58 What Do Leaders Do? Behavioral Approaches to Leadership (54/42) -- Principles of Management

58 What Do Leaders Do? Behavioral Approaches to Leadership Learning Objectives - Explain the behaviors that are associated with leadership. - Identify the three alternative decision-making styles leaders use and the conditions under which they are more effective. - Discuss the limitations of behavioral approaches to leadership. When the trait researchers became disillusioned in 1940s, their attention turned to studying leader behaviors. What did effective leaders actually do? Which behaviors helped them to be perceived as leaders? Which behaviors increased their success? Leader Behaviors In order to understand behaviors of effective leaders, researchers at Ohio State University and University of Michigan used many different techniques such as observing leaders in laboratory settings as well as surveying them. This research stream led to the discovery of two broad categories of behaviors: task-oriented behaviors (sometimes called initiating structure) and people-oriented behaviors (also called consideration). Task-oriented leader behaviors involve structuring the roles of subordinates, providing them with instructions, and behaving in ways that will increase the performance of the group. Task-oriented behaviors are directives given to employees to get things done and to ensure that organizational goals are met. People-oriented leader behaviors include showing concern for employee feelings and treating employees with respect. People-oriented leaders genuinely care about the well-being of their employees and they demonstrate their concern in their actions and decisions. At the time, researchers thought that these two categories of behaviors were the keys to the puzzle of leadership. However, research did not support the argument that demonstrating both of these behaviors would necessarily make leaders effective. When we look at the overall findings regarding these leader behaviors, it seems that both types of behaviors, in the aggregate, are beneficial to organizations but for different purposes. For example, when leaders demonstrate people-oriented behaviors, employees tend to be more satisfied and react more positively. However, when leaders are task-oriented, productivity tends to be a bit higher. Moreover, the situation in which these behaviors are demonstrated seems to matter. In small companies, task-oriented behaviors were found to be more effective than in large companies. There is also some evidence that working under a leader with very high levels of task-oriented behaviors may cause burnout on the part of employees. Leader Decision Making Another question behavioral researchers focused on was how leaders actually make decisions, and the influence of decision-making styles on leader effectiveness and employee reactions. Three types of decision-making styles were studied. In authoritarian decision making, leaders make the decision alone without necessarily involving employees in the decision-making process. When leaders use democratic decis