Definition: Robert Blake and Jane Mouton have developed the Managerial Grid, also called as a leadership grid. According to them, the leadership styles can be identified on the basis of manager’s concern for people and production.
Here, concern for people means the degree to which an individual is committed towards the goal achievement, maintaining self-esteem to workers and satisfying interpersonal relationships. Whereas, the concern for production means an attitude of superiors towards the quality of procedures and policies, creativeness of research, effectiveness of staff, work efficiency and volume of output.
The managerial grid identifies five leadership styles based on two behavioral dimensions as shown in the figure below:
- Impoverished Management (1,1): The managers with this leadership style exert minimum effort to get the work done by the subordinates. They have minimal concern for both the people and production, and they function merely to preserve their jobs and seniority. Therefore, the disharmony, dissatisfaction, disorganization arises within the organization.
- Task Management (9,1): Here, the leader is more concerned with the production and lay less emphasis on the personal needs of his subordinates. This leadership style is also called as a dictatorial or perish style, where the subordinates are required to perform the task as directed by the superiors. In this leadership style, the output in the short run may increase drastically, but due to stringent rules and procedures, there could be a high labor turnover.
- Middle of the Road (5,5): The manager with this style tries to keep a balance between the organizational goals and the personal needs of his subordinates. Here, the leader focuses on an adequate performance through a balance between the work requirements and satisfactory morale. Both the people and production needs are not completely met, and thus the organization land up to an average performance.
- Country Club (1,9): Here, the leader lays more emphasis on the personal needs of the subordinates and give less attention to the output. The manager adopts this style of leadership with the intent to have a friendly and comfortable working environment for the subordinates, who gets self-motivated and work harder on their own. But however, less attention to the production can adversely affect the work goals and may lead to the unsatisfactory results.
- Team Management (9,9): According to Blake and Mouton, it is the most effective leadership style wherein the leader takes both people and production hand in hand. This style is based on McGregor’s Theory Y, where the employees are believed to be committed towards the goal achievement and need not require manager’s intervention at every step.The leader with this style feels that empowerment, trust, respect, commitment helps in nurturing the team relationships, which ultimately results in the increased employee satisfaction and overall production of the organization.
Thus, the managerial grid is a graphical representation of different leadership styles that manager adopts while dealing in the industrial settings.
The managerial grid, also known as the management grid, was proposed by Robert Blake and Jane Mouton, and is a behavioral leadership model. Pursuant to this model, a leader's style can be identified based upon her concern for the following factors:
- People - How committed are subordinates to goal achievement. Does the worker show high self-esteem? Are subordinates satisfied with interpersonal relationships?
- Productivity - The leaders perception of the quality of policies and procedures in place. How creative is the research? How effective is the staff? What is the work efficiency and value of the output?
Concern for production is represented on a one to nine scale on the horizontal axis (x-axis). Concern for people is represented on a one to nine scale on the vertical axis (y-axis).
Note:Blake and Mouton state that there is also a third axis: Motivation - measured from negative (driven by fear) to positive (driven by desire).
According to them, the leadership styles can be identified on the basis of the managers concern for people and production.
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What is the Managerial Grid?
Based on these two factors, the managerial grid identifies 5 leadership styles. Each style is characterized by its position on a scale of 1-9 for concern for people and concern for production:
- Country Club - This is characterized by High - Personal Needs, Low - Attention to Output. The objective is to have a friendly and comfortable work environment for subordinates. It depends on fostering self-motivation in the subordinate. Without a high level of personnel motivation, it can lead to lower performance results.
- Team Management - This is characterized by High - Personal Needs, High - Attention to Output. Subordinates are committed and motivated without leader intervention. The leader must trust the commitment of employees and empower them in decision making and autonomy. If done correctly, employees are motivated by the environment and positive relations. This style is based upon McGregors Theory Y of Leadership.
- Task - This is characterized by Low - Personal Needs, Hi - Attention to Output. The style is also known as dictatorial or perish style. Subordinates operate based upon specific directives from the leader. This can result is lower levels of morale and motivation among subordinates. It generally leads to higher productivity in the short run; but, long-run productivity may be lower based upon subordinate turnover.
- Impoverished - This is characterized by Low - Personal Needs, Low - Attention to Output. These individuals have a very low commitment to the organization or the people. Thus, they are only seen as leaders based upon their position and authority in the organization. It tends to lead to discontentment, lack of purpose, and low productivity.
- Middle of the Road - This is characterized by Mid - Personal Needs, Mid - Attention to Output. Leaders seek a balance between each focus. It generally leads to an average or moderate level of performance, as personal relationships and productivity are not maximized.
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Image: Source The grid consists of two dimensions, one is the Concern for People and the other one is Concern for Production. The managerial grid helps the managers to identify their leadership style with 5 basic leadership styles, (i) Country Club Management, (ii) Authority-Compliance Management, (iii) Impoverished Management, (iv) Middle-of-the-road Management, and (v) Team Management. The managerial grid theory is useful for the managers for the creation of personal development ideas, how to keep the members intact, satisfied and competent and it also helps them to identify their style of leadership and other improvements. This theory’s disadvantage is that it is schematic and does not cover many other areas of leadership management but focusses only on two aspects, employees and productivity.
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