Leadership and Management Styles: Analysis and Practical Application

This report analyzes leadership and management styles, differentiating between the two and emphasizing the importance of leadership in setting goals, designing policies, and managing change, while management focuses on maintaining the status quo. The report explores the Blake and Mouton grid, a framework for analyzing leadership styles based on concern for people and results. It highlights how leadership styles must adapt to organizational needs, using a startup CEO as a case study to illustrate the application of different leadership styles like team management, country club management, impoverished management, and produce-or-perish management, along with their implications. The report stresses the importance of choosing the right leadership style to foster both business success and maintain relationships, especially in the early stages of a business.

1. When considering the differences between leadership and management, one can view the
purpose that each of them serves in organizations. Leadership pertains to a strategic
usage entailing goal setting, designing and developing policies, and change management
initiatives. It is a highly coveted and not so common skill.
Management is at a functional level, involving maintaining the status quo, making low
impact decisions, following the leadership directive and resource allocation. It is a
widespread skill characterized by reliability and consistency.
2. A framework to analyze individual leadership style, the Blake and Mouton (Blake,
Mouton, & Bidwell, 1962) grid characterizes a leader on their concern for people and
concern for results. An organization requires a different style of leadership when it
undergoes a different stage in its life cycle or when the demands of the workplace change
because of internal and/or external demands. In such cases, the leadership style has to
adapt to the situation. The Blake and Mouton grid classifies the different styles of
leadership based on their application and the priority the leader wishes to assign to the
tasks at hand and the people/team.
As an example, if we consider a CEO of a startup who has employed few of her friends in
key positions, she would do well with an equal concern for both people and tasks i.e. the
middle of the road style. In such a scenario, she does not alienate her friends and yet gets
the work done in an adequate manner. She could also employ ‘team management’ which
would help her leverage her friends’ strengths to get optimal work done while
maintaining a cordial relationship and thus having a win-win situation. This would prove
to be a more useful style in the initial stages of the startup. If she was a ‘country club
manager,’ she would risk not getting any work done as she would fear hurting the
sentiments of her friends in case of a conflict. Considering it is a startup, her business
would severely suffer since the people employed to help her, are actually hindering her
work. If she decides to keep the interactions strictly professional, she may be an

‘impoverished’ or ‘produce-or-perish’ managers wherein the work would really be great
and her business would move ahead, but her friendship may suffer. It could also result in
a few of her key employees leave the organization or be unhappy and regret their
decision to stay. In both scenarios, she would lose out on friendship that could be a
source of comfort amidst the chaos of starting a business. She also tends to lose out on
trusted colleagues who could help her while she is setting up her business.
References
Blake, R. R., Mouton, J. S., & Bidwell, A. C. (1962). Managerial grid. Advanced Management-
Office Executive.