Critical Reasoning

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


[spoiler]OA: E[/spoiler]

I would like to discuss the logical reason why Option B is wrong.

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.

richachampion wrote: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

Conclusion:
Assessments of leadership effectiveness can disregard the attitudes of individuals -- since these attitudes are irrelevant -- and should instead occur only at the group level.

Rephrase each answer choice as a basic statement.
The correct answer choice will either strengthen or weaken the conclusion.

E, rephrased:
Individuals' attitudes toward supervisors affect group success.
This rephrase clearly WEAKENS the conclusion that the attitudes of individuals are irrelevant and can be disregarded.

The correct answer is E.

B, rephrased:
It is possible to assess individual supervisees' attitudes without thereby changing those attitudes.
While this option seems to indicate that there is no danger in assessing the attitudes of individuals, it does NOT indicate whether such assessments are RELEVANT.
Since B does not strengthen or weaken the conclusion that the attitudes of individuals can be disregarded, eliminate B.

richachampion wrote: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?

I would like to discuss the logical reason why Option B is wrong.

Since we are evaluating the argument, let's first be clear about what the conclusion is, AND what that conclusion is based on.

Conclusion: Assessment of leadership effectiveness should occur only at the group level.

What The Conclusion Is Based On: Leaders affect group success, not individual success.

So this argument is about what should be done to assess leadership effectiveness, and the conclusion is based on the idea that individual attitudes are irrelevant.

Now let's look at B.

B. Whether it is possible to assess individual supervisees' attitudes toward their supervisors without thereby changing those attitudes

B is tempting because if the answer were "No", then assessing supervisees' attitudes would corrupt the information gained in the process of assessing them. That corruption of the process might seem to make assessing their attitudes useless.

Ok.

Let's be clear though, the argument is less about the outcome of the process of assessing attitudes than it is about the idea that the attitudes matter.

So even if the answer to B were "No", the attitudes might still matter.

To take this a step further, reading too much into the word "change" can cause one to think that a "No" answer to B renders assessing supervisees' attitudes useless.

The truth is that the word "change" alone does not mean complete and significantly change. The change mentioned in B could be great or small. So a "No" answer to B does not even clearly undermine the validity of results gained via assessing the attitudes of supervisees.

So B is a trap on two levels. On one level one can read into it that "change" means "significantly change", and on another level one can conflate the focus of the argument, which is the relevance of supervisee attitudes, with with the focus of B, which is the feasibility of assessing those attitudes.

Having said all that, I can say that if you were to focus on the conclusion, which is simply that you should assess leadership effectiveness only at the group level, then I could sort of see why B would be relevant, as if you can't get uncorrupted information by assessing attitudes at the individual level, then doing that might not make sense.

Still, given what I said previously, B does not really work.

On another note, I wonder about E.

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.

So E even if the answer to E were "Yes", assessing supervisee attitudes might not provide information that adds to an assessment of leadership effectiveness.