Psychology of management

1.
 
3 Companionate strategy 
HOW EMOTIONAL IMPACT IS BUILT UP: the leader creates harmony by bringing 
people closer to each other. 
IMPACT ON ORGANIZATION’S CLIMATE: positive. 
APPROPRIATE FOR USING: to “heal” a discord in the collective, to motivate 
employees at hard times or to strengthen interpersonal relations. 
THE SOURCES OF COMPANIONATE STYLE 

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The companionate style is the realized in practice aptitude for collective work. Such 
leaders care most of all for maintaining harmony and strengthening friendly relations with 
employees. Accordingly, leaders who keep to the companionate style value the breaks in 
production cycle when there comes an opportunity of “creating” emotional capital on which they 
can count later, in need. 
Leaders who keep to the companionate approach pay more attention to employees’ 
emotional needs than to business. Such an attentive treatment develops their empathy – the 
ability to understand other people’s feelings, needs, and concepts which is one of the most 
important leader-skills. Empathy, corncern for everyone, and not only of work-tasks fulfilment, 
responsiveness make the companionate approach a real catalyst of the collective’s high moral 
spirit: such a leader can put people in a good mood even when doing a dull, monotonous work. 
Finally, the use of the companionate style supposes another emotional intellect skill – the ability 
to settle conflicts. This ability finds its application when there appears the task of uniting 
different or even antagonistic individuals into a single collective. 
Despite of the advantages characteristic of the companionate style, it is sometimes 
impossible to stick to it only. Because such leader uses only praise for management, employees 
might decide that mediocre performing one’s job in this organization is quite acceptable, and 
simply will not correct their mistakes. Besides, leaders of this type seldom give constructive 
advice, i.e. employees are left to their own and have to find out unassisted how to develop their 
abilities.