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Interaction of Style and Leadership
by
Charles Lamson
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Style is a larger component of the advertising agency manager's job than of the army sergeant's. Although the mix varies from job to job, behavior in an organization remains a function of both style and expectations and involves some combination of task and relationship behaviors.
Leader's Style and Expectations
One of the most important elements of a leadership situation is the style of the leader. Leaders develop their style over a period of time from experience, education, and training. Robert Tannenbaum and Warren Schmidt suggested that there are at least four internal forces that influence a manager's leadership style: value system, confidence in employees, personal inclinations, and feelings of security in an uncertain situation.
A manager's value system consists of the answers to such questions as: How strongly does a manager feel that individuals should have a share in making the decisions that affect them. How convinced is the manager that the person who is paid to assume responsibility should personally carry the burden of decision making? The strength of a manager's convictions on questions such as these will tend to affect that manager's leadership style, particularly in terms of the amount of direction or support that manager is willing to provide for staff members.
Confidence in employees is often influenced by the manager's assumptions about human nature. In other words, the amount of control or freedom a manager gives to staff members depends on whether that manager believes that people are basically lazy, unreliable, or irresponsible or that people can be creative and self-motivated in an environment, if properly motivated. In addition, a manager's confidence in employees also depends on feelings about the knowledge and competence of staff members in a particular area of responsibility.
A manager's personal inclinations have an impact on leadership style. Some managers are comfortable being directive (controlling and supervising). Others operate more comfortably in a team situation in which they provide some direction or facilitate the interactions of team members. Still other managers prefer to delegate and let staff members handle specific problems and issues.
Feelings of security in an uncertain situation have a definite impact on the manager's willingness to release control over decision making to other people in an uncertain environment. What might be involved here is the manager's tolerance for ambiguity.
It is important to recognize that managers have different leadership styles, but it is also important to remember that style is not how leaders think they behave in a situation, but how others (most importantly, their followers) perceive their behavior. The importance of this concept is often difficult for leaders to understand. For example, if Jane's followers think that she is a firm, task-oriented leader, it will not matter that she thinks she is a democratic, relationship-oriented leader; her followers will behave according to how they perceive her. In this case, the followers will treat Jane as if she were a firm task-oriented leader. Thus, leaders have to learn how they are coming across to others. Yet, this kind of information is difficult to obtain. People are often reluctant to be honest on this subject, especially in a supervisor-employee relationship.
Followers' Styles and Expectations
The styles of followers are an important consideration for leaders in appraising their situation. In fact, as Fillmore Sanford indicated, there is some justification for regarding the followers "as the most crucial factor in any leadership event." Followers in any situation are vital, not only because individually they accept or reject the leader, but because as a group they actually determine whatever personal power that leader will have. If the follower decides not to follow, it really does not matter what the other elements in the situation are.
This is an important aspect of all levels of management. Victor H. Vroom uncovered evidence that the effectiveness of a leader is dependent to a great extent on the style of the individual workers. Saul Gellerman also stressed the importance of the workers:
Place a group with strong independence drives under supervisors who need to keep the group under their thumb, and the result is very likely to be trouble. Similarly, if you take a docile team who is accustomed to obedience and respect for their supervisors and place them under supervisors who try to make them manage their own work, they are likely to wonder uneasily whether the supervisors really know what they are doing. 
Tannenbaum and Schmidt argued that a leader can permit followers greater freedom if the following essential conditions exist:
Even though managers would prefer to change their followers' styles, they may find that they must adapt, at least temporarily, to the followers' current behavior. For example, a supervisor who wants followers to take more responsibility and to operate under general rather than close supervision cannot expect this kind of change to take place overnight. The supervisor's current behavior, at least to some extent, must be compatible with the current expectations of the group, with planned change taking place after a long-term period. We have seen numerous examples of the need for this kind of diagnosis in schools where humanistic teachers have tried to turn over significant responsibility to students without recognizing that many of these students expect teachers to tell them what to do. This rapid change in style often produces irresponsibility rather than more student initiative.
Hyler Bracey has suggested that leaders need to "manage from the HEART":
Managing from the HEART can promote increased honesty in supervisor-employee relationships, increasing job satisfaction through personal empowerment, and give your organization a tangible competitive edge.
 Leaders, especially leaders who are new in their position, should know the expectations that followers have about the way they should behave in certain situations. A predecessor's leader behavior style is still a powerful influence. If this style is different from the new leader's style, this difference may create an immediate problem. Leaders must either change their style to coincide with followers' expectations or change follower expectations. Because the style of leaders often has been developed over a long period of time, it can be difficult for them to make any drastic changes in the short run. It may, therefore, be more effective if leaders concentrate on changing the expectations of their followers. Supervisor's Style and Expectations Another element of the environment is the leadership style of one's supervisor. By supervisor, we mean the leader's leader. Just about everyone has a supervisor of one kind or another. Most managers give considerable attention to supervising followers, but some do not pay enough attention to being a follower themselves. Yet, meeting the supervisor's expectations is often an important factor affecting one's style, particularly if one's supervisor is located close by. If a supervisor is very task-oriented, for example, the supervisor might expect followers(s) to operate in the same manner. Relationship-oriented behavior might be evaluated as inappropriate, without even considering results. This rigid thinking has become evident when first-line supervisors are sent to training programs to improve their human relations skills. Upon returning to the company, they try to implement some of these new ideas. But their own supervisors, who have not accepted these concepts, become impatient with the first-line supervisor's newfound concern for people. "Joe, cut out all that talking with the workers and get the work done." With such reactions, it would not take this first-line supervisor long to revert to the previous style, and in the future, it will be much more difficult to implement any behavioral change. Associates' Styles and Expectations A leader's associates, or peers, are those individuals who have similar positions within the organization. For example, the associates of a vice president for production are the other vice presidents in the company; the associates of a teacher would be other teachers. Yet, not all associates are significant for leaders; only those they interact with regularly have an impact on their style and effectiveness. The style and expectations of one's associates are important when a leader has frequent interactions with them, such as a situation that involves trading and bargaining for resources. Organization's Styles and Expectations The style and expectations of an organization are determined by the history and tradition of the organization, as well as by the organizational goals and objectives that reflect the style and expectations of current top management. Over a period of time, an organization, much like an individual, becomes characterized by certain modes of behavior that are perceived as its style. The development of an organizational style, or corporate image, has been referred to as the process of institutionalization. In this process, the organization is infused with a system of values that reflects its history and the people who have played vital roles in its formation and growth. Thus, it is difficult to understand Ford Motor Company without knowing the impact that Henry Ford had on its formation. Some organizations, for example, hold to the notion that the desirable executive is one who is dynamic, imaginative, decisive, and persuasive. Other organizations put more emphasis on the importance of the executive's ability to work effectively with people---human relations skills. Members of the organization soon become conscious of the value system operating within the institution and guide their actions from many expectations derived from those values. The organizations expectations are most often expressed in forms of policies, operating procedures, and controls, as well as in informal customs and mores developed over time.\ Organizational Goals The goals of an organization usually consist of some combination of output and intervening variables. Output variables are those short-run goals that can easily be measured, such as net profits, annual earnings, and win-loss records. On the other hand, intervening variables consist of those long-run goals reflecting the internal condition of the organization that cannot easily be measured, such as its capacity for effective interaction, communication, and decision making.  Joseph Batton, an author of fourteen books on leadership and quality management, summarized the relationship of an organizations values and expectations. Organizational policies, procedures, processes, and programs must be individually rooted in the organization's philosophy, which is the basic repository of corporate vision and values, and which, in turn, pervades every part and person in the organization. It is important to note that in the absence of a coherent and cogent philosophy, mediocrity and a sense of drift abound.
*SOURCE: MANAGEMENT OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR: LEADING HUMAN RESOURCES, 8TH ED., 2001, PGS. 146-152*
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