Leadership Styles
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Leadership_Theory_----__Pg_122--130_.pdf
5 Theories of Production and Effectiveness “Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people—they manipulate them.”
PAULO FREIRE
Theories of production and effectiveness are grounded largely in management and emphasize the purpose dimension of leadership. Of primary interest is how positional leaders, particularly those with formal authority, engage in social coordination (e.g., supervision, project management) to most efficiently and effectively achieve organizational outcomes. The concern here is production and how best to maximize it. Style theory, situational leadership, and pathgoal each attempt to identify the specific leader behaviors that contribute to this, offering prescriptive advice on the most effective approaches to leading.
In examining theories that comprise the production and effectiveness cluster, it becomes clear that each is a response to the limits addressed by its predecessor. This positions them collectively as a progression in thinking that situates leader behaviors as a primary influence on organizational outcomes. It also draws into question the degree to which each legitimately serves as a theory in its own right or, more realistically, an inflection point along the continuum of a single line of inquiry.
STYLE THEORY Style theory, also referred to as behavioral theory, provides the basis from which most theories of production and effectiveness are derived. It emerged as a direct response to the limitations of trait theory, refocusing research away from the mere possession of traits and attributes and onto specific behavioral enactments of leadership. This was initially in service of identifying a single best way to lead.
Overview Lewin, Lippitt, and White (1939) conducted some of the earliest work on leader behaviors by examining how they contributed to the emergence of different work climates (i.e., autocratic, democratic, or laissezfaire). This, along with Stogdill's (1948) critique of trait theory, served as catalysts for a boom in research that identified behaviors associated with effective leadership. Note that in almost all these studies, leadership is defined as a process of management, with effective leadership a function of employee satisfaction and performance.
The most influential research on style theory was conducted in the 1950s and 1960s at The Ohio State University and the University of Michigan. This research resulted in two meta categories describing leadership behaviors: task and relational (Cartwright & Zander, 1960;
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Fleishman, 1953; Halpin & Winer, 1957; Katz & Kahn, 1951; Likert, 1961). Metacategories serve as overarching themes under which more specific leader behaviors fall. Task behaviors are concerned with efficiency of performance and maximizing productivity, whereas relational behaviors address building affinity between leaders, members, and the larger group to enhance job satisfaction. Yukl (2013) argued that a third metacategory, changeoriented behaviors , emerged from research in the 1980s and is associated with navigating change processes.
The names for metacategories can differ from study to study, along with the specific behaviors that comprise them, but their general definitional parameters are consistent and empirically supported. Table 5.1 provides sample behaviors from each of the three major metacategories of leadership.
TABLE 5.1 Metacategories of leader behaviors
Adapted with permission from source: Yukl, Gary A. Leadership in Organizations, 8th Edition. Copyright © 2013. Reprinted by permission of Pearson Education, Inc., New York, New York.
MetaCategory Sample Behaviors
Task AKA: initiating structure, instrumental, directive, performance orientation, concern for product, production orientation
Organize and assign work to improve efficiency
Explain and clarify rules, policies, expectations, and priorities
Monitor performance and goal achievement
Provide worker feedback and accountability
Direct and coordinate work activities
Resolve problems that disrupt performance
Relational AKA: consideration, supportive, maintenance, concern for people, employee orientation
Socialize with workers to develop positive relationships
Use symbols, traditions, and stories to build group cohesion
Provide support, encouragement, and coaching to workers
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Solicit feedback on decisions that directly affect workers
Foster agency among workers in how best to achieve goals
Assist in resolving issues and conflicts in constructive ways
ChangeOriented Monitor environment to address threats and opportunities
Engage in active vision setting for innovation
Encourage and facilitate creativity and innovation
Foster collective organizational learning
Communicate importance and nature of change processes
Facilitate implementation efforts related to change processes
Applying the Concept Early claims from The Ohio State and Michigan studies suggested that behaviors associated with task and relational metacategories fell along a single continuum, with a leader practicing one more than the other. Later research led scholars to assert that each meta category represented separate and unique continua, with leader enactments ranging from low to high in frequencies on each. This, in turn, shaped employees' levels of satisfaction and productivity.
Blake and Mouton (1964) created a model that translated task and relational behaviors more directly to leadership practice. Originally referred to as the Managerial Grid, their work is now referred to as the Leadership Grid and conceived the two metacategories of task and relational behaviors as falling along separate but intersecting axes. By triangulating the level of concern for tasks with the level of concern for relationships, they created a grid representing multiple leader styles (see Figure 5.1).
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FIGURE 5.1 The leadership grid Reprinted with permission from Blake, R. R. & Mouton, J. S. The New Managerial Grid. Houston: Gulf Publishing Co., 1978.
The Leadership Grid has undergone numerous revisions (Blake & McCanse, 1991; Blake & Mouton, 1964; McKee & Carlson, 1999), resulting in some variation in naming conventions for the styles that emerge based on a leader's relative concern for task and relational behaviors. Variation in naming conventions can be a source of confusion, so both the most common and current labels are provided in the following descriptions:
Indifferent/Impoverished: Reflects low task and low relational behaviors that are generally unconcerned with people or productivity, effectively evading and eluding responsibility.
Accommodating/Country Club: High in relational behaviors and low in task behaviors yielding and complying to people's needs with the hope that happy employees will equate
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to high performance.
Controlling/AuthorityCompliance: Exhibits low relational behaviors, but high task behaviors that are often directive and domineering as employees are reduced to serving as tools for productivity.
Status Quo/Middle of the Road: Moderate levels of both task and relational behaviors in an attempt to balance and compromise but runs the risk of failing to provide adequate support in either area.
Sound/Team: Demonstrates both high task and relational behaviors with strong commitment to goals and positions employees as valued contributors.
Paternalistic: Shifts between accommodating/country club and controlling/authority compliance styles to reward loyalty and discourage being challenged, divergent thinking, or noncompliance.
Opportunistic: Behaviors fluctuate among all styles based on selfinterest and as a means to manipulate or exploit opportunities for personal gain.
Grid scholars suggest people adopt a dominant style of leadership that is “not dependent on a single incident or consciously selected according to a particular situation. In fact, dominant styles are based on firmly entrenched values and attitudes and cannot easily be turned on nor off according to isolated situations” (McKee & Carlson, 1999, p. 19). Typically, individuals also have a backup style that is seen when the person is under duress or the dominant leadership style does not work. In short, people bring a particular leader style to an environment and may or may not be conscious about the ways in which it informs how they engage in leadership.
At this point, you may be thinking that style theory, and the Leadership Grid in particular, seems to function much like personcentered theories, offering taxonomies or heuristics that simply shift content from lists of traits and attributes to lists of behaviors. You wouldn't be entirely wrong. However, there is an often omitted third dimension to the Leadership Grid that affords greater attention to process considerations through the exploration of motivation (Blake & McCanse, 1991; Blake & Mouton, 1964; McKee & Carlson, 1999). It asks what drives a person to demonstrate particular levels of concern for tasks and relationships. The hypothesis is that each style is motivated by what the person most desires and most fears when engaging in a leader role. Table 5.2 walks through the motivations associated with each leader style.
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TABLE 5.2 Motivational factors associated with dominant leader styles Adapted from source: Blake & McCanse (1991)
Leader Style Positive Motivational Influence Negative Motivational Influence
Indifferent/Impoverished Desire to be uninvolved Fear of being terminated Accommodating/Country Club
Desire to please others Fear of being rejected
Controlling/Authority Compliance
Desire for dominance, mastery, and/or control
Fear of failure
Status Quo/Middle of the Road
Desire to belong Fear of humiliation
Sound/Team Desire for fulfillment through contribution
Fear of selfishness
Paternalistic Desire for reverence and adulation
Fear of repudiation and abandonment
Opportunistic Desire to be “on top” or win Fear of being exposed as opportunistic
Blake and Mouton (1964) make the case that the “one best way to lead” or ideal leader style is Sound/Team. They go as far as to suggest that leadership practice must evolve to using this as a universal approach. Note, however, that early work with the Leadership Grid explicitly differentiated between the styles of leaders with formal authority and the styles of their “subordinates” who were not in and of themselves considered leaders. The distinction is so strong that they even developed a separate grid just to represent subordinates' levels of concern for their boss (i.e., the relationship) and the task (Blake & McCanse, 1991). Thus, the universality of a Sound/Team style is really about ensuring that those with authority adopt and enact it on subordinates versus a style that informs group processes as a whole.
Later work with the Leadership Grid shifted away from positioning the leader as ultimate authority, naming the ways in which power flows through organizations and the importance of all actors in group processes being perceived as leaders (McKee & Carlson, 1999). The utility of the grid is then repositioned as a vehicle to increase consciousness of leader styles and to “develop a shared understanding up front so that people working together can discuss and agree on what behaviors they think are effective before beginning a task” (McKee & Carlson, 1999, p. 20, emphasis in original). This in turn allows for a greater likelihood that groups will achieve their purpose and members of those groups will be satisfied in the process of doing so.
How Research Evolves the Concept Yukl (2013) argued that historically “more research has been conducted on leader activities and behaviors than on any other aspect of leadership” (p. 405), although recent years have seen a dramatic decrease (Dinh, Lord, Gardener, Meuser, Liden, & Hu, 2014). This may be a result
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of differing opinions regarding the relative contribution of style theories. Some argue that they largely serve as precursors to later theories, that they are limited by a lack of attention to situational and environmental considerations, and that research yields inconsistent findings about their effects on leadership outcomes (Judge, Piccolo, & Ilies, 2004; Yukl, 2012, 2013). Others suggest that the metacategories, and task and relational behaviors in particular, represent enduring influences with unique explanatory value even when combined with other theories to examine leadership outcomes (DeRue, Nahrgang, Wellman, & Humphrey, 2013; Judge et al., 2004; Piccolo, Bono, Heinitz, Rowold, Duehr, & Judge, 2012). Let's explore two considerations:
Impact
Just like with past theories, studies on leadership style can vary significantly in quality and the degree to which they account for the impact of enacting the metacategory behaviors above and beyond other influences. However, several highquality, metaanalytic studies (i.e., research that examines results across multiple studies) demonstrate that the frequency of employing task and relational behaviors is indeed related to leadership outcomes, although they have differential effects (DeRue et al., 2013; Judge et al., 2004; Piccolo et al., 2012). Perhaps not so shockingly, task behaviors are more strongly associated with productivity and goal achievement, whereas relational behaviors are more strongly linked to follower satisfaction and motivation. This research also provides evidence that there is no single “right” style of leading and that leaders must draw on varying frequencies of task and relational behaviors in a way that is responsive to the environment and situation.
Ascription
Past chapters addressed how people often ascribe onto leaders various perceptions. Yukl (2013) described how ratings of a leader's enactment of task and relational behaviors are often inflated when the person is well liked and suppressed when they are not liked, suggesting the power of affiliation and affinity in shaping perceptions of leaders' styles. Additionally, scholars express concern regarding perceived incongruence between stereotypical gender roles for women and leader roles as well as ways in which meta categories draw on highly gendered stocks of knowledge that associate masculine gender performance with task behaviors and feminine gender performance with relational behaviors (Ayman & Korabik, 2010; Eagly & Carli, 2007). Context indeed matters as these normative assumptions contribute to women routinely receiving worse evaluations and diminished perceptions of effectiveness than their male peers in maledominated environments or when adopting stereotypically male leader roles. This is despite the fact that research confirms that there are no differences in the enactment of task behaviors between men and women and that women demonstrate relational behaviors more frequently than men (Eagly & Carli, 2007). Said another way, gender and other dimensions of social location (e.g., race, gender, sexual orientation) do not influence how well an individual enacts task and relational behaviors, but they do influence in powerful ways how these behaviors are perceived by others.
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WrapUp Style theory marks a significant theoretical shift in its attempt to identify specific behaviors that contribute to effective leadership. However, because effective leadership is defined largely by employee satisfaction and productivity, the theory can seem more concerned with general principles of management than contemporary understandings of leadership. Additionally, given the ultimate goal is to enhance organizational productivity, the emphasis on relational behaviors is less altruistic and more of an expedient means to a desired end. Nevertheless, Judge et al. (2004) remind us that we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the core concepts of task and relational metacategories as dated or archaic because research affirms their contribution above and beyond that of other theories, positioning them as “important pieces of the leadership puzzle” (p. 44). Table 5.3 highlights additional strengths and weaknesses.
TABLE 5.3 Strengths and weaknesses of style theory
Strengths Weaknesses
Consistent emergence of task and relational behaviors in research as well as links to leadership outcomes
Represent important management behaviors related to supervision, project management, and decision making
Offers concrete direction for leaders through identification of learnable behaviors
Workers viewed as a commodity to be managed in service of increased production
Neglects situational and environmental influences that shape leader behaviors and how they are perceived
Does not take into account socially ascribed norms that may negatively influence how behaviors are perceived
Making Connections
Are there particular leadership behaviors that you feel more efficacious enacting than others? How might this be tied to influences of social location rather than actual competence?
What stands out as useful about style theory? What do you think needs to be addressed in the deconstruction and reconstruction processes?
SITUATIONAL LEADERSHIP With increasing recognition that style theory lacked sufficient attention to the context in which leader behaviors unfold, focus shifted to understanding situational influences. Situational leadership has extensive name recognition and is widely represented in mainstream leadership
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texts, although often without substantive critique. Academic leadership texts, however, frequently omit it entirely or position it as a footnote given its near total lack of empirical support (Graeff, 1983, 1997; Thompson & Vecchio, 2009; Yukl, 2013). To complicate things, the evolution of situational leadership reads like a bad episode of reality television—shifting claims, altered premises, a split between the creators' approaches to and uses of the concept, and the equivalent of academic throwdowns challenging the legitimacy of the concept. So, why include it in this text? Situational leadership persists as a popular tool for teaching and explaining leadership across disciplines. Indeed, the terminology of situational leadership seems to have slipped into the language of how leadership is informally described even when it is not tied explicitly to the theory itself. Despite being deeply flawed, situational leadership has a definitive influence on the informal theories people hold.
Overview The premise of situational leadership is that there is no single “best” way to lead and that to accomplish goals leaders must adapt their behaviors to meet followers' needs under varying contextual conditions (Blanchard, Zigarmi, & Nelson, 1993; Blanchard, Zigarmi, & Zigarmi, 2013; Hersey & Blanchard, 1969; Hersey, Blanchard, & Johnson, 2013). Leaders' behaviors fall along two continua: supportive and directive. If these sound familiar, they should. They mirror the task and relational metacategories advanced by style leadership, along with the ways in which the continua interact as outlined by the Leadership Grid. What situational leadership adds is consideration of how the context shapes followers' needs, which are framed as a function of their development (i.e., varying levels of commitment and competence). Follower development, in turn, dictates the leader style that should be employed to maximize leadership outcomes.
Although situational leadership represents a fairly straightforward approach, explaining the specifics can be tricky because its authors have generated multiple versions—and when I say multiple versions I mean lots and lots of versions. For the sake of space and clarity, we will use Situational Leadership II (Blanchard et al., 2013), but let me walk through a few important elements of how we even get to this version.
Whose Theory Is It Anyway?
Hersey and Blanchard (1969) codeveloped the original situational leadership theory along with early revisions. However, the two parted intellectual paths in the late 1970s … sort of. They continued to publish a management text together that features situational leadership (Hersey et al., 2013) but also developed separate consulting firms and independent revisions of the concept. Hersey's work is now referred to as the situational leadership model, while Blanchard and colleagues' is called Situational Leadership II. Confused yet?
What's This Based On?
Situational leadership's major contributions were theoretically justified using Korman's (1966) proposition that there may be a curvilinear relationship between task and relational
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