Many leadership theories have provided evidence that leaders affect

Question

Many leadership theories have provided evidence that leaders affect group success rather than the success of particular individuals. So it is irrelevant to analyze the effects of supervisor traits on the attitudes of individuals whom they supervise. Instead, assessment of leadership effectiveness should occur only at the group level.

Which of the following would it be most useful to establish in order to evaluate the argument?

(A) Whether supervisors’ documentation of individual supervisees’ attitudes toward them is usually accurate
(B) Whether it is possible to assess individual supervisees’ attitudes toward their supervisors without thereby changing those attitudes
(C) Whether any of the leadership theories in question hold that leaders should assess other leaders’ attitudes
(D) Whether some types of groups do not need supervision in order to be successful in their endeavors
(E) Whether individuals’ attitudes toward supervisors affect group success

ID: 500317
OG Verbal 2017 New Question(Book Question: 117)

Nightfury14 · Accepted Answer

Premise:  Many leadership theories have provided evidence that leaders affect group success rather than the success of particular individuals. 
 Conclusion Part -I :  So it is irrelevant to analyze the effects of supervisor traits on the attitudes of individuals whom they supervise. 
 Conclusion Part -II :  Instead, assessment of leadership effectiveness should occur only at the group level.

Question Type:  Evaluate the argument
 Prephase:  The argument revolves around the subject of supervisor traits/ individual attitudes. But as mentioned in the conclusion, primary objective is leadership effectiveness should occur at group level for Group success. Look for ans choices which relates to this information.

A. Whether supervisors’ documentation of individual supervisees’ attitudes toward them is usually accurate -  Irreleant .
 B. Whether it is possible to assess individual supervisees’ attitudes toward their supervisors without thereby changing those attitudes.  Irrelevant 
 C. Whether any of the leadership theories in question hold that leaders should assess other leaders’ attitudes.  Incorrect Outside information - Irrelevant. 
 D. Whether some types of groups do not need supervision in order to be successful in their endeavors.  Had kept this one, as leadership effectiveness occur at group level, groups may not require supervision. But then this doesnt mean individual do not require a supervisor. - Incorrect. 
 E. Whether individuals’ attitudes toward supervisors affect group success.  Correct - This is the other side of the coin. Supervisors traits on the attitutes of individuals is irrelevant to the success of the group. But can the same be said the other way around. Does the individuals attitude toward supervisors affect group success.

mbaprep2016 · Answer

Basically author is saying 
Leadership effectiveness is based on X not on Y 
X-: group Success 
Y :- individual attitude 
Here author is assuming X and Y are independent event.
So any answer which tell they are dependent events or not.
E is the answer

GMATNinja · Answer

We are told that the success of particular individuals does not affect group success. But we're not told whether individuals'  attitudes  affect group success. If the attitudes toward supervisors do affect group success, then analyzing the effects of supervisor traits on attitudes of the individuals whom they supervise WOULD be relevant.

I hope that helps!

LogicGuru1 · Answer

Many leadership theories have provided evidence that leaders affect group success rather than the success of particular individuals. So it is irrelevant to analyze the effects of supervisor traits on the attitudes of individuals whom they supervise. Instead, assessment of leadership effectiveness should occur only at the group level.

Answer is E.
 
 Explanation:-  A group is not a separate entity . Its made up of individual. Every individual must act as a unit only then group will succeed. Now if the Leader/Supervisor is particularly bad, nasty or abusive to one person, then this person might try to make the supervisor look bad. He can do so by failing in the most important task assigned to him. Ultimately the success of the entire operation will be compromised and being the Leader,the supervisor will come across like an idiot and an incompetent fool. SO WE SEE THAT AN INDIVIDUAL CAN DESTROY THE WHOLE GROUP. 
 
 Therefore it is important to evaluate CAN THIS SCENARIO HAPPEN WHERE AN ANGRY OR HUMILIATED PERSON CAN THREATEN THE ENTIRE GROUPS SUCCESS?
 
What option matches this pre-thinking ?
OPTION E:- Whether individuals’ attitudes toward supervisors affect group success

Therefore E IS THE CORRECT ANSWER.

Which of the following would it be most useful to establish in order to evaluate the argument?

A. Whether supervisors’ documentation of individual supervisees’ attitudes toward them is usually accurate
 B. Whether it is possible to assess individual supervisees’ attitudes toward their supervisors without thereby changing those attitudes
 C. Whether any of the leadership theories in question hold that leaders should assess other leaders’ attitudes
 D. Whether some types of groups do not need supervision in order to be successful in their endeavors
 E.  Whether individuals’ attitudes toward supervisors affect group success

OG Verbal 2017 New Question(Book Question: 117)

ajay2121988 · Answer

summarizing the argument,
effectiveness of leadership must be evaluated at group level and NOT at the individual level.
This is because the leaders affect success of the group and NOT the success of individuals they supervise.
It is possible that for ex. individual employees working under a boss are not successful, but as a group, under the same boss, they are successful.
How is this possible? Is it possible that the boss has some great group policies but bad individual policies. 
still the group is performing but individuals may not.

Let's look at options
A) Are we concerned about supervisor's documentation ? No.
B) Is it possible to check attitudes of employees toward boss, without changing those attitudes ?
 Why are we even concerned about "checking employee attitudes toward boss" that too taking care
 not changing them ? Issue at hand is leadership effectiveness should be evaluated at group level, not at individual level. This option takes us far from that issue at hand
C) Leaders testing other leader's attitudes. Strays away from issue at hand
D) Same as C
E) This one talks about group success. If individual attitude affects group success then leadership evaluation only at group level does not suffice(weakener). However, if individual attitude does not affect group success, then it's fine to conclude what the argument is concluding. In that case, this choice strengthens by negating a weakener. Also called closing the gap. Choice E is correct.

anairamitch1804 · Answer

Situation Many leadership theories have provided evidence that leaders affect the success of groups but not of individuals.

Reasoning What would be most helpful to know in order to evaluate how well the stated fact supports the conclusion that leadership effectiveness should be assessed only at the group level without considering supervisors' influence on the attitudes of the individuals they supervise? Even if leaders do not affect the success of the individuals they lead, they might still affect those individuals' attitudes. And those attitudes in turn might affect group success. If so, the argument would be weak. So any evidence about the existence or strength of these possible effects in the relationship between supervisors and their supervisees would be helpful in evaluating the argument.

A How accurately supervisors document their supervisees' attitudes is not clearly relevant to how much the supervisors affect those attitudes, nor to how much the attitudes affect group success.

B Even if assessing supervisees' attitudes would in itself change those attitudes, the person doing the assessment might be able to predict this change and take it into account. Thus, considering individual supervisees' attitudes might still be worthwhile.

C The argument is not about interactions among leaders, but rather about interactions between supervisors
and supervisees.

D The argument is not about groups without supervisors, or whether certain groups might be effective without a supervisor, but rather about how to assess the effectiveness of supervisors in groups that do have them.

E Correct. As explained above, if individual supervisees' attitudes affect group success, the argument would be weak. And probably individual supervisees' attitudes toward their supervisors are influenced by those supervisors. So knowing whether individual attitudes toward supervisors affect group success would be
helpful in evaluating the argument.

The correct answer is E.

sunny91 · Answer

I marked option E, but had a hard time to understand how individual's attitude towards supervisor's affect group success. Had the correct option be individual's attitude affect group success, this makes more sense to me because answer to this argument is whether the affect of leadership leaves an impact on the individuals which may/may not affect the group success. Please help me in understanding how individual's attitude towards supervisor's affect group success?

HimanshuW11 · Answer

Conclusion : So it is irrelevant to analyze the effects of supervisor traits on the attitudes of individuals whom they supervise. Instead, assessment of leadership effectiveness should occur only at the group level.

Which of the following would it be most useful to establish in order to evaluate the argument?

Yes it is accurate, even if it is accurate it doesn't affect the conclusion that "assessment of leadership effectiveness should occur only at the group level."
No it is not accurate, even in this case the conclusion stands tall i.e. "assessment of leadership effectiveness should occur only at the group level."
 What role would the assessing of the attitude of the individual supervisee play?
 Even if there is a leadership theory that does what is being asked in the answer option, or there isn't any theory that does what is asked. No affect on the conclusion.
 Out of scope. If the group doesn't even need any supervision. There isn't any affect on the conclusion. 
 If something/attitude of an individual affect group success, then the conclusion goes for a toss here. Then instead of "assessment of leadership effectiveness should occur only at the group level.", we need to assess leadership effectiveness at individual level and not on the group level.
If attitude of the individual doesn't affect the success of the group, then the conclusion stands tall.

kornn · Answer

Dear  VeritasKarishma  and  GMATNinja

I have been confused a lot by choice E. Could you please explain why it is considered correct?

My doubts:
If we already have a way to assess leadership effectiveness, assessing at the group level, then I am not sure how also assessing individual attitudes helps, even if those attitudes affect success.  Either the group succeeded or it didn't, whatever the individual attitudes may be and however they may affect success.

In other words, this choice suggests the  factor  that affects "group success". However, the author concerns only the  result  of the success, not how the success is affected/derived from.

Whatever factors that affect the "group success", if the group succeeds, then the leader is effective.

Thank you in advance!

KarishmaB · Answer

Success is not black and white - you measure it on a scale. Say revenue of 200 mil is good. Of 400 mil is very good. 800 mil is excellent etc. 
Leaders affect group success so say a leader was able to help his team get 600 mil in revenue. He is a good leader. So the argument says that we do not need to analyse the impact of the leader on individual attitudes.

But what if individual attitudes affect group success? What if this leader was a bad leader as far as individual attitude is concerned and hence people are not happy with him. What if this individual attitude affected group success and actually revenue should have been 800 mil?

Think in terms of variables. Say A impacts B. But A impacts C too. 
Now if we only measure how A impacts B, is it enough if we know that C impacts B too? Basically A is impacting B indirectly too by impacting C which in turn is impacting B. 
Whether we need to worry about how A is impacting C depends on whether C is impacting B too. If C impacts B, then A's impact on B comes from two sources and we need to worry about both. If C does not impact B, then we can ignore C.

Here A is the leader, B is group success and C is individual attitude. 
Leader impacts group success, we know.
Now, we need to worry about how leader impacts individual attitude too if individual attitude impacts group success too.

That is why (E) is correct.

woohoo921 · Answer

Hi experts

Question 1.) I am still confused by @GMATNinja's response, "If the attitudes toward supervisors do affect group success, then analyzing the effects of supervisor traits on attitudes of the individuals whom they supervise WOULD be relevant." If we are told that leaders impact group success, why do we now care about individuals?

Question 2: For Choice D, is this just simply out of scope because the argument is focusing on the groups that do need supervision based on the "many leadership theories"? We don't care about other groups (the outliers) that can succeed on their own.

Thank you!

RonTargetTestPrep · Answer

"Attitudes toward supervisors", as discussed in choice E, refers to   individuals'   attitudes toward supervisors.

The argument is about the possible effects of "supervisor traits" (either at the group level or at the individual level), so, only groups that actually have supervisors are relevant to the argument.

custodio · Answer

GMATNinja   KarishmaB   avigutman

(E) looks like the best choice among others but I am still not convinced about it.

Wouldn't 
(F)Whether  supervisors’   individuals’  attitudes toward  individuals   supervisors  affect group success
be a better option than
(E)Whether individuals’ attitudes toward supervisors affect group success
?

I think supervisors’ attitudes toward individuals are more related than individuals’ attitudes toward supervisors. Who cares about individuals’ attitudes toward supervisors?

KarishmaB · Answer

Consider a corporate structure with teams in NA, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Each team has its own manager. 
Then there is the CEO to whom all managers report.

The argument says that we should look at the impact of the CEO on the entire company's success only, not on the managers. Are managers happy with the CEO is not relevant as per the argument.

But what if the NA manager doesn't like the CEO and is hence inciting trouble within his team and bad mouthing the CEO to his counterparts in other regions? The overall company may suffer because of that. Option (E) says that we need to figure this out - does the individuals’ attitudes toward supervisors affect group success? If it does, then it may not be enough to study the direct impact of the CEO on the company. If he is pulling down some individuals, the individuals may be pulling down the whole company too.

Kavicogsci · Answer

Can anyone just explain option B here in detail what it means?
 carcass

KarishmaB · Answer

Premise: Many leadership theories have provided evidence that leaders affect group success rather than the success of particular individuals. Intermediate Conclusion: So it is irrelevant to analyze the effects of supervisor traits on the attitudes of individuals whom they supervise. Conclusion: Assessment of leadership effectiveness should occur only at the group level. Leaders affect the success of the group as a whole. So leader's effectiveness should be assessed at the group level only - not at the level of his direct reportees. What do we need to evaluate this argument? The point of discussion is how to assess the effectiveness of the leader - only at the group level? Or at individual level too? (A) Whether supervisors’ documentation of individual supervisees’ attitudes toward them is usually accurate Supervisors’ documentation of individual supervisees’ attitudes toward them is out of scope. (B) Whether it is possible to assess individual supervisees’ attitudes toward their supervisors without thereby changing those attitudes We want to know whether we should assess the supervisor's attitude toward individual supervisees’ and the impact of this attitude. We are not discussing the other way around - assessing individual supervisees’ attitudes toward their supervisors and whether it is possible to assess it. (C) Whether any of the leadership theories in question hold that leaders should assess other leaders’ attitudes Leaders assessing each other's attitudes is out of scope. The point is whether we need to assess the impact of the leader on his reportees. (D) Whether some types of groups do not need supervision in order to be successful in their endeavors Out of scope. (E) Whether individuals’ attitudes toward supervisors affect group success We are saying that A (leader's attitude) impacts B (group success) so assess A by looking at the impact on B. Hence ignore the impact of A (leader's attitude) on C (individuals' attitude). But hey, what if C impacts B too? Basically, what if the variable B is dependent not just on A but on C too? Then can we just assess A's impact on B while ignoring C? No. Leaders affect group success so say a leader was able to help his team get 600 mil in revenue. He is a good leader. So the argument says that we do not need to analyse the impact of the leader on his supervisees. But what if individual attitudes affect group success too? What if this leader was a bad leader as far as individual attitude is concerned and hence people are not happy with him. What if this individual attitude affected group success and actually revenue should have been 800 mil but it was brought down by his supervisees to 600 mil? Consider a corporate structure with teams in NA, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Each team has its own manager. Then there is the CEO to whom all managers report. The argument says that we should look at the impact of the CEO on the entire company's success only, not on the managers. "Are managers happy with the CEO" is not relevant as per the argument. But what if the NA manager doesn't like the CEO and is hence inciting trouble within his team and bad mouthing the CEO to his counterparts in other regions? The overall company may suffer because of that and this may have brought down the revenue from 800 mil to 600 mil. Option (E) says that we need to figure this out - does the individuals’ attitudes toward supervisors affect group success? If it does, then it may not be enough to study the direct impact of the CEO on the company. If he is pulling down some individuals, the individuals may be pulling down the whole company too. Hence this is correct. Answer (E) Discussion on Useful to Evaluate Questions: https://youtu.be/1JtHjH1lWZc

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Many leadership theories have provided evidence that leaders affect

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