484 



MORA.LE AND LEADERSHIP 



the roles of leader and follower, with refer- 

 ence either to that group or to hypothetical 

 situations, and under the critical eye of a 

 participating leader-trainer and other group 

 members (9, 33, 34, 69, 97). This is essen- 

 tially an opportunity for practice, but it ap- 

 pears to differ in several important respects 

 from practicing in a real leadership position 

 or a conventional student leader position. 

 The role-playing takes place in an atmos- 

 phere of make-believe, which makes possible 

 greater freedom to experiment with new 

 modes of behavior. Secondly, it involves 

 filling, self-consciously and in rapid succes- 

 sion, the roles of both leader and follower. 

 If leadership is basically a process of com- 

 munication, and if effective communication 

 rests upon anticipating the reaction of the 

 other person (23, 73), then a procedure which 

 encourages development of realistic expecta- 

 tions of the reactions of other group members 

 should be productive. Thirdly, the proce- 

 dure allows quicker knowledge of results 

 than is ordinarily possible in real situations. 

 This technique deserves intensive investiga- 

 tion, not only with reference to leadership 

 training, but also because of its implications 

 for a basic understanding of social inter- 

 action. 



Other potentially fruitful kinds of experi- 

 ence suggested by some of the above studies 

 are: discussion of the basic objectives and 

 philosophy of leadership in the trainees' own 

 groups, experiencing contrasting methods of 

 leadership, observing movies of contrasting 

 methods and of one's own performance, dis- 

 cussion of particular methods at appropriate 

 intervals, and so on. In the application of 

 all of these procedures, the skill of the leader- 

 trainer seems to be a critical factor. 



Studies of effective leadership behavior 

 presumably determine the content of leader- 

 ship training (and also the method). If, as 

 was suggested earlier, different individual 

 leaders can achieve equivalent results by 

 different methods, and are predisposed to 

 use such methods, training programs must 

 probably allow for considerable flexibility. 



Investigations of the acquisition of particu- 

 lar leadership techniques, and of the effec- 

 tiveness of different training procedures, as 

 functions of trainee personality, would ulti- 

 mately be desirable. 



Leadership training cannot be, and in 

 practice ordinarily is not, conceived simply 

 in terms of special courses. Contacts with 

 superiors and subordinates outside the class- 

 room are likely to be more decisive than 

 classroom experiences in shaping leaders' be- 

 havior (41). Thus, the improvement of 

 leadership and leadership training calls for 

 attention to on-the-job training procedures, 

 and this may imply in turn the production of 

 fundamental changes in organizational func- 

 tioning through re-education of both leaders 

 and followers. The possible roles of staff 

 advisers in catalyzing such changes have 

 been discussed recently by several writers 

 (51, 71). 



Summary 



Because of the relatively undeveloped 

 state of the science of group behavior, the 

 attempt has been made in this chapter pri- 

 marily to indicate areas and problems need- 

 ing investigation — to raise questions rather 

 than to answer them. 



The term "morale" is assumed to refer to 

 the effectiveness of group functioning in rela- 

 tion to group goals, or to aspects of group 

 behavior indicative of the level of group 

 effectiveness. Many different behavioral in- 

 dications may be hypothesized as relevant 

 in this connection, and various techniques 

 exist or can be developed for observing these 

 systematically. A prime necessity in re- 

 search is the development of a precise and 

 economical behavioral definition of group 

 morale, through hypothesizing morale indi- 

 cators, measuring these, analyzing the inter- 

 relationships of different measures, and con- 

 firming through further observation the 

 utility of the factors or clusters thus dis- 

 covered. 



Given an adequate operational definition 

 of morale, the way is open to investigation of 



