What is the Best Leadership Style?

We often get asked, “What’s the best leadership style?” To some extent, it depends on the situation. However, regardless of the situation, there are two factors that tend to matter most. 

What is Leadership?

In 1945, researchers at Ohio State University embarked on a 10-year program that would revolutionize our understanding of leadership.  The fruit of their labor was the identification of two independent domains of leadership behavior, which were later termed Consideration and Structure. 

Leadership Consideration

Consideration is the extent to which a leader:

  • treats their direct reports as their equals
  • displays active concern for their needs
  • involves them in decisions
  • implements their suggestions
  • accommodates their requests
  • supports them with any problems they are having

This dimension is also now commonly referred to as people-orientation.

Leadership Structure

Structure is the extent to which a leader:

  • emphasizes accomplishing goals
  • challenges direct reports to be productive
  • clearly defines their responsibilities
  • stressing the importance of meeting deadlines and getting a lot done
  • gives people constructive feedback when they are not meeting expectations. 

This dimension is now also commonly referred to as task-orientation.

While the Ohio State model fell out of favor in the 1970s with the emergence of transformational leadership theory, it has seen a resurgence in interest over the past 17 years. More recent research has leveraged powerful statistical techniques not available when the model fell out of favor. This research has consistently shown that Consideration and Structure are important predictors of overall leadership effectiveness and other important outcomes¹˒²˒³˒⁴˒⁵˒⁶.  Even more impressive, head-to-head research has shown that Consideration outperforms transformational leadership⁴. The same has been found for Structure, at least as it relates to some criteria².

6 Things to Know about Effective Leadership

  1. Consideration is more important than Structure.  If you want to be an effective leader, you should strive to be high on Consideration, and there is probably no such thing as displaying too much of this crucial leadership behavior⁴.

  2. The picture with Structure is more nuanced.  It is helpful up to a point (especially if it is not present in the form of clear job descriptions, policies, and procedures), but in some cases it can have a detrimental effect once the threshold of sufficiency is exceeded.

  3. Consideration and Structure are only modestly related to personality⁷.  This is important because personality is stable and doesn’t change much after age 30.  You can, however, focus on changing the leadership behaviors that you display at work.

  4. Less can be more.  If you currently display high structuring behavior, you may find that less leads to more in terms of your overall effectiveness.  Just keep in mind that the two domains are (mostly) independent, so simply doing less structuring behavior won’t lead you to be perceived as more considerate; you will actually need to display those crucial leadership behaviors.

  5. Not everyone needs to be a Transformational Leader.  Rather than trying to be a charismatic and inspirational leader who transforms the way things are done, many leaders would be better served by making sure they get the simple things right (like being considerate and providing structure).

  6. Your best bet.  In terms of emphasis, a style of high Consideration accompanied by moderate Structure is probably a safe bet for most leaders.  Do this simple thing and you will help to maximize your chances of being an effective leader, regardless of whether you are an entry level supervisor or an executive. 

Laissez-Faire Leadership: The Silent Killer

What comes to your mind when you think about toxic leadership?  Are you envisioning an arrogant tyrant who rules by fear?  While such an approach is indeed extremely harmful to others, research suggests that it is rare, and that a far more common form of destructive leadership is laissez-faire leadership¹. 

Laissez-faire leadership occurs when an individual with formal leadership responsibilities abdicates them by avoiding making decisions, addressing problems, and offering support when needed.  In short, it is non-leadership and, while passive in nature, research indicates that it can be just as detrimental as more active forms of destructive leadership². 

The Destructive Impact of Laissez-faire Leaders

Research shows that Laissez-faire leadership creates stress for followers in the form of role ambiguity and increases in conflict among team members that can lead to bullying³.  This results in lower follower job satisfaction and organizational commitment, which can show up in 3 ways:

  1. Followers are less likely to display Organizational Citizenship Behaviors⁴ (i.e., discretionary actions that benefit the company culture and organizational effectiveness).

     

  2. Followers are more likely to exhibit Counterproductive Work Behaviors⁵
    (i. e., voluntary actions that have a negative impact on the company culture and organizational effectiveness).

     

  3. Followers are more likely to turnover.     

 

The Invisible Nature of Laissez-faire Leadership

Making matters worse, the absence of needed behavior is harder to observe than the presence of inappropriate behavior.  This makes it easier for laissez-faire leadership to operate below the radar.  Given its insidious nature and higher prevalence, it is likely that laissez-faire leadership is a more significant problem for organizations than more actively destructive leadership behaviors, even though the latter are more likely to make the news and gossip circles because they are more sensational. 
 

Destructive Leadership is a Widespread Problem

When laissez-faire leadership behavior is combined with other forms of destructive leadership behavior, prevalence estimates are as high as 61%¹.  What’s more, as many as 60-75% of employees identify their direct leader as the worst part of their job⁶.  And, when people are dissatisfied with their direct leader, they are more likely to leave.

Practical Implications

  • Using a psychometrically sound tool to measure a person’s preferred leadership style will help you  hire great leaders and identify those in your organization who would benefit from development. 
  • When evaluating current leaders, use a 360-dgree feedback tool to gather the perceptions of Direct Reports.  This tool should give them a chance to evaluate how often their leader engages in specific behaviors related to the Consideration and Structure aspects of leadership.
  • Evaluate your Leadership Development program to ensure that it is grounded in sound theory and has modules covering both Consideration and Structure. Consider conducting a pre- and post-training assessment of leadership style from both the leader’s perspective (self-report) and direct reports’ perspective.

  • If you have a remote workforce or hybrid leadership roles, it is even more imperative to assess leadership style, given the invisible nature of Laissez-faire leadership and physical distance that separates remote teams. 

Citations – Effective Leadership

¹ Judge, T. A., Piccolo, R. F., & Ilies, R. (2004). The forgotten ones? The validity of Consideration and Initiating Structure in leadership research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 765-780.

² Keller, R. T. (2006). Transformational Leadership, Initiating Structure, and substitutes for leadership: A longitudinal study of research and development project team performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 202-210.

³ Derue, D. S., Nahrgang, J. D., Wellman, N., & Humphrey, S. E. (2011). Trait and Behavioral theories of leadership: An integration and meta-analytic test of their relative validity. Personnel Psychology, 64, 7-52. 

⁴ Piccolo, R. F., Bono, J.E., Heinitz, K., Rowold, J., Duehr, E., & Judge, T. A. (2012). The relative impact of complementary leader behaviors: Which matter most? Leadership Quarterly, 23, 567-581.

⁵ Lambert, L. S., Tepper, B. J., Carr, J. C., Holt, D. T., & Barelka, A. J. (2012). Forgotten but not gone: An examination of fit between leader consideration and initiating structure needed and received. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97, 913-930.    

⁶ Holtz, B. C., & Harold, C. M. (2013). Effects of leadership consideration and structure on employee perceptions of justice and counterproductive work behavior. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 34, 492-529.

⁷ Francoeur, K. A. (2008). The relationship between the five-factor model of personality and leadership preferences for initiating structure and consideration. (Doctoral Dissertation)

Citations – Laissez-faire leadership

¹ Aasland, M. S. Skogstad, A., Notelaers, G., Nielsen, M. B., & Einarsen, S. (2010). The prevalence of destructive leadership behavior. British Journal of Management, 21, 438-452.

² Fosse, T. H., Skogstad, A., Einarsen, S. V., Martinussen, M. (2019).  Active and passive forms of destructive leadership in a military context: A systemic review and meta-analysis. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 28, 708-722.

³ Skogstad, A., Einarsen, S., Torsheim, T., Aasland, M. S., Hetland, H. (2007). The destructiveness of laissez-faire leadership behavior. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 12, 80-92. 

⁴ Lambert, L. S., Tepper, B. J., Carr, J. C., Holt, D. T., & Barelka, A. J. (2012). Forgotten but not gone: An examination of fit between leader consideration and initiating structure needed and received. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97, 913-930.    

⁵ Holtz, B. C., & Harold, C. M. (2013). Effects of leadership consideration and structure on employee perceptions of justice and counterproductive work behavior. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 34, 492-529.

⁶ Hogan, R. Raskin, R. & Fazzini, D. (1990). ‘The dark side of charisma’. In K. E. Clark and M. B. Clark (Eds.), Measures of Leadership (pp. 343-354). West Orange, NJ: Leadership Library of America