Leadership is a crucial skill for all human beings to possess in order to run a business successfully. A company’s success is not only determined by their profitability but also by where they have taken the organization. Leadership dictates the culture of an organisation, which reveals its most important asset – its employees. People in an organization must be motivated to excel, perform and display their great abilities and skills. Leaders use many approaches, models and behaviors. The three essential types of behavioral leadership approaches are task-oriented, relationship-orientated and transformational leadership approaches.
The Task-Oriented Leadership Approach is one of 3 behavioral leadership approaches. It is an approach that is used by people who have a trait. It is the person who demonstrates behavior to complete tasks and achieve goals. It is the precise way of completing tasks to get results. It is about allocating resources where they are needed to achieve goals. Planning, scheduling and implementing a structure are all behaviors associated with task-oriented behaviour. But two are of paramount importance: initiating-structure-leadership and transactional-leadership. Initiating structure leadership is a behaviour that defines roles for team members and develops structure to be followed by the team. It also explains what the team must do in order to maximize its efforts. Transactional leadership is an approach that clarifies and establishes the roles and tasks of employees, as well as their responsibilities. This includes corrective measures, including rewards for performance.
Relationship-oriented behavior is a leadership behavior that shows the interaction that the leadership has with its employees. A relationship-oriented leader is very personable, social, outgoing and a need to care for their employees. The three kinds of relationship-oriented behaviors are consideration, empowering leadership and servant leadership. The leadership behavior of consideration is when the leader shows concern for the needs and desires of their employees. It’s a key part of building a positive culture by fostering trust and respect amongst everyone. Empowering leadership is another behavior that goes a little bit beyond just the emotional part of relationship-oriented leadership behavior which empowering leadership consist of the psychological aspect of it. This includes the performance, motivation and creativity aspects of empowering leader behavior. Servant leadership is the third part of relationship-oriented behavior which is a behavior that focuses on being a selfless leader and putting the needs of your employees before yours with the expectation that those employees will flourish and exceed performance expectations.
The opposite of these two leadership styles is transformational leadership. In this case, employees put the needs and goals of the organization ahead of their own. This type of leader is influenced by two factors: organizational culture and personal characteristics. Leaders are often very adaptable, proactive and extroverted. The organizational environment is flexible and adaptive. This behavior reflects the philosophy, expectations and values of an organization.
We can always rely on time to continue producing great leaders. Barack Obama, a leader of note in the 21st-century, is one such example. Although he is a leader of note, he is best known for his transformational style. He exhibited the four key behaviors that make up a transformational leadership style. These four behaviors are charismatic, idealized influence and individualized consideration. In his campaign, Obama made a big appeal to the middle and young classes of America by telling the story of how he had been raised by an unwed mother who was struggling to get by. While he was pursuing his goal of greatness, he had an absentee father. He showed how he struggled to get to Harvard Law and study Constitutional Law. He was like many college kids who had tried marijuana. But he was able, despite his experimentation with the drug, to stay on the right path. The end result is votes. The Washington Post noted that exit polls showed that young people voted 60-37 for Obama in 2012. While lower than in 2008, the rate was still much higher than back in 1990 (Aaron Blake). As an example of his transformational skills, he could have extended the olive branches to leaders around the world including Cuba which was under embargo. He did this through baseball in order to rekindle relations. Barack Obama has shown transformational skills both during his time as president and now. The four behaviors that make up transformational skills are inspiring motivation, idealized impact, individualized consideration, and intellectual stimulus.
Leadership is not just about the behavioral skills. Fred Fielder’s Contingency Leadership Model is a situational approach. The contingency-leadership model helps determine whether the person is task or relationship focused. The contingency leadership model helps to decide which type of leadership is most effective in a given situation. The Path-Goal Leadership Model, also known as the House’s Approach, clarifies the behavior patterns needed to achieve organizational goals and objectives. It does this while providing a supportive environment for employees. They both have their pros and cons, but may offer more benefits than behavioral leadership. Using different leadership approaches has many benefits and drawbacks. They are easy to adapt into your own leadership style. The relationship of leadership and employee is built on the basis of their relationship, not the perspective of leadership models.
