1. How would you describe your own leadership style in relation to task and relationship orientation? What are your strengths and weaknesses?
My leadership style is highly task-oriented. The strengths of my task-focused leadership style include rapidity of action and solution-taking, unity of single-mindedness and severe monitoring over the performance of employees. Provided that the subordinates are motivated by the needs of a higher level, the weaknesses concern the fact that the use of this management style cannot give the opportunity to head to stimulate personal interest of performers in a specific job (Lawler III and Boudreau 127).
2. What biases do you maintain regarding task style and relationship style? How do your biases affect your leadership?
Leadership style focused on the task relates to the modification of an authoritarian style and is characterized by concentrating of the head on the organizational problems and, consequently, weakening of attention to the people (Lawler III and Boudreau 139).
3. One of the most difficult challenges leaders face is to integrate their task and relationship behaviors. Do you see this as a challenge in your own leadership? How do you integrate task and relationship behaviors?
For me, this is not huge risk, because as the task-oriented leader I scold for poor performance, encourage slowly working employees to work faster, and pay special attention to the amount of labor (to maximize the working time of each employee). As s relationship-focused leader, I take care of good relations with subordinates, and protect my employees.
Action
1. Caring about the welfare of subordinates would in fact improve the relationship between managers and subordinates. Relationship-oriented style is characterized by concentrating of the head’s attention on the staff needs and expectations (Lawler III and Boudreau 141).
2. First change is to become open to employees, who can easily and freely discuss their problems with me, secondly, to support employees in what they are doing or should be doing, and thirdly, to create an atmosphere of openness and trust, in which employees do not hesitate to ask for help (Lawler III and Boudreau 145).
3. One of the barriers is psychological condition, because it is not easy to change thinking process at once. The other problem may appear in regards to the constant assessment of employees’ satisfaction. Also, it will be difficult to increase the effectiveness of the organization through the improvement of human relations.
4. It is necessary to visit special trainings and organize more team-buildings.
Works Cited
Lawler III, Edward E. and Boudreau, John W. Effective Human Resource Management: A Global Analysis. Stanford Business Books, 2012.
