The Leadership Style Approach
Leadership Styles and The Ohio State University Research
The starting point for these studies was to analyze how individuals behave leading a group. To do so, they give subordinates questionnaires to identify the number of times that the leader engaged in certain behaviors.
By 1957 the LBDQ (Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire) was given to hundreds of military, educational and industrial settings. The results of these studies gave some light on the behaviors typically found in leaders. In 1963, Stogdill published a reduced version of the LBDQ, the LBDQ-XII. This became the most widely used form of the questionnaire in research. After all the research and data processing of the studies, the researchers found that leaders behaviors’ clustered around two types, task and relationship. In researchers’ jargon we’re referring to “Initiating structure behaviors” and “Consideration structure behaviors” respectively.
- Intiating Structure Behavior: it focuses on getting the job done, it’s clearly task oriented. Organizing work, giving structure and scheduling the work are among the activities of this type of behavior.
- Consideration Structure Behavior: it focuses on meeting people’s needs and developing relationships, building camaraderie, trust and liking between leaders and followers.
Ohio State researchers view these behaviors as independent. They were not seen as opposites, like the autocratic or democratic styles in the University of Iowa studies. It’s a two dimensional approach, the next chart displays the concepts.
Leadership Styles and The University of Michigan Research
The researchers at Michigan placed special attention to the impact of leader’s behaviors on the performance of small groups. (Northouse, 2004).
Just like their Ohio State counterparts, the researchers at Michigan identified two types of behavior, employee orientation and production orientation.
- Employee Centered Behavior: it’s like the Consideration Structure Behavior of the Ohio Studies, it focuses on people and relationships.
- Production Centered Behavior: it’s like the Initiating structure behavior of the Ohio studies, it focuses on the task.
So far, we see similar behaviors identified by the Ohio and Michigan studies, but unlike the Ohio Studies, the Michigan researchers see the Employee and Production centered behaviors as opposites of the same continuum. With this in mind, leaders will not be able to have an employee centered behavior, and production centered behavior at the same time.
As more studies were completed, eventually the researchers reconceptualized their approach as two independent behaviors, just like Ohio State did before.
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