Determining Person Leadership Style

Training Plan

Workshop title: Determining Your Leadership Style

Participants: This workshop is designed for young team leaders/ managers in an organization.

Workshop objectives:

• Theory & research base(s) and rationale: Blake and Mouton leadership style theory
• Aims/objectives: to determine the relationship between leadership style and employee satisfaction and retention.

Content:

• Intro: the “setup” – challenge, “hook,” priming, “lesson objectives.”
• Info: presentation of relevant T&R material
• Activities: instructions, materials, management
• Processing: drawing out the significance of activities/experience
• Takeaways: itemize/highlight what the clients should be able to apply and how
• Feedback: questionnaire to gather relevant information quickly

The functioning of business operations and your firm’s general growth and development might benefit from determining your management style. You can use your leadership style to establish plans and strategies to increase your skill and professional development. Similarly, honing your leadership abilities will help you approach your employees and team members with efficiency and realistic project, task, and overall business objectives. In this post, you will learn about the Blake and Mouton Managerial Grid’s history and how to use it to improve your leadership abilities.

According to the Blake Mouton model, team management is the most effective leadership style. It depicts a leader who is enthusiastic about their work and goes above and beyond for the people they collaborate with. Team leaders are dedicated to their organization’s goals and mission, motivating those who report to them and working hard to get people to push themselves to achieve excellent outcomes. They are, nonetheless, inspiring personalities who look after their teams. Someone whom a Team Manager leads is respected and empowered, and she is dedicated to reaching her objectives.

Team managers prioritize both the organization’s and their people’s needs. They accomplish this by ensuring that their team members know the organization’s mission and involve them in the production planning process. People’s wants and production needs coincided when they are committed to and invested in the organization’s success. This fosters a culture of trust and respect, resulting in high satisfaction, motivation, and performance. As previously stated, team managers are likely to use the Theory Y approach to motivation.

Managerial Grid

The Managerial Grid model setup tool can assist managers in determining whether they place more importance on everyone completing their jobs on time or their employees’ overall pleasure and sense of belonging. The grid model divides management styles into horizontal and vertical axes, with result-oriented styles on the horizontal axis and ‘people-focused’ styles on the vertical axis (Curtis, 2002). One may learn that their leadership style fits into one of five basic types based on the grid’s rating and evaluation results. In addition to the previous five leadership styles, these predefined styles can incorporate two more (Curtis, 2002). They are not technically part of the grid concept, but they can still be helpful identifiers. It is crucial to know one’s management or leadership style to figure out how to get to the team manager position they want.

Identify Your Managerial Style

The first step in using the Blake and Mouton grid is to figure out what kind of leader you are. Consider your previous leadership roles. If you put the wants and concerns of your team first in your management role, you can get a nine or close to a nine on the vertical axis. On the horizontal axis, you will score yourself as nine or near to nine if you can identify as task-oriented (prioritizing outcomes, results, and job completion). Your management style can be determined by connecting the scores from both the horizontal and vertical axes. You can fall into one of five core leadership styles based on the combination of your scores.

Instructions:

1. Write out five or six recent scenarios in which you were in charge.
2. Place yourself on the grid according to where you think you belong in each situation.
3. To help you identify your leadership traits, take our self-assessment leadership questionnaire.

Identify Improvement Areas and Develop Leadership Skills

If you notice that you score higher in one area but lower in another, you may have some areas where you may make improvements. For example, if you scored high on the task-oriented management axis but low on the people-oriented axis, you might consider implementing tactics to assist you in balancing both task-oriented and people-oriented approaches in your leadership style. You may plan a team-building activity or set out 10 minutes each day to check in with your employees to ensure they are happy and productive.

Instructions: Evaluate your present strategy. Are you settling for “Middle-of-the-Road” because pushing for more is too difficult? Consider whether your personal style is appropriate for the scenario. If you think you are overly task-oriented, try involving your team members in creative problem solving, improving your communication skills, or honing your mentoring abilities. It could also mean becoming more specific about scheduling and monitoring project progress or strengthening your decision-making if you have a tendency to focus too much on people. Maintain a constant eye on your performance and keep an eye out for occasions where you revert to previous patterns.

Put the Grid in Practice

While high scores in both people- and task-oriented management approaches are desired, there are times when a task-oriented management style is more beneficial than a team approach. If your team performs hazardous duties (such as operating heavy machinery or working with corrosive substances), you may want to take a more authoritative approach to management to ensure that stringent safety regulations are followed. If, on the other hand, you have taken over for a previous forceful or controlling manager, you might use a ‘country club’ leadership style to increase morale and motivation before moving on to more task-oriented techniques.

Value of the Blake Mouton Grid Activity

The Blake Mouton Grid compares a manager’s or leader’s task-centeredness to their person-centeredness, identifying five different combinations and the leadership styles that result. The grid illustrates how putting too much focus on one area at the expense of the other leads to poor results by pitting concern for results against concern for people. Employee engagement and productivity are likely to be outstanding when concern for both people and results is strong, according to the model (Garg & Jain, 2013). While the grid does not fully address the complexities of “which leadership style is best?” it is a good starting point for reflecting on your performance and developing overall leadership skills.

Leadership Styles and Employee Satisfaction

According to previous research, the leadership style has a considerable impact on job satisfaction (Barling et al., 2002). Flexible businesses have a participatory management style, an engaging atmosphere, and a happy staff (Gong et al., 2009). When it comes to increasing job happiness, transformational leadership is quite effective (Lok & Crawford, 2004). According to research, transformative leadership enhances employee perception and dedication to the company (Ojokuku et al., 2012). Employee happiness is said to be influenced by both transactional and transformational leadership (Lok & Crawford, 2004). When opposed to transactional leadership, transformational leadership has a stronger impact on job satisfaction (Awamleh & AlDmour, 2004). Transformational leaders believe in empowering their staff, which increases their motivation and satisfaction.

Job Satisfaction and Transactional Leadership Rewarding and punishing employees are part of the transactional leadership style. The transactional leader recognizes employees who have met their goals (Saleem, 2015). Workers who underperform, on the other hand, are penalized. Promotions and salary increases are examples of rewards. Termination and a reduction in compensation increments are possible punishments (Jansen et al., 2009). According to previous studies, this leadership style may not be appropriate in all settings (Bryant, 2003). Employee motivation is based on transactions under transactional leadership (i.e., rewards and punishments). As a result, transactional leadership will have a negative impact on long-term performance and happiness. According to certain studies, neither transactional nor transformational leadership styles may increase employee motivation and satisfaction. Employees prefer the inspiration and consideration aspects of transformative leadership. Employees also prefer transactional leadership’s contingent rewards component. On the contrary, according to certain studies, both leadership styles have a favorable impact on employee job and career satisfaction (Jansen, Vera, & Crossan, 2009). The effectiveness of transactional and transformational leadership styles varies depending on the situation and sector.

Leadership Advice from Your Role Model

You draw into the wisdom of the group—and their role models—in this structured sharing activity, which is a faster, cheaper, and superior alternative to buying and reading a lot of books.

Goal: To investigate many pieces of leadership advice on styles, qualities, attitudes, behaviors, and skills. To find parallels and differences between these pieces of leadership advice and examine them.

Materials: Index cards, Whistle

Everyone has at least one ideal leader whom they have met or read about. Request that each participant choose a role model who has influenced them. A spiritual mentor, an inspirational writer, a fictional hero, or a prophetic guide could be a family member, a school teacher, a boss at work, a captain of the industry, a political leader, a sports coach, a military genius, a spiritual mentor, an inspiring writer, or a prophetic guide.

Instructions

1. Play the role of the role model. Instruct participants to play the role of the role model they choose. Ask them to pretend that they are a young person seeking leadership advice from this role model. Ask participants to write one crucial piece of advice they would give to this young person (in their presumed role) on an index card. Leadership styles, qualities, attitudes, actions, and talents may be discussed. Encourage participants to keep their sentences to one or two sentences long. While the participants are doing this job, take a break.
2. Toss the advice cards around. Instruct each player to trade the card with the written side down to someone else. Rep this technique until all cards have been traded quickly and repeatedly. To catch the attention of the participants, blow a whistle and ask them to stop the activity.
3. Take a look at the piece of advice. Request that each person read the bit of advice on their card. Invite them to consider this piece of advice and how it might assist them in becoming better leaders. Encourage them to consider how they may apply this advice to their personal and professional lives. While the participants are doing this, take a breather.
4. Read it out loud. At random, choose a participant. Request that this individual gets up and reads the piece of advice from the card while keeping the identity of the role model hidden. Request that everyone else pays attention. Request that the participant read this piece of advice again if necessary.
5. Figure out who the role model is. Allow everyone a minute to consider the bit of advice. Then have them estimate who the role model (leader) was who gave them this piece of advice. Invite everyone to yell out their best guesses. Make a point of pointing out that most leaders have comparable characteristics, views, attitudes, and beliefs. Request that the person who read this piece of advice name the role model listed on the card.
6. Similar pieces of advice can be found on the internet. Invite other participants to read their cards aloud if they include comparable pieces of advice. Identify the slight distinctions between these concepts. Discuss how these changes might have an impact.
7. Examine alternative viewpoints. Request that participants check the piece of advice on their cards to determine whether it conflicts with the advice given previously. Invite everybody who has such a diametrically opposed piece of advice to read it aloud from her card.
8. Bring the disparities together. It is important to note that, while these pieces of advice seem to contradict one another, it is not as if one is accurate and the other is erroneous. This is because effective leadership necessitates a number of flexible styles that vary depending on the scenario, the type of followers, and the leader’s personality. Consider the circumstances in which each of the competing pieces of advice would be useful.
9. Continue with the procedure. Choose another person at random (who has not yet read the piece of advice from her card) and read it aloud. After that, estimate which the role model is and read and discuss cards with similar and contrasting viewpoints.
10. Choose one bit of advice. After the conversations, have participants reflect on the various pieces of advice they received from various role models and choose one to implement in their personal and professional lives. Remind participants not to keep track of the number of pieces of advice they have gotten but to focus on the one item of advice they have chosen. Encourage them to start using this piece of advice right away.
11. The topic of situational leadership is one of the most important consequences of this activity. This necessitates a sufficient number of conflicting viewpoints. Collect all of the advice cards after the game is over. Examine each item carefully and save the good ones, including those that provide contradictory advice. In the following games, have participants swap their handwritten cards for a card from your supply.

Explore Your Values

Your Values is a game that allows participants to discover their most essential values. It’s done in an intuitive and quick manner to encourage participants to trust their instincts rather than overthinking and trying to discover the “right” values. It is a useful exercise to use to start thinking about and talking about personal beliefs. It is a valuable activity because, in order to identify one’s leadership style, they first need to understand their values.

Instructions

1. Hand out papers to every participant.
2. Ask them to write out the ten most important items in their lives, one on each post-it note, in the form of a value. In other words, instead of a name, write down something like “friendship,” “family,” or “honesty” – something they value in their relationship with that person.
3. As soon as everyone has their ten posts, have them spread out in front of them so they can see them clearly and get a good overview.
4. Tell the participants they have 30 seconds to choose the three posts that are the least significant to them and discard them. Be strict with the deadlines and do not offer them any extra time, even if it is necessary, because they are to trust their instincts.
5. Finally, repeat the previous procedure, allowing them 20 seconds to discard two more items. They should now have three posts with their top three values on them.

Feedback

In order to collect a feedback about the leadership training, the questionnairs will be handled. The quiestionnair will include questions regarding how the training had helped the participants to better understand their leadership type, their thoughts about the effectiveness of the activities, and how they think the given training has impacted their future leadership style.

References

Awamleh, R., & Al-Dmour, H. (2004). The impact of transformational leadership on job satisfaction and self-perceived performance of banking employees: The case of Jordan. Web.

Barling, J., Loughlin, C., & Kelloway, E. K. (2002). Development and test of a model linking safety-specific transformational leadership and occupational safety. Journal of applied psychology, 87(3), 488. Web.

Bryant, S. E. (2003). The role of transformational and transactional leadership in creating, sharing and exploiting organizational knowledge. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 9(4), 32-44. Web.

Curtis, B. M. (2002). Analysis of the Blake/Mouton leadership styles and their relationship to effective coaching behaviors. Pepperdine University. Web.

Garg, S., & Jain, S. (2013). Mapping leadership styles of public and private sector leaders using Blake and Mouton leadership model. Drishtikon: A Management Journal, 4(1), 48. Web.

Gong, Y., Huang, J. C., & Farh, J. L. (2009). Employee learning orientation, transformational leadership, and employee creativity: The mediating role of employee creative self-efficacy. Academy of management Journal, 52(4), 765-778. Web.

Jansen, J. J., Vera, D., & Crossan, M. (2009). Strategic leadership for exploration and exploitation: The moderating role of environmental dynamism. The Leadership Quarterly, 20(1), 5-18. Web.

Lok, P., & Crawford, J. (2004). The effect of organisational culture and leadership style on job satisfaction and organisational commitment: A cross‐national comparison. Journal of management development. Web.

Ojokuku, R. M., Odetayo, T. A., & Sajuyigbe, A. S. (2012). Impact of leadership style on organizational performance: a case study of Nigerian banks. American journal of business and management, 1(4), 202-207. Web.

Saleem, H. (2015). The impact of leadership styles on job satisfaction and mediating role of perceived organizational politics. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 172, 563-569. Web.