Exploring Leadership in Business: A Relationship-Oriented Approach

The essay delves into leadership as a critical component of organizational management aimed at achieving business goals, focusing particularly on relationship-oriented leadership. This approach centers on human skills—such as attention to team members and effective communication—to foster strong interpersonal relationships within organizations. It highlights the necessity of trustful communication for collaboration and goal attainment while distinguishing between skill-focused and style-based leadership approaches. Ultimately, it asserts that a blend of style and communication is vital for effective relationship-oriented leadership.

Running head: LEADERSHIP IN BUSINESS
LEADERSHIP IN BUSINESS
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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Introduction
Leadership is an essential function of management of an organization, which assists to
maximize the efficiency of the organization and helps to achieve the organizational goals
(Northouse 2015). The effective leadership skills are necessary for an organization that would
motivate the members and provide guidance to them. There are different types of leadership
approaches such as the trait approach, skill approach and style approach (Giltinane 2013).
The aim of this essay is to reflect on the personal leadership approach, which is relationship-
oriented leadership approach. The essay will also elaborate the personal communication style
and the importance of communication and social interaction skills of a leader and
differentiate the skills and style approaches.
Discussion
I would like to describe myself as a relationship-oriented leader. The human skill
within the skill approach of a leader and relationship behavior within the style approach
jointly describe the relationship-oriented leadership skills. The human skill approach of a
leader focuses on the ability to get along with others. It is called the ‘people skills’ as it
describes the leadership capacity to deal with the members of any organization (Dinh et al.
2014). People skills are an essential factor for any manager. It involves building the
relationship with the members based on attention and effective communication skills.
However, though human skills are important for a leader, the management theorist Daniel
Katz identifies that they cannot stand-alone. The human skills need support from a
complementary approach called relation behavior of a style approach to work effectively
(Rosenbach, Taylor and Youndt 2012). One of the major dimensions of the style approach of
leadership is relationship behaviors that are employed by the members of a business
organization to influence them and lead them to achieve the business goals.

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I would like to apply the relationship behavior, which is an essential part of the
relationship-oriented approaches. My approach would involve building a trustful relationship
with the members of the organization. The behavioral approach focuses on creating a
respectful and caring relationship with the employees. As the relationship-oriented approach
focuses on the human qualities of a leader, such as motivation, satisfaction and overall well-
being of the employees, I would like to choose this approach (Nahavandi 2016).
The effective communication skills are very important for the relationship-oriented
leadership. This type of leadership approach would encourage the collaborative team works
by building effective communication with the team members. Effective communication skills
are also important for creating positive relationships. The leaders would develop trust and
respect by engaging themselves in a powerful communication system with the team
members. The leaders need to establish effective communication with their employees to
convey the vision, values and purpose of any action taken by the organization (Hackman and
Johnson 2013). Effective communication and social interaction is the zone where the
leadership breathes and lives.
The relationship-oriented leaders would focus on building a trustful relationship with
the stakeholders by establishing an effective communication system (Northouse 2015).
Building relationship is essential for successful communication. The leaders would convince
their employees and make them understand the organizational purpose and goals based on the
quality of the relationships with the team members and that would be possible only by
establishing effective communication with the employees.
To build the relationship-oriented leadership style, I would like to develop my own
communication skills that incorporate the qualities of trustfulness and respect. There are five
types of communication styles and I would like to apply the assertive style of

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communication. To build assertive communication style, a leader needs to respect him as
well as show respect to the other members of a group. The communication style must be
based on the mutual respect and assertive communication style helps to build the trust and
respect for each other in a team (Hackman and Johnson 2013). The assertive communication
style demands an honest, open and a direct communication. Being assertive in my
communication style means I am able to express my feelings and thoughts clearly and
coherently to the employees and I would also encourage the same.
Assertive communication style helps to remove the ill feeling from the mind of the
leader and employees if the expected outcomes have not been met. The leader would know
that by engaging assertive communication system, he has tried to tackle the situation in a best
possible manner (Hackman and Johnson 2013).
There are many differences between the skills and style approaches. The skills
approach focuses on the skills of the leaders or what the leaders do while the style approach
concentrates on the style of the leadership or the way a leader handles any situation. The style
approach identifies with the behavior of a leader. The way a leader approach to a particular
situation and his behavioral pattern in this specific situation would be analyzed by the style
approaches of leadership.
Skills approaches focus on the abilities and skills of a leader, which could be learnt
and taught. The skill approach could be developed with time. Katz has identified three
personal skills, which influence the qualities of the leadership effectively (Lussier and Achua
2015). The first one is technical skills, which focuses on developing the skills in a specialized
area. The second one is human skills or the people skills and the third one is conceptual
skills. Conceptual skills involve working with ideas and abstract concepts.

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On the other hand, style approach focuses on the behavior of the leaders. This
leadership approach defines the personality of a leader based on his behavioral pattern. The
style approach has two major dimensions namely task behavior and relationship behavior
(DuBrin 2015). The leaders employ the behavioral skills to influence the employees or team
members and lead them to the business goals of an organization.
Conclusion
It can be concluded by stating that the leadership qualities are an essential factor for
achieving success. It is also the essential part of the management theory. The paper has
described the relationship-oriented leadership skills and subjective communication styles.
The paper has also distinguished the skill approach and style approach. However, it can be
concluded by stating that the style approach is necessary to establish relationship-oriented
leadership method and in this method, communication holds an important part.

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References
Dinh, J.E., Lord, R.G., Gardner, W.L., Meuser, J.D., Liden, R.C. and Hu, J., 2014.
Leadership theory and research in the new millennium: Current theoretical trends and
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DuBrin, A.J., 2015. Leadership: Research findings, practice, and skills. Nelson Education.
Giltinane, C.L., 2013. Leadership styles and theories. Nursing standard, 27(41), pp.35-39.
Hackman, M.Z. and Johnson, C.E., 2013. Leadership: A communication perspective.
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Hackman, M.Z. and Johnson, C.E., 2013. Leadership: A communication perspective.
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Lussier, R.N. and Achua, C.F., 2015. Leadership: Theory, application, & skill development.
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Nahavandi, A., 2016. The Art and Science of Leadership -Global Edition. Pearson.
Northouse, P.G., 2015. Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.
Rosenbach, W.E., Taylor, R.L. and Youndt, M.A., 2012. Contemporary issues in leadership.
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