Applying the Behavioral Approach
According to Northouse (2016), the behavioral approach is divided into task behaviors and relationship behaviors. Task behavior is how the leader gets the job done, so to speak. It includes organization, and anything else that brings the group closer to its objective(s). Relationship behavior is all about the people. It is about creating an environment conducive to goal completing. It also involves making people feel at ease with each other. I thought it was interesting to read about Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid (2016). This theory combined both relationship and task behavior. The Michigan Studies (2016), in their later studies, also thought that leaders could exhibit both behaviors at the same time. The Ohio State Studies (2016) thought that leaders could be either one or the other. This is impossible in practice. Leaders who are only oriented toward goal completion or, on the opposite side of the spectrum, only towards the group members, would fail. Even ineffective leaders, though probably leaning towards one side or the other two much, exhibit both behaviors to a certain degree.
Leaders that are likable have strengths in terms of effectiveness. Spending the time and energy to build trust and commitment to a goal and/or organization while promoting good relationships and being attentive to salary fairness are important in keeping group members on task (2016). I once had a supervisor who was more oriented towards people than towards tasks. In his perspective, keeping the people happy would make group goals completed without extra effort. He took the time to make the workers (English language teachers in an institute in China) feel comfortable and understood. He asked us how our days were going and whether any students were giving us problems. He offered suggestions to improve classes in a general way, not directed towards anyone in particular. As a result, we felt comfortable in the institute. For about six months, there was no turnover and no complaints from the teachers at all. However, the supervisor neglected one important area: salary fairness. Many English institutes in China try to ‘cheat’ teachers of their wages. In this institute, up until this issue, we felt safe in terms of our salary because our supervisor ‘had our backs’ so to speak. However, one month the institute did not make the sales goals so the owner of the company docked everyone’s pay and did not deposit the money for another week and a half after payday. The teachers were all angry and blamed the supervisor (rather unfairly). Since he could not continue to provide the ‘protection’ that teachers required in terms of salary, the teachers began to leave. Three months later, three out of the four teachers had quit.
I think that this reveals some shortcomings of the behavioral approach. Critics say that the behavioral approach does not provide a universal theory of leadership (2016). I agree with this. Since all of the teachers were Westerners, they expected salary to be given fairly because of some sort of law. Also, since the supervisor acted in a paternalistic way (2016), all of the teachers (all younger than 30), expected that he would ensure that payment was fair. However, in Chinese employment culture, the owner (or ‘big boss’) is able to dock payment, delay payment or demand extra work at will. There is no real law that protects workers from the whims of the boss. In American culture, this would be unacceptable.
Another shortcoming of this approach is that it seems to show that leaders need to be both extremely task oriented and relationship oriented (2016). This is extremely difficult for a leader to do, everyday, while performing other tasks. Also, some situations require the leader to lean towards one way or another. For example, in regards to the salary problem, the leader should have leaned towards the task behavior. By spinning the problem in a different, more goal oriented way, perhaps the teachers would not have blamed the supervisor for the problem.
Source
Northouse, P.G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice (7th ed.). Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
Bryce Chong Ke Jun says
A very good summary of the behavioral approach. Particularly, I couldn’t agree more that the dichotomy of being either task or relationship oriented, while useful to understand in theory, simply does not happen in practice. The Managerial Grid by Blake and Mouton (1964, as cited in Northouse, 2016) manages to factor this in, as you realize the ratings go from 1 to 9, instead of 0 to 9. This for me illustrates that even if a leader might be very low on relationship orientation, there must still be some, albeit very little, relationship-oriented behavior in his/her leadership. At the same time, the Managerial Grid also shows us that being moderate on both orientations might not necessarily be a good thing, as exemplified in the Middle-of-the-Road Manager (Blake & Mouton, 1964, as cited in Northouse, 2016).
I liked your personal experience as an example, as it demonstrated the supervisor’s focus on relationship-oriented behaviors. It is intriguing to me because sometimes managers don’t realize they are exhibiting a particular orientation as a leader. The behavioral approach, however, as Northouse states, allows managers to assess themselves and change their behaviors to be more effective. In addition to the disparity in leadership orientations of the supervisor and the boss, I enjoyed that you brought up the differences that might exist in work cultures.
Apart from work culture and employment laws, I believe that the position of the supervisor also had a part to play. Since the supervisor was not in a position to manage salaries, and the owner was not in a position to explain to everyone why their pay was docked, it seems to me like the problem here might exist in the miscommunication rather than the behavioral approach itself.
If the supervisor had been more task-oriented, it may not have had an effect on the owner’s behavior when targets were not met. In other words, I don’t think the supervisor provided any ‘protection’ to the teachers’ salaries, and it is a lack of communication on both sides that led to the disappointment. The supervisor could have been more upfront about his lack of control, which would build stronger cohesiveness and trust in the team. This also goes to show that not all relationship-oriented behaviors are the same. As you mentioned, the supervisor was leaning more towards the relationship-oriented behavior, and so his lack of task-oriented behavior should not be seen as a shortcoming of the behavioral approach as a whole. Instead, if he had been high on both relationship and task orientation, and still failed to provide the best leadership for a situation, that might be grounds for criticizing the behavioral approach.
As mentioned, there is an implication that the high-high style (high task and high relationship) is the best style of leadership in the behavioral approach, but it is also important to remember that the leadership styles in the behavioral approach are not meant to be a universal leadership style. Additionally, as Northouse (2016) states, “At this point in the development of research on the behavioral approach, it remains unclear whether the high–high style is the best style of leadership.” The fact that this is a chapter and not the entirety of our class is proof that this approach alone is not enough to understand leadership as a whole.
Works Cited
Northouse, P.G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice (7th ed.). Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.