Leadership

1 Ashridge Management College model

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The Ashridge Management College model identifies four types of leadership style, but remember these are only points in the continuum of management styles.

First and the most autocratic or dictatorial is “tells.” The manager simply tells the staff what to do. The manager does not even feel a need to have to explain why that’s what has to be done.

A slightly more liberal approach is “sells.” Here the manager tells people what to do but then sells that idea to them, convinces or persuades them, or explains why it has to be done that way.

Next, there is the “consults” style. Here the manager will ask staff what they think ought to be done, but then the manager will make the final decision. However, this is quite a participative style.

Finally there is “joins” or “joins with”. This can be entirely democratic where the manager effectively asks people to vote on what should be done. This might be the sort of style adopted for deciding things like where should the summer outing be. However, many people regard this extremely democratic style of leadership as abandoning one of the important functions of management which is to direct and control.

2 Blake and Mouton’s managerial grid

The final style theory we look at is Blake and Mouton’s managerial grid. These researchers measured two elements of management or leadership. First, the leader’s concern for people, and second their concern for the task that had to be accomplished.

The grid was initially devised as a way of analysing a manager’s approach through a series of questionnaires and their position would then be plotted on the grid. This would give them some indication of where improvement was needed.

First of all we go to the top left of the grid - someone who has a very high concern for people but relatively low concern for accomplishing the task. This manager adopted a country club style. In a way they weren’t really very interested in accomplishing tasks at all as long as people had a nice time. Hence their name “country club”: everything was fine as long as people were happy.

The other extreme is at the bottom right of the grid, the authoritarian or task-oriented style. Here the leader puts all their energies into getting the task done but couldn’t care less about the people. These managers wouldn’t be very nice to work for: they will put you under a lot of pressure, they certainly wouldn’t be interested in dealing with any personal issues that you might have which stood in the way of getting the task done.

The best style is presumably at the top right, someone who has great concern for people and also great concern for the task. This is regarded as the team leadership style: someone who will be a very good leader will get tasks accomplished as required but will also make their staff feel wanted, valued, and will have time to deal with their concerns.

Most ordinary managers are probably going to be near the middle, the 5,5 position, the middle of the road style. Reasonably good with people, reasonably good with the task, but of course what we want to do is to try and shift people up towards the 9,9 position.

There will be some managers at the 1-1 position, the impoverished style: not much good at anything. One really has to ask: Why are they managers? Is there any way their performance can be improved at all?

3 Contingency theories

We now come to a group of theories known as “contingency theories.”

These are the most modern theories and are miles away from the original classical theories. If you remember, the idea behind classical theories was that they presented a set of golden rules which promised that if you manage like this, then you will manage successfully.

Contingency theories say that there aren’t any golden rules. There is no single, proper way of managing. If you ask someone, “How should I manage?” the appropriate reply is, “Well, it depends.”

It might depend for example on the people you are managing, the urgency of the task and the resources you have available. Contingency theories mean that style of management is contingent or dependent on the situation. You will probably find some of these more interesting and more helpful than others, but again that doesn’t much matter, they are all mentioned in the syllabus. You have to be able to tie up the key words used in each theory with the author of that theory.

4 Adair – action-centred leadership

Adair is associated with action-centred leadership.

We know that Blake and Mouton plotted people’s approach to leadership by looking at their concern for individuals and the concern for the task. Adair added a third variable - a recognition that there should be a concern for the group.

How shall we manage? Well, according to Adair, it depends. On some occasions there may be a very urgent task and we have to reduce our concern for individuals and the group and concentrate on the task. Sometimes there may be a crisis within the group; perhaps their leader has left, perhaps there is disagreement within it, and then the manager or leader should pay more attention to making sure that the group operates properly. Of course, sometimes the proper approach to leadership will mean concentrating on an individual and seeing to their needs, perhaps like giving advice or training.

5 Bennis

Bennis makes a distinction between the term “manager” and the term “leader.”

A manager is primarily concerned with administering the status quo. In other words, primarily looking after the existing business somewhat in the short term, keeping an eye on the profit for the coming year. That’s not to say it’s not an important activity. But best to think of a manager as having a time horizon of about a year.

A leader is more concerned with innovation, will be looking at the long-term future of the organisation, will not be so concerned with matters of detailed control, but will be focusing on people, inspiring trust, asking “How can we improve, where should the business go, what should the business do?”.

The leader can therefore be regarded as transformational - in other words, concerned with doing the right thing; whereas the manger is more concerned with transactional leadership - in other words, doing things right, but not necessarily questioning whether what we are doing and controlling is useful.

Bennis suggested that great leaders have certain qualities. You might like to compare this list with the qualities of good managers you have known or good world leaders and politicians you know about.

• Integrity – that really means honesty;
  

• Dedication;
  

• Magnanimity - magnanimity is like generosity, particularly when you have won a battle; humility;
  

• Openness, so that people can trust you;
  

• Creativity, so that you can think of novel solutions to difficult problems.

6 Fiedler

Fiedler suggested that leadership effectiveness depends on:

• Leadership style - that’s the leader’s own attributes, and the leader can either be psychologically close or psychologically distant, and
  

• Situational favourableness - the degree to which a situation gives the leader control and influence.
  

A leadership style which is psychologically distant is one where there tends to be very formal, effectively distant relations between the leader and the subordinates. For example, they prefer formal consultations with subordinates rather than more informal seeking of opinions.

A psychologically close leader will be more concerned to maintain good human relationships at work than to ensure that tasks are being carried out well. They are a friendlier, perhaps more easygoing type of leader.

A favourable situation is one where there is a good relationship between the leader and followers. For example, if the followers trust the leader, or where the structure of the task is clearly defined so that everyone knows what has to be achieved, or where the leader has power to, for example, reward and punish.

Successful or effective leadership depends on adopting the right style so that it matches the situation.

Fiedler suggested that a psychologically distant style would work well where either the situation was very favourable or very unfavourable. So in these two extremes, the leadership style should be psychologically distant. If the situation is moderately favourable, relationship needs matter more and a psychologically close style is likely to be more effective.