Which leadership style drives the best results?
The main takeaway for business leaders is that focusing on employee well-being is just as important as focusing on hitting targets and goals. Treat people with respect, help them find the support they need, and be clear about expectations and priorities.
Employees who believe their bosses care about them tend to take their work more seriously, according to a new study.
Research from Binghamton University, State University of New York, found that when a leader shows compassion to subordinates, the result is almost always improved job performance. That’s especially true, the data indicates, when niceness is combined with the communication of clear goals and benchmarks.
The researchers wanted to determine how both the presence and lack of kindness would affect job performance. To do this, they surveyed nearly 1,000 members of the Taiwanese military and almost 200 adults working full-time in the United States.
They measured performance from three different leadership styles and found the results were consistent across both groups, despite the differences in culture and types of work.
The three leadership styles studied:
• Authoritarianism-dominant leaders, who asserted absolute authority and control, and were focused on completing tasks at all costs with little consideration for the well-being of subordinates.
• Benevolence-dominant leaders, whose primary concern was the personal or familial well-being of subordinates. These leaders wanted followers to feel supported and have strong social ties.
• Classical paternalistic leaders, who combined authoritarianism and benevolence, focusing on both task completion and the well-being of subordinates.
The researchers found that authoritarianism-dominant leadership almost always had negative results on job performance, while benevolence-dominant leadership almost always had a positive impact. In other words, being nice to people motivates them to do better, whereas showing no com--
passion to employees tends to negatively impact job performance.
They also found that classical paternalistic leadership, which combines both compassion and authoritarianism, had the same positive effect on
subordinate performance as benevolent-dominant leadership. The reason for this may be rooted in childhood.
The researchers speculated that the parent and child relationship can be a prototype for what people expect out of leadership on the job, and the paternalistic leadership style, as its name implies, resembles that of a parent.
The findings imply that for leaders, showing personal support for employees may be as important as setting expectations. Help and guidance from the leader in developing social ties and support systems for a subordinate can significantly impact the subordinate’s job performance.
Because of the difference in work cultures between
U.S. employees and members of the Taiwanese military, researchers were surprised that the results were consistent across both groups.
The main takeaway for business leaders is that focusing on employee wellbeing is just as important as focusing on hitting targets and goals. Treat people with respect, help them find the support they
need, and be clear about expectations and priorities.
Think of it like the “tough love” that often characterizes parent-child relationships. Judy Kneiszel is an associate editor with J.J. Keller & Associates, a nationally recognized compliance resource firm. Kneiszel specializes in business topics such as recruiting and hiring, onboarding and training, team building, employee retention, and labor relations. She is the editor of J. J. Keller’s SUPER adVISOR newsletter and Essentials of Employee Relations manual. For more information, visit www. jjkeller.com/hr and www. jjkellerlibrary.com.