Pros and Cons of Behavioral Approach

The Behavioral Approach

The behavioral approach focuses on what leaders do rather than discovering who leaders are. The task behaviors and relationship behaviors are the two types of behaviors engaging in this approach and help leaders to influence others (Northouse, 2016). A wide range of researches have been done on behavioral approach by various universities and scholars.

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The Ohio State studies

Researchers analyzed how individuals acted when they were leading a group or an organization. In order to help this analyzing-process, they had developed a questionnaire called the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ) (Stogdill, 1963).

The University of Michigan studies

Employee orientation and production orientation are the two leadership behaviors identified by the researchers at University of Michigan (Northouse, 2016). In Employee orientation behavior, leaders have approached their followers with a strong human relation (Northouse, 2016).

The work of Blake and Mouton on the Managerial Grid

Blake and Mouton have developed a grid called the Leadership Grid which explains how leaders help organizations to reach their objectives over two factors. One factor is leaders’ concerns on the results and the other factor is leaders’ concerns on the people (Northouse, 2016).

Pros and Cons of Behavioral Approach

Pros

1.   Rather than focusing on leaders characteristics, it broadly focuses on what leaders do and how they act in various situations (Northouse, 2016). This approach takes an account of the behaviors of leaders.

2.   A wide range of studies mentioned above validates and gives credibility to the basic beliefs of the approach (Northouse, 2016).

3.   This helps leaders to exercise leadership by acting out both task and relationship behaviors. The way in which how leaders use of these two behaviors in a balancing way, will help them to be an effective leader (Northouse, 2016).

     

4.      They can see how they act to others by trying to see their behaviors in the light of task and relationship behaviors aspect (Northouse, 2016). It helps them to evaluate their actions and to decide the way how they can improve their leadership behaviors (Northouse, 2016).

Cons

1.   The researches on behavioral approach do not provide satisfactory linking between leaders’ behaviors and the performance outcomes (Yukl, 2013).

2.  These researches have failed in finding a general form of leadership that adapts their behaviors to be effective in almost every situation (Yukl, 2013).more researches are needed.

3.    The behavioral approach is pointed out that most effective leadership style is the high-high style (i.e., high task and high relationship). But in some particular situations, applying different types of leadership styles may be healthier than applying high-high style. So still it remains unclear that the high-high style is the best style of leadership (Yukl, 2013).

Conclusion

The behavioral approach provides a valuable structure to assess the leadership with respect to task and relationship dimensions. It has several pros and cons.

References:

Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership (7 ed.). Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.

Stogdill, R. M. (1963). MANUAL for the LEADER BEHAVIOR DESCRIPTION QUESTIONNAIRE – Form XII. Retrieved April 29, 2018 : 11:55 pm, from The Ohio State University: https://fisher.osu.edu/supplements/10/2862/1962%20LBDQ%20MANUAL.pdf

Yukl, G. (2013). Leadership in organizations (8 ed.). Boston: Pearson Education.