The Leadership Style Approach

Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid®

Robert Blake and Jane Mouton from the University of Texas, developed the Managerial Grid®. It was first published in 1964, since then it has been updated in 1975, 1985, and 1991 when it became the Leadership Grid®.

The Leadership Grid® its based on the Ohio and Michigan studies, it’s based on the same dimensions which were named as “concern for production” and “concern for people”. Both “concerns” are measured on a scale from 1 to 9. The grid can represent then 81 different combinations of Leadership Styles.

However, the Leadership Grid® identifies five different styles. The styles are:

• Impoverished Leader (1,1):Has low concern for production and for people. The leader does just what it takes to stay in position.
• Authority Compliance Leader (9,1):High concern for production and low concern for people. The leader only looks for getting the job done. People are treated like tools or machines.
• Country Club Leader (1,9):High cocern for people, low concern for production. The leader makes every possible effort to keep a good working environment, and a friendly atmosphere, with little o no concern for production.
• Middle of the road Leader (5,5):It has a “balanced” concern for people and production. The leader tries to keep a good team morale and a good performance.
• Team Leader (9,9):High concern for people and high concern for production. The leader tries to keep a high team morale along with an excellent performance.

Along these styles, Blake and Mouton also identified two other styles:

• Paternalism / Maternalism: The leader uses styles (1,9) and (9,1) but does not integrate them. It’s the “benevolent dictator” that behaves gratiously to get the job done only.
• Oportunism: The leader uses any of the five basic styles for the purpose of personal advancement.

To finish, Blake and Mouton sustain that a person tipically has two styles of leadership, one dominant which is used commonly, and a backup style which is used when the dominant it’s not working, or the leader is under pressure and the main style hasn’t worked.

Ups & Downs of the Style Approach

The Up Side

• It broadened the scope of leadership research, it took into account not only the personal characteristics of leaders, but what the leaders did, and how they act.
• It helped companies, to understand that they need both people, and task oriented leadership.
• It’s and Heuristic approach, it helps leaders to assess their own behaviors, and learn what they can change to improve their leadership style.
• It’s and Heuristic approach, it helps leaders to assess their own behaviors, and learn what they can change to improve their leadership style.

The Down Side

• Unclear relationship between task oriented and people oriented behaviors, with outcomes like high morale, high perfomance. For some investigators there’s even contradictory information.
• Not a clear style to effective in almost every situation. Investigations have not been able to find an effective leadership style for every situation.
• Implies that high-high is the best style. While this is a “natural” good leadership style, is not suited for every situation, nor is the preferred leadership style.

Summary to the Leadership Style Approach

Instead of relying solely on personal characteristics, this approach focuses on the leader’s behavior. From the point of view of this approach, leaders exhibit two type of behaviors: task oriented and people oriented.

The early studies looking for behavior, date from 1930s with the Iowa State Universtity studies. After that, in Ohio State, and Michigan studies the approach is brought up again. Later on, Blake and Mouton sum up the previous works and conceived the Managerial Grid(r).

The Leadership Style approach helped to recognize that production-oriented and people-oriente leadership are needed by organizations. These two functions are accepted and apply across organizations and industries.

Further Investigation and References

Lussier, R.N.; Achua, C.F.(2004) “Leadership: Theory, Application,
Skill Development” (2ed)
South Western

Northouse, P.G. (2004) “Leadership Theory and Practice” (3rd Ed)
Sage Publications

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