Leadership and Followership Communication Styles 51

leadership improves work performance and employee job satisfaction.34 After reviewing 50 years of research, professors Gary Yukl, Angela Gordon, and Tom Taber conclude that change-centered behaviors should join task and relational behaviors as components of leadership styles. All three types of behaviors play a role in effective leadership, though not all behaviors are equally important in every context and every behavior is not significant in every leadership situa- tion. Here are the specific behaviors that Yukl and his colleagues associate with each leadership style:35

Task Behaviors • Short-term planning—“deciding what to do, how to do it, who will do it,

and when it will be done.” Includes writing plans and budgets, making schedules, and coordinating with others to determine a plan of action.

• Clarifying responsibilities—guiding and coordinating work activity. Involves setting objectives, looking for the best way to do the work, and evaluat- ing performance against benchmarks.

• Monitoring operations and performance—gathering data about operations, work progress, the performance of individual followers, product and ser- vice quality, and project and program success. Takes the form of observa- tion, reading reports, reviewing performance data, inspecting quality, and holding progress review meetings.

Relations Behaviors • Supporting—demonstrating consideration, concern, and acceptance for

the needs and feelings of others.

Figure 2.2 A Two-Dimensional View of Leadership CONSIDERATION

HighLow

High

Low

INITIATING STRUCTURE

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52 Chapter Two

• Developing—coaching others. Examples: helping someone learn how to do a task or learn from a mistake, explaining how to solve a problem, provid- ing opportunities for followers to develop their skills and confidence.

• Recognizing—expressing praise and appreciation for excellent perfor- mance, significant contributions, and noteworthy achievements. Often combined with tangible rewards.

• Consulting—involving followers in important decisions. • Empowering—delegating to followers and giving them autonomy and dis-

cretion.

Change Behaviors • External monitoring—scanning the environment to identify threats and

opportunities from customers, clients, suppliers, government policies, market trends, and so on. Includes reading industry reports, attending professional meetings, talking to customers, studying competitors, and conducting market research. Monitoring also incorporates analyzing the information and interpreting events to lay the foundation for change.

• Envisioning change—creating an inspiring vision to encourage followers to commit to change; connecting with the values, goals, and ideals of followers.

• Encouraging innovative thinking—sparking innovative thinking in others and in oneself; proposing innovative ideas.

• Taking personal risks—stepping out to push for change in the face of opposition, which may result in loss of job, reputation, or career.

McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y In the late 1950s, Douglas McGregor, a professor of management at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, attempted to isolate the ways in which attitudes and behaviors influence organizational management. The result of this investigation was McGregor’s classic work, The Human Side of Enterprise.36 In his book, McGregor identifies two basic approaches to supervision—Theory X management and Theory Y management.