Northouse, Leadership 9e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
Lecture Notes
Chapter 4: Behavioral Approach
Learning Objectives
4-2 Explain how the behavioral approach works.
4-4 Discuss the criticisms of the behavioral approach.
4-5 Recognize applications of the behavioral approach.
Annotated Chapter Outline
I. Description
A. Behavioral approach emphasizes behavior over traits or skills.
B. Leadership is composed of two general kinds of behaviors:
i. Task behaviors: Behaviors which facilitate goal accomplishment and help group
members to achieve their objectives.
ii. Relationship behaviors: Help followers feel comfortable with themselves, each
other, and their situation.
C. Task and Relationship Behaviors
i. Some degree of each of these two categories of behavior is required in each
situation.
a. Each leader has their own unique tendencies toward task orientation or
ii. Task-oriented leaders are the “doers” in life, who tend to facilitate task
accomplishment.
iii. Relationship-oriented leaders are not as goal directed in leadership; they are
instead more interested in connecting with others.
a. Elements of relationship orientation: Building camaraderie, respect, and
D. Historical Background of the Behavioral Approach
i. In the Ohio State Studies, researchers constructed a list of more than 1,800 items
describing different aspects of leader behavior. From this list, researchers
developed a questionnaire of 150 questions called the Leader Behavior
Description Questionnaire (LBDQ).
Northouse, Leadership 9e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
ii. Followers’ responses clustered around two general types of leader behaviors:
initiating structure and consideration.
a. Initiating structure behaviors: Similar to task behaviors, including acts
like organizing and structuring work, defining role responsibilities, and
scheduling activities.
e. Overall, some studies suggest the best leaders are high in both
behaviors.
iii. The University of Michigan Studies explored leadership behavior simultaneously
to the Ohio State Studies. They identified two types of leadership behavior:
employee orientation and production orientation.
a. These researchers were especially interested in how leadership affects
small group performance.
b. Employee orientation: The behavior of leaders who approach followers
with a strong human relations emphasis, take an interest in workers as
unique human beings, and give them special attention related to their
personal needs.
c. Production orientation: Leadership behaviors that stress the technical
and production aspects of a job and view workers as a means of getting
iv. Blake and Mouton’s Managerial (Leadership) Grid is perhaps the best-known
model of managerial behavior, which first appeared in the early 1960s and has
since been continually refined and revised.
Northouse, Leadership 9e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
a. Divided behaviors into two motivations: Concern for production and
concern for people, which closely parallel task orientation and
relationship orientation.
b. Concern for production: A leader’s concern for organizational tasks,
c. Concern for people: A leader’s attendance to people in the organization
trying to achieve organizational goals, including building organizational
e. Authority-Compliance (9,1): Heavy emphasis on job and task
requirements, less emphasis on people as unique individuals. Leaders
may be seen as controlling, demanding, hard driving, and overpowering.
f. Country-Club Management (1,9): Low concern for task accomplishment,
h. Middle-of-the-Road Management (5,5): Roughly equal concern for the
task and the people who do the task. Leaders have a compromising style
and are often described as expedient, preferring the middle ground,
soft-pedaling disagreement, and swallowing convictions in the interest
of progress.
i. Team Management (9,9): Strong emphasis on both tasks and
v. Paternalism/Maternalism describes a leader who uses both Blake and Mouton’s
1,9 and 9,1 styles in a non-integrative fashion. This figure is a “benevolent
dictator” who acts graciously for the purpose of goal accomplishment.
a. Effectively dissociates people from their assigned tasks.
Northouse, Leadership 9e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
b. Often described as fatherly or motherly, they regard the organization as
vi. Opportunism describes a leader who uses any combination of Blake and
Mouton’s five basic styles for the purpose of personal advancement.
a. Leadership behavior adapts and shifts for personal advantage, putting
self-interest ahead of other priorities.
b. May be described as ruthless, cunning, and self-motivated, or adaptable
and strategic.
vii. Recent studies
a. Behrendt et al. formulated an Integrated Model of Leadership Behavior
(IMoLB), based on multiple studies of leader behavior.
a. Builds upon the heuristic taxonomy of leader behavior
developed by Yukl.
b. Relates task-oriented behavior to envisioning change,
II. How Does the Behavioral Approach Work?
A. Not a refined or prescriptive approach.
i. A broad framework for assessing leadership with a task and relationship
dimension.
ii. Does not tell leaders how to behave, but describes the major components of
their behavior.
B. Depending on the situation, a task orientation or relationship orientation may be more
appropriate.
i. Followers may also have different needs from their leaders.
ii. Some cases may also require both a task and relationship orientation.
III. Strengths
A. Major shift in the general focus of leadership research.
i. Before this approach, leadership was seen as a trait exclusively.
B. Validated by a wide range of studies.
i. Ohio State University.
ii. University of Michigan.
Northouse, Leadership 9e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
iii. Blake and Mouton.
iv. Blake and McCanse.
a. Extensive meta-analysis indicates LBDQ-XII is highly predictive of leader
success.
C. Conceptually significant concept of task and relationship behaviors.
i. The core of the leadership process.
ii. Effectiveness of a leader often rests on how the leader balances these behaviors.
D. Behavioral approach is heuristic.
IV. Criticisms
A. Research on the behavioral approach is not adequately linked to performance
outcomes.
i. No consistent link between task and relationship behaviors and:
a. Morale.
B. Leader behavior questionnaires typically completed by followers.
i. Follower perception may be biased.
a. Overly positive attributions may result in overestimation of a leader’s
effects.
b. That is, considerate leaders may receive inflated estimations of task
behavior.
C. Approach has failed to find a universal leadership style effective in every situation.
i. A failure of the central goal of the researchers.
ii. Research findings are inconsistent.
a. Unable to identify universal behaviors associated with effective
leadership.
iii. May be due to contextual factors:
D. Leader effectiveness is also influenced by characteristics of leaders, followers, and the
situation.
i. Skilled followers with a strong reward system may make it easier for a leader to
succeed.
E. Implies the most effective leadership style is high task—high relationship orientation.
i. May not be universally true, and the research provides limited support for a
universal truth.
F. Most research is focused on the United States and reflects United States norms and
values.
Northouse, Leadership 9e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
i. Different cultures have recently been shown to prefer different styles.
V. Application
A. Easy to apply the behavioral approach.