AQF8

Leadership (8001LEAD)

AQF8

Term 5 2023

[insert student name]

[insert student number]

Leadership Self-Reflection

Word count: [insert word count]

[type paragraphs hereadd more, as required]

References

[On a separate page, type references here, in alphabetical order. See the AIB Style Guide for the format. This section is excluded from the word count.]

Appendix 1 Declaration on the use of Generative AI

[On a separate page Title of Appendix 2 This section is excluded from the word count.]

Declaration (example) to include as an appendix to your assessment if you use Generative AI in your assessment. If you did not use Generative AI delete this appendix.

I acknowledge the use of ChatGPT on [date] to [specific use].

The prompts used include [list of prompts].

The output from these prompts was used to [explain use].

Task

Your first assessment task is designed to give you a starting point from which to reflect on your raw leadership approach and perspectives on leadership, as they are now, as you commence your MBA journey. This will start you on the often difficult path of critically reflecting on your personal leadership style an important aspect of leadership development, even for the most seasoned leaders.

Procedure

There are two parts to this assessment:

After engaging with the content in Week 1, you will have completed the following self-assessment questionnaire from theLeadership textbookin which you will gain insight into your own leadership competencies.

Leadership_Behaviour_Questionnaire(LBQ)

Reflect on the questionnaire results that you received from the LBQ (Chapter 4 of theLeadership textbook). Then, compose a 500-word response considering what you have learned about yourself and your perspectives on leadership.

Use the following questions as a guide to help you draft your response:

What have you learned about yourself as a result of completing this questionnaire? Give an example(s) that supports or is in contrast with these results.

What are the practical implications of these results on your leadership development?

What is the significance of these results concerning the wider leadership perspectives discussed in Week 1?

After drafting your response, check it against the marking criteria for this task (see rubric below). Make sure it is free of errors and submit it for marking by the due date.

Important: If you haven't already done so, it is essential that you completeModule 3 Academic Integritylocated in the Orientation Program,before submitting your first assessment.Remember, you can take the two quizzes as often as you like. Tick the completion box on the main Assessment page once you have completed the two quizzes to an 80% pass grade.

Requirements

Note:Allwritten assessmentsshould be submitted asWord files (.docx)(Word is available from your AIBOffice 365account).

The required word length for this assessment is 500 words (plus a 10% tolerance).

In terms of structure, presentation and style, you are required to use the following:

a. AIB standard essay format. This means that you do not typically use multiple headings and sub-headings within the body of your response, as you would when writing a report. Write well-structured paragraphs to develop and support your ideas.

b. You are required to follow the reflective writing style. Please refer toAIB Style Guidefor more information.

Please be aware that the best practice in academic writing is to write in the third person style, making your writing more objective and less biased. However, as Assessment 1 is a reflective piece, you can write in the first person when referring to your personal/professional experiences see 7.4 Reflection in theAIB Style Guide.

This assessment requires you to use a minimum oftwo (2)credible academic sources in addition to your textbook. You may also use credible company, industry, government and media sources to support your statements, but these will NOT count toward the minimum required credible academic sources for your assessment. Many web-based sources are not sufficiently rigorous and credible for use in academic assessments and will NOT count toward the minimum required credible academic sources for your assessment. For further guidance, refer toScholarly, academic & peer-reviewed journals.

You must appropriately acknowledge all sources of information in your assessment with the AIB Harvard author-date referencing style see theAIB Style GuideandAssessment Policy.Utilise the suggested structure outlined in theAssessment 1 Leadership self-reflection templateas described below:

Cover Page

Introduction

Paragraph 1

Paragraph 2

Conclusion

On a new page: Reference List (you must reference the prescribed textbookplusa minimum of two additional sources). They are not included in the word limit.Appendices(Please do not add any surveys as an appendix, the only appendix to include is the use of Generative AI if applicable)Note:Table of Contents and Executive Summary are NOT required for Assessment 1.

Assessment planning

You may find thisAssessment 1 Plannerhelpful for planning out your time for your first assessment.

Grading criteria and feedback

You will receive feedback on your reflection from your Online Learning Facilitator to indicate the strength of your work. This feedback will create a formative foundation in the subject knowledge and provide a framework for your responses in Assessments 2 and 3. Your assessment will be marked according to the following grading criteria:

Depth of reflection in response to questionnaire results (20%).

Application of questionnaire results to a broader context of professional life and leadership development (35%).

Demonstrated understanding of relevant theories and concepts (35%).

Communication, presentation, structure and language (5%).

In-text citations and referencing (5%).

SeeAssessment 1 rubric

The behavioral approach suggests that leaders engage in two primary types of behaviors: task behaviors and relationship behaviors. How leaders combine these two types of behaviors to influence others is the central focus of the behavioral approach.

DESCRIPTION

The behavioral approach emphasizes the behavior of the leader. This distinguishes it from the trait approach (Chapter 2), which emphasizes the personality characteristics of the leader, and the skills approach (Chapter 3), which emphasizes the leaders capabilities. The behavioral approach focuses exclusively on what leaders do and how they act. In shifting the study of leadership to leader behaviors, the behavioral approach expanded the research of leadership to include the actions of leaders toward followers in various contexts.

Researchers studying the behavioral approach determined that leadership is composed of two general kinds of behaviors: task behaviors and relationship behaviors. Task behaviors facilitate goal accomplishment: They help group members to achieve their objectives. Relationship behaviors help followers feel comfortable with themselves, with each other, and with the situation in which they find themselves. The central purpose of the behavioral approach is to explain how leaders combine these two kinds of behaviors to influence followers in their efforts to reach a goal.

Many studies have been conducted to investigate the behavioral approach. Some of the first studies to be done were conducted at The Ohio State University in the late 1940s, based on the findings of Stogdills (1948) work, which pointed to the importance of considering more than leaders traits in leadership research. At about the same time, another group of researchers at the University of Michigan was conducting a series of studies that explored how leadership functioned in small groups. A third line of research was begun by Blake and Mouton in the early 1960s; it explored how managers used task and relationship behaviors in the organizational setting.

Although many research studies could be categorized under the heading of the behavioral approach, the Ohio State studies, the Michigan studies, and the studies by Blake and Mouton (1964, 1978, 1985) are strongly representative of the ideas in this approach. By looking closely at each of these groups of studies, we can draw a clearer picture of the underpinnings and implications of the behavioral approach.

Task and Relationship BehaviorsThe essence of leadership behavior has two dimensionstask behaviors and relationship behaviors. There are leadership situations and challenges that call for strong task behavior, while others demand strong relationship behavior, but some degree of each is required in every situation. At the same time, because of personality and life experiences, leaders bring to every situation their own unique tendencies to be either more task oriented or more relationship oriented, or some unique blend of the two. On the surface, this may seem incidental or ho-hum, but in regard to leader effectiveness, the utilization of both of these behaviors is absolutely pivotal to success or failure.

Task Orientation

Simply put, task-oriented people are doers, and task leadership behaviors facilitate goal accomplishment. Researchers have labeled these behaviors differently, but they are always about task accomplishment. Task leadership considers the elements involved in task accomplishment from organizing work and defining roles to determining policies and procedures to facilitate production.

Relationship Orientation

Relationship-oriented people differ from task-oriented people in that they are not as goal directed in their leadership behavior; they are more interested in connecting with others. Relationship-oriented leadership behaviors focus on the well-being of followers, how they relate to each other, and the atmosphere in which they work. Relationship leadership explores the human aspects of leadership from building camaraderie, respect, trust, and regard between leaders and followers to valuing followers uniqueness and attending to their personal needs.

Task and relationship leadership behaviors are inextricably tied together, and the behavioral approach looks at how leaders engage in both of these behaviors and the extent to which situational factors affect these behaviors.

Historical Background of the Behavioral Approach

The Ohio State Studies

A group of researchers at Ohio State believed that the results of studying leadership as a personality trait seemed fruitless and decided to analyze how individuals acted when they were leading a group or an organization. This analysis was conducted by having followers complete questionnaires about their leaders. On the questionnaires, followers had to identify the number of times their leaders engaged in certain types of behaviors.

The original questionnaire used in these studies was constructed from a list of more than 1,800 items describing different aspects of leader behavior. From this long list of items, a questionnaire composed of 150 questions was formulated; it was called the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ; Hemphill & Coons, 1957). The LBDQ was given to hundreds of people in educational, military, and industrial settings, and the results showed that certain clusters of behaviors were typical of leaders. Six years later, Stogdill (1963) published a shortened version of the LBDQ. The new form, which was called the LBDQ-XII, became the most widely used instrument in leadership research. A questionnaire similar to the LBDQ, which you can use to assess your own leadership behavior, appears later in this chapter.

Researchers found that followers responses on the questionnaire clustered around two general types of leader behaviors: initiating structure and consideration (Stogdill, 1974). Initiating structure behaviors are essentially task behaviors, including such acts as organizing work, giving structure to the work context, defining role responsibilities, and scheduling work activities. Consideration behaviors are essentially relationship behaviors and include building camaraderie, respect, trust, and liking between leaders and followers.

The two types of behaviors identified by the LBDQ-XII represent the core of the behavioral approach and are central to what leaders do: Leaders provide structure for followers, and they nurture them. The Ohio State studies viewed these two behaviors as distinct and independent. They were thought of not as two points along a single continuum, but as two different continua. For example, a leader can be high in initiating structure and high or low in task behavior. Similarly, a leader can be low in setting structure and low or high in consideration behavior. The degree to which leaders exhibit one behavior is not related to the degree to which they exhibit the other behavior.

Many studies have been done to determine which leadership behavior is most effective in a particular situation. In some contexts, high consideration has been found to be most effective, but in other situations, high initiating structure is most effective. Some research has shown that being high in both behaviors is the best form of leadership. Determining how a leader optimally mixes task and relationship behaviors has been the central task for researchers from the behavioral approach. The pathgoal approach, which is discussed in Chapter 6, exemplifies a leadership theory that attempts to explain how leaders should integrate consideration and structure into their behaviors.

The University of Michigan Studies

While researchers at Ohio State were developing the LBDQ, researchers at the University of Michigan were also exploring leadership behavior, giving special attention to the impact of leaders behaviors on the performance of small groups (Cartwright & Zander, 1970; Katz & Kahn, 1951; Likert, 1961, 1967).

ake and Moutons Managerial (Leadership) Grid

Perhaps the best-known model of managerial behavior is the Managerial Grid, which first appeared in the early 1960s and has been refined and revised several times (Blake & McCanse, 1991; Blake & Mouton, 1964, 1978, 1985). It is a model that has been used extensively in organizational training and development. The Managerial Grid, which has been renamed the Leadership Grid, was designed to explain how leaders help organizations to reach their purposes through two factors: concern for production and concern for people. Although these factors are described as leadership orientations in the model, they closely parallel the task and relationship leadership behaviors we discuss throughout this chapter.

Concern for production refers to how a leader is concerned with achieving organizational tasks. It involves a wide range of activities, including attention to policy decisions, new product development, process issues, workload, and sales volume, to name a few. Not limited to an organizations manufactured product or service, concern for production can refer to whatever the organization is seeking to accomplish (Blake & Mouton, 1964).

Concern for people refers to how a leader attends to the people in the organization who are trying to achieve its goals. This concern includes building organizational commitment and trust, promoting the personal worth of followers, providing good working conditions, maintaining a fair salary structure, and promoting good social relations (Blake & Mouton, 1964).

The Leadership (Managerial) Grid joins concern for production and concern for people in a model that has two intersecting axes (Figure 4.1). The horizontal axis represents the leaders concern for results, and the vertical axis represents the leaders concern for people. Each of the axes is drawn as a 9-point scale on which a score of 1 represents minimum concern and 9 represents maximum concern. By plotting scores from each of the axes, various leadership styles can be illustrated. The Leadership Grid portrays five major leadership styles: authoritycompliance management (9,1), country-club management (1,9), impoverished management (1,1), middle-of-the-road management (5,5), and team management (9,9).

Description

Figure 4.1 The Leadership Grid

Source: The Leadership Grid figure, Paternalism figure, and Opportunism figure from Leadership DilemmasGrid Solutions, by Robert R. Blake and Anne Adams McCanse. (Formerly the Managerial Grid by Robert R. Blake and Jane S. Mouton.) Houston, TX: Gulf Publishing Company (Grid figure: p. 29, Paternalism figure: p. 30, Opportunism figure: p. 31). Copyright 1991 by Scientific Methods, Inc. Reproduced by permission of the owners.

AuthorityCompliance Management (9,1).

The 9,1 style of leadership places heavy emphasis on task and job requirements, and less emphasis on people, except to the extent that people are tools for getting the job done. Communicating with followers is not emphasized except for the purpose of giving instructions about the task. This style is result driven, and people are regarded as tools to that end. The 9,1 leader is often seen as controlling, demanding, hard driving, and overpowering.

Country-Club Management (1,9).

The 1,9 style represents a low concern for task accomplishment coupled with a high concern for interpersonal relationships. De-emphasizing production, 1,9 leaders stress the attitudes and feelings of people, making sure the personal and social needs of followers are met. They try to create a positive climate by being agreeable, eager to help, comforting, and uncontroversial.

Impoverished Management (1,1).

The 1,1 style is representative of a leader who is unconcerned with both the task and interpersonal relationships. This type of leader goes through the motions of being a leader but acts uninvolved and withdrawn. The 1,1 leader often has little contact with followers and could be described as indifferent, noncommittal, resigned, and apathetic.

Middle-of-the-Road Management (5,5).

The 5,5 style describes leaders who are compromisers, who have an intermediate concern for the task and an intermediate concern for the people who do the task. They find a balance between taking people into account and still emphasizing the work requirements. Their compromising style gives up some of the push for production and some of the attention to employee needs. To arrive at an equilibrium, the 5,5 leader avoids conflict and emphasizes moderate levels of production and interpersonal relationships. This type of leader often is described as one who is expedient, prefers the middle ground, soft-pedals disagreement, and swallows convictions in the interest of progress.

HOW DOES THE BEHAVIORAL APPROACH WORK?

Unlike many of the other approaches discussed in the book, the behavioral approach is not a refined theory that provides a neatly organized set of prescriptions for effective leadership behavior. Rather, the behavioral approach provides a framework for assessing leadership in a broad way, as behavior with a task and relationship dimension. The behavioral approach works not by telling leaders how to behave, but by describing the major components of their behavior.

The behavioral approach reminds leaders that their actions toward others occur on a task level and a relationship level. In some situations leaders need to be more task oriented, whereas in others they need to be more relationship oriented. Similarly, some followers need leaders who provide a lot of direction, whereas others need leaders who can show them a great deal of nurturance and support. And in some cases, a leader must combine both approaches (Casimir & Ng, 2010).

An example may help explain how the behavioral approach works. Imagine two college classrooms on the first day of class and two professors with entirely different styles. Professor Smith comes to class, introduces herself, takes attendance, goes over the syllabus, explains the first assignment, and dismisses the class. Professor Jones comes to class and, after introducing herself and handing out the syllabus, tries to help the students to get to know one another by having each of the students describe a little about themselves, their majors, and their favorite nonacademic activities. The leadership behaviors of Professors Smith and Jones are quite different. The preponderance of what Professor Smith does could be labeled task behavior, and the majority of what Professor Jones does could be labeled relationship behavior. The behavioral approach provides a way to inform the professors about the differences in their behaviors. Depending on the response of the students to their leadership behaviors, the professors may want to change their behavior to improve their teaching on the first day of class.

Overall, the behavioral approach offers a means of assessing in a general way the behaviors of leaders. It reminds leaders that their impact on others occurs through the tasks they perform as well as in the relationships they create.

STRENGTHS

The behavioral approach makes several positive contributions to our understanding of the leadership process. First, the behavioral approach marked a major shift in the general focus of leadership research. Before the inception of this approach, researchers treated leadership exclusively as a trait (see Chapter 2). The behavioral approach broadened the scope of leadership research to include the behaviors of leaders and what they do in various situations. No longer was the focus of leadership on the personal characteristics of leaders: It was expanded to include what leaders did and how they acted. The early research examined a broad set of leader behaviors (over 1,800) and distilled these down to two dimensionsconsideration and initiation structure. These two behaviorscaring for others and goal attainmentare the two fundamental aspects of human behavior in groups, whether they be tribes, families, or work teams.

Second, a wide range of studies on leadership behavior validates and gives credibility to the basic tenets of the approach. First formulated and reported by researchers from The Ohio State University and the University of Michigan, and subsequently reported in the works of Blake and Mouton (1964, 1978, 1985); Blake and McCanse (1991); Judge, Piccolo, and Ilies (2004); and Littrell (2013), the behavioral approach is substantiated by a multitude of research studies that offer a viable approach to understanding the leadership process. An extensive meta-analysis of the LBDQ-XII developed by the Ohio State studies has been carried out by Judge et al. (2004), who found that all the survey instruments had significant predictive validity for leader success (Littrell, 2013). The Managerial Grid, which translates the research into categories that can be easily understood, is a popular leadership approach among managers.

Third, on a conceptual level, researchers of the behavioral approach have ascertained that a leaders style consists primarily of two major types of behaviors: task and relationship. The significance of this idea is not to be understated. Whenever leadership occurs, the leader is acting out both task and relationship behaviors; the key to being an effective leader often rests on how the leader balances these two behaviors. Together they form the core of the leadership process. Blake and Mouton defended 9,9 leadership, refuting what they called situationalism (see the next chapter), arguing that concerns for people and production reflect the situational context in organizations (Cai, Fink, & Walker, 2019).

Fourth, the behavioral approach is heuristic. It provides us with a broad conceptual map that is worthwhile to use in our attempts to understand the complexities of leadership. Leaders can learn a lot about themselves and how they come across to others by trying to see their behaviors in light of the task and relationship dimensions. Based on the behavioral approach, leaders can assess their actions and determine how they may want to change to improve their leadership behaviors. Unlike with most traits, leaders can learn to lead through leadership training.