Video Transcript: The Behavioral Approach to Leadership

let's take a look at the behavioral approach to leadership. The behavioral approach emphasizes the behavior of the leader. It distinguishes it from the trait approach, which emphasizes the personality characteristics of the leader and the skills approach, which emphasizes the leader's capabilities. In the shifting of the study of leaders behaviors, the behavioral approach expanded the research of leadership to include the actions of leaders towards followers in various contexts. In the central purpose of the behavioral approach is to explain how leaders combined these two kinds of behaviors to influence followers in their efforts to reach a goal. Many studies have been conducted to investigate the behavioral approach. By looking closely at each of these groups of studies, we can draw a clearer picture of the underpinnings and implications of the behavioral approach of leadership. A group of researchers at The Ohio State University believed that the results of studying leadership as a personality trait seemed fruitless the analysis they conducted including having followers complete questionnaires about their leaders. On the questionnaires, followers had to identify the number of times their leaders engaged in certain types of behaviors. The original questionnaire used in the studies was constructed from a list of more than 1800 items describing different aspects of leader behavior. From this long list of items, a questionnaire composed of 150 questions was formulated. It was called the leader behavior description questionnaire, or the LBDQ. It was given to hundreds of people in educational, military and industrial settings, and the results showed that certain clusters of behaviors were typical of leaders. Six years later, the form was shortened to a new version of the form and became the most widely used instrument in Leadership Research. Researchers found that followers responses on the questionnaire clustered around two general types of leader behaviors, initiating structure and consideration initiating structure behaviors are essentially task behaviors, including such acts as organizing work, giving structure to the work context, defining role responsibilities and scheduling work activities. Consideration behaviors are essentially relationship behaviors, and include building camaraderie, respect, trust and linking between leaders and followers. The two types of behaviors identified by the LBDQ represent the core of the behavioral approach and are central to what leaders do. Leaders provide structure for followers, and they nurture them. The Ohio State studies viewed these two behaviors as distinct and independent. They were thought of not as two points along a single continuum, but as two different continuum altogether. For example, a leader can be high in initiating structure and high or low on task behavior. Similarly, a leader can be low in setting structure and low or high in consideration behavior. The program of research at Michigan identified two types of leader behaviors, employee orientation and production orientation. Employee Orientation is the behavior of leaders who approach followers with a strong human relations emphasis. Production orientation consists of leadership behaviors that stress the technical and production aspects of the job. Unlike the Ohio State researchers, the Michigan researchers, in their initial studies, conceptualized employee and production orientations as opposite ends of a single continuum. As more research studies were completed, however, the researchers reconceptualized the two constructs as the Ohio State studies as two independent leadership orientations. In essence, the researchers were looking for a universal theory of leadership that would explain leadership effectiveness in every situation. The majority of research in this area was inconclusive. The leadership grid was designed to explain how leaders help organizations to reach their purpose through two factors, concern for production and concern for people. Although these factors are described as leadership orientations in the model, they closely parallel the task and relationship leadership behaviors that we've been discussing in both the Ohio State and Michigan Leadership Studies, not limited to an organization's manufactured product or service. Concern for production, can refer to whether the organization is seeking to accomplish concern for people, refers to how a leader attends to people in the organization who are trying to achieve its goals. Here is the leadership grid showing concern for people and concern for production on two separate axises. The leadership grid has five identifiable leadership elements that we'll discuss next. The nine, one style of leadership places heavy emphasis on task and job requirements and less emphasis on people, except to the extent that people are tools for getting the job done. The one nine style represents a low concern for task accomplishment coupled with a high concern for interpersonal relationships. The one, one style is representative of leader who is unconcerned with both the task and interpersonal relationships. Five, five style describes leaders who are compromisers, who have an intermediate concern for task and intermediate concern for people who do the task. The Nine. Nine style places a strong emphasis on both tasks and interpersonal relationships. In addition to the five major styles described in the leadership grid, two other behaviors that incorporate multiple aspects of the grid occur. Opportunism refers to a leader who uses any combination of the five basic styles for the purpose of personal advancement. People usually have a dominant grid style, which they use in most situations, and a backup style. The backup style is what the leader reverts to when under pressure, when the usual way of accomplishing things doesn't work. The leadership grid is an example of the practical model of leadership that is based on the two major leadership behaviors, task and relationship. The behavioral approach provides a framework for assessing leadership in a broad way, a behavior with a task and a relationship dimension. The behavioral approach works by not telling leaders how to behave, but by describing the major components of their behavior. The behavioral approach reminds leaders that their actions towards other occur on a task level and a relationship level. In some situations, leaders need to be more task oriented, whereas in others, they need to be more relationship oriented. It reminds leaders that their impact on others occurs through the tasks they perform, as well as the relationships they create. The behavioral approach makes several positive contributions to our understanding of the leadership process. The behavioral approach broadened the scope of Leadership Research to include the behaviors of leaders and what they do in various situations. Second, a wide range of studies on leadership behavior validates and gives credibility to the basic tenets of this approach. Third, on a conceptual level, researchers of the behavioral approach have ascertained that a leader's style consists primarily of two major types of behaviors, task and relationship. The significance of this idea is not to be understated. Whenever leadership occurs, the leader is acting out of both task and relationship behaviors. The key to being an effective leader often rests on how the leader balances these two behaviors. 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, based on the behavioral approach, leaders can assess their actions and determine how they want to change to Improve their leadership behaviors, along with its strengths, the behavioral approach does have several weaknesses. First, the research on behavioral approach has not adequately shown how leaders' behaviors are associated with performance outcomes. Another criticism is that this approach has failed to find a universal style of leadership that could be effective in almost every situation. The difficulty in identifying a universal style may be due to the impact of contextual factors. For example, there's a strong situational element that impacts whether one leader's behavior or another is effective. Of another criticism of the behavioral approach is that it implies the most effective leadership style is the high high style, ie the high task and high relationship style. Certain situations may require different leadership styles. Some may be more complex and require high task behavior, and others may be more simple and require supportive behavior. A final criticism is that most of the research undertaken in the behavioral approach has come from a US centric perspective, reflecting the norms and values of US Culture. Research shows that different cultures prefer different leadership styles than those espoused or favored by current US management practice, the behavioral approach can be applied easily in ongoing leadership settings. By assessing their own behaviors, managers can determine how they're coming across to others and how they could change their behaviors to be more effective. Many leadership training and development programs throughout the country are structured along the lines of the behavioral approach. Grid seminars are about increasing productivity, improving morale and gaining employee commitment. As an example. In short, the behavioral approach applies to nearly everything a leader does. The behavioral approach focuses on what leaders do rather than who leaders are. It suggests that leaders engage in two primary types of behaviors, task behaviors and relationship behaviors. The behavioral approach originated from three different lines of research, the Ohio State studies, the University of Michigan studies, and the work of Blake and Mouton in the managerial grid, researchers at The Ohio State developed a leadership questionnaire called the leader behavior description questionnaire, or LBDQ, which identified initiation of structure and consideration as the core leadership behaviors. The goal has been to find a universal set of leadership behaviors capable of explaining leadership effectiveness in every situation. A practical model through the leadership grid was established by training managers that described leadership behaviors along a grid with two axises, concern for results and concern for people. The behavioral approach has several strengths and weaknesses. On the positive side, it's broaden the scope of Leadership Research. It's also a reliable approach because it's supported by a wide range of studies. And the behavioral approach is valuable because it underscores the importance of the two core dimensions of leadership behavior, task and relationship. On the negative side, researchers have not been able to associate the behaviors of leaders task and relationship with the outcomes such as morale, job satisfaction and productivity. In addition, researchers from the behavioral approach have not been able to identify a universal set of leadership behavior that would consistently result in effective leadership overall the behavioral approach is not a refined theory that provides a neatly organized set of prescriptions for effective leadership behavior.