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309 
QUESTION 
Styles of leadership
 
Suggest an appropriate style of leadership for each of the following situations. Think about your reasons 
for choosing each style in terms of the results you are trying to achieve, the need to secure commitment 
from others, and potential difficulties with both. 
(a) 
Due to external factors, the budget for your department has been reduced and 25% of your staff 
must be made redundant. Records of each employee's performance are available. 
(b) 
There is a recurring administrative problem which is minor, but irritating to everyone in your 
department. Several solutions have been tried in the past, but without success. You think you 
have a remedy which will work, but unknown problems may arise, depending on the decisions 
made. 
ANSWER 
(a) 
You may have to 'tell' here: nobody is going to like the idea and, since each person will have their 
own interests at heart, you are unlikely to reach consensus. You could attempt to 'sell', if you can 
see a positive side to the change in particular cases: opportunities for retraining, say. 
(b) 
You could 'consult' here: explain your remedy to staff and see whether they can suggest potential 
problems. They may be in a position to offer solutions – and, since the problem affects them too, 
they should be committed to solving it. 
 
5.2.2 Blake and Mouton's Managerial Grid 
Robert Blake and Jane Mouton (1964) carried out research (The Ohio State Leadership Studies) into 
managerial behaviour and observed two basic dimensions of leadership: 
concern for production
(or task 
performance) and 
concern for people
.
 
 
Along each of these two dimensions, managers could be located at any point on a continuum from very 
low to very high concern. Blake and Mouton observed that the two concerns did not seem to correlate, 
positively or negatively: a high concern in one dimension, for example, did not seem to imply a high or 
low concern in the other dimension. Individual managers could therefore reflect various permutations of 
task/people concern. 
Blake and Mouton modelled these permutations as a grid. One axis represented concern for people, and 
the other concern for production. Blake and Mouton allotted nine points to each axis, from 1 (low) to 9 
(high). 
A questionnaire was designed to enable users to analyse and plot the positions of individual respondents 
on the grid. This was to be used as a means of analysing individuals'