Choices of Fraternity Presidents for Leadership and Maintenance Roles

Abstract

In a recent paper, Fiedler advanced the hypothesis that effective leadership requires the maintenance of psychological distance between leaders and followers ( 1). If this hypothesis is to be supported, we would expect that the leader would not be sociometrically chosen by his peers for activities which require psychologically close relations, e.g., preferences for a person with whom one would discuss personal problems, and choices for room mate or double-date partner. While such trends may be expected in highly taskoriented groups, the present paper tests this hypothesis as it applies to groups which are largely maintenance-oriented, viz., social fraternities. Subjects.-Officers from 20 social fraternities at the University of Illinois participated in this investigation. Four officers from each of these organizations were tested (president, vice president, treasurer, and secretary). Each officer completed a sociometric questionnaire containing two questions regarding preferences for executive leadership, and three questions of psyche-telic nature, i.e., choices for room mate, double-date partner, and a person in whom one could confide about personal problems. Resalts.-The president was chosen by a majority of officers of 15 fraternities as the preferred leader, but he was chosen by none of the fraternities as potential room mate, double-date partner, or as a quasi-therapeutic person. Of the 59 officers (other than the presidents) 41 selected the president as leader, but only four preferred him as a double-date partner or confidant, and only one preferred him as a room mate. Discassion.-These findings appear to indicate that the leadership and maintenance functions are not related, and may in fact be incompatible, even though one of the group's primary functions is to provide social activities and counseling for its members. As in task groups which have previously been studied ( 2 ) , social fraternities seem to require, or strongly encourage, critical, analytic attitudes in the leader, and psychologically distant relations between him and other members in the organization. REFERENCES 1. FIEDLER, F. E. A note on leadership theory: the effect of social barriers between leaders and followers. Sociometry, 195 7, 20, 87-74. 2. FIEDLER, F. E. Leader attitudes and group effectiveness. Urbana, 111.: Univer. of Ulinois Press, 195 8.