Considerate Leadership

Considerate leadership is a particular characterization of leader behavior that emphasizes commitment to developing personal relationships with followers, care and concern for others, willingness to attend to the unique preferences and work styles of subordinates, and facilitating cooperation among members of a work group. The concept was central in the Ohio State Studies of the 1960s and led to studies published by Edward Fleishman, who specified two distinct clusters of effective leader behavior: “Initiating Structure”, or the extent to which a leader defines leader and group member roles, initiates actions, organizes group activities and defines how tasks are to be accomplished by the group; and “Consideration,” the extent to which a leader exhibits concern for the welfare of the members of the group. Around the same time as the Ohio State studies, research conducted at the University of Michigan revealed a similar pattern of effective behavior, distinguishing leader behaviors that were task-oriented (i.e., initiating structure) from those that were people-oriented (i.e., consideration). According to this model, leaders who were people-oriented were more considerate, helpful, and supportive of subordinates. Similarly, Blake and Mouton proposed a Managerial Grid in 1964, which identified five important behaviors for effective managers. These behaviors were clustered into a concern for production, which concerns the degree to which a manager emphasizes specific and concrete objectives; organizational efficiency and productivity when making decisions; and a concern for people, or the degree to which a employee needs and preferences are taking into account. These three sets of seminal studies represented a meaningful evolution in leadership research, which, up to that point, had focused primarily on identifying the specific and unique traits characteristic of great leaders. Since then, several models of leader behavior have included reference to a leader’s care and concern for others, appreciation of individual differences, and interest in the general welfare of the team. For example, transformational leadership theory, as introduced by Bass in 1985, highlights four dimensions of especially effective leader behavior, including individualized consideration, or the degree to which leaders attend to followers’ needs, act as mentors or coaches, and listen to followers’ concerns. Similarly, recent models of servant leadership theory, as discussed in Reed, et al. 2011 (cited under Servant Leadership), include an “interpersonal support” (caring) dimension, where leaders “perceive their decisions in the context of utilitarianism and benevolence, stressing an overarching concern for the well-being of others, including society at large” (p. 418). Lastly, Rafferty and Griffin 2006 (cited under Supportive Leadership) isolates supportive leadership as distinct from developmental leadership. In doing so, the authors define supportive leadership as behaviors that are attentive the interest of subordinates and considerate of their personal feelings and concerns. As recently as 2013, van Knippenberg and Sitkin made a critical assessment of the charismatic-transformational leadership paradigm. In doing so, they offered four criticisms of how these leadership models have been developed and tested. Especially relevant in their review is a summary of how essential leader behaviors, such as leader consideration, are described, operationalized, measured, and tested in various modern models of effective leadership.