The Blake Mouton Managerial Grid is a leadership framework based on two behavioral pattern dimensions. The first dimension represents a concern for people that detects the leader’s number one priorities: employee satisfaction, motivation, and positive emotional well-being. The second dimension represents a concern for results, implying the leader’s emphasis on company efficiency, arrangement, and the high productivity rate. Recruiting a new team member, a leader might decide on which priorities to choose: enhancing and honing workers’ strengths and objectives or being centered around a company itself, taking the role of a team manager. A leader might take a serving part or treat company participants as “cogs in the system,” where all members are tools for achieving the highest efficiency rate.
Which leadership style to choose depends on the working environment a person deals with, as it is a default position predisposing a particular style choice. After an elaborate analysis, assessment, and active involvement in company processes, a leader administers organization participants utilizing two leadership approaches; one of them is a dominant leadership style, and the other is a backup style. From my perspective, I would choose a democratic style combined with a team management framework as a dominant style. This effective combination is a prerequisite for employee freedom expansion, motivation refinement, and a company goal orientation. This style plays out in the form of a driving force, creating a positive workplace where all employees’ objectives are satisfied, thus providing further prospects for fulfilling the leader’s anticipations in terms of company prosperity. In case this approach entails some issues, such as a lack of control and discipline and participants’ negligent approach to work, as they feel free in the working environment, I resort to an authoritarian style. This backup leadership style is aligned with maintaining pressure and so-called seizure on workers to return their productivity on track.
The situational leadership style represents a leader’s ability to react, facilitate and enhance employees’ abilities related to the current situation. A leader might have a working knowledge concerning their employees’ aptitudes, skills, and working and salary expectations. This very information might help leaders enhance company performance and prosperity. It is not surprising that this kind of leadership style applies to most organizations. It gives a clear-cut depiction and evaluation of both phenomena: people’s participation and company maintenance. Although this style provides action flexibility and a vast expanse of beneficial outcomes, this approach might be slightly modified to great advantage.
The concept of situational leadership consists of two dimensions, such as a concern for assignment distribution and a concern for behavioral patterns. Todorović and Todorović (2020) stated that “situational leadership style refers to the behavior of a leader that affects a subordinate” (p.118). Control, support, defining goals, establishing personal contact with subordinates, and setting deadlines are the primary leader’s liability. Sometimes, there are some issues a leader might face during their administration policy. For instance, a leader can not pay attention to all management aspects; some points such as less support surveillance or lack of uplifting mood might be left unattended. As a rule, the inability to observe all management risks and factors is a newbie leader’s implication position due to little first-hand experiment in the leadership policy. To eradicate all possible pitfalls, a leader might use a modified situational leadership pattern that involves four leadership styles:
- S1-Telling (orientation on motivation, goal achievements);
- S2-Selling (satisfaction of employees’ social and emotional needs);
- S3-Participating (encouragement of skill development and task fulfillment);
- S4-Delegating (orientation on employees’ freedom) (Todorović&Todorović,2020, p.119).
The multiple and practical usages of these styles are beneficial solutions to issues a newbie leader might face. Combining these techniques, a leader can help sustain a positive working environment, where all participants are goal-oriented, motivated, and stimulated to work in a company advance. The main aim of a leader is to emphasize all essential factors that are in charge of abundant and affluent company development.
Reference
Todorović, Z., & Todorović, B. (2020). Situational leadership in service organizations. Acta Economica, 18(33), 115-129.