Style Approach - Application

The style approach emphasizes that one style of leadership behaviour cannot be effective in all situations. Earlier theories treated leadership exclusively as a personality trait and behavior approach has widened the scope by including the behaviors of leaders and what they do in various situations. Explore how you can benefit from the concepts to understand your own behaviors and what are some of the leadership tools based on the style approach to leadership.

Advantages of the Style Approach:

This approach to leadership provides a broad framework for assessing leadership and rather than telling leaders how they should be behaving for leadership effectiveness. This approach rather describes major components of their behavior and classifies their action towards either task or relationship level. This approach is easy to understand as it provides a tool to the leader to assess his behavior in terms of two dimensions based on Task or Relationship orientation.

Major Learnings from Style Leadership:

As per this theory the leader’s style consists primarily of two major types of behaviors which can be task or relationship oriented. In any practical situation, where leadership is occurring, the leader is acting out both task and relationship behaviors and his success as a leader depends on how he is able to balance these two orientations – task v/s relationship. Hence they become core to the process of leadership.

Practical Applications of Style Leadership:

Self-Assessment: Leaders can learn a lot about themselves and how they are perceived by others in light of the task and relationship dimensions. They can assess their behaviors, styles and actions and based on the assessment determine how they may want to change to improve their leadership style.

Application at workplace: The style approach can be applied easily in all types of organizational settings. At all levels (supervisory, mid-level, senior level) managers are continually engaged in task and relationship behaviors. By assessing their own style, managers can determine how they are being perceived and work towards changing their behaviors to be more effective.

Learning and Development: Many leadership training and development programs are structured along the lines of the style approach. OrganizaAlmost all are designed similarly and include giving managers questionnaires that assess in some way their task and relationship behaviors toward subordinates. Participants use these assessments to improve their overall leadership styles.

To assist you in developing a better understanding of how leadership style is measured and what your own style might be “TechnoFunc Leadership Style Quiz” is included in this section and by taking this quiz you can gain visibility to your general leadership behavior and take some tips to flex this behavior based on different leadership situations.