The Vertical Dyad Theory: Understanding Leadership and Employee Relationships

Running head: LEADERSHIP
LEADERSHIP
Name of Student
Name of the University
Author Note

LEADERSHIP1
The vertical dyad theory or popularly known as the leader member exchange theory,
discuses basically about the ways in which the leaders develop good relationship with their
employees and also maintain their position in the group. There is a two way relationship
between the leader and his followers that connects them. This relationship can be measured in
terms of support, respect, trust and loyalty. According to the theory, the relationship between
the leaders and his employees determines decision making, responsibility of people,
accessibility to resources and others. Therefore there are two kinds of employees on the basis
of relationship that is in group and out group (Martin et al., 2016). The members belonging to
the in-group are given responsibility of complex work and projects, more attention, more
rewards and others. The out-group members comprise of lesser responsibility, lesser attention
and even lesser rewards. Therefore leadership exchange can also lead to conflicts because of
friction by out group members. The Leadership exchange process comprises of – role taking,
role making and routinasation. The role taking is the first stage in which the mangers assess
the skills and knowledge of the employees who have newly joined. Through this step, the
leader gets an image of the employees on the basis of their expressions. In this phase, the
leader and the employees start understanding the ways of working in group and new
opportunities are given to the members by the leaders (Breevaart et al., 2015). Role making
involves carrying out unstructured and informal negotiation regarding job related factors.
This is the stage in which the assigned task is carried out. In this stage, it becomes very
important to build the trust among the two parties. It is at this phase when the leader decides
whether an employee is an in-group employee or out-group employee. In the stage of
routinasation, certain routines, standards and expectations are determined by both the parties.
Steve jobs have been able to apply this theory and get the best out of all the
employees (Krapfl & Kruja, 2015). This is so because he believes in praising the employees-
Steve jobs praises his employees even when things are not completely right. This helps in