students great to be with you again hey i want to remind you at this point as we're getting ready here in our pre-intensive getting ready for intensive time together make sure that you're talking to your ministry mentor whoever the senior leader is around you or if you are that senior leader and be thinking about what project what apostolic pioneering project you want to be able to work on throughout this year because when we're together in our intensive uh pastor kevin york's going to have an amazing session that's we're going to want to have something practical that we can apply his his team building and his strategic planning methods too all right in this video we are going to be working through what's called a behavioral approach to leadership a behavioral approach it's also leader focused and again we're going to work through what it is how it works some of the strengths and some of the weaknesses of a behavioral approach of leadership uh what is it the behavioral approach emerged in the 1950s and was gained prominence up to and into the 1980s and it's really a focus on what leaders do it's a little bit different from the trait approach which focused on who leaders are kind of their traits and things and in many ways last video that talked about the the skills approach also focused on who leaders are like what are their capabilities what are their competencies this is going to focus exclusively on how the leader behaves and exclusively on how the leader acts what actions they put into place leaders engage in two types of behaviors or two dimensions of behaviors we engage in task behaviors and we engage in relationship behaviors and the focus of the behavioral approach is how leaders combine these two a task focus and a relationship focus how we combine these two types of behaviors to influence others the university of michigan used different labels as they were doing a lot of research around behavioral approaches they talked about a production orientation and an employee orientation either way whether you use production orientation or a task focus that that sort of behaviors uh are really kind of doing behaviors doers that are achieving goals kind of taking hills uh the focus is the goal is going to get done by focusing on the goal so the steps the progress right i've got a got a list of steps we're going to take and if i focus on the steps i focus on the goal i focus on the project i focus on what we're doing that is a task focus or production orientation those are the types of behaviors there's other types of behaviors where again the relationship behaviors or the employee orientation behaviors as university of michigan said and this is where i'm going to focus on connecting with others the focus is going to be on the well-being of others the goal is going to get accomplished by focusing on the team relating well together and if we can foster a positive atmosphere where people enjoy the work that they're doing then the goal is going to get done so one focuses on the goal that has to get done one focuses on the the the way that the people feel that are gonna get the goal done this is kind of a neat approach because we've we're taking a little bit of a shift from where we've been talking about leadership because now we're getting to the actions of leaders but actions of leaders not just what they do but actors of actions excuse me of leaders toward followers or toward situations so of all the leadership theories we've been discussing so far this one is really now going to start to consider the context and the research around behavioral leadership real this is really a pivotal point in leadership thinking the goal of behavioral the behavioral approach was originally to see if we could find a set of universal everywhere across settings multiple industries could i find a universal set of leadership behaviors that would explain leadership effectiveness again in every situation and what the preponderance of evidence found in the preponderance of study found was that it was inconclusive there really aren't certain leadership behaviors or combinations of behaviors that can determine leadership effectiveness across situations which means that there are various situations which require various behaviors and there are certain team members that need certain leader behaviors so this was amazing within like the the thought of leadership is for the first time you know we've talked about that there's we can even examine leadership from the perspective of the leader the interaction or the followers perspective this is where the the shift starts to happen as researchers cannot identify these behaviors always make a leader effective they're starting to go wow these behaviors really whether i'm task-oriented or people-oriented really depends kind of on who the followers are huh let's examine some of those or really depends on the nature of the task or the nature of the interaction or the situation so leadership while there are things that leaders need to have were starting to really look for the first time at the environment in which the leader is leading so essentially we have a leader might have a personal inclination toward a task orientation or toward a relationship orientation and honestly if you go way way way way way back to term one uh i'm sorry year one term two where you did the portrait predictor where you were given either a d an i an s or a c one of those pages measured task orientation versus people orientation and it also measured speed rather we like to to move fast or move slow but are we people oriented or are we task oriented the task oriented on the d i s and c where the d's and the c's the what is the hill or what is the checklist what is the data the focus is on the task the task will get accomplished by focusing on the task the relationship side was eyes and s's the tasks will get accomplished as the team is built and as camaraderie is thriving so we already looked a little bit at that now in light of discovering what we're going to talk about here in this behavioral approach you may want to even go back and look at your results and might add a little more insight but we have a personal inclination we have a way that we're naturally sort of bent but you can choose to employ task focus or a relationship-focused behaviors based on what's needed you have the ability to pick both so effectiveness in leadership really comes down to matching the behavior to the situation or to the personnel properly so i have a situation i've got personnel can i as the leader match my behaviors is it a task focus that's needed for the situation are these tasky people that i'm leading or is it a relational component that's needed to move the job forward or these more relational personnel now you can see before you what's called blake and moton they were some of the primary studiers of this and this is what's known as their leadership grid you can see on the left the vertical axis we see the concern for people and then across the bottom the horizontal axis is the concern for results and this is actually one of the real strengths of a behavioral approach is there's only two types of behaviors and because of that i can actually sort of build a grid you'll see far to the left if i'm very very uh have low concern for results i'm not task oriented all right let's restate that if i move to the left of my grid i'm low on task orientation i'm down in the one range one or two range on task orientation if i'm also low down in the one or two range on people orientation i have what's called impoverished management blake and moton just defined it that and basically i'm putting in minimal effort to get work done uh and minimal effort to build the right relationship with the people if i go way to the top of that a one nine meaning low on task orientation but high on people orientation the leadership style they call that is is a country club management country club management and there's thoughtful attention to the needs of people satisfying relationships it's a comfortable friendly work environment comfortable friendly atmosphere comfortable friendly tempo it works for the people involved that are leading we may not be focusing on the task but everybody loves being there at least people oriented people they call that country club leadership now move to the bottom right corner we are going to see far high focus on task but a very low focus on concern for people so take the hill take the hill take the hill and that's what's called a they call an authority compliance style of management authority compliance there's an efficiency in the opera operations and it really results from getting the conditions of work so that the human elements can't interfere so we're going to eliminate all interpersonal you are going to twist widgets you're going to interact with a task we're going to eliminate drama we're going to eliminate you know team building and team lunches so that work gets done task task task somebody that sits in the middle of the road what they call a middle of the road manager uh would be a a five five so you're about half and half you're half concerned with the people pretty well you're half concerned with the task pretty well you're kind of middle of the road manager and honestly middle of the road management produces an adequate performing organization you kind of balance the necessity between work while you maintain the morale of the people but it's just sort of a satisfactory level like the people aren't super excited the productivity is not off the charts at the expense of the people or people excited at the expense of the productivity the people are okay they're satisfied and the tasks are getting done okay but where we want to thrive is going to be at the top right which is 9 9 so high concern for tasks high concern for people i'm i'm employing task behaviors and people behaviors at a high level for both and this is where we see team management what blake and moton called team management and the work is accomplished from committed people so there's interdependence there's a common stake in the organization's purpose and this is leading to relationships of trust and respect and because we trust and respect man we can get out there and grind and get it done so we bring both tasks and relationship to bear and the kingdom wherever you are starts to flourish and people are thriving so how does a behavioral approach work well in many ways very simply and intuitively so imagine you have um two college professors and one walks into his college course and the first day of class and what he does is he takes attendance and then he passes out a syllabus and then he tells them okay you're going to have three assignments and you're gonna have uh four examinations and we meet every day at nine o'clock and i have office hours and he sort of tells them how it's gonna go and then dismisses them you have another college professor who comes in and says hi my name is professor tower and you know what we're going to make take an opportunity and get to know one another and does more of a an exercise where everybody tells us two exciting facts about you and at the end of that they say oh by the way your syllabus is online uh this is going to be a fun exhilarating class and they leave we see we see two types of professors the first one is a task oriented professor here's what's going to happen here's what we're going to do here's what needs to happen for you to get an a and then the other one is saying okay let's get to know each other the relationships here are going to be important these are the emotions you can feel it's going to be an exciting exhilarating class with much more relationship focused behaviors in leading the classroom now the question is who is showing better leadership well it depends depends on the situation depends on the type of class if we're in an engineering class and all we need to do is get that last grade task is very very appropriate if we're in a sociology class where we're going to be talking about human interaction part of the learning in a sociology class is in real time the interaction that's happening so um who's leading better what depends on the situation i would say it also depends on this expectation of the students as well so the personnel that you're leading if they're coming in and their first year students and they don't know what to expect and they don't know anybody and they look at like a deer in headlights and there's only 12 of them and maybe it's a cohort that's going to stay together for a little bit of time i think doing some relationship building is very very important because now they know who they're in this with if the students don't trust each other or need to trust each other we're going to work together in group assignments or we want peer learning we would use a relationship based if none of that's the case and you have 300 students and they're uh you know in a giant auditorium or it's an online class and they're from all over the world and they're not going to interact with one another anyway and there's not any peer learning and it's individual projects task is totally appropriate that they can know what's expected of them and go ahead and thrive so who's the better leader depends which of those leadership behaviors was better to employ depends but here's here's the the beauty of a behavior approach understanding that there are task behaviors in their relationship behaviors is that now i know how to coach that professor or you know how to coach an emerging leader on their leadership we actually now can have a grid to say hey when you consider this situation you may want to you know this is just a task like we're building a set for our you know kids summer school or we're you know painting the offices right so is it task or are we looking at you know hey we just want to get this done these volunteers have been working hard or these volunteers been working hard we need to build morale and relationship is going to be important so i can now help a young leader or coach that professor to match the situation or the the personnel that they're working with with either a task orientation or relationship orientation it kind of gives me a grid uh to be able to be helpful and help an emerging leader or myself to become more effective at what's needed what are some of the strengths of a behavioral approach we're winding this lesson down strengths and weaknesses uh of the behavior approach the strengths well if this is the first of the leadership theories to really broaden the scope of leadership to include behaviors and not just kind of hardwire traits or skills that i can develop it's now what i'm doing in situations that's starting to happen another valuable piece of this is there is a lot of research 30 plus years major universities the u.s military worked quite a bit on this so it's it's it's been looked at and looked at and looked at what are the behaviors that are going to match the situation's best another strength i think is there's two scales which means that i can gauge my own leadership behaviors it's an easy grid to evaluate people it's an easy grid to slot new leaders if it is a task-oriented project that's happening and i have a task-oriented leader that's going to be a really good marriage for effectiveness if it is a people-intensive relational intensive project that's coming up and i have or am a relation-focused behavioral leader i can bring those together and i can get something done if it's a very relational situation and my leader is not a effective i could talk to them and watch what they're doing and see are they using relationship behaviors are using task behaviors are they taking a warm group and trying to drive drive drive versus taking some relational time flip side is do i have a a task-oriented group of people and they're feeling like i'm wasting their time as we're doing bonding exercises and sharing starbucks coffee together right so i can match the task or the people involved in the task and i can pick one of two sort of sets of leadership behaviors and if i can match those i'm going to be effective if i can assign a leader to not just do what they always do but to see what's needed and shift between task and relationship behaviors they are going to be effective and consequently the organization is going to do better two scales make it really really easy and honestly 30 plus years of research have boiled all the leadership behaviors down to two scales you have two buckets which one of these buckets do i need to pour the contents onto on this situation there are a lot of things that leaders do but they all fall into either relationship building or a task focus what are the weaknesses well the behavioral approach was originally set out to define are their universal leadership and they couldn't find any that were universally there they only found categories task or relationship there weren't specific behaviors so there's no clear set of behaviors that universally produce good leadership outcomes but it has opened the door kind of the the the strength to the weakness if you will there are no clear behaviors but it has opened the door for research to start to consider the situation in the interaction which has been incredibly important as you're going to see in coming videos it also now has a leader starting to think about follower attributes what does my follower need for me right now to be able to thrive and to be effective and it's really for this is the first of the leadership theories that started to really expand academic thinking on leadership for the first time we're now going wait when we consider leadership we shouldn't just look at the leader we need to now consider are there interactional qualities that we're going to talk about here in coming videos or are there follower qualities so in many ways the behavioral approach is kind of a linchpin it's a pivotal theory but for now just remember it comes down to task or relationship actions [Music]