Leadership Behavior and

Leadership Development
Unit 7
Leadership behavior
• Leadership behavior refers to the consideration of various leadership
approaches by the leaders while taking decisions and dealing with
subordinates.
• The success of leaders in their leadership profession is based on their
behavior rather than natural attributes.
• Leadership behavior may be defined as the way in which one acts or
conducts oneself, Leadership behaviors may be defined as the
combination of specific characteristics of the leaders and their actions.
Strong leadership behaviors enhance leadership effectiveness and
thus overall performance of the organization.
Types of leadership behavior
• Directive behavior
• Supportive behavior
• Participative behavior
Supportive leadership Behavior
These behaviors provide psychological support for subordinates. The leader is friendly and
approachable, makes the work more pleasant, treat employees equally and shows
concern for the status, needs, and well being of employees. Supportive leadership is a
people-centered leadership.

• The following are the major features of supportive leadership.

• Concern for employee needs/ preferences
• More autonomy to the employees
• Creation of a supportive work environment
• Providing positive feedback Fostering team cohesion and openness
• Participation of the employees in decision-making process
• Nurturing positive morale
• Facilitating discussions (as opposed to dominating them)
Directive Leadership Behavior
The leader clarifies performance goals, the means to reach those goals, and the
standard against which performance will be judged. It is the same as tasks oriented and
initiating structure behavior. The leader focuses on planning, ma organizing, and
coordinating the activities of subordinates. The leader tells subordinates what is
expected of them and provides specific guidance, schedules, rules, regulations, and
standards.
The following are the major features of directive leadership.
• Job centered approach
• Control over subordinates.
• Strict adherence to rules and regulations.
• Dominating interactions
• Close supervision
• Focus ontime management
Participative Leadership Behavior
Participative leaders actively consult with employees, ask for their
suggestions and take these ideas into serious consideration before
making a decision. It is also called democratic leadership behavior.
The following are the major features of participative leadership.
• Encouragement the employees to participate in the decision-making
process.
• Guidance to the employees in their job performance.
• There is two-way communication between the leader and employees.
• The suggestions and views of the employees are listened to, valued,
and considered by the leader
Professional Development to Leaders
• Leaders should be professional in their own area of the profession to
lead the where organization and its functions in an effective way.
There are several advice environmental factors that create
complexities and challenges in leadership jobs.
• Therefore, to become a successful leader in a competitive
environment leaders must have some fundamental skills consisting of
conceptual, human relations and technical skills. So, the leader needs
to develop different skills to prove himself as a successful manager.
There are different sources of professional development to leaders
such as formal education, training, men coaching, experience,
mentoring, counseling, and problem-solving etc.
Coaching:
• In coaching, supervisors are guided by their immediate line managers
with more explicit and short-term purposes. Line managers coach to
supervisors through formal direction, criticism and suggestion for doing
managerial jobs. They provide job assignments to supervisors for
accomplishment in an effective manner.
• If any error occurred in the course of doing the job, line managers
provide guidelines so that supervisors can correct themselves and
complete the job properly. It is suitable for the improvement of the
working ability of supervisors. It focuses on removing poor performance
in actual work life. It is a flexible technique of training to meet the
changing demand of the organization. It develops the leadership of the
supervisors which can be the means of promotion to a higher level.
Mentoring:
Mentoring is a relationship between a senior and a junior where the
elder person guides the younger person in difficult times, and gives
advice and support to accomplish the assigned job effectively. It is said
to be an important source of professional development to leadership.
In an organization, the senior helps the junior through his early career.
He gives guidance, suggests, training if required, and helps to make the
right career choices. Many organizations have an active mentoring
program.
A mentor is someone who can patiently assist with someone's growth
and development in a given area. This assistance can come in the form
of guidance, teaching, and imparting of wisdom and experience. A
mentor should provide a vision, willingness to support, counsel and
access to professional development of leadership.
Counseling:
• Career counseling is a process that helps individuals to know and understand
themselves and the scope of work in order to make career, educational, and
life decisions. It provides techniques that support individuals in making
complex decisions and facing difficult situations. The focus of career
counseling is generally on issues such as career exploration, career change,
personal career development and other career-related issues which
facilitates to leadership development.

• In an organization, career counselors help employees with the task of self-

assessment and self analysis. They try to match the ability, skills and
interests of the employees with various job types. They help employees
make informed career choices and help them to choose their career paths to
maximize success in future professions and to become a successful leader.
Leadership Development Mechanisms
• Leadership development is the process of imparting knowledge, skills,
attitudes, and visions to the managerial leaders so that they can
discharge their responsibilities more professionally, effectively and
efficiently. Leadership development programs transform managers
into leaders, and leaders are further developed through certain
structured mechanisms like recruitment, training and learning,
delegation, mentoring, experimental learning and 360-degree
appraisal,
• Recruitment:
• Recruitment is the process of searching new employees, managers and
leaders in the organization. The leadership development program will be
effective if the selection of new people for the organization have positive
attitude towards learning for changing behavior. The leadership
development programs as they are learning programs, basically starts
with the selection of people who are interested in learning, unlearning,
and relearning.
• Here, for the learning process, recruitment is to select the person for the
leadership development program. The participant leaders for leadership
development program must have the learning capability to develop
qualities of leadership very fast. We can use psychometric assessment,
interviews, and simulation exercises for selection of potential leaders for
the program.
Training:

• Systematic training programs are the most powerful tools to enhance the
leadership ability. Training both on-the-job as well as off-the-job are used for
increasing integrity, loyalty, commitment, energy, decisiveness, and
selflessness. We can organize the workshops for the longer training to induce
a particular skill or to induce a trait to solve specific problem. Training can be
short term or long term based on the skills essential to develop.
Delegation:

• Through delegation of authority to the subordinate, we can develop the leadership ability
within them. Through delegation of authority, subordinate gets opportunity to be creative,
innovative and analytical to solve any particular problem in guidance and observation of
leader. It is a formal way of improving leadership capabilities. But, delegation of authority to
each employee is not possible, thus, ability and skill-set of the person to whom the
responsibility is to be delegated must be carefully evaluated beforehand.

• The leaders developed through empowerment through delegation become ready to apply
their skills immediately. But, delegation is not merely passing on the responsibility and
assignment, relatively it is a deliberate process. Just delegation of responsibility and
authority is not enough; for it role boundaries should be decided properly.
Experiential learning:

• Experiential learning is the process of learning from direct experience.

Experiential learning is suitable if the skills can be developed through experiment,
practical skills, through trial and error, and the opportunity to practice techniques
related to real tasks is essential. For example, students go to internship to
implement their knowledge in to job, they learn skills essential for their career
development, or they will be familiar with the real work environment.

• On-the-job training, equipment simulators, management and decision games and

simulation, case study and analysis, roleplay, behavioral modelling, and sensitivity
are more commonly known experiential methods of learning.
• Mentoring:

• Mentorship is the process of influencing, guidance, or directing given to the followers

i.e., employees to improve leadership skills and competencies. The person who
influence, guide or direct the employees is called mentor and the person to which the
mentoring is focused is called mentee. In an organizational setting, a mentor influences
the personal and professional growth of a mentee.

• Mentoring is a partnership between mentor and mentee who are working in a similar
field or sharing similar experiences. In general, an experienced senior leader becomes
mentor and the less experienced manager or employee become the mentee. For
effective mentoring, mentor and mentee relationship should be long, based on good
faith and mutual respect.
• 360 Degree appraisal:

• 360 Degree feedback is an evaluation system or process in which employees receive

confidential, anonymous feedback from the people who work around them for
example co-workers, supervisor, customers, and manager. The employee who
receives feedback also provides self-rating survey. This strategy helps workers
understand their strengths and weaknesses from a variety of perspectives.

• The advantages of 360-degree appraisal include drawing on many different sources,

strengthening teamwork, and uncovering procedural issues that might otherwise go
unnoticed. The 360degree appraisal is basically used as an assessment for personnel
development rather than evaluation.