The Vroom-Yetton Model Of Leadership

Leadership is a fiercely debated topic in our competitive society. As I come closer to graduation and prepare for the real world, I look around and notice that people are not really concerned with excellence but more so by how they can do the ‘right’ things in their career to be a leader one day. And I can say this because having attended at least 30 firm presentations in the past year for recruitment, students would not only ask more questions to senior executives but also seemed more interested in the kind of work they did relative to the work performed by the recently hired analyst. Two thoughts would often be running in my mind:

1. Why are there not more questions like ‘how to excel in the workplace as a recently hired college graduate?’

It is simply my observation that people are attracted towards leaders and leadership. This can be further reinforced by browsing the aisles of a library or running a search on leadership on the Internet – thousands of articles, journals and books can be found on leadership offering their two cents. Some would say leaders are born, some say they are made and there are others that basically list traits that a person should have to be a leader. While all pretty accurate, it is still abstract and not narrowly focused (maybe its too complex of a topic to narrowly focus). I am particularly interested in the Vroom-Yetton Model of Leadership because their answer to effective leadership (I am glad that somebody finally answered it this way) is simple yet powerful and extremely pragmatic. Their answer is IT

The decision making study in the service organization reinforced the fact that subordinates are more productive and report better satisfaction when leaders develop situation-appropriate decision making styles. However, at the end of the study, the big question was if the accuracy of the study could be distorted because of the use of self-report techniques, which might have lead to errors in perception. This is where Chris Parker’s study on the impact of leaders’ implicit theories saved the day and addressed some of the concerns. It became clear that studies conducted on the Vroom-Yetton Model that used self-reporting, most likely resulted in higher validity estimates. It is still important to understand that the validity of the model was still supported – the question was the strength of the