LECTURE NOTES
ON
LEADERSHIP AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT
IV SEMESTER
MS. SURABHI LAKSHMI
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
DEPARTMENT OF MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
INSTITUE OF AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERING
(AUTONOMUS)
DUNDIGAL, HYDERABAD - 043
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LECTURE NOTES
ON
LEADERSHIP AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT
IV SEMESTER
MS. SURABHI LAKSHMI
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
DEPARTMENT OF MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
INSTITUE OF AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERING
(AUTONOMUS)
DUNDIGAL, HYDERABAD - 043
Unit- 1 Introduction and skills approach to leadership
Leadership
Leadership is a process by which an executive can direct, guide and influence the behavior and work of others towards accomplishment of specific goals in a given situation. Leadership is the ability of a manager to induce the subordinates to work with confidence and zeal.
Leadership is the potential to influence behaviour of others. It is also defined as the capacity to influence a group towards the realization of a goal. Leaders are required to develop future visions, and to motivate the organizational members to want to achieve the visions.
According to Keith Davis, “Leadership is the ability to persuade others to seek defined objectives enthusiastically. It is the human factor which binds a group together and motivates it towards goals.”
Characteristics of Leadership
- It is a inter-personal process in which a manager is into influencing and guiding workers towards attainment of goals.
- It denotes a few qualities to be present in a person which includes intelligence, maturity and personality.
- It is a group process. It involves two or more people interacting with each other.
- A leader is involved in shaping and moulding the behaviour of the group towards accomplishment of organizational goals.
- Leadership is situation bound. There is no best style of leadership. It all depends upon tackling with the situations.
Importance of Leadership
Leadership is an important function of management which helps to maximize efficiency and to achieve organizational goals. The following points justify the importance of leadership in a concern.
- Initiates action- Leader is a person who starts the work by communicating the policies and plans to the subordinates from where the work actually starts.
- Motivation- A leader proves to be playing an incentive role in the concern’s working. He motivates the employees with economic and non-economic rewards and thereby gets the work from the subordinates.
- Providing guidance- A leader has to not only supervise but also play a guiding role for the subordinates. Guidance here means instructing the subordinates the way they have to perform their work effectively and efficiently.
- Creating confidence- Confidence is an important factor which can be achieved through expressing the work efforts to the subordinates, explaining them clearly their role and giving them guidelines to achieve the goals effectively. It is also important to hear the employees with regards to their complaints and problems.
- Building morale- Morale denotes willing co-operation of the employees towards their work and getting them into confidence and winning their trust. A leader can be a morale booster by achieving full co-operation so that they perform with best of their abilities as they work to achieve goals.
Outstanding leaders see the whole picture and do not get too focused on specific tasks or initiatives. They have deep knowledge of related industries/organizations and are seen as strategic thinkers. They often have strong networks and consistently identify important trends early in their life cycle. They are very good at communicating a vision of the future and getting organizational buy-in.
Strong leaders know their target customers, understand the organization's value proposition and also, its competitive weaknesses. They focus on enhancing core competencies of the organization and developing the skills and capabilities that will enhance their value proposition.
They are excellent at establishing clear goals and objectives for the organization, and for their direct subordinates. Importantly, they are also able to provide clear and convincing rationale that supports their vision of the future.
Courage
To have courage requires confidence. The best leaders are very confident in themselves and their ideas, which allows them to be decisive. But, they must be able to exude that confidence without conveying arrogance or intimidation!
Great leaders have the ability to make tough decisions and are willing to take risks, even when conventional wisdom would dictate otherwise. They must be willing to stand alone if they believe in their convictions. This is directly related to their visionary skills, strategic thinking and their self confidence.
They are also able to recognize when they need the expertise or knowledge of others and are not afraid to admit it.
Communication Skills
Great leaders do not have to be great orators or exceptional writers. What is required is that they are inspirational and persuasive. They can speak and write to the audience’s level, focusing on the WIFM (“What’s in it for me”). They communicate in a way that generates buy-in and willing followers. Because if you can’t succeed in doing those two things, you cannot effectively lead.
Good leaders must always be truthful, even delivering the bad news when appropriate. But, they generally exude a positive attitude and are seen as optimistic, even in the most troubling of times.
Even if they do not have a professional background or training in sales, leaders often exhibit elements of effective selling skills. They have the ability to advance their ideas in a logical and understandable way to all levels of the organization.
Team Builder
Great leaders must have outstanding team building skills. This requires first and foremost the ability to attract and retain top talent.
Every great leader knows they cannot do it alone and that having the best talent enhances the opportunity for success. They know they need to build a team with complementary skill sets and experiences and constantly look to bring in people that know more than they do (this is because they are confident).
Importantly, they also understand that a team performs best when its members have differing personalities and styles, to expand perspectives when problem solving and avoid getting caught up in “group think.”
A good leader is often more of a facilitator of the team, able to generate healthy discussions and generate consensus. Great leaders know that if the team believes in, and is committed to a strategy or plan, the chance of success goes up immensely. The team becomes passionate about doing what they said they would do. Conversely, when a team feels that the leader will force them to do what he or she thinks is best, innovation is lost and there is little passion.
The best leaders are highly organized and trust the team members to do their respective jobs. The leader becomes a delegator, setting clear expectations and providing on-going feedback.
Finally, effective leaders regularly and publicly recognize others. They are quick to accept blame for failures, even when they may have not been directly responsible. And are just as quick to give others credit for successes rather than themselves.
Trait Approach to Leadership
The trait model of leadership is based on the characteristics of many leaders - both successful and unsuccessful - and is used to predict leadership effectiveness. The resulting lists of traits are then compared to those of potential leaders to assess their likelihood of success or failure.
Scholars taking the trait approach attempted to identify physiological (appearance, height, and weight), demographic (age, education and socioeconomic background), personality, self-confidence, and aggressiveness), intellective (intelligence, decisiveness, judgment, and knowledge), task-related (achievement drive, initiative, and persistence), and social characteristics (sociability and cooperativeness) with leader emergence and leader effectiveness.
Successful leaders definitely have interests, abilities, and personality traits that are different from those of the less effective leaders. Through many researches conducted in the last three decades of the 20th century, a set of core traits of successful leaders have been identified. These traits are not responsible solely to identify whether a person will be a successful leader or not, but they are essentially seen as preconditions that endow people with leadership potential.
Among the core traits identified are:
Achievement drive: High level of effort, high levels of ambition, energy and initiative Leadership motivation: an intense desire to lead others to reach shared goals Honesty and integrity: trustworthy, reliable, and open Self-confidence: Belief in one’s self, ideas, and ability Cognitive ability: Capable of exercising good judgment, strong analytical abilities, and conceptually skilled Knowledge of business: Knowledge of industry and other technical matters Emotional Maturity: well adjusted, does not suffer from severe psychological disorders. Others: charisma, creativity and flexibility.
Limitations of The Trait Theory
There is bound to be some subjective judgment in determining who is regarded as a ‘good’ or ‘successful’ leader The list of possible traits tends to be very long. More than 100 different traits of successful leaders in various leadership positions have been identified. These descriptions are simply generalities. There is also a disagreement over which traits are the most important for an effective leader The model attempts to relate physical traits such as, height and weight, to effective leadership. Most of these factors relate to situational factors. For example, a minimum weight and height might be necessary to perform the tasks efficiently in a military leadership position. In business organizations, these are not the requirements to be an effective leader. The theory is very complex
Applications of Trait Approach
Use assessment to identify and compare the traits that an individual possess and use trait measures to assess your own characteristics. Compare the traits leaders’ exhibit and use assessments to see who has these traits. Organizations can use personality assessment instruments to identify how individuals will fit within their organizations. This helps them select the right candidate and in turn helps increasing organizational effectiveness. Trait information can suggest areas in which employees personal characteristics are beneficial to the organization. The trait approach can be used for personal awareness and development by analyzing strengths and weaknesses to gain a better understanding of their traits. Use personality tests and other similar questionnaires to gain insight into your current capabilities with regard to certain traits that are deemed important for leadership. Use assessment tests to understand your strengths and weaknesses with regard to leadership. Use assessment to determine careers or development needs that fit your personality and therefore offers you a greater chance of success. Use the assessment results to understand the traits that are good to have if one aspires for a leadership position. Use the results to develop a deeper understanding of how your personality based on traits affect others in the organization. Identify the areas in which you may want to get more training to enhance your levels.
Skills Approach
In the skills approach we shift our thinking from a focus on personality characteristics, which usually are view edasinnate and largely fixed, to an emphasison skills and abilities that can be learned and developed. Although personality certainly plays an integral role in leadership, the skills approach suggests that knowledge and abilities are needed for effective leadership.
Researchers have studied leadership skills directly or indirectly for a number of years (seeBass,1990,pp.97–109). However, the impetus for research on skills was a classic article published by Robert Katzinthe Harvard Business Review in 1955,
titled “Skills of an Effective Administra tor”. Katz’s article appeared at a time when researchers we retry in to identify a definitive set of leadership traits. Katz’s approach was an attempt totranscend the trait problem by addressing leadership as ase to develop- able skills. More recently, are vitalized interest in the skills approach has emerged. Beginning in the early1990s ,a multitude of studies have been published that contend that a leader’s effectiveness depends on the leader’s ability to solve complex organizational problems. This research has result Edina comprehensive skill based model of leadership that was advanced by Mumfordand his colleagues. In this chapter, our discussion of the skills approach is divided into two parts. First, we discuss the general ideas set forth by Katz regarding three basic administrative skills: technical, human and conceptual. Second,we discuss there cent work of Mumfordand colleagues that has result edina new skills-based model of organizational leadership.
Katz’s Three-Skill Approach
The skills theory of leadership emerged as a prominent theory in 1955 when Robert Katz published his paper "Skills of an Effective Administrator" in the "Harvard Business Review." The research was based on Katz’s own first hand observations of executives in the workplace and on field research in administration. He suggested in the paper that effective administration or leadership depends on three basic personal skills: technical, human, and conceptual. He identified these three skill areas as the most important skills that the executives had in common and used on a regular basis.
What are the three Skill Areas?
Katz identified three skills; technical, human, and conceptual as the basic personal skills essential for leadership. Technical skills related to the field, human skills related to communicating with people and conceptual skills related to setting vision.
Skill 1: Technical Skills:
As defined by Katz in 1955, ‘Technical skill is knowledge about and proficiency in a specific type of work or activity. It includes competencies in a specialized area, analytical ability, and the ability to use appropriate tools and techniques’. Technical skills play an essential role in producing the actual products a company is designed to produce. Having appropriate technical skills signify that the person is competent and knowledgeable with respect to the activities specific to an organization, the organization’s rules and standard operating procedures, and the organization’s products and services.
Examples of Technical Skills:
For a Software Company the following skills or knowledge areas can be considered as technical skills; Knowledge of Unix/Linux Operating System, Java/C++/Perl Programming Language, MySQL/Oracle Database Management, XML - Extensible Markup Language, HTML Skills etc.
In an accounting firm, technical skill might include understanding of generally accepted accounting principles, accounting principles, knowledge of commercial laws, knowledge of tax laws etc.
This skill is most important for top managers This skill is comparatively less important for middle managers This skill is least important for supervisory managers
Necessary skill to climb the career ladder
Examples of Conceptual Skills:
Some conceptual skills that are generally considered important are creativity, decision making, wing to wing interconnectedness, thinking as a whole, strategic thinking, problem solving etc.
Katz’s Three-Skill Approach
Skill model
The skill-based model of Mumford’s group has five components: competencies, individual attributes, leadership outcomes, career experiences, and environmental influences. A portion of the model, illustrating three of these components, appears in Figure3.2. This portion of the model is essential to understanding the overall skill-based leadership model.
Competencies
As can be observed in the middle box in Figure3.2, problem-solving skills, social judgment skills, and knowledge are at the heart of the skills model. These three competencies are the key factors that account for effective performance. Problem-Solving Skills. According to Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, etal.(2000), problem-solving skills area leader’s creative ability to solve new and unusual, ill-defined organizational problems. The skills include being able to define significant problems, gather problem information, formulate new understandings about the problem, and generate prototype plans for problem solutions. These skills do not function in a vacuum, but are carried out in an organizational context. Problem-solving skills demand that leaders understand their own leadership capacities as they apply possible solutions to the unique problems in their organization.
Being able to construct solutions plays a special role in problem solving. In considering solutions to organizational problems, skilled leaders need to attend to the time frame for constructing and implementing a solution, short-term and long-term goals, career goals and organizational goals, and external issues, all of which could influence the solution.
To clarify what is meant by problem-solving skills, consider the follow ing hypothetical situation. Imagine that you are the director of human resources for a medium-sized company and you have been in formed by the president that you have to develop a plan to reduce the company’s health care costs. In deciding what you will do, you could demonstrate problem-solving skills in the following ways. First, you identify the full ramifications for employees of changing their health insurance coverage. What is the impact going to be? Second, you gather information about how benefits can be scaled back. What other companies have attempted a similar change, and what were their results? Third, you find a way to teach and inform the employees about the needed change. How can you frame the change in such away that it is clearly understood? Fourth, you create possible scenarios for how the changes will be instituted. How will the plan be described? Fifth, you look closely at the solution itself. How will implementing this change affect the company’s mission and your own career? Last, are there issues in the organization (e.g., union rules)that may affect the implementation of these changes?
As illustrated by this example, the process of dealing with novel, ill-defined organizational problems is complex and demanding for leaders. In many ways, it is like a puzzle to be solved. For leaders to solve such puz zles, the skill-based model suggests that problem- solving skills are essential.
Social Judgment Skills. In addition to problem-solving skills, effective leadership performance also requires social judgment skills (seeFigure3.2). In general, social judgment skills are the capacity to understand people and social systems. They enable leaders to work with others to solve problems and to marshal support to implement change with in an organization. Social judgment skills are the people skills that are necessary to solve unique organizational problems.
INDIVIDUAL ATTRIBUTES COMPETENCIES^
LEADERSHIP OUTCOMES Problem- Solving Skills Social Judgment Skills Knowledge
General Cognitive Ability Crystallized Cognitive Ability Motivation Personalit y
Effective Problem Solving
Performance
them. People with a lot of knowledge have more complex organizing structures than those with less knowledge. These knowledgeable people are called experts.
Consider the following base ball example. A baseball expert knows a lot off acts about the game; the expert knows the rules, strategies, equipment, players, and much, much more. The expert’s knowledge about baseball includes the facts, but it also includes the complex mental structures used in organizing and structuring those facts. That person knows not only the season and life time statistics for each player, but also that player’s quirks and injuries, the personality of the manager, the strengths and weaknesses of available substitutes, and soon. The expert knows base ball because she or he comprehends the complexities and nuances of the game. The same is true for leadership in organizations. Leaders with knowledge know much about the products, the tasks, the people, the organization, and all the different ways these elements are related to each other. A knowledge- able leader has many mental structures with which to organize the facts of organizational life.
Knowledge has a positive impact on how leaders engage in problem solving. It is knowledge and expertise that make it possible for people to think about complex system issues and identify possible strategies for appropriate change. Further more, this capacity allows people to use prior cases and incidents in order to plan for needed change. It is knowledge that allows people to use the past to constructively confront the future. To summarize, the skills model consists of three competencies: problem-solving skills, social judgment skills, and knowledge. Collectively, these three components are positively related to effective leadership performance (see Figure3.2).
Individual Attributes The box on the left identifies four individual attributes that have an impact on leadership skills and knowledge: general cognitive ability, crystallized cognitive ability, motivation, and personality. These attributes play important roles in the skills model. Complex problem solving is a very difficult process and becomes more difficult as people move up in the organization. These attributes support people as they apply their leadership competencies.
General Cognitive Ability. General cognitive ability can be though to fasa person’s intelligence. It includes perceptual processing, information processing, general reasoning skills ,creative and divergent thinking capacities, and memory skills. General cognitive ability is linked to biology, not to experience.
General cognitive ability is sometimes described as fluid intelligence, a type of intelligence that usually grows and expands up through early adulthood and then declines with age. In the skills model, intelligences described as having a positive impact on the leader’s acquisition of com plex problem-solving skills and the leader’s knowledge. Crystallized Cognitive Ability. Crystallized cognitive ability is intellectual ability that is learned or acquired overtime. It is the store of knowledge we acquire through experience. We learn and increase our capacities over a lifetime, increasing our leadership potential (e.g., problem-solving skills, conceptual ability, and social judgment skills). In normally functioning adults, this type of cognitive ability grows continuously and typically does not fall off in adulthood. It includes being able to comprehend complex information and learn new skills and information, as well as being able to communicate to others in or a land written forms. Stated another way, crystallized cognitive ability is acquired intelligence :the ideas and mental abilities people learn through experience. Because it stays fairly stable overtime, this type of intelligence is not diminished as people get older.
Motivation. Motivation is listed as the third attribute in the model. Although them does not purport to explain the many ways in which motivation may affect leadership, it does suggest three aspects of motivation that are essential to developing leadership skills (Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding,etal.,2000,p.22):First, leaders must be willing to tackle com plex organizational problems. This first
step is critical. For leadership to occur, a person wants to lead. Second, leaders must be willing to express dominance —to exert their influence, as we discussed in Chapter 2. In influencing others, the leader must take on the responsibility of dominance because the influence component of leadership is inextricably bound to dominance. Third, leaders must be committed to the social good of the organization. The social good is abroad term that can refer to a host of outcomes. However, in the skills model it refers to the leader’s willingness to take on the responsibility of trying to advance the overall human good and value of the organization. Taken together, these three aspects of motivation (willingness, dominance, and social good) prepare people to become leaders. Personality. Personality is the fourth individual attribute in the skills model. Placed where it is in the model, this attribute reminds us that our personality has an impact on the development of our leadership skills. For example, openness, tolerance for ambiguity, and curiosity may affect a leader’s motivation to try to solve some organizational problem. Or, in conflict situations, traits such as confidence and adaptability may be beneficial to a leader’s performance. The skills model hypo the sizes that any personality characteristic that helps people to cope with complex organizational situ ations probably is related to leader performance.
Leadership Outcomes Effective problem solving and performance are the outcomes of leadership. These outcomes are strongly influenced by the leader’s competencies (i.e.,problem-solving skills, social judgment skills, and knowledge). When leaders exhibit these competencies, they increase their chance so problem solving and overall performance.
Effective Problem Solving. The skills model is a capa bility model, designed to explain why some leaders are good problem solv ers and others are not. Problem solving is the keystone in the skills approach. In the model (seeFigure3.2), problem-solving skills, as competencies, lead to effective problem solving as a leadership outcome. The criteria for good problem solving are determined by the originality and the quality of expressed solutions to problems. Good problem solving involves creating solutions that are logical, effective, and unique, and that go beyond given information (Zaccaro et al.,2000). Performance In the model, performance outcomes reflect how well the leader has done her or his job. To measure performance, standard external criteria are used. If the leader has done well and been successful, the leader’s evaluations will be positive. Leaders who are effective receive good annual performance reviews, get merit raises, and are recognized by superiors and subordinates as competent leaders. In the end, performance is the degree to which a leader has successfully performed the assigned duties. Taken together, effective problem solving and performance are the two ways to assess leadership effectiveness using the skills model. Further more, good problem solving and good performance go hand in hand. A full depiction of the comprehensive skills model appears .It contains two other components, not depicted that contribute to overall leadership performance: career experiences and environ mental influences.
Career Experiences Career experiences have an impact on the characteristics and competencies of leaders. The skills model suggests that the experiences acquired in the course of leaders’ careers influence their knowledge and skills to solve complex problems. Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, et al. (2000, p. 24) pointed out that leaders can be helped through challenging job assignments, mentoring, appropriate training, and hands-on experience in solving new and unusual problems. In addi- tion, the authors think that career experiences can positively affect the individual characteristics of leaders. For example, certain on-the-job assignments could enhance a leader’s motivation or intellectual ability. In the first section of this chapter ,we discussed Katz’s(1955)work, which notes that conceptual skills are is consistent with Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, etal.’s(2000) skills model, which contends that leaders develop competencies over time. Career experience helps leaders to improve their skills and knowledge over time. Leaders learn and develop higher levels of conceptual capacity if the kinds of problems they confront are progressively more complex and more long term as they ascend the organizational hierarchy. Similarly, upper-level leaders, as opposed to first-line supervisors, develop new competencies because they are required to address problems that are more novel, that are more poorly defined, and that demand more human interaction. As these people move through their careers, higher
Last, the skills approach provides a structure that is very consistent with the curricula of most leadership education programs. Leadership education programs throughout the country have traditionally taught classes in creative problem solving ,conflict resolution, listening, and teamwork, to name a few. The content of these classes closely mirrors many of the components in the skills model. Clearly, the skills approach provides a structure that helps to frame the curricula of leadership education and development programs.
Criticisms Like all other approaches to leadership, the skills approach also has certain weaknesses. First, the breadth of the skills approach seems to extend beyond the boundaries of leadership. For example, by including motivation, critical thinking, personality, and conflict resolution, the skills approach addresses more than just leadership. Another example of the model’s breadth is its inclusion of two types of intelligence (i.e., general cognitive ability and crystallized cognitive ability).Although both are as are studied widely in the field of cognitive psychology, they are seldom addressed in leadership research. By including so many components, the skills model of Mumford and others becomes more general and less precise in explaining leadership performance. Second, related to the first criticism, the skills model is weak in predictive value. It does not explain specifically how variations in social judgment skills and problem-solving skills affect performance. The model suggests that these components are related, but it does not describe with any precision just how that works. In short, the model can be faulted because it does not explain how skills lead to effective leader ship performance.
In addition, the skills approach can be criticized for claiming not to be a trait model. when, in fact, a major component in the model includes individual attributes, which are trait-like. Although Mumford and colleagues describe cognitive abilities, motivation, and personality variables as factors contributing to competencies, these are also factors that are typically considered to be trait variables. The point is that the individual attributes component of the skills model is trait driven, and that shifts the model away from being strictly a skills approach to leadership. The final criticism of the skills approach is that it may not be suitably or appropriately applied to other contexts of leadership. The skills model was constructed by using a large sample of military personnel and observing their performance in the armed services. This raises anobvious question: Can there sults be generalized to other populations or organizational settings? Although some research suggests that these Army findings can be generalized to other groups (Mumford, Zaccaro, Connelly, et al., 2000), more research is needed to address this criticism.
Applications Despite its appeal to the orists and academics, the skills approach has not been widely used in applied leadership settings. For example, there are not raining packages designed specifically to teach people leadership skills from this approach. Although many programs have been designed to teach leadership skills from a general self-help orientation, few of these programs are based on the conceptual frameworks set forth in this chapter. Despite the lack of formal training programs, the skills approach offers valuable information about leadership. The approach provides away to delineate the skills of the leader, and leaders at all levels in an organization can use it. In addition, this approach helps us to identify our strengths and weaknesses in regard to these technical, human, and conceptual skills. By taking a skills inventory such as the one provided at the end of this chapter, people can gain further insight into their own leadership competencies. Their scores allow them to learn about are as in which they may want to seek further training to enhance their overall contributions to their organization. From a wider perspective, the skills approach may be used in the future as a template for the design of extensive leadership development programs. This approach provides the evidence for teaching leaders the important aspects of listening, creative problem solving, conflict resolution skills, and much more.
Leadership Theories - Important Theories of Leadership Just as management knowledge is supported by various theories, the leadership function of management too is authenticated by various theories. While the behavioural theories of leadership focused on discovering the constant relationship between leadership behaviours and the group performance, the contemporary theories emphasized the significance of situational factors (such as stress level, job structure, leader’s intelligence, followers’ traits, etc.) as well.
Some of the important leadership theories are as follows:
Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid House’s Path Goal Theory Great Man Theory Trait Theory Leadership-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory Transformational Leadership Transactional Leadership Continuum of Leadership Behaviour Likert’s Management System Hersey Blanchard Model Fiedler’s Contingency Model
Ohio State Leadership Studies Explained with Examples Ohio State Leadership Studies is Behavioural Leadership Theory. Series of studies on leadership was done by the Ohio State University in 1945 to identify observable behaviours of leaders instead of focusing on their individual traits. They found two critical characteristics of leadership either of which could be high or low or independent of one another. The research was based on questionnaires to leaders and subordinates of the organizations.These are known as the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LDBQ) and the Supervisor Behavior Description Questionnaire (SBDQ). Ultimately, these studies narrowed the description of leader behavior into two dimensions:
Initiating Structure Behavior: The behavior of leaders who define the leader-subordinate role so that everyone knows what is expected, establish formal lines of communication, and determine how tasks will be performed.
Consideration Behavior: The behavior of leaders who are concerned for subordinates and attempt to establish a worm, friendly, and supportive climate.
The Ohio State Leadership Studies also showed that initiating structure and consideration are two distinct dimensions and not mutually exclusive. A low score on one does not require a high score on the other. Hence, leadership behavior can be plotted on two separate axes rather than on a single continuum, as shown in the following diagram;
The Michigan Leadership Studies were-conducted around the same time as the Ohio State Leadership Studies , which also identified the focus on task and people. The Michigan Leadership Studies added “Participative leadership” to the Ohio findings, moving the debate further into the question of leading terms rather than just individuals.
Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid
The treatment of task orientation and people orientation as two independent dimensions was a major step in leadership studies. Many of the leadership studies conducted in the 1950s at the University of Michigan and the Ohio State University focused on these two dimensions.
Building on the work of the researchers at these Universities, Robert Blake and Jane Mouton (1960s) proposed a graphic portrayal of leadership styles through a managerial grid (sometimes called leadership grid ). The grid depicted two dimensions of leader behavior, concern for people (accommodating people’s needs and giving them priority) on y-axis and concern for production (keeping tight schedules) on x-axis, with each dimension ranging from low (1) to high (9), thus creating 81 different positions in which the leader’s style may fall. (See figure 1).
The five resulting leadership styles are as follows:
- Impoverished Management (1, 1): Managers with this approach are low on both the dimensions and exercise minimum effort to get the work done from subordinates. The leader has low concern for employee satisfaction and work deadlines and as a result disharmony and disorganization prevail within the organization. The leaders are termed ineffective wherein their action is merely aimed at preserving job and seniority.
- Task management (9, 1): Also called dictatorial or perish style. Here leaders are more concerned about production and have less concern for people. The style is based on theory X of McGregor. The employees’ needs are not taken care of and they are simply a means to an end. The leader believes that efficiency can result only through proper organization of work systems and through elimination of people wherever possible. Such a style can definitely increase the output of organization in short run but due to the strict policies and procedures, high labour turnover is inevitable.
- Middle-of-the-Road (5, 5): This is basically a compromising style wherein the leader tries to maintain a balance between goals of company and the needs of people. The leader does not push the boundaries of achievement resulting in average performance for organization. Here neither employee nor production needs are fully met.
- Country Club (1, 9): This is a collegial style characterized by low task and high people orientation where the leader gives thoughtful attention to the needs of people thus providing them with a friendly and comfortable environment. The leader feels that such a treatment with employees will lead to self-motivation and will find people working hard on their own. However, a low focus on tasks can hamper production and lead to questionable results.
- Team Management (9, 9): Characterized by high people and task focus, the style is based on the theory Y of McGregor and has been termed as most effective style according to Blake and Mouton. The leader feels that empowerment, commitment, trust, and respect are the key elements in creating a team atmosphere which will automatically result in high employee satisfaction and production.
Advantages of Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid
The Managerial or Leadership Grid is used to help managers analyze their own leadership styles through a technique known as grid training. This is done by administering a questionnaire that helps managers identify how they stand with respect to their concern for production and people. The training is aimed at basically helping leaders reach to the ideal state of 9, 9.
Limitations of Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid
The model ignores the importance of internal and external limits, matter and scenario. Also, there are some more aspects of leadership that can be covered but are not.