Chapter 4 - Style Approach

Leadership

Chapter 4 - Style Approach

Northouse, 4th edition

Chapter 4 - Style Approach

Overview
 Style Approach Perspective
 Ohio State Studies
 University of Michigan Studies
 Blake & Mouton’s Leadership Grid
 How Does the Style Approach Work?
 Chapter 4 - Style Approach

Style Approach Description

Perspective Definition

Comprised of two general

 Emphasizes the
kinds of Behaviors
behavior of the
leader
 Focuses exclusively
on what leaders do
and how they act
Task behaviors
Facilitate goal
accomplishment: Help group
members achieve objectives
Relationship behaviors
Help subordinates feel
comfortable with themselves,
each other, and the situation
Chapter 4 - Style Approach
Chapter 4 - Style Approach

The Behavioral Approach to

Leadership
 Categories of essential leadership behaviors:

 Task-oriented behaviors

 -Help group members achieve goals and objectives

 -Initiating Structure”

 -Concern for Results”

 Relationship-oriented behaviors

 -Help group members feel comfortable with themselves, each

other, and the situation
 -Develop healthy relationships

 -Consideration

 -Concern for People

Chapter 4 - Style Approach

 Research indicates:
 1) Relationship-oriented behavior predicts
– Employee job satisfaction
– Employee work motivation
– Perceptions of leader effectiveness
 2) Task-oriented behavior predicts
– Leader performance
– Team performance
– Employee performance
Chapter 4 - Style Approach

The theory:
– The most effective leaders are both highly
task-oriented and highly relationship-
oriented.
Chapter 4 - Style Approach

Ohio State Studies

Leadership Behavior Description

Questionnaire (LBDQ)
– Identify number of times leaders engaged in
specific behaviors
 150 questions
– Participant settings (military, industrial,
educational)
– Results
 Particular clusters of behaviors were typical of
leaders
 Chapter 4 - Style Approach

Ohio State Studies, cont’d.

 LBDQ-XII (Stogdill, 1963)
– Shortened version of the LBDQ
– Most widely used leadership assessment instrument
– Results - Two general types of leader behaviors:
 Initiating structure – Leaders provide structure for
subordinates
• Task behaviors - organizing work, giving structure to the
work context, defining role responsibility, scheduling work
activities
 Consideration - Leaders nurture subordinates
• Relationship behaviors – building camaraderie, respect,
trust, & liking between leaders & followers
 Chapter 4 - Style Approach

University of Michigan Studies

 Exploring leadership behavior
– Specific emphasis on impact of leadership behavior on
performance of small groups
 Results - Two types of leadership behaviors
conceptualized as opposite ends of a single continuum
– Employee orientation
 Strong human relations emphasis
– Production orientation
 Stresses the technical aspects of a job
– Later studies reconceptualized behaviors as two
independent leadership orientations - possible orientation
to both at the same time
Chapter 4 - Style Approach

Blake & Mouton’s Managerial

(Leadership) Grid
 Historical Perspective
 Leadership Grid Components
– Authority-Compliance
–Country Club Management
–Impoverished Management
–Middle-of-the-Road Management
–Team Management
–Paternalism/Maternalism
–Opportunism
Chapter 4 - Style Approach
 Chapter 4 - Style Approach

Historical Perspective
Blake & Mouton’s Managerial Leadership Grid
Development Purpose

 Designed to explain how

 Developed in
leaders help organizations to
early 1960s reach their purposes
 Used extensively – Two factors
in organizational  Concern for production
• How a leader is concerned
training & with achieving
development organizational tasks
 Concern for people
• How a leader attends to the
members of the organization
who are trying to achieve its
goals
 Chapter 4 - Style Approach

Authority-Compliance
Definition Role Focus

 Efficiency in  Heavy emphasis on task

operations results and job requirements and
from arranging less emphasis on people
conditions of work  Communicating with
such that human subordinates outside task
interference is instructions not emphasized
minimal  Results driven - people
regarded as tools to that end
 leaders – seen as controlling,
demanding, hard-driving &
overpowering
 Chapter 4 - Style Approach

Country Club
Definition Role Focus

 Thoughtful attention  Low concern for task

to the needs of accomplishment coupled
people leads to a with high concern for
comfortable, friendly interpersonal relationships
organizational  De-emphasizes production;
atmosphere and work leaders stress the attitudes
tempo and feelings of people
 leaders – try to create a
positive climate by being
agreeable, eager to help,
comforting, noncontroversial
 Chapter 4 - Style Approach

Impoverished
Definition Role Focus

 Minimal effort  Leader unconcerned with

exerted to get work both task and
done is appropriate interpersonal relationships
to sustain  Going through the motions,
organizational but uninvolved and
membership withdrawn
 leaders - have little contact
with followers and are
described as indifferent,
noncommittal, resigned, and
apathetic
 Chapter 4 - Style Approach

Middle-of-the-Road
Definition Role Focus
 Adequate  Leaders who are
organizational compromisers; have
performance intermediate concern for task
possible through and people who do task
balancing the  To achieve equilibrium, leader
necessity of getting avoids conflict while emphasizing
work done while moderate levels of production and
maintaining interpersonal relationships
satisfactory morale  leaders - described as expedient;
prefers the middle ground, soft-
pedals disagreement, swallows
convictions in the interest of
“progress”
 Chapter 4 - Style Approach

Team
Definition Role Focus
 Work accomplished  Strong emphasis on both
through committed tasks and interpersonal
people; relationships
interdependence  Promotes high degree of
via a “common participation & teamwork,
stake” in the satisfies basic need of employee
organization’s to be involved & committed to
purpose, which their work
leads to  leaders - stimulates
relationships of
participation, acts determined,
trust and respect
makes priorities clear, follows
through, behaves open-mindedly
and enjoys working
 Chapter 4 - Style Approach

Paternalism/Maternalism
Definition Role Focus

 Reward and  Leaders who use both and

approval are without integrating the two
bestowed on  The “benevolent dictator”;
acts gracious for purpose of
people in return
goal accomplishment
for loyalty and
 Treats people as though they
obedience; were disassociated from the
failure to comply task
leads to
punishment
Chapter 4 - Style Approach

Opportunism
Definition Role Focus
 People adapt and  Performance occurs
shift to any grid according to a system of
style needed to selfish gain
gain maximum  Leader uses any
advantage combination of the basic five
styles for the purpose of
personal advancement
 Leader usually has a
dominant grid style used in
most situations and a backup
style that is reverted to when
under pressure
Chapter 4 - Style Approach

How Does the Style

Approach Work?

 Focus of Style Approach

 Strengths
 Criticisms
 Application
Chapter 4 - Style Approach

Style Approach
Focus Overall Scope

 Primarily a  Offers a means of

framework for assessing in a
assessing leadership
general way the
in a broad way, as
behavior with a task behaviors of leaders
and relationship
dimension
 Chapter 4 - Style Approach

Strengths
 Style Approach marked a major shift in leadership research
from exclusively trait focused to include behaviors and
actions of leaders
 Broad range of studies on leadership style validates and
gives credibility to the basic tenets of the approach
 At conceptual level, a leader’s style is composed of two
major types of behaviors: task and relationship
 The style approach is heuristic - leaders can learn a lot about
themselves and how they come across to others by trying to
see their behaviors in light of the task and relationship
dimensions
Chapter 4 - Style Approach

Criticisms
 Research has not adequately demonstrated
how leaders’ styles are associated with
performance outcomes
 No universal style of leadership that could be
effective in almost every situation
 Implies that the most effective leadership
style is High-High style (i.e., high task/high
relationship); research finding support is
limited
 Chapter 4 - Style Approach

Application
 Many leadership training and
development programs are designed
along the lines of the style approach.
 By assessing their own style,
managers can determine how they
are perceived by others and how they
could change their behaviors to
become more effective.
 The style approach applies to
nearly everything a leader does.