Behavioral and Situational Leadership

The behavioral approach to leadership focuses on how a leader interacts with followers in unlike situations.  Three major studies accept been done on the behavioral approach.  Get-go, a study was done by The Ohio State University; then by The Academy of Michigan; and finally by Blake and Mouton.  The researchers in each report used dissimilar terminology, simply all three studies similarly depict behaviors of leaders as either task behaviors or relationship behaviors (Northouse 2016).

The outset major study was washed in the belatedly 1940s by researchers at The Ohio State University.  The researchers at OSU based their research on information provided by Stogdil that suggested leadership was based on more than the traits of a leader.  Researchers at OSU created the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ), which originally had 150 questions.  The researchers gave the LBDQ to followers to determine the type of leadership their leaders used.  The followers who received the LBDQ were in educational, military, and industrial settings.  After analyzing the results it was determined by the OSU researchers that leadership behavior primarily involved leaders "initiating structure" or "consideration".  Behaviors that are considered initiating structure would exist behaviors that establish or enforce rules or help with production within the organization.  Consideration behaviors are behaviors that build relationships or rapport between leaders and followers.  Another interesting decision from the study washed at OSU is that the score of a leader in one area does not bear on his score in the other expanse (Northouse 2016).  Therefore, a leader can be high in initiating structure and consideration, low in both, or high in one and low in the other.

Effectually the aforementioned time the research was conducted at OSU, researchers at the University of Michigan were studying the behavioral approach.  Researchers at UM looked specifically at leadership in small groups.  The behaviors constitute in the UM research were "employee orientation" and "production orientation".  Employee orientation describes the behavior of leaders who engage their followers with human skill.  Production orientation describes the behavior of leaders who are more concerned with accomplishing the goals of the organization than they are the people of the organisation.  Researchers at the Academy of Michigan believed that a leader who was high in employee orientation would be low in production orientation and vice versa (Northouse 2016).  This was a stark contrast to the research performed past OSU, that believed the scores were unrelated.

Blake and Mouton conducted the third major study of the behavioral approach in 1964.  Their written report created the Managerial Filigree, which was later, renamed the Leadership Grid.  The master business concern of the Managerial Grid was whether employers were focused more on "concern for product" or "concern for people".  The Leadership Grid combines concern for people and business for production on 2 separate axes that intersect.  The horizontal axis on the Leadership Filigree represents concern for production while the vertical centrality represents business concern for people.  Each axis has 5 points that range from one to five.  The score on each axis can be plotted to determine the score of the leader in each expanse.  With the Leadership Grid, the score of a leader in ane expanse does not touch his score in another(Northouse 2016).  This is similar to the conventionalities of researchers at OSU.

While the behavioral approach to leadership has changed the view that the behavior of a leader can be bars to ii areas, it has non yet shown which area is more constructive.  Chore behaviors and relationship behaviors are important to the behavioral approach, but the arroyo has not determined if either type of leadership beliefs is best in every state of affairs.  It does seem to make the implication that a high score in job beliefs and in human relationship beliefs is most effective for a leader (Northouse 2016).  However, it seems difficult if not incommunicable for a leader to exhibit high scores in both areas.

The situational approach to leadership looks at the situations in which leaders are placed.  The belief of the situational arroyo is that different situations require different types of leadership.  Hersey and Blanchard studied situational leadership based on findings of Reddin in his 3-D Direction style theory.  Similar the behavioral approach, the situational approach to leadership can be narrowed to 2 types of leadership.  The situational arroyo believes that a leader needs to exist supportive or directive.  The decision of a leader to be supportive or directive depends on the attitude and skill of the followers (Northouse 2016).

Under the situational approach, leadership tin exist broken down to four different styles.  The first style is called the "directing mode", it is high directive and low supportive leadership.  The second fashion is called "coaching approach", it is loftier directive and high supporting.  The tertiary style is called "supporting approach", it is high supporting depression directive leadership.  The quaternary style is called "delegating approach", it is depression directing and low supporting (Northouse 2016).  A leader has to make up one's mind how much support a follower needs and how much management a follower needs to consummate a task to know which type of leadership to utilise in a specific state of affairs.

To help a leader determine which style to use the situational arroyo likewise defines developmental levels of followers.  Followers are labeled based on their competence and commitment to the system.  The higher the competence the less directive that is needed by the follower.  The lower the competence levels of the follower the more directive that is needed.  The higher the commitment to the organization of the follower the less support that is needed by the follower.  The lower the level of commitment to the organization to the organization the more than support the follower will need (Northouse 2016).  If a leader needs to give extensive instructions on how to complete a task the leader will need to use a style that is high on directives for his followers.  If a leader needs to heighten morale of his followers he will demand to use a style that gives support to the followers.

The situational arroyo to leadership helps predict what leadership fashion will work based on the followers within the arrangement.  The situational approach also forces an organization to seek flexibility in its leaders, because a leader volition take to alter.  The situational approach, however, does not address how education or other factors come into play with relationships between a leader and follower (Northouse 2016).

Northouse, P.Thou. (2016). Leadership: Theory and do, 7th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage         Publishing.