How leadership styles affect the workplace
Editor’s note: William Beaumont-Oates is the web content manager at Thomas. This is an edited version of an article that was originally published under the title “Task-Oriented vs People Oriented Leadership.”
Organizations need good leaders to succeed. Effective leaders ensure that the vision remains clear while motivating their teams. Every leader has their preferred way to manage their team to ensure the job gets done.
There are two recognized types of leadership orientations: task-oriented leadership and people-oriented leadership. To effectively manage and motivate teams, it’s important to understand these styles and how to use them.
What is task-oriented leadership?
Leaders who lean into task-oriented leadership are focused on tasks, goals and efficiency. They don’t always request input from their teams but use their knowledge and their skill sets to delegate accordingly and ensure projects are completed on time. These leaders emphasize organization, structure and achieving specific outcomes. They communicate concisely and manage their time well and they expect the same from others.
The advantages and disadvantages of task-oriented leadership
Task-oriented leaders work well with deadlines, autocratically divvying up tasks between their teams to ensure all elements of a project are completed in time and that no one part of the workforce machinery is jamming up the next. They are highly productive and ensure the lines of responsibility for each role are clear to those in and adjacent to them.
These sound like ideal qualities when it comes to the success of any given organization. However, this leadership orientation has its downsides. When a leader is too task-oriented, they risk overlooking the needs of their employees as people, leading to low morale and potential burnout.
What is people-oriented leadership?
People-oriented leaders look at their people first and tasks second. They are motivated by the needs, development and well-being of their team and use their skills in empathy and communication to build strong relationships with all team members.
The pros and cons of people-oriented leadership
Leaders who are people-oriented play a key role in employee satisfaction. They inspire loyalty and spearhead collaborative teams who feel encouraged to propose new ideas and to take risks.
However, as people-oriented leaders tend to focus on maintaining positive relationships, they can run into challenges when it comes to discipline. If a manager’s leadership orientation is too people-focused, attention can be drawn away from tasks and too much leeway can be expected around deadlines. Employees led by people-oriented leaders may be happy, but they may also be less efficient.
How to balance task-oriented and people-oriented leadership styles
As we’ve seen from the potential disadvantages of these leadership orientations, it can be detrimental for a leader to lean too far in either a task-oriented or people-oriented direction. Go one way and your company may suffer from poor employee retention and burnout, go the other and you may lose discipline and focus.
All leaders need to strike a balance. They need to understand the different types of leadership orientations and their signifiers to get a feel for what their natural inclination is. With this knowledge and awareness, they can seek to find a balance that allows them to help their team get work done without being dictatorial or losing track of tasks. Leaders should always adapt to fit the organizational context and their team’s needs, recognizing if their situation calls for a more people-oriented or task-oriented approach and adapting as the situation evolves.
The need to call upon different leadership orientations may change on a day-to-day basis. On days with tight deadlines or sudden challenges, a task-oriented approach can get everyone in order and ensure all tasks are outlined and completed. The same leader who applied this technique may then recognize that, following the announcement of a restructure, a people-oriented approach is required to maintain morale and reassure their team. Leaders who can flex and strike a balance see a higher level of performance from their team. Bill Gates is known for his ability to transform his leadership style as the situation requires, and he is arguably one of the most successful leaders in the world.
Determining your leadership style
Leaders can make use of a few different methods to assess their leadership style. Self-assessment and self-development require little investment other than time. To self-assess, leaders should look back on recent projects and teams they’ve managed and review how they handled those situations. They can look out for signs of task-orientation or people-orientation in their current interactions.
Feedback from peers and team members is another useful way of uncovering leadership style. This approach removes any of the leader’s personal bias from the equation, instead highlighting how those who have experienced their leadership viewed them. Gathering 360-degree feedback, which collates contributions from superiors, subordinates and colleagues outside of their team, is a particularly effective method.
To dig down into leadership orientation, people can complete psychometric assessments. These tests use people science to discover an individual’s traits, including their workplace personality, behavior, emotional intelligence and general aptitude. Add this all up and you’ll have a clearer picture of a person’s leadership orientation.
The effect leadership orientation has on organizational success
Let’s recap
Task-oriented leaders are good delegators and decision-makers. They ensure everything is completed on time but can overlook their employees’ well-being in doing so. People-oriented leaders, on the other hand, naturally lean towards empathy and relationship building, but this can lead to problems disciplining their teams, leading to slipping deadlines.
Understanding leadership orientations and striking a balance is key. Leaders who can adapt their style, turning one way or the other as a situation calls for without pushing too hard in one direction, have the best impact on their team’s engagement, productivity and adaptability.
Self-aware, balanced leaders are needed to navigate the complex modern workplace and motivate busy teams for success. Understanding and utilizing leadership orientation will help your leaders reach their full potential.