Style Approach

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Style Approach

• Team S.W.A.T.

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Research on Leadership Styles

• Many research studies could be categorized under
  the heading of style approach, only a few
  strongly represent the idea
• Ohio state
• University of Michigan
• Studies by Blake and Mouton

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Ohio State Studies

• Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LDBQ)
• Administered to hundreds of individuals in
  various fields
• Two general types of leader behaviors
• Initiating structure (Task)
• Consideration (Relational)

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University of Michigan Studies

• Studied leaders behaviors performance on small
  group performance
• Two behaviors identified
• Employee orientation
• Leaders approach with strong human relations
  emphasis
• Production orientation
• Leadership behaviors that stress technological
  advancement and production aspects of the job

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Results

• Behaviors viewed as distinct and independent (two
  different continua)
• The degree to which a leader exhibited one
  behavior was not related to the degree to which
  he or she exhibited the other behavior
• When two behaviors were treated as independent
  orientations, leaders were seen as being able to
  be oriented to both
• Determining how a leader optimally mixed task
  and relationship behaviors has been the central
  task for research in style approach

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Style Approach

• Emphasizes the behavior of the leader
• Focuses exclusively on what leaders do and how
  they act
• Explains how leaders combine two kinds of
  behaviors to influence subordinates in efforts to
  reach a goal

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Task Behaviors vs. Relational Behaviors

• Task Behaviors
• Facilitates goal accomplishment
• Relationship Behaviors
• Help subordinates feel comfortable with
  themselves, with each other, and with the groups
  situation

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Blake and Moutons Leadership Grid of Style
Approach

• Most well-known model of leader behavior
• Explains how leaders help organizations to reach
  their purposes through two factors
• Concern for production
• How a leader is concerned with achieving
  organizational tasks
• Concern for people
• How a leader attends to the people with the
  organization who are trying to achieve its goals.

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Blake and Moutons Leadership Grid of Style
Approach

• Joins concern for production and concern for
  people on two intersecting axes
• X axis concern for results
• Y axis concern for people
• Portrays five major leadership styles
• Authority-Compliance (9,1)
• Country Club management (1,9)
• Impoverished management (1,1)
• Middle-of-the-Road management (5,5)
• Team management (9,9)

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Authority-Compliance Management

• Places heavy emphasis on task and job
  requirements
• Less emphasis on people
• Communication under-emphasized
• Leadership is controlling, demanding, and
  overpowering

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Country Club Management

• Low concern for task accomplishment
• High concern for interpersonal relationships
• De-emphasis on production
• Leadership characterized as agreeable, eager to
  help, comforting, and uncontroversial

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Impoverished Management

• No concern for task, as well as interpersonal
  relationships
• Going through the motions with lack of
  involvement
• Leaderships described as indifferent,
  noncommittal, resigned, and apathetic

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Middle-of-the-Road Management

• Leaders are compromisers
• Immediate concern for task and interpersonal
  relationship
• Leader avoids conflict and emphasizes moderate
  levels of production and relations with others to
  establish equilibrium
• Leaders are described as one who is expedient,
  soft-pedals disagreement, and is interested in
  group progress over their own convictions

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Team Management

• Places strong emphasis on both tasks and
  interpersonal relationships
• Promotes high degree of participation and
  teamwork
• Satisfies a basic need in employees to be
  involved and committed to their work
• Leaders characterized as clear, open-minded,
  determined, and one who stimulates participation

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Combined Styles

• Blake and his colleagues have identified two
  styles that incorporate multiple aspects of the
  grid
• Paternalism/Maternalism
• Leaders uses both (1,9) and (9,1) styles but does
  not integrate the two
• Opportunistic
• Leader uses any combination of the basic five
  styles for purpose of personal advancement

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How does the Style Approach work?

• Provides framework for assessing leadership
  behaviors in a broad way and general way
• Gives leaders a way to look at their behavior by
  sub-dividing it into the two dimensions
• Reminds leaders that their impact occurs through
  both the task they perform and the relationship
  they create.

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Strengths and Weaknesses of the Style Approach

• Strengths
• Easily applied
• Studies on leadership style validates and gives
  credibility to the approach
• Provides core of the leadership process
• Can be used as a heuristic (cognitive map)
• Approach applies to everything a leader does
• Weaknesses
• Hasnt adequately shown how leaders styles are
  associated with performance outcomes
• There is no universal leadership style
• Implies that the most effective leadership style
  is the Team Management style (9,9)