Task Leadership

When between one-third and one-half of recent scholarly leadership articles are devoted to transformational leadership (where followers' goals are broadened and elevated and confidence is gained to go beyond expectations) or charismatic leadership (where leaders by force of their personal abilities are capable of having a profound and extraordinary effect on followers), one wonders whatever happened to plain, unadorned leadership directed toward task completion. The answer is that such leadership, here called “task leadership,” is alive and well and still serves as an irreplaceable leadership component.

The notion of task leadership, first hinted at by social psychologists Kurt Lewin, Ronald Lippitt, and R. K. White (1939), gained dramatic impetus shortly after World War II. A new breed of leadership researchers began to break away from earlier “great man” (a leader as a person endowed with unique qualities that capture the imagination of the masses) and trait approaches (what traits make certain leaders “better” or more effective than others, or what traits make one person, rather than another, emerge as a leader?). Disappointed in their ability to clearly answer the trait questions, researchers decided to look at leadership behaviors in the hope that such behaviors would show clearer results.

Almost concurrently, research teams at The University of Michigan, Ohio State University, and the University of Southern California (USC) converged on similar kinds of leadership dimensions. At Michigan, these dimensions were called “production (“job”) centered” and “employee centered” (Likert 1961, Ch. 2). At Ohio State, they were called “initiating structure” and “consideration” (Bass 1990, Ch. 24). At USC, the dimensions comprised such task [Page 1525]aspects as advanced planning, job competence, and lack of pressure for production and considerationoriented dimensions such as job helpfulness, lack of arbitrariness, sympathy, and the like.

These studies were based on survey questionnaires. However, at roughly the same time, some laboratory experiments were conducted at Harvard, and a research program ultimately using a variety of research methods was started in Japan (Misumi and Peterson, 1985). The Harvard work used small groups comprised students to identify emergent leaders (those arising from the situation) and identified “task-centered” and “socio-emotional” leadership dimensions. The Japanese mixed research methods studies identified performance behaviors (forming and reaching group goals [P]) and (group) maintenance behaviors (preserving group social stability [M]), summarized as the “PM” approach.

Essentially, all of this work tapped dimensions related, in one way or another, to those concerned with group and individual goals and means to achieve the goals (task leadership) and those concerned with maintaining friendly, supportive relations with followers (relationship leadership).