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Leadership Style
The leadership style is determined by the approach a leader takes for getting things done.
Since the primary role of a leader is to get the tasks done through the people, leaders have to
focus on the productivity of the employees along with maintaining good relationship with them.
Leaders who are strong in technical skills would naturally focus on structuring and planning of
the work, defining activities and scheduling them. On the other hand, leaders who have strong
personal traits would focus on building trust, delegating responsibilities and thereby bringing
meaning to their work and motivating them. These two distinct styles are termed as
task-oriented style or people-oriented style of leadership.
Are there leaders who use both these styles simultaneously? The early researcher (Michigan)
concluded that these two traits are mutually exclusive with one another; a leader might only
posses either one of them but not both. However later research showed that these two
independent orientations exists with different degrees in leaders.

Blake and Moutons Leadership Grid

The leadership grid proposed by Blake and mouton (1964) attempts to conceptualize how the
task and people orientation of a leader, helps the organization in attaining its purpose.
The leadership grid joins the task concern along the horizontal axis and people concern
along the vertical axis.

Depending upon the scale of concern of each axis, the grid categorizes the leadership into five
distinct styles:1. Impoverished Manager (Low People - Low Task Concern). Such
leaders exhibit lack
of concern for the result of the assigned task or
interpersonal relationship. They act
uninvolved and withdrawn from the
organizations objectives and often give an
impression of incumbency.
However, one ponders how do such leaders rise to their
present position?
Is their style a suggestion of lack of motivation, saturation of position
in organization or something else? Since it might appear that they perform
only to
sustain their employment.
2. Country Club Manager (High People Low Task concern). Such leaders exhibit care and
concern for the people, they create a comfortable and friendly environment
while

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de-emphasizing the productivity of task. In certain situations, like

a country club
manager, where the primary role is to create a comfortable
environment for clients
while providing routine amenities, such leaders
might be desired.
Authority Compliant Manager (Low People High Task concern). These
leaders
have a strong focus on good planning and successful completion of
task. They place
little emphasis on relationships, motivation or
communication with their subordinates.
They believe in setting up the
organizational structure that maximizes the productivity
while minimizing
the interference of human elements. At first, it might appear to be an
undesired style of leadership, since it is very dictatorial, but such
leaders are highly
effective in tasks that are extremely critical, highly
structured and have a short duration.
An organization at the verge of
collapse might require such leader to fix it, but might
not be suitable
once the restructuring is finished and organization is back to routine.
Middle-of-the-Road Manager (Medium People & Task concern). These leaders are
compromisers who have weak balance between
concern for people and task. They
avoid any conflicting situations and try
to get the work done by moderately focusing on
interpersonal relationships, they do not try to push others too much
for sake of better
results. Such managers can be effective in matured and
structured organization that is
performing routine job functions or
services and do not envision much growth in future.
Team Manager (High People High Task concern). This style tries to
maximize the
concern for both task and people. Such leaders create
strongly structured tasks, set
clear priorities and track the progress on
timely basis. At the same time, they promote
active participation &
teamwork, creates open and comfortable environment, sets
guidelines for
effective communication and empowers the individuals enough to keep
them
motivated. Even though this is the most preferred style, it may be best suited in a
growing organization which needs to thrive on internal synergy.

Style Variants
Each leader usually has one of the above dominant leadership style, it comes naturally and is
most comfortable for the leader. However, leaders do adapt their styles according to
situations, the kind of task, its urgency and complexity, competence and morale of the team
etc. Variations of styles in a leader makes them unpredictable to the team, they might be
perceived as leaders who are opportunistic, acts gracious only for their selfish interest. In a
long run, they do loose their credibility and trust.

Strengths of Style Approach

1. Style
approach shifts the focus from personality traits and skills to how
leaders
behave in different situations.
2. It is
centered around two basic orientations, task vs people, which are very intuitive and
its easy to
conceptualize various variations of them.

General Criticism of Style Approach

1. Style
approach also fails to prove the effectiveness of task vs
people behavior in
the outcome of leadership.
2. Even
though the style approach prefers team manager style as the most
desirable, other styles are also effective in different situations.

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