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Unit 11: Leadership Style and Theories of Leadership

1. Directive : The theory said that leader directiveness has a positive correlation with satisfaction Notes
and expectancies of subordinates who are engaged in ambiguous tasks and a negative correlation
with satisfaction and expectancies of subordinates engaged in clear tasks.
2. Supportive : The theory hypothesizes that supportive leadership will have its most positive
effect on subordinates satisfaction in case of those subordinates who work on stressful, frustrating
or dissatisfying tasks.
3. Achievement Oriented : The theory hypothesizes that achievement-oriented leadership will
cause subordinates to strive for higher standards of performance and to have more confidence
in the ability to meet challenging goals.
4. Participative : The theory also hypothesizes that participative leader style is more satisfying
and instrumental in effective performance.
These styles are only hypotheses which need to be empirically tested. They have been derived
on the basis of path-goal theorizing. The rationale underlying them is that both task characteristics
and characteristics of subordinates interact with each other to determine the effect of a specific
kind of leader behaviour on the satisfaction, expectancies and performance of the subordinates.
This theory, however, is considered more a tool of research and stimulating insight than a
proved guide for managerial action. This theory is still in the form of hopothesis. Its assertions
have, yet, to be tested and verified.

11.4 Measurement of Educational Leadership

All the theories of leadership behaviour have significant implications for training people in leadership
or managerial skills. Training programmes have been developed by Fiedler, Vroom and Yetton,
Reddin, Hersey and Blanchard. They all belive that the effective leader must possess rather a broad
repertoire of behaviours and styles that may enable him to be effective in a variety of situations.
Through systematic training, as they believe, it is possible.
But, one important aspect of leadership training is measurement or evaluation of leadership. Without
this, one can never known what quality of leadership one had prior to training and whether after
training there was any improvement in his leadership quality.
A number of tools have been developed in the past which can be used for measuring leader behaviour.
These have been described as follows :
1. The Leader Behaviour Description Questionnaire (LBDQ) : This tool was designed by the
Personal Research Foundation at Ohio State University. It was constructed by Hemphill and
was later on adapted by Halpin and Winer. The tool yields two scores on two dimensions of
leadership behaviour-the ‘initiating structure’ and ”consideration”. These dimensions have
already been explained and described. A combination of these two dimensions indicates the
leadership behaviour pattern. The tool facilitates to define leadership behaviour dimensions
operationally. The tool reveals to what extent the manager or any educational administrator
such as a Principal or a Vice-Chancellor is structure-oriented and to what extent he is
consideration-oriented.
Each dimension of the tools consists of 15 items. All the 30 items of the tool are scored on a 5-
pt scale ranging over “always”, “often”, “occasionally”, “seldom”, and “never”. Hence,
theoretical range of scores on each dimension varies from 0 to 60. The tool identifies four
managerial styles : (1) high initiating structure high consideration (HS, HC), (ii) low initiating
structure, high consideration (LS, HC), (iii) low structure, low consideration (LS, LC), (iv) high
initiating structure, low consideration (HS, LC).
The LBDQ was based on the perception of obeserved leader behaviour by the other staff members.
But, the Ohio State leadership studies staff also developed another form known as Leader Opinion

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