interrupt the work process, much additional time and effort is needed from him and his followers.
      
      
3. Laissez-faire leaders cancel some of their management activities and save time by neglecting their responsibility.32 The typical description of this style is: ‘Whatever you think is the correct choice is okay with me‘. Cancelling can be considered as the most extreme form of short-term time saving and has negative effects on both task accomplishment and subordinates’ well-being.33 This strategy includes an analysis of one’s tasks and goals. Those that are regarded as optional, unimportant or even undesired are not even delegated to followers but totally ignored. This behaviour might save time in the present but it does so at the expense of an unpredictable amount of additional effort in the future due to performance and motivation problems in the department.
   
   
4. Tyrannical leadership involves a different approach of demonstrating power by time occupation. This strategy implies on the one hand giving the priority to one’s personal time structure and forcing the subordinates to arrange their time in accordance with this schedule. On the other hand, time is used to stress the power distance between leader and follower.34 Examples for this abusive behaviour are numerous: setting short deadlines without need, making subordinates wait even if they have an appointment, interrupting their work with irrelevant questions or assignments, arranging meetings or setting appointments without former inquiry or after working time, or spending insufficient time answering questions.35
   
   
5. Popular-disloyal leadership corresponds with the time strategy of procrastination, setting an example for a poor work ethic by showing up late or performing private activities at work.36 By this means, the importance of time norms like punctuality and meeting deadlines are being faded out. The work on tasks is postponed as long as possible. This time strategy could be effective in ambiguous, risky situations, where it might be better to wait and not act hastily. Nevertheless, in most cases one would expect the strategy to be rather destructive. Our knowledge concerning the consequences of procrastination or popular-disloyal leadership is rather limited. Einarsen et al.37 point out that it is not related to job dissatisfaction, a negative evaluation of one’s leader-member exchange or higher levels of stress. As the leader tries to avoid work for himself and his followers, these results might not be too surprising. However, it seems likely that procrastination should have its most destructive long-term impact with regard to organisational performance and the image of the leader and his department.38 Also, followers can be expected to lack self-efficacy as they often experience criticism and complaints concerning their work.
   
   
6. Derailed leaders find themselves in a situation when they have to pursue several contradicting goals39: neglecting one’s leadership responsibility and pursuing private tasks (i.e. search for another job) while at the same time preserving or even improving one’s reputation towards superiors, engaging in conflicts with subordinates but keeping these conflicts hidden from the public. Multitasking is a time strategy which best matches with this leadership behaviour. This strategy implies the simultaneous execution of several tasks. As Dethloff and Heitkamp point out, this strategy is the least effective because it leads to stress and deterioration of well-being.40 The task structure of the department disappears, chaos and time loss grow, and the quality of work impairs as tasks are only started but are not sufficiently accomplished.

Adjustment of Followers’ Time Strategies

Leadership is a reciprocal relationship, which is formed by both leaders and followers.41 Certain leadership behaviours with their related time strategies can only evolve in an environment that supports or at least does not impede such strategies, i.e. the organisation tolerates this specific behaviour and the followers in some way adjust to the strategy of their leader. Due to their formal authority, leaders’ specific time strategies can be expected to coin the time use of the followers. They adjust their own time strategies to use their time economically under the circumstances of specific leadership behaviouriv. By this means, they are able to amplify their leader’s strengths and modulate his weaknesses42 but also vice versa. Hence, while the impact of the followers has been underestimated in leadership research,43 for better or for worse they do have a crucial influence on organisational performance. The specific strategy followers choose depends most likely on a complex configuration of factors like their personal preferences,44 self-concepts45 or their personal concepts of time saving.46 Nevertheless we assume that there are some regularities which enable a limited quantity of possible scenarios. The aim of this passage is to describe these regularities in order to form the basis for possible future research on the impact of time strategies on leadership development.

For transformational leadership, two main scenarios of follower reactions are possible. In the first scenario, the leader trains and mentors his followers to develop transformational qualities like developing future scenarios, performing charismatic behaviour and working with a long-time perspective. The number of followers may be limited, because this kind of instruction demands a great amount of time and energy on the part of the leader and certain talents on the part of the follower. Nevertheless, these followers can be expected to use the same or similar time strategies as their leader. In the second scenario, the manager and the followers might develop a division of labour. The manager takes care about the long-term strategy and planning, whereas the followers engage in dealing with the immediate tasks and current goals. Conger and Kanungo speculate that charismatic or transformational leadership may be tied to certain skill deficiencies: low concern and ability to focus on tasks related to effective administration and management.47 Therefore, such a division of perspectives between leader and followers might be a remedy for the described weaknesses of the leader. On the one hand, the leader’s focus on stimulating more creativity concerning time use should encourage followers to use reflexivity as a preferred time strategy and invent new ways to save time and increase its pay off in their work. On the other hand, followers take over some tasks of their manager in addition to their usual tasks. This means that they might often experience overload and stress and therefore have to establish priorities between different areas of their job or use innovations to fulfil the requirements.

Transactional leadership induces followers to develop a very rational and objective relationship towards the time use. Time is regarded as a resource and object of exchange and value. Followers are spending their time in order to receive certain rewards and demand the time of their leader for consulting in order to progress with their task (time exchange). It has been shown that managers often spend more time with colleagues and superiors than with their own followers.48 Hence, the time of a leader is a scarce resource and a valuable commodity. In this exchange it is most important for the followers to increase the value of their own time. It can be expected that they will develop strategies of impression management (i.e. being busy) as well as reducing their accessibility for their leader.

Laissez-faire leadership is characterised by pure indifference concerning one’s responsibility as a leader, avoiding the important decisions and giving followers no direction. Two main reactions of the followers are likely: on the one hand, they might counter the drawback of their leader by doing the business on their own and largely ignoring his formal authority. In this case, his time strategy of cancelling achieves short-term support for he is not bothered by his followers, but it is likely that in the long run the department will run into performance and team problems. On the other hand, it is possible that the followers take their leader as a role model and reduce their effort for their work because nobody prevents them from doing so. In this situation, we can expect the department’s performance problems to occur even earlier.

Destructive leadership in general animates avoiding reactions like shortening and cancelling as preferred time strategies of the followers. They are not encouraged to invest their time and energy into task accomplishment and focus their interest on areas outside their work. This can be especially true in the case of tyrannical leadership. Leaders who are humiliating and abusing their subordinates alienate them and might even induce a desire for retaliation. Concerning the time concept, passive strategies of shirking one’s duties, avoiding contact with the leader and acting busy can be expected as typical reactions from followers. A more active retaliation is dangerous and difficult as the leader will use his formal authority to discipline subordinates. Nevertheless, small acts of time occupation may take place like making appointments with the leader without necessity or overloading him with reports, memos and e-mail copies.

The popular-disloyal leader is mainly controlled and driven by the followers because they control resources valuable for the leader (information, reputation, productivity).49 Thus the time strategies of the followers are more independent from those of the leader. Again, two scenarios are possible: active (future-oriented) or passive (presence-oriented) reactions of the followers. A future-oriented employee would fear for his job as he would judge the disloyal attitude of his leader to become a problem for the whole team. In this situation a follower might show a great deal of independence, search for important tasks, and present himself as loyal towards the organisation. A passive strategy would be to enjoy the friendly and stress-free atmosphere in the team and not think about the future. In this case the followers would adopt their leader’s time strategy of procrastination.

Derailed leaders try to pursue several tasks simultaneously without being interested in either the followers or the organisational task. As argued before, followers most certainly will use the strategy of cancelling and withdraw from their duties and tasks. These presence-oriented followers would enjoy the indifference of their leader. Situations when the leader criticises or humiliates followers are taken as unavoidable but insignificant. The leader is known to not care enough to forcefully pursue deviant follower behaviour. Future-oriented employees would try to perform well in their job but because their effort has little influence on their performance evaluation they would simultaneously work on other tasks. These tasks can be found inside the organisation (e.g. networking with other superiors) or in the private area. In this sense the future-oriented employee might be prone to adopt his leader’s ineffective time strategy of multitasking.

Conclusion
Leadership theory is often criticised as the different models of leadership styles ignore the concrete behaviours by which leaders achieve their impact on the followers. We have presented a concept of the correspondence between leadership behavioural styles and time strategies. In this sense, leadership can be understood as an influence process that is specified by time distributing activities. Different leadership behaviours can be distinguished by their preferred time strategies. It is important to note that time strategies of the leader can be assumed to have great impact on followers’ behaviour and performance as well as on the organisational culture. Followers react to the time strategies of their leader through adaptation of their own time use. They develop strategies for successfully interacting with their leader: some of these strategies might support the leader in his management, while others are intended to counter the leader’s influence and power. The emergence of specific organisational cultures can be comprehended as a result of different patterns of interaction between leaders and followers. As organisational cultures are not easily changed, the effect of preferred time strategies adopted by certain leaders might have a long-term impact.

As a practical implication of our discussion, the presented concept of leaders’ preferred time strategies could be an interesting starting point for a new direction in leadership development and training. As models of leadership behaviour are often rather abstract and difficult to train, different strategies of time use and management might be a more concrete approach to leadership development as they are easier to convey in their content. During coaching sessions leaders can learn to use their time precisely and purposefully in order to achieve higher degrees of personal productivity, task fulfilment, and more positive relationships with their followers. Furthermore, our concept can help new leaders to understand and successfully deal with difficult organisational cultures and team settings in order to improve them sustainably. This would require a more conscious use of time strategies and an awareness that their own time management results in very specific and concrete time management of the employees.

Business Leadership Review. Vol 5 Issue 2
Apr 2008

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© 2008 Association of MBAs