What’s Your Leadership Style?
Per Douglas McGregor, there are two types of leadership styles, Theory X & Theory Y.
With Theory X, you’re more likely to create a tit for tat culture. Leaders believe that people — by default — are not motivated and need to have an incentive or a punishment to perform. They also believe that people need to be monitored, good work has to be rewarded and bad work needs punishment.
On the other side of the spectrum, you’ll find the Theory Y leadership, based on the ridiculous idea that people are willing to contribute and are self motivated to make good work.
Theory Y leaders want to inspire people to go above and beyond, not because of a peculiar rewards or fear, but with empowerment, creating a gift culture where people are actively contributing to the company.
Now let me ask you this question, are you focusing on getting stuff done or take care of the people?
Task-focused leaders are self-organized, proactive, self-reflective and self-regulating as times change while person-focused leaders care about the people, their well-being, and look to build a trustful relationships with them.
In 1964, Robert Blake and Jane Mouton developed the managerial grid model that depicted five different types of leadership, the optimal style being based on the Theory Y.
The Authority-Obedience leader focuses too much on the task making people often don’t feel appreciated enough.
The Country-Club leader focuses too much on the people that no work is getting done.
The Impoverished leader is low people, low task, and is not really doing stuff.
Team Managers are high people and high task.
Team leaders focus both on the people and the work to be done.
Since then two leadership styles have been added to the model, and some renaming has been done, if you want to know more about it feel free to check it out on Wikipedia.
In the end, most of us tend to be Middle of the Road Manager, we’re aware we should be attending to the task and the people, but we’re falling short.
When Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard realized there was not a single “best” style of leadership, they decided to develop the Situational Leadership Model because organizations and companies face different challenges and situations change, so leaders need to be ready to respond, pivot and adjust.
According to this model, leaders need to consider how their team is ready in regard to the task. If your team is not ready to perform the task, low readiness, leaders need to be very directing, what Blake and Mouton referred to as an authority obedience leadership.
If teams are very ready, leaders can delegate because the team can handle the rest. When team members are moderately ready when it comes to the task, leaders can do more supporting and coaching.
Now think about which leadership style would be most useful for the goals of your company and what can you do in the coming month to begin to develop and cultivate this style.
