Leadership Grid

A “leadership grid” is a chart that basically shows where a certain leader falls with regard to concern for results versus concern for people.

To demonstrate how this works, we’d like to share a tale of two managers: Luke and Leia.

Leia is a taskmaster. She’s all about getting stuff done. After all, companies exist to make money, right? So she’s going to focus all of her attention on making sure deadlines are met, goals are accomplished, and deliverables are…delivered.

Then we’ve got Luke, the peopliest people person at the company. He’s totally in tune with the moods and needs of his team members, and if there are personnel issues going on, resolving those can take precedence over meeting organizational production goals. After all, money is only money, right? People are a company’s most important asset. The rest is just noise.

Luke and Leia are obviously very different leaders. On a leadership grid that plots “concern for results” on the X-axis and “concern for people” on the Y-axis, Luke and Leia would be in very different places.

The point of the leadership grid is to show managers and other leaders where they fall on the grid, and the impact that might be having on productivity. Because, as we instinctively know, the manager who is all about results but is a horror show to work for probably isn’t going to get the same work ethic out of her people as someone who is a little more personable. But, on the other hand, the manager who wants to be everybody’s friend all the time but never cracks the whip...probably isn’t going to have the most productive team.

Anyhoo, there are five leadership styles identified by where a person places on the grid: indifferent/impoverished (low scores on both axes), status quo (middle of the grid), dictatorial (high X value, low Y value, like Leia), country club (low X value, high Y value, like Luke), and team (high scores on both axes). The team style is the goal: a high focus on both results and people tends to lead to high levels of productivity and job satisfaction. When leaders can see themselves on the grid, the hope is that the visual tool will help them change their behavior so they can move on up into that coveted team-style area.