Implicit Leadership Theories at the Charlotte Observer’s Magazine Department

Before studying implicit leadership theories in Theories and Models with Dr. von Rueden, I, of course, had my fair share of implicit leadership theories, which have been acquired through my previous interactions with leader-follower organizations — my lacrosse team and newspaper staff in high school, my sorority in college, and my internship last summer. Female leaders are typically more relationship-oriented, rather than power-oriented, like most male leaders. My boss, Caroline, definitely values relationships within the office, as it is clear she has a special relationship with each member of the team. She also outspokenly promotes the idea of team members forming relationships with one another. This proves to be an effective way to run the organization. Since our team is so small, it is easy to get to know each and every member of the team really well. Because we have formed these relationships, we all feel very comfortable around one another, thus making it easier to collaborate on projects. The implicit leadership theory here rightly explains the leader-follower dynamic at our organization, because there really isn’t an apparent hierarchy. All of our actions contribute to one team effort. This implicit leadership theory also proves that Caroline is a pro-social leader (other-regarding) rather than a pro-self leader (self-regarding), in the sense that she is a team player rather than a dominant figure. However, because it is implicit that she doesn’t want there to be any major distinction between her position and others’, it allows her followers to think they can abuse the little power they have and make decisions on our boss’ behalf. For example, Caroline is in charge of the magazine’s layout, like which articles go on which pages, which photos will go where, and so on. Because she usually grants a lot of freedom to the magazine’s page designer, the designer decided to design one magazine’s layout without running it by Caroline first. Caroline wasn’t a huge fan of that issue’s layout, but instead of asserting her dominance, she told the designer she didn’t really like the layout, without making a huge deal of anything, because the layout had already been submitted for publishing. Therefore, a dominant leader might be more useful in cases where decisions made would reflect the entire group. And this executive decision should be made by the leader.