The Leadership Grid has five categories of leadership: Country-Club Management, Team Management, Middle-of-the-road Management, Impoverished Management and Authority-Compliance Management (Northouse, 2019). While reading through the detailed descriptions of each management style it occured to me that I have used every one of these management styles at one time or another. Here are some examples.
Country-Club Managment – This one is basically keeping everyone happy so that they are happy to come to work and perform their jobs well. In my opinion, this is the ideal management style. As leaders we all know that to get the best performance from your team they have to want to do the work well for their own motivations. Having a happy staff means that you will get the optimal performance, generally. At my workplace we do as much as possible to keep our staff happy, including but not limited to paid holiday and PTO (not common in non-profit preschools), snacks and coffee provided daily, lunch provided by admin at least once a month but usually more. These are just a few of the things that we do to keep our staff happy which hopefully motivates them to want to do their best.
Team Managment – For me this is the gold standard of working as a team. Everyone knows that they can count on the other members of the team to hold up their end. Admins don’t have to be looking over anyone’s shoulders because they know and trust that their staff are doing their best. When you are staffed with experienced, committed professionals this is what you hope to have.
Middle-of-the-road Management – Generally this is the management style that occurs when we in the admin office are particularly bogged down with student registration and staff hiring. When we are basically just surviving minute to minute, we try to maintain middle-of-road management. We keep our ears open for any urgent situations that need our attention but rely heavily on staff to alert us to any issues that need to be addressed. We know that this is not a sustainable management style for long as it stresses the staff out and they begin to feel abandoned, which means their performance lags.
Impoverished Management – This one is obviously not ideal. Recently my boss and the only other admin at the preschool had to quarantine due to a potential Covid exposure. I was left in charge on the first day with kids in attendance after a nine month closure. Many days while she was out I was drowning in work, some of which I had not been trained to handle. I had zero time to step into classrooms to help or give teachers bathroom breaks. It was terrible. While reading the description of this management style I recognized many of those days that I was left to run the preschool on my own as a perfect example of impoverished management.
Authority-Compliance Mangement – We don’t run into this management style very often running a play-based preschoool. Any type of preschool is very hands-on for all staff members. The few times that I can remember using this style would have been when there were two staff members who couldn’t get along but had to work together for whatever reason. Generally, this would be a situation where two teachers start the year working together congenially and their relationship fractures for some reason. We don’t move teachers mid-year as its too disruptive for the kids. We try to take as much of the need for communication out of their working relationship by giving them both specific lists of responsibilities that they alone are in charge of. It’s absolutely not ideal but it generally works to get to the end of the year. The success of that strategy lies in the compliance part of this strategy, which you can never predict.
Although all five management styles are necessary and have their benefits, I strive for team management. What does everyone else think is the best management style of the five?
References
Northouse, P. (2019). Leadership : Theory and Practice (8th ed.). Los Angeles Sage.
HI – This blog defined each concept in detail and provided great examples of each management style. The concepts were easy to understand and offered vivid real life situations to further explain the theory. You mentioned country club is the ideal management style and team management is the gold standard. You, also, mentioned team management is what you strive for at work. If the ideal management style is country club because “it will get the best performance out of your team”, why would management not strive to put practices in place to move the team to this ideal management style. From the examples provided above, you seem to be a very hard worker and so does your management team. Therefore, it’s not a people problem. I would conclude then the it’s a process problem. It would be interesting to understand if the ideal management style was ever pursued and what were the results?
Thanks for sharing,
Tisha
Hi
I think you have done a great job to create a real-life situation for each leadership grid, I like the example you created for the middle of road manager. This leadership grid is just like the registration officer, who help us in the middle of the research to help and solve our problems. Then the Authority-Compliance has given out great example, how two people who have bad relationships but still tried to work out for the job.
You have to give out different management styles to be used in a different situation, which maybe can infer that an individual’s leadership style would be changing based on different situations. What do you think of my idea, is it possible? If the situation has changed, will trait play more weight at the beginning learning stage of leadership behavior?
BotaoXu
Good evening,
I thought your blog did a great job of analyzing how each of the five styles of management identified by Blake and Mouton (1964) has been evidenced within one organization (as cited in Northouse, 2019, p. 76). The leadership grid explains how different styles can be utilized by leaders in order to either focus on the organization’s tasks or interpersonal relationships, depending on what the leader views as a priority. It sounds like your organization does well to ensure that both task and relationship needs are met, by using a combination of country-club management to address social and personal needs, but team management or authority-compliance management to address task completion (PSU WC, 2021, L. 5, p. 6). Do you know if your work provides any training on this to their leaders, and if so how do they help these individuals identify which style is best used in a given situation? I know my own work is highly task focused, and to convey this to its supervisors ensures that the individuals they place into leadership roles not only understand how to complete daily activities, but to ensure that those we supervise are able to. Less focus is placed on maintaining relationships, although we are encouraged to adjust our styles as necessary.
You stated that to you, country-club management is the ideal style. I’d have to argue. While it is important to foster interpersonal relationships and address employee needs, I would be concerned that reducing the focus on tasks could be detrimental to the company. Maybe this is my own focus on task showing, but I feel that if less emphasis is placed on task completion, employees will begin to believe that the organization is not concerned with it. Also, when the organization shifts back to emphasizing production, employees may resist increased oversight or other efforts by management. This happened at my work, where employees were not punished by some supervisors for arriving late or socializing instead of working, and became livid with others who attempted to hold them accountable.
I feel that the team management approach works best (Blake & Mouton, 1964, as cited in Northouse, 2019, p. 78). The leader emphasizes both task and relationships equally, through including followers more involved in the organization, and feel that they are full participants. I would also argue that this is possible even with inexperienced group members, as they can still be involved. While experienced members may offer suggestions and input into the process, less experienced individuals participate through asking questions and demonstrating that they have a strong desire to learn. Through this they remain focused on task, and also that their personal needs are being met.
Great post.
Northouse, P. G. (2019). Leadership: Theories and Practice. Sage Publishing.
Pennsylvania State University World Campus. (2021). PSYCH 485, Lesson 5: Style and Situational Approaches [Online Course]. https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2110258/modules/items/30985917