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When To Use The Task-Oriented vs. The Relationship-Oriented Leadership Style

When you lead other people, you tend to have a natural preference to either focus on the task at hand (task-oriented) or to focus on the people that will be doing the work (relationship-oriented.) Knowing this can help you lead more effectively in any scenario. You can first read a situation, and then you can either adapt your leadership style for the situation, or you find a situation that better suits your style. According to Fiedler’s Contingency Model, there are three key factors to evaluate for a scenario:

  • 1. Leader-Member Relationship – The degree to which group members are supportive, respective, and loyal to the leader. For our purposes, we’ll consolidate leader styles to two:

  • The TASK-ORIENTED LEADER STYLE: The leader tells the specifics of “who, what, where, when, how” etc. and closely supervises & monitors.
  • The RELATIONSHIP-ORIENTED LEADER STYLE: The leader supports and encourages the report to assume increasing responsibility for day-to-day decision- making & problem solving.

  • 2. Task Structure – This is whether the task has a lot of clarity or ambiguity. If the task is clear, it can be structured. If the task has a lot of ambiguity, meaning you’re not exactly sure how to go about the work or what “good” looks like, then it will tend to be unstructured.

  • 3. Leadership Position Power – This is the degree of power in terms of rewards and punishment the leader is able to control.

8 Scenarios and Their Matching Successful Leadership Style

This table summarizes the scenarios and whether task-oriented or relationship-oriented tends to be more successful:
  Good Structured Strong Task-Oriented
  Good Structured Weak Task-Oriented
  Good Unstructured Strong Task-Oriented
  Good Unstructured Weak Relationship-Oriented
  Poor Structured Strong Relationship-Oriented
  Poor Structured Weak Relationship-Oriented
  Poor Unstructured Strong Task-Oriented
  Poor Unstructured Weak Task-Oriented

The key take away: You can use the chart to help you see what scenarios your style is well-suited for.

While leadership is often more art than science, I think this lens is helpful for thinking through whether to adapt your style because of the nature of the work in front of you (structured vs. unstructured) or because your relationship with the people (good or poor), or because of your leadership position power (strong or weak).

To learn more about leadership and developing your repertoire of leadership styles and techniques, please call Dr. James M. Walters, QUAD2 Consulting, at +1 (215) 919-6259