Leadership
Chapter 2 – Behavioral approach
2023–2024
Michaël Parmentier
Leaders engage in two primary types of behaviors: (1) task
behaviors and (2) relationship behaviors
Leaders’ behaviors
The Behavioral Approach
Contrary to the trait approach, which emphasized the stable, sometimes innate, characteristics of
leaders
The behavioral approach focuses exclusively on:
› What leaders do
› How leaders act
By doing so, the behavioral approach expanded leadership research on:
› The actions of leaders toward followers
› The actions of leaders in various contexts
The Behavioral Approach
Leadership is composed of two general kinds of behaviors:
1. Task behaviors
- Facilitating task and goal accomplishment
- Helping othersto achieve their objectives
2. Relationship behaviors
- Helping followers feel comfortable
- Helping followers to collaborate and connect, get along with each other
- Helping followers with the situation
The central purpose of the behavioral approach is to understand how leaders combine
these two kinds of behaviors to influence followers in their efforts to reach a goal
The Behavioral Approach
Historically, many studies have been conducted to investigate the behavioral
approach:
› The Ohio State University studies in the late 1940s
› The University of Michigan studies
› Blake and Mouton’s (1960) studies
Leadership styles
Combinations of :
Leaders Task behaviors Situations
Relationship behaviors
Which leaders’ traits and experiences Which elements in the situation will
will influence behaviors? influence behaviors?
The Ohio State Studies
The Ohio State studies
Based on the findings of Stogdill (1948) who pointed to the importance of considering
more than leaders’ traits
› A group of researchers believed that trait research was fruitless
› They began asking followers to complete questionnaires about their leaders’ behaviors
The Ohio State studies
Their original questionnaire was constructed from a list of more than 1,800
items describing different aspects of leader behavior !
Both followers and leaders were asked to rate their leaders (or themselves)
on leadership dimensions
From this long list of items, a questionnaire composed of 150 questions
was formulated – the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ;
Hemphill & Coons, 1957)
The Ohio State studies
The LBDQ was assessed among thousand of people in educational,
military, and industrial settings
Later, Stogdill (1963) published a shortened version of the LBDQ – the
LBDQ-XII and it became the most widely used instrument in leadership
research
The Ohio State studies
The researchers found that followers’ responses clustered around two general types of behaviors,
which explained 85% of the descriptions of leadership behavior
Setting clear Scheduling work
Organizing work expectations activities
Initiating Structure is the degree to which the leader creates clarity and Setting work and
Giving structure to the performance standards
structure for the team and the organization
work context
Defining role Providing feedback
responsibilities
Creating and maintaining
Emphasizing the welfare of
Listening to team members policies and procedures
the team members
and other stakeholders
Providing support to team Consideration is the degree to which the leader creates an environment of
members emotional support, warmth, friendliness, and trust
Building trust and a good
team climate Stogdill (1974)
The Ohio State studies
Warner-Soderholm et al. (2019)
The Ohio State Studies Leaders that display both behaviors
are more successful for both the team
and the organization
Organizational productivity
Job satisfaction
Organizational productivity
Job satisfaction
The Michigan studies
The University of Michigan studies
Around the same time, a group of researchers started to explore how leadership
functioned in small groups
Likewise, they identified two opposite ends of leadership behaviors:
› Employees-oriented
› Production-oriented
Cartwright & Zander (1970), Likert (1961, 1967)
Blake and Mouton’s (1960)
studies
Blake and Mouton (1960)
Perhaps one of the best-known model of leadership is the Leadership Grid from Blake
and Mouton
Again, they identified two main dimensions of leadership behaviors:
› Concern for production
› Concern for people
However, they went further by suggesting that the combinations of both created
specific leadership styles
Blake and Mouton (1960)
Country Club Leadership
Thoughtful attention to the needs of people for
satisfying relationships leads to a comfortable, friendly
organization atmosphere and work tempo
Middle-of-the-road Leadership
Adequate organization performance is possible
through balancing the necessity to get work out while
maintaining morale of people at a satisfactory level
Impoverished Leadership
Minimum effort is exerted to get required Authority-Compliance Leadership
work done as appropriate to sustain Efficiency in operations results from arranging
organization membership conditions of work in such a way that human
éléments interefer to a minimum degree
Blake and Mouton (1960)
Blake and Mouton (1960)
Team Leadership
Work accomplishment is from commited people.
Interdependence through a common stake in organization
purpose leads to relationships of trust and respect
Country Club Leadership
Thoughtful attention to the needs of people for
satisfying relationships leads to a comfortable, friendly
organization atmosphere and work tempo
Middle-of-the-road Leadership
Adequate organization performance is possible
through balancing the necessity to get work out while
maintaining morale of people at a satisfactory level
Impoverished Leadership
Minimum effort is exerted to get required Authority-Compliance Leadership
work done as appropriate to sustain Efficiency in operations results from arranging
organization membership conditions of work in such a way that human
éléments interefer to a minimum degree
Blake and Mouton (1960)
Blake and Mouton (1960)
In addition to the grid, Blake and Mouton incorporated two behaviors that incorporate multiple
aspects of the grid:
› Paternalism/Maternalism
- Focuses on a family-like team
- Irrespectively of the work and tasks
Patertnalism is more linked to Country club leadership
Blake and Mouton (1960)
In addition to the grid, Blake and Mouton incorporated two behaviors that incorporate multiple
aspects of the grid:
› Paternalism/Maternalism
› Opportunism
leaders who prioritize their own interests
and agendas over the needs of their
team or organization
Implications for practice, strengths
and criticisms
Implications for practice
› It brings simplicity to our understanding of leadership
› This approach is more descriptive rather than prescriptive
- Leaders can easily assess themselves and how they could adapt and change to
be more effective
- Many training programs are structured along this approach
› It provides the foundation to understanding how leaders can adapt to
situations and people – see next chapter
Strengths
› It marked a major shift in the general focus of leadership research
› The basic tenets of this approach has been widely validated
› Leadership styles are combinations of the two basic leadership behaviors
› The simplicity of the approach makes it heuristic – it helps our understanding
and judgment of leaders
Judge et al. (2004)
Criticisms
› The way leaders adapt their behaviors to situations and people is unclear
› Most studies rely on followers’ perceptions of leadership rather than actual
behavior
› No universal leadership style have been found to be the most effective
(even the high-high style) and thus calls for closer attention to situations and
people
› This approach is extremely US-centered and recent shows that important
cultural differences exist
Behrendt et al. (2017), Dinh et al. (2014), Martin et al. (2012), Yukl (2003)
Group Activity– Leaders’ traits and behaviors
By groups of three
Choose a leader
Describe his/her leadership traits and behaviors
using the theoretical models
Is it useful?
What is missing?
