One of the more notable, as well as complicated leadership theories is the Path-Goal Theory
of Leadership.
Much like the situational leadership theory developed by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard,
the path-goal theory operates with the idea that leaders should adapt their leadership
styles to their subordinates.
Developed in 1971 by Robert House, the path-goal theory is actually based on the popular expectancy
theory of motivation.
If you recall, Vroom argued that employees are motivated to the extent that they believe
their efforts will lead to improved performance, that improved performance will lead to the
attainment of certain rewards, and those rewards are desirable to employees.
Coined expectancy, instrumentality, and valence respectively, these three components make
up the expectancy theory of motivation.
So how does this relate to the path-goal theory?
Well according to the path-goal theory, leaders are responsible for outlining a clear path
for employees to achieve goals, eliminating those obstacles that stand in the way, and
ensuring that desirable rewards exist.
By reducing the ambiguity and obstacles associated with accomplishing goals, as well as providing
valuable rewards, leaders can improve employee motivation, satisfaction, and job performance.
Now before you start to think that the path-goal theory is simply just an alteration of expectancy
theory, let me tell you that it gets a little more complicated than that.
In addition to what we've discussed, the path-goal theory also outlines four leader behaviors.
The behaviors include: directive, supportive, participative, and achievement-oriented leadership.
Each of these leader behaviors carries certain significance, and not one is appropriate in
all situations.
So really, on top of clearing paths to goals, reducing obstacles, and providing desirable
rewards to increase motivation, leaders also need to tailor their leadership style based
on a specific employee and the environment.
Now lets talk about each of these leadership styles.
The first leadership style, directive, involves providing a structure for employees.
Essentially what a leader does is provide a clear outline of how tasks should be performed,
specify standards of performance, and communicate policies, rules, and procedures among other
things.
Next we have the supportive leadership style, which primarily involves displaying concern
for the welfare of employees and creating a warm and friendly environment.
Several studies have pointed to a link between supportive leader behaviors and increased
performance as they tend to reduce stress and frustration in the workplace.
The next leadership style is participative, which involves including employees in decision
making and taking their opinions into account.
Engaging in participative leadership produces several benefits, some a little more obvious
than others.
By allowing employees to have more involvement in what directly affects them, employees receive
clarity surrounding their goals and how they can achieve them.
Also, by involving employees in the goal-setting process, employees are far more likely to
be committed to the goals that since they played a role in creating them.
Participative leader behavior also transfers more responsibility to the employee, and this
increased autonomy in terms of how to perform their work can lead to greater performance
outcomes.
The last leadership style is achievement-oriented.
Achievement-oriented behavior takes the form of establishing challenging goals, communicating
high performance expectations, and also displaying confidence in employees to achieve those goals.
If you're familiar with transformational leadership you've probably noticed a few similarities
in this area.
But the primary objective of achievement-oriented behavior is to encourage excellence in performance.
Alright so we've outlined the different leadership styles or behaviors that can be utilized with
employees.
But how do we determine which one is appropriate?
What are some of the things that leaders should consider when trying to determine the appropriate
leadership style according to path-goal theory?
The first thing that should be considered is the subordinates themselves.
It's not effective to apply one leadership style across all types of employees.
Since employees all have different levels of experience, confidence, and abilities,
it makes more sense to evaluate these characteristics and choose a leadership style that is most
likely to encourage better performance.
These characteristics include the perceived ability of the employee, their locus of control,
as well as experience.
Lets talk about how the perceived ability, meaning the ability that an employee perceives
they possess, affects choice of leadership styles.
Employees with low perceived ability need more direction as well as supervision since
they lack the means to perform their job effective.
So a directly leadership style is likely to be the best choice here.
However, an employee with high perceived ability would be unlikely to thrive in such a situation.
Instead, employees may feel insulted and unappreciated as the manager, through their choice of leadership
style, displays little confidence in the their abilities.
As you can imagine, this may produce job dissatisfaction and may even lead to dysfunctional turnover.
An employees locus of control should also be considered when selected a leadership style.
What is locus of control?
Well it has to do with how much control individuals believe they have over their lives.
So someone with an external locus of control believes that a majority of what happens to
them is a result of factors beyond their control.
In comparison, someone with an internal locus of control believes that a majority of what
happens to them is a result of their behavior.
So how does this affect choice of leadership style?
Well someone with an internal locus of control is more likely to blame outside forces when
things don't go their way.
Because they often do so, they're more likely to respond to a directive leadership style
that outlines how a job should be performed.
If the outcome is not desired, employees can always rest in the fact that management told
them to perform the job this way.
Now someone with an internal locus of control is unlikely to find this situation desirable.
Instead, they thrive on autonomy and the ability to elect how the work should be performed
to achieve the desired outcome.
Those with an internal locus of control often prefer achievement-oriented leadership, since
they agree on challenging goals with management, but then have the opportunity to determine
how to achieve them.
In a sense, these individuals are going to view their own behavior as the cause of on
outcome anyways, so it only makes sense that they be given a little more autonomy in affecting
that outcome.
Lastly, managers should consider the experience level of an employee when choosing a leadership
style.
This is a little different from perceived ability.
Remember perceived ability deals with employee perceptions of their abilities.
Experience on the other hand is more focused on how long they've been performing the job
and their exposure to certain tasks.
However, a manager would consider experience in a similar fashion as perceived ability,
as an employee with a great deal of experience would be unlikely to respond positively to
a directive leadership style.
Outside of the subordinates themselves, managers should also consider the actual environment
where the subordinates work.
The environment plays a rather significant role in how employees perform, so the goal
here is for managers to avoid duplicating characteristics already represent in the environment
itself.
These characteristics take the form of task structure, formal authority systems, and the
primary work group.
So if a work environment has a great deal of task structure, which means tasks are clearly
specified, the managers shouldn't duplicate these efforts by engaging in directive style.
Instead, perhaps the tasks are repetitive and maybe even stressful.
Which would indicate the need for a supportive leadership style.
However, jobs that don't provide a great deal of task structure may create a need for more
directive leadership.
Now a formal authority system represents the policies, rules, and procedures that provide
employees with information on what to do in certain situations.
Similar to task structure, if the formal authority system is clear then managers wouldn't need
to use a directive leadership style.
The last characteristic of the environment is the primary work group.
This represents the support that an employee receives from the people they work with.
If employees receive more emotional support from their work group, then managers don't
need to duplicate this in their own behavior.
Instead, managers can focus on what is not being met by the environment to ultimately
improve organizational performance.
Now that we've outline some of the major components of the path-goal theory, I suppose the next
question to answer is: Well, does it work?
Overall, the answer is yes it does produce greater employee satisfaction and performance.
However, researchers have a difficult time teasing out the data when evaluating the impact
of the environment and the subordinate themselves on a manager's leadership style.
There are just too many variables at work here with too many ways of impacting the data.
But although further research is needed, the path-goal theory still provides managers with
somewhat of a blueprint so that managers can begin thinking about their own leadership
style in new and different ways.
Thank you watching this video on the path-goal theory of leadership.
In next week's video we're going to talk about perception.
And how perception affects the way that we communicate.
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