Formal study of leadership relatively new 'science',
October 28, 2007, 2D.
Leadership has been around as long as
people have lived and worked in groups. The
Old Testament and other ancient texts are full of examples of the accounts and
accomplishments of leaders. The ancient
Egyptians even had hieroglyphic symbols for leadership, leader, and follower 5,000 years
ago.
The formal study of leadership, using the
procedures and principles of the scientific method, is relatively newwithin the past
100 years. Beginning first with an analysis
of traits and characteristics of leaders, the field then moved into an analysis of leader
behaviors. Researchers concluded that there
are two types of behaviors that leaders exhibittask-oriented and people-oriented. Leadership researchers from Ohio State University
labeled the two types of behaviors Initiating Structure and
Consideration. Initiating
structure refers to direction, goal facilitation, task-related feedback, well-defined
patterns of organization, and procedure. Consideration,
on the other hand, refers to behaviors stressing friendship, mutual trust, respect,
interpersonal warmth, concern for the feelings of followers, and participative
communication. Some researchers of this era
concluded that leaders who exhibited high-task and high-people behaviors were most
effective in the workplace. Those beliefs led
to the idea of Universal Leadershipwhere the universally
best style of leadership was the combination of high-task and high-people behaviors.
The proposition that there was a
best style of leadership caused some researchers to reexamine and refine their
models and thinking. With that reexamination,
the contingency era of leadership thought was born. It
was realized that characteristics of the situation help determine the most appropriate and
effective combination of task and people behaviors. Paul
Hersey and Ken Blanchard hypothesized that follower maturity (or follower
readiness) was the situational characteristic that determined the optimal combination of
task and people behaviors. Hersey and
Blanchard describe follower maturity as a combination of willingness and ability of
followers to perform a task. As followers
increase in willingness and ability, their maturity levels increase and the combinations
of task and people behaviors required to most effectively guide them change. As follower maturity increases, the required
levels of task behaviors decrease. People
behaviors increase through the middle levels of maturity before dropping at higher levels
of maturity.
According to Hersey and Blanchards
Situational Leadership Theory, followers who are unwilling and unable to perform a task
are of lowest follower maturity and require a telling (high task, low people)
style of leadership. As followers increase in
maturity, leaders should advance to selling (high task, high people),
participating (low task, high people), and delegating (low task,
low people) styles of leadershipeach one appropriate for a progressively higher
level of follower maturity.
Hersey and Blanchards model makes
it clear that leaders need to adjust their behaviors and styles of leadership toward
followers in relation to their degrees of task-related maturity. Effective leaders can identify the appropriate
degrees of task and people behaviors required in all types of work situations. Effective leaders recognize that people, tasks,
and situations change and that leadership styles must also change to bring about optimal
compliance and performance from their people.
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