On Leadership and It’s Marketing

doi:10.4236/ojl.2013.24011

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Open Journal of Leadership

2013. Vol.2, No.4, 78-81

Published Online December 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojl) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojl.2013.24011

Open Access

On Leadership and It’s Marketing*

Jinzhang Gao

School of Business Administra tion of Zhengzhou Institute of Aeronautical

Industry Manag ement, Zhengzhou, China

Email: [email protected]

Received August 2nd, 2013; revised September 5th, 2013; accepted September 15th, 2013

bution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the

original work is properly cited.

Leadership is a kind of scarce resources and a determinable factor in an organization. Effective leadership

is one of the key factors in its growth, change and regeneration whereas currently, leaders in some or-

ganizations do not have the leadership in match with their development and leadership resource is out of

proportion of the highly-developed economy which prevents organizations from developing. Leadership

is a leader’s most significant peculiarity and his developing in leadership contributes most greatly to the

organization. Effective leadership depends on leadership marketing as well as the cultivating and devel-

oping. Based on marketing researches, this paper mainly studies individual leadership, group leadership

and organizational leadership so as to lead to more researches and studies.

Keywords: Lead; Leadership; Leadership Marketing

Introduction

Why enterprises in current China lasting for generations are

scarce and some in great success are like a flash in the pan?

One important reason is the lack of leaders owning effective

leadership skills (Dean & Tjosvold, 2004). Leadership is a rare

resource and if one wants to make his leadership effective, he

must value his leadership marketing, and this is of key impor-

tance. In this text, on the basis of some marketing researches,

the author will discuss the leadership marketing from individual,

group and organizational layers.

Lead

Definition

Lead has many meanings in Chinese, and it can be both a

noun and a verb. Lead in noun means a person who leads an

organization and holds leading posts and carries out the leading

process. For instance, Bass and Stogdill (Bass & Stogdill, 1990)

defines it as “Leadership is an interaction between two or more

members of a group that often involves a structuring or re-

structuring of the situation and the perceptions and expectations

of members.” Lead as a verb means the leading activity, the

dynamic process where a leader and his or her followers inter-

act with certain contexts. As an initiative scholar in studies on

leadership, Stogdill (Stogdill, 1974) defines it “an activity in-

fluencing an organizational group and a process that makes it

move to an expected goal and achievement.” Lead studied in

this paper is a noun.

Function of Le ade r

As it is said that trains run fast with the front entirely. Here,

the front is the leader in a modern organization. A leader’s role

is like a head of a train. The front works wrongly, the whole

train can not work well meanwhile the front cannot work well if

the train works wrongly. If both are all right, but run in wrong

rail, it will be much farer than the destination with higher

speed.

Leadership

Concept

Everyone has leadership but it is different in different people

(Mowles, 2009). In this paper, the leading capacity is to be

studied. In our country, leadership is a new concept introduced

with intellectual economy development and intellectual man-

aging revolution. In a sense, there are definitions of leadership

so long as one wants to define it. However, studying the rela-

tive literature researches at home and abroad, the author found

scholars define it on different emphasis. They can be included

as follows:

On theory of capability—It gives emphasis on a leader’s per-

sonality and holds that a leader has the ability to influence his

or her followers to realize the organizational goals (Dehoogh &

Den Hartog, 2008).

On theory of behavior—It values the behavioral process of

leadership that influences all members and holds that leadership

is the combination of a series of behaviors that a leader influ-

ences his or her followers to work hard willingly for their

shared goals (Pearce, Manz, & Sims Jr., 2008).

On theory of holism—It gives emphasis on the overall force

of leaders at all levels and believes that leadership is a driving

force to stimulate all members to realize their shared goals

(Uhl-Bien, Marion, & McKelvey, 2007).

In this paper, it is believed that leadership is a join force of a

leader’s power and authority. It is a force, but not a capability

or behavior.

*Supported by the Henan Province Science and Technique Foundation:

Research on Leadership Marketing of Enterprise in Henan Province

o. 122400440096.

J. Z. GAO

Classification

Leadership can be classified differently according to differ-

ent criteria.

First of all, it can be classified into individual leadership and

group leadership. Individual leadership refers to that of an indi-

vidual leader holding a certain post in an organization and that

is influenced by a leader’s peculiarity. In an organization, there

are three distinguishable levels of leaders: top, middle and

first-line, thus the demands for peculiarity are different. Group

leadership is the join force of individual leaders at the same

level in an organization. In such an organization, even though

an individual extends his or her leadership to the extreme, the

realization of goals and visions is still limited and depends on

the full development of the group leadership of all leaders. The

group leadership also has three levels: top, middle and first-line.

From the angle of the organizational levels, it can be classified

into top, middle level and basic level leadership. The top lead-

ership refers to the join forces of leaders at the top, the middle

level leadership of the leaders at the middle level, the basic

level leadership of the leaders at the basic level. All the three

interact with each other to form the organizing leadership

which means the join force of the group leadership at all levels

and results from the interaction among all the individual lead-

ership at the same levels and all the group leadership at distin-

guishable levels.

Function of Le ad ership

Leadership is a determining factor in the success of an

organization, and effective leadership is one of the key factors

in its growth, change and regeneration. The construction and

development involves different aspects among which leadership

is of great importance and occupies 45 percent in organizational

work (Bass & Stogdill, 1990). Leadership works greatly on the

realization of visions and goals. A leader lack of leadership,

like the front of a train short of driving force, is incapable to

lead all the members to move towards their shared goals. In

contrast, a leader with powerful leadership, like a front with

strong driving force, has great capability to lead his followers to

move toward destination. The front to a train is a leader to an

organization. From the view point of system theory, so long as

the organizational leadership is at its best, the harmony of an

organization appears and the visions and goals come true.

Current Situation

Leadership is a scarce resource. In the 21st century, the

greatest challenge of the business circle and organization is lack

of leaders with effective leadership (Uhl-Bien, Marion, &

McKelvey, 2007). Every organization needs to realize its vi-

sions and goals under the leadership of leaders with effective

leadership while currently, leaders in some organizations has no

leadership in match with their development (Lumby, 2009).

The leadership resources are out of proportion with the highly

developed economy and this prevents many organizations from

developing and leads to their inadaptability to the increasingly

competitive era and failing of many well-designed strategic

changes in forms such as difficult start, quitting on the half way

or thorough failure.

Leadership Marketing

The foremost peculiarity of a leader is his or her leadership

and its development is his or her greatest contribution to the

organization while the effective leadership depends on his or

her marketing as well as the cultivating and developing. Lead-

ership marketing refers to the process that a leader makes his

followers accept him so as to build his or her authority through

marketing his or her power and authority.

Individual Leadership Marketing

Individual leadership marketing indicates that a leader at a

certain level in an organization markets his or her personal

leadership. Any leader owns a certain leading power because of

different posts at the top, middle or the basic levels which is a

part of his or her personal leadership. Such part of leadership is

granted by an organization, and is positively associated with the

level a leader is in. That is to say, the higher level a leader is in,

the stronger leadership one has and vice versa. It is shown as

Figure 1.

Another part of leadership is a leader’s prestige. Generally

speaking, a leader’s prestige is also positively correlated with

his or her leadership: the higher prestige one has, the stronger

leadership he or she owns and vice versa. It is shown as Figure

2: a leader’s prestige should be accumulated daily, just like

greatness is the accumulation of small matters.

Based on our research group members’ surveys of the lead-

ership in some enterprises, by using factor analysis method and

normalization processing we can draw a conclusion that lead-

ership is under the mutual influences of the following 6 factors.

It can be shown in Table 1.

As can be seen from the table above that any individual

leader must pay attention to marketing himself from the aspects

mentioned above to improve his leadership so as to establish

Strong

Weak

Leadership

Top Middle Base

Leader Hierarchy

Figure 1.

Relation between leadership and leading levels.

Strong

Weak

Leadership

High Medium Low

Leader Prestige

Figure 2.

Relation between leadership and leader p r estige.

Open Access 79

J. Z. GAO

Open Access

interaction, l is the number of leaders at that level. his own prestige whereas since the different hierarchy they are

in, the degree of the 6 influencing factors is different (See Fig-

ure 3). Among leaders at the same level, there is a leader who is in

the core position while others are in subordinate position.

Group leadership requests that every individual should have

global sense and maintain main leaders’ authority and even if

his own prestige weakened so long as to ensure the utmost

group leadership.

Group Leadership Marketing

The advantages of group leadership must be valued because

even if a leader gives play to the limit by marketing his leader-

ship, the realization of enterprise visions and goals is limited.

Group leadership marketing refers to the same-hierarchy group

leaders’ leadership marketing which is distinct from individual

leadership marketing—the latter is guided by individuals im-

proving his leadership by marketing the six above aspects while

the former is oriented by a group of leaders of the same level

improving group leadership. Group leadership is the effective

accumulation of the individual and the result of the same-level

individual leadership interaction. The formation of group lead-

ership can be seen i n Figure 4.

Organizational Leadership Marketing

Organizational leadership marketing refers to the leadership

marketing made by an organization from the global level and it

is a complex system of multi-levels and multi-factors. Organ-

izational leadership is formed by the interactions between same

level individual leadership, between different level leadership,

between adjacent layers of group leadership and between

non-adjacent layers of group leadership. The interactions in-

clude Zero interaction, positive interaction and negative inter-

action. See the Figure 5 diagram as follows . In the diagram, Sij is the leadership of leader j at level i, i is

the hierarchy, j is leader j at level i, “” refers to their In the above diagram, G1, G2, G3 refers to the top, middle and

Table 1.

Influencing factors of individual leadership.

Influencing factors

(weight) Content (importance)

1 (0.53) global consciousness sense (0.15), strategic sense (0.14), organizing and conducting capability (0.13), master sense (0.12), corrective

power execution (0.12), creative sense (0.12), team sense (0.12), coordinative and communicative capability (0.10)

2 (0.17) advanced learning ability (0.24), scientific decisive capability (0.21), awareness of people (0.20), self-controlling ability (0.18),

nurture talent (0.17)

3 (0.11) execution (0.28), honesty (0.28) self-confidence (0.24), appetency (0 .21)

4 (0.07) Responsibility (0.31), motivation (0.29), initiative (0.22), quality sense (0.18)

5 (0.06) Influence (0.52), inspiration ( 0.48)

6 (0.05) success sense (0.43), servic e sense (0. 29), reason able autho rization ability (0.28)

Influencing

Factors

Top Middle Base

Leader Hi erarchy

Figure 3.

Relation between leaders’ hierarc hy and in fluencing factors.

Figure 4.

Formation of group leadership.

J. Z. GAO

Figure 5.

Formation of organizational leadership.

basic level group leadership. Among the different layers, the

top is in the core position, the middle layer in the central posi-

tion and the basic level in the subordinate position. According

to system theory—when the local is optimal, the global is not

necessarily optimal while the local is necessarily optimal when

the global is optimal, organizational leadership marketing re-

quests that the middle-layer leaders must maintain the top lead-

ers’ authority and the basic level must maintain that of the mid-

dle-layer ones so as to establish a harmonious and effective

organization to develop faster and better.

Conclusion

Leadership is the trait that the leader must have. Whether or

not the leadership is effective depends on leadership market-

ing for leader. Leadership marketing includes power marketing

and authority marketing. Power with leader hierarchy is posi-

tively correlated relationship; leadership with leader prestige is

like this too. We have much work to do for deep research on the

above problems.

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