Walking the Walk, Talking the Talk

Greetings and Salutations Everyone,

Remember this classic line:

Like him or not, Leonidas is one tough leader who led by example and was not afraid to tell it like it was. He is also an example to start off this week's discussion about what behaviors do leaders exhibit  and in what situations do great leaders emerge?  Leaders may be effective in one situation and completely ineffective in another.  And then there's….well……just watch……

One of the two above leaders would likely inspire you to do something great, and the other would make you want to run away!  Leaders have behaviors that influence followers to be better at their tasks, or behaviors that make them worse.  Back in the mid-1900's, around the 1940's to 1960's, the Ohio State University, Michigan State University, and researchers Blake & Mouton tried to examine those behaviors and explain how certain behaviors were more effective than others.  What came out of that period was the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ) from the Ohio State research which looked at whether or not leaders provided structure for followers or nurtured them.  The Michigan State researchers focused on the employee and production orientation, or in other words, task focus versus interpersonal/human focus.  Blake & Mouton (1964) ultimately developed the Managerial (Leadership) Grid which visually displayed leadership styles, see below:

The Blake & Mouton Managerial (Leadership) Grid showed that when the concern for people and concern for production is low, things don't go so well.  We call these (1,1) leaders.  When the manager has high people concern and high production concern, things can go very well, and we call these (9,9) leaders.  Of course, a leader that has some concern for people and some concern for production, we get the middle-of-the-road leader who scores out at (5,5).  These behavioral analyses still do not address the why's of leadership.  For example, why do some leadership styles work well in some cases and not in others?  Imagine King Leonidas in charge of a monastery?  Imagine Michael Scott in charge of a Navy S.E.A.L. team?  You get my point! :-)

Around the same time, in the late 1960's through the 1980's, a bunch of sociologists realized that simply examining the behavior of leaders was not enough, because one size does not fit all.  What if the situation or task at hand determined the necessary action of the leader and how he/she needs to influence the followers?  What if leadership is situational?  Situational leadership looked at two primary factors; directive behaviors (telling others what needs to be done) and supportive behaviors (making followers feel comfortable about themselves and situation).  In the graphic below, we can see the different styles of leadership that adapt to a situation:

Seems to make sense, right?  Match the behavior and style to the task.  One of the main drawbacks to situational approach theory is there is not a lot of research on it that has been done.  A second one that is true of many leadership theories is they focus on the leaders and their actions, but none seem to focus on the affect or the impact on the followers.  For example, in my career, I had a supervisor who was a micromanager, and was only task-oriented with little concern for me as an individual, my family, or my goals and aspirations.  I did not like her leadership style and it was ineffective for me, yet, the higher level managers above her thought she was a great leader and kept promoting her.  Of course, the higher up she promoted, the low morale in the unit spread to others because she thought her style was great never realizing that it was negatively impacting the followers where ever she went.  This is where leadership questionnaires can help a leader, who really wants to learn and improve, do a better job.  Listen to Tennessee Vols Cuonzo Martin put it plain English:

Look, there is no silver bullet for leadership.  All of these theories are not right and they are all certainly not wrong either.  I believe it is more important to understand what it is you are trying to accomplish and how you can motivate your followers to do an awesome job.  If you have followers who are go-getters and don't need a lot of direction, don't micromanage them!  Don't be a high directive/low supportive leader. Likewise, if you have people who look to you to help them get from point A to point B, but aren't looking for a back patter, then be the high directive/low supportive leader.  Learn to read people and then act accordingly.  Most importantly, DO NOT BE AFRAID TO LEARN AND IMPROVE UPON BEING A GREAT LEADER!!!!!  A true leader always wants to improve and has no problem with feedback.  What kind of leader are you?  Thank you for reading, and until next week, take care of yourself.