leadership
- 1. 1. Introduction<br />“He is born to be leader” or “she is a natural leader”, these are the commonly heard statements and expressed by those who take a trait perspective towards leadership. The trait perspective are characterised by individuals having inborn characteristic or qualities that make them leader and differentiate from non leaders (Northouse, ‘Leadership: theory and practise’, 2010). <br />Leadership is the ability to imply the will of the leader on those led and to gain respect, loyalty, obedience and cooperation (Moore, 1927).<br />Decisions people make is a reflection of human behaviour and the processes that control these decisions are central to any discipline to understand and predict human behaviour. In some discipline like economics, statistics and operation research, decision making approach from a normative standpoint with a fundamental interest in how choices or decisions should be made. Others in psychology, sociology and political science are concerned with predicting and understanding with behaviour with human, including those areas of behaviour that result of human choices and decisions.<br />Confidence is essential ingredient for the success of every leader. Various psychological studies have stated that errors in judgement occur when leaders are overconfidence. Various researches have defined overconfidence as overestimation and over placement of one’s performance and ability relative to others and excessive confidence in one’s belief. <br />This research paper highlight various researches on Leadership theory and Overconfidence theory and goes through three leaders, Political, Military and Business leader and in the conclusion an analysis of the three leaders are done to show how their overconfidence in decision making turned out to be bad decisions.<br />2. Leadership theory and Overconfidence theory<br />2.1. Leadership theory<br />Various leadership models have been proposed by various researchers to develop theories to predict, evaluate, describe and develop good leaders. Among the various researches the most classified and eight types of leadership are (Bolden, et al.., ‘Leadership Theory and Competency Frameworks’, 2003)<br />“Great Man” theories: In this it assumes that Great Leaders are born and are not made. This theory portrays Great leaders as heroic, mythic and rise to leadership when needed.
- 2. Trait theories: It identifies behavioural characteristic or particular personality shared by leaders. This theory had one of difficulties that if particular traits are key features of leadership, then how to explain those people with those qualities but are not leaders?
- 3. Contingency theories: Under this no leadership style is best in all situations. It focuses on particular variables related to the environment that is best suited for the situation. Success depends on number of variables including leadership styles, qualities of followers and aspects of the situation.
- 4. Situation theories: In this theory, the best course of action is chosen by the leaders based on the situation. Leadership with different style would be appropriate for certain types of decision making.
- 5. Behavioural theories: This theory states that Great Leaders are made. People can become Great leaders by observation and through teaching. This theory focuses not on mental qualities or internal states but on the action of leaders.
- 6. Participative theories: This theory states that ideal leadership takes input of others into account and encourages contribution and participation from group members to decision making process.
- 7. Management theories: This theory is basically used in business and employees are rewarded or punished. This theory base leadership on rewards and punishment.
- 8. Relationship theories: It is also known as transformational theories. It focuses on connections made between leaders and followers. These leaders motivate and inspire group members by helping them and focus on performance of group members but also want each member to fulfil his or her potential.2.2. Overconfidence theory<br />Various researches have been done in the field of overconfidence and some of the accepted one’s were the works of Sarah Lichtenstein and Baruch Fishhoff (1997). They drew conclusion between accuracy and confident that<br />When accuracy is near chance levels then overconfidence is greatest.
- 9. When accuracy increases from 50% to 80%, overconfidence diminishes and people become under confident when accuracy exceeds 80%.
- 10. Decision Makers Intelligence is not related to discrepancies between accuracy and confidence.However their work was criticised because they drew conclusion based on asking questions to people about obscure or trivial topics. They conducted a series of experiments to address these issues. In the first experiment, they asked people of general knowledge questions and estimated probability of their answer. They conducted a second experiment to be more accurate with their results and in this confidence were drawn in terms of odds being correct. Finally they conducted three replications. In the first replication, the relation between probability and odds were explained to the people. In the next group of people were asked whether they accepted monetary bet based on the accuracy of answers and in the final replication group of people were asked whether they agreed to gamble on the accuracy of their answer. Based on these experiments they concluded that<br />When people are virtually certain that they are correct, they become overconfident
- 11. Taking the task lightly need not result in overconfidence (Plous, ‘The Psychology of Judgement and Decision Making’, 1993). <br />3. Military, Political and Business leaders<br />3.1 Military leader<br />Pervez Musharraf was the tenth president of Pakistan. He was born on 11 August 1943 in Delhi, India to an educated Muslim family. His family during India and Pakistan partition migrated to Pakistan. He attended exclusive schools before joining Pakistan Military Academy in 1961. In an artillery regiment in 1965 he was a second lieutenant when war broke out with India and company commander during 1971 war with India. He took power on 12 October 1999 when he and Pakistani army overthrew democratically elected government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (Ahrari, ‘Musharraf: A leader in search of new category’, 2002). He led an administrative military government from 1999 to 2007. Pakistan under Nawaz Sharif was messy, uncertain, law and order situation was bad. Crime and corruption was unrestrained.<br />General Musharraf appointed himself as the head of the state as president in June 2001 promising true law and order, democracy and economic growth to Pakistan. Initially there was an improvement in the growth of the economy and he received praise from international institutions for the introduction of reforms. He managed to survive because of his unusual traits in a wild and ungovernable country. He didn’t mind taking big risks knowing he wouldn’t see them through (Koebl, ‘General Musharraf searches a way out’, 2007).<br />During the time of terrorist attack on US in September 11, 2011, he supported for war on terror. He agreed to give United States three airbases for operation to fight against the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Musharraf had admitted that Pakistan had sponsored the rise of Taliban. Pakistani troops had joined Islamic militants to fight in the province of Kashmir and these militants were trained by Pakistani military and these militants were the back bone of Taliban (Tristan, ‘Profile: Pakistan’s General Musharraf’).<br />During the period he was President, Pakistan relation with India and Saudi Arabia was good. After the 2001 Gujarat earthquake in India, he had sent a plane load of relief supplies to India and began a series of talks to dissolve Kashmir issues. His visit to Riyadh was his first foreign visit as a president to lay importance he gave to Pak-Saudi relation<br />Musharraf signed into law “Women’s Protection bill’ which places rape laws under the penal code and abolishes previous harsh conditions that required the victim to produce four male witness in case unable to prove the crime (Akhtar, ‘Women’s Right Bill signed into law’, 2006). However the seat for women in assemblies was increased by his government to increase women’s participation.<br />Musharraf on 9 March 2007, suspended Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudry, chief justice of Pakistan on grounds of corruption but his decision was seemed as political by the public of Pakistan. There were large protest by the Pakistani lawyers and the protest grew momentum when the opposition parties took huge rallies against Musharraf.<br />In 2007 election, his supports were fading so he declared an emergency rule dissolving the constitution of Pakistan and large public protest mounted against Musharraf (Rohde, ‘Musharraf declares state of Emergency’, 2007). On 2008, he resigned under the impeachment pressure.<br />3.2 Political leader<br />Tony Blair born on 6 May 1953 was one of the longest serving and the most famous Prime Ministers Britain has ever had. He was the leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007 and went on to become Prime Minister in 1997. He served as Prime Minister for the three consecutive terms before he completed his third term in office he resigned on 2007. His role as a leader of the Labour Party was success. He named his Labour Party as New Labour and brought back the party from collapse after losing three consecutive elections. He changed the policies of the party and he led the party to a landslide victory in the general election in 1997. He established reputation of ultra skilled, ultra modern political leader, high popular ratings (Ushio, ‘Tony Blair and the saddest political mistake’, 2007). This eventually helped him win the election of 2001 and 2005.<br />.During the first term as Prime Minister in the office, he was famous for the introduction of the things he took in his pledges, mainly the devolution of Scotland and Wales. Scottish parliament was established in 1998 and accordingly Welsh National Assembly was established (Mogg, ‘Battle for England’, 2005). During that term he was famous for making peace in Kosovo, a province of Serbia but with a majority Albanian population seeking independence from Serbian rule. He had a healthy relationship with US with Bill Clinton and strong political alliance Gorge Bush in the area of foreign policy during his second term as Prime Minister. He was often referred to as “Bush’s poodle”. During his second term in his office he supported for war on terror after the terrorist attack on the twin towers in US (Happold, ‘Blair promises relentless war on terror’, 2004). He supported US to jointly attack Afghanistan at that time. He also decided to participate in the invasion of Iraq with US (Mirghani, ‘The Iraq war and Tony Blair’s Journey’, 2010). Saddam Hussein president of Iraq at that time possessed weapons of mass destruction referred to in the United Nation Resolution. Despite of 139 of Blair’s MP opposing to go for the war with Iraq and massive British public opposing it, Blair decided to stick with his decision. This decision had ruined his public image which was seen in the election of 2005, even though his Labour Party has won but with a much reduced 67 seat majorities. His third term in office was marked by controversy and accusation of being wrong of moving forward with his decision to go for war against Iraq. He was also criticised for halting a police investigation of corruption between Saudi Arabia and British company in the view that it would harm Britain’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. At that time his public approval rating slashed below 35% and some members in the Labour Party considered him as an electoral liability. These pressures and distraction led him to resign on Ma<br />