Leadership Style

Leadership and communication are inseparable aspects. Leadership focuses on traits, which are converted to behaviors and their effect on team members. For one to achieve effective leadership there has to be focus on two parameters, objective data and sales data. Objective deals with production and sales while subjective is opinions about the leadership’s effectiveness.  Eighty-five percent of Ohio State leadership research concentrates on two dimensions to measure effective leadership that is consideration behaviors and initiating structures. Consideration behavior is the level at which a leader offers a supportive environment for his employees, and shows equality to all team members. Initiating structures emphasizes on how a leader creates roles for the team. It entails adhering to rules and regulations, maintaining good standards of work, and assigning roles to employees (Anuj 2010). It focuses on production while consideration behavior focuses on people.

These dimensions can work together to achieve set goals, they are combined in high and low ratios depending on the type of employee relations (Andrew, 2016) as shown in the table below

Low initiating structures High considerations (C) behavior

High initiating structures (S) high consideration (C) behavior

Low initiating structures(S) low consideration (C) behavior

Low initiating structures (S) Low consideration (C) behavior

In a High considerations (C) and low structures (S), the leader has less emphasis on creating employee structures but has a high concentration on employee satisfaction. This is a type of leader who is people oriented and is known as a country club leader. This kind of management takes care of employee but fails in the structure. A leader should adopt this style when the set goal is to improve production, and the state of employee satisfaction is above average as per organization policy (Andrew, 2016).

In high structure (S) and high consideration (C), the leader focuses on tasks and gives guidance effectively. In addition, this leader would highly support his/her employees. This leader achieves effective leadership and he meets his targets. The leader is a team player. This type of organization has high concern for employee welfare at the same time maintaining high structures for high production. A leader should use this type of leadership when the set goal for an organization is to improve employee demands while aiming at increasing the production performance. In other words, organizations that need to perform while achieving employee satisfaction.

  A low structure (S) low consideration (C) has a leader who is not interested to provide the required structure for work and has little or no interest in satisfying his employees. This is a poor leader. In this kind of management, leaders pay less concern on their employee’s welfare and no concern on tasks and schedules. Thus, it does not achieve set goals. A leader should adopt this style of leadership when the organization is at its peak, where the employees’ welfare s taken care of and production goals have exceeded the set goal.

A low consideration (C) high structure (S) is a form of leadership where the leader offers little or no offer on employee satisfaction, but gives priority to a high level of assigning task and roles for employees to achieve high production. This kind of leader is product oriented. This leadership style in an organization focuses on its production performance while the employees work in deplorable working conditions. A leader should adopt this style of leadership in a situation where the employees’ needs and wants have been provided, but the organization production performance has not been achieved.

References

Andrew Bubrin. (2016). Chapter 4: Leadership Behaviors Attitudes and styles. Retrieved from http://slideplayer.com/slide/5728780

Anuj Gandi, Samir Gondaliya, Hadrik Sanchaniya & Pratik Shah. (2010). Ohio State Leadership behavior theory (Ohio State Uni.) Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/anujgandhi30/ohio-state-leadership-behaviour-theory