Assignment: Short-term planning

Assignment: Short-term planning

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Assignment: Short-term planning
Assignment: Short-term planning

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

Hackman-Johnson 6E.book Page 51 Tuesday, March 12, 2013 12:54 PM
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.
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

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