How to Choose a Leadership Pattern: Taking Authority

Making Better Business Decisions

Choosing a leadership pattern involves balancing the need to take authority, with involving your colleagues in decision making. The appropriate balance will vary with the situation, but one thing’s constant. The choices you make will affect your team’s performance and their motivation. Get it wrong and you could risk alienating, even losing, good people. Judge it correctly and you’ll achieve a ‘win-win,’ inspiring your team to give their best.

In this article, we look at the work of Robert Tannenbaum and Warren H. Schmidt. They critiqued the existing leadership theories, and proposed the idea of a leadership continuum, balancing authority and free rein. Their original article, How to choose a leadership pattern, appeared in the Harvard Business Review in 1958. They revisited and refined it in 1973, and the later version is available to download as an “HBR Classic.” Fifty years on, Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s Continuum still holds good as a tool for choosing your leadership pattern. Here’s why.

Morphing Managers, Shapeshifting Leaders

In today’s continuing uncertain climate, clarity about how best to lead and manage your business is more important than ever. But getting your head around the possible options can be hard! That’s where Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s Continuum could be helpful. Visualising the balance between authority and free rein as a sliding scale makes the idea easier to grasp.

This notion of leadership shapeshifting to fit the situation is very current. We’ve seen businesses of all kinds pivoting in the pandemic. And as workplaces grow more diverse, leaders and managers need to be flexible to get the best from their teams. Managing people involves a mix of critical thinking, emotional intelligence and active listening. Developing these important soft skills will help you make choices about how you lead them.

Leadership Styles and Motivation Theories

Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s work looked back at the widely recognised leadership styles which emerged in the last century. The American psychologist Kurt Lewin and his team of researchers identified these three styles in 1939:

• Autocratic: The decision-making power lies with you, and nobody else. You give the orders, and assign duties and tasks, without consulting the team. There’s praise and reward, but also punishment and fear. You probably micromanage them as well. Your employees are likely to get frustrated by being treated like this, and they won’t grow and develop their strengths. And their work drops when you leave the room.
• Democratic or participative: You consult the team and let them share in decision-making. You lead through persuasion and example, and moderate team members’ ideas and suggestions. Your team loves you for it. But without you giving them firm leadership, they might not make the most effective work decisions.
• Laissez faire or free rein: You pass decision-making responsibility to the team, believing they’ll all give you their best. But again, without proper direction or control, they’ll be less productive than you’d like, and eventually, the business could flounder.

Following Kurt Lewin’s work, other people identified more leadership styles. The following examples are essentially variants of authoritative leadership, each with a distinctly different impact on employees. You need to be aware of them.

Do Any Describe Yourself?

• Pacesetting: You set the bar high, and push team members to the finish line. That’s fine for launching a product or service, but you can’t keep this kind of pressure up for ever. People will get stressed and maybe even burn out.
• Paternalistic: Papa, or increasingly these days, Mama, knows best! You guide and protect your team like family members, assuming they’ll work harder out of gratitude. Get real! Some mature adults might not appreciate you looking after their interests like this. They could even get antagonistic and resentful. You need to back off a bit.
• Transactional/managerial: It’s all about focusing on the task in hand. You set targets, along with rewards and penalties. This ensures compliance with your goals, but also suppresses your team’s creativity and ingenuity. And you’ll only get predictable outputs, not innovation.
• Transformational/visionary: You energise your team and sell them the company vision. To encourage individuals to give their best, you’re big on empathy, enthusiasm and praise. Your employees feel empowered and loyal, but as the business grows, you could come across as distant. Maybe even insincere. CEOs who like to use social media to build their personal profile and appear in company adverts, take note!

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Staff Motivation

As we said at the start, the leadership pattern you choose will have a direct bearing on your staff’s motivation. American psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote his “Theory of Human Motivation” in 1943. The theory proposes that humans have a hierarchy of needs that drive us in work. As defined in Maslow’s Hierarchy, these needs are physiological, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualisation.

People start off in their working lives by satisfying their basic needs. We need to eat and pay the rent. From there they work up to what Maslow called ‘self-actualising.’ Becoming the best version of you, as the saying goes. As a manager or leader, sure, you need to get the job done. But you also need to make your people feel fulfilled.

Not Either or, but Both – The Leadership Continuum Explained

In the 1950s, new findings from social science meant business people were questioning directive leadership’s motivational effectiveness. So it was time for a fresh look.

Robert Tannenbaum and Warren H. Schmidt’s article “How to choose a leadership pattern” appeared in Harvard Business Review in 1958. They looked at the different prevailing points of view about supposed ‘good leadership,’ and noted there were some clear contradictions. 15 years later, in 1973, they looked back on their commentary and updated it.

Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s big question was, how do you combine being democratic, while maintaining authority and control?  Or, to put it another way, how do you lead and direct while motivating people and keeping them onside?

In their article, Tannenbaum and Schmidt noted that striking this balance hadn’t been a problem in the early 20th century. Back then, it was accepted that successful leaders were authoritative, and their employees followed them willingly. But after WW2, training researchers started exploring all this, giving people experience in full participation and decision making. In their experiments, designated “leaders” reduced their own power and made group members more responsible for setting their own goals.

People experiencing these sessions saw this kind of leadership as truly democratic and wanted more of it. It fed into managerial training courses, and the resulting attitude change went viral. As Tannenbaum and Schmidt observed, this led to some managers having a crisis of confidence. “Democratic” leadership behaviour was held up as good, “authoritarian” leadership as bad. Torn between the old ideal of “strong” leadership and the new “permissive” alternative, it was impacting their decision-making ability.

Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s Leadership Patterns

To help managers handle this dilemma, Messrs T. and S. came up with their framework of leadership patterns. They called this their Continuum of Leadership Behavior. The diagram in the updated article has “Boss-centred leadership” on the left and “subordinate-centred leadership” on the right. Below is a rectangle with a diagonal line running bottom left to top right. This divides the rectangle into “Use of authority by the manager” and “area of freedom for subordinates.” Under the rectangle are all the possible variations of leadership styles on the Continuum.

Continuum Variations

• Make the decision yourself and announce it: There’s no team involvement. Useful if strict deadlines must be met, or when employees don’t have the right qualities to do a job effectively.
• “Sell” the decision: You need the team to understand why you’re making the decision and the positive benefits it will have.
• Present ideas and invite questions: You want to see whether they understand your decision. It also lets you see which employees are ready for more responsibility, because of their critical thinking.
• Make tentative decisions subject to change: It’s a group problem, so employees should be able to influence it if they make good arguments. Or, you’ve made your initial decision, but now you want to consult them. This is likely to make employees feel valued and more engaged because they can influence decisions.
• Present problems, get suggestions, and make decisions: The team provides input, but you still make the final decision. The difference is, you discuss it with the group first. This is good when the group has knowledge and professional skills they can bring to the table. But you still have the last word.
• Define limits and ask the group to make decisions: This gives the employees more freedom, but it’s risky for you. You’ve given them the authority to make decisions on your behalf, but you’re still responsible as the leader. That’s why you need to set limits and have boundaries.
• Permit colleagues to function autonomously within limits you define: You expect the team to research potential problems and take measures to deal with risks. Again, you’re still responsible, but you encourage the team to identify and solve problems without involving you. This isn’t about choosing the paper clips or arranging the office Christmas party. It happens in the top management of corporates because it allows leaders to focus on strategy.

In the Continuum Model

The freedom and responsibility you give team members will increase with their skill and competence. But remember, you’re still the leader.

Mr. McGregor’s Challenging Idea

In the 1960s Douglas McGregor published his Theory X and Theory Y, still taught in business studies courses. He drew a distinction between the motivation assumptions underlying autocratic and democratic leadership. Theory X describes autocratic leadership and assumes people dislike work and must be coerced, controlled, and directed towards goals. And Theory Y describes democratic leadership and says employees want to be self-directed and accomplish goals they believe in. They can be motivated with positive incentives.

McGregor’s theories imply that you can only manage one way or the other. Their emergence mirrored the social tensions at the time on both sides of the Atlantic, between conservative and liberal values.

Tannenbaum and Schmidt picked up on these social changes in their 1973 update. They talked of “strong” leadership and the new “permissive” approach. But they also pointed out that in the Continuum managers are either maintaining or releasing a high degree of control. Neither of these positions is absolute, and authority and freedom are never without their limitations. Whichever leadership pattern they choose, leaders are still responsible for the end results.

Understand the Factors Impacting Your Decision Making Patterns

Tannenbaum and Schmidt also identified the personal factors and external forces underlying people’s choices about decision making:

Personal factors impacting leaders

• Leadership values: Do you believe in democracy and equality in the workplace? Or do you think strong leadership is all-important?
• Confidence: How confident are you in your team’s decision-making ability? And how much confidence do you have in yours?
• Tolerance for ambiguity: Individuals’ temperaments vary widely. Not everyone can handle the uncertainty and ambiguity involved in group decision-making. Especially if they want results quickly. As leader, that may make you reluctant to involve the team in particular decisions.

Personal Factors Impacting Team Members’ Contribution:

• Aspiration: People who want to move up the ladder, or are naturally motivated, may be more inclined to take a role in decision making.
• Desire for independence: Some individuals may want more independence in how they do their work, and would like a bigger say.
• Readiness to Assume Responsibility: Particular individuals may be more willing to move to the centre of decision-making.
• Skill level: Some people may not have the skills or knowledge to be given responsibility. You need to train them and bring them on.

External Factors Affecting Your Choice of Leadership Pattern:

• Business culture: Are you under pressure from the top to be more collaborative with your team or, conversely, keep control?
• Time pressure: You need quick decisions, and can’t wait for the team’s input.
• Group cohesion: If the team works well together, you may be able to delegate more to them than if there are conflicts.
• The kinds of problem you need to solve: Some problems are simple. Others are more complex, and need experts to contribute.

And Finally: Some Pros and Cons, and Ideas for Further Reading

Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s Continuum is widely recognised as a useful tool for choosing leadership patterns. But you need to be aware of its limitations, and the pros and cons of using it.

Pros:

• Lays out a range of strategies to choose from.
• Allows space for different strategies in different situations.
• Gives you scope to try things out and see what works best.

Cons:

• Doesn’t present any one ‘correct’ way, so leaves ambiguity.
• It’s not differentiated for particular businesses, which might need more specific models.

For further reading, you can download various scholarly articles about Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s Continuum as PDFs. And their 1973 article is available free as an “HBR classic.” The commentary might seem a bit dated, but it’s definitely worth a look. Tannenbaum and Schmidt are also mentioned in NHS England People Directorate’s excellent guide to choosing leadership styles.

When it comes to making better business decisions, thinking about how you lead and involve your team can only bring benefits. As we said earlier, the Continuum isn’t differentiated for particular businesses. So, how about creating a version tailored to your decision-making? That will enable you to use it in coaching meetings to help your team develop their decision-making skills. Your leadership pattern is your choice – so choose well!

Action: For even more useful content on leadership, check out our ultimate guide on Leadership Skills.