People Oriented vs Task Oriented

Leadership: Building People While Building Things

As a Lead or Manager, one could naturally incline more towards being people oriented or task oriented. Which is better? Do you know which side you lean more towards?

⚡Sounds clichéd but it is Gold: Leadership is not about building things (product/service/company) using people. It is about building people while building things.

💯End of the day, let us accept the fact that 'building things' is what pays in today's world. It could be building a product or customer satisfaction or revenue through sales or so on & so forth. So, building things is every organization's Goal.

👎However, if we build things by using people, then we will never have a sustainable organization. And the one that tries to do it will never be a Leader. And in my personal yet humble opinion, it is plain wrong to do so.

🎯A Leader has to build people while building things. And hence a Leader has to be both people oriented & task oriented. Most of us, naturally incline more towards one of them.

🪜Here are the steps to become good at being both people oriented & task oriented:

1️⃣ Identify where you are today. An amazing management tool I learnt about is "Blake & Mouton Managerial Grid" (Google 'Blake Mouton managerial grid leadership self assessment questionnaire'). Using this, find your "People" score & "Task" score (on a scale of 0 to 9) and find your management style as well (Country Cub Leader, Team Leader, Authoritarian Leader, etc...).

2️⃣ Ideally one should have a score of (9, 9) (People, Task). At the least, a score of (6,6) or above, so that one can be a "Team Leader". But, now that you know your current score - let's say (6, 4) - you could either focus on improving the lower score among the two while still maintaining the other score or you could focus on improving both the scores together.

3️⃣ One excellent book that helps in improving your People oriented-ness & Task oriented-ness is "Bankable Leadership" by Dr. Tasha Eurich. Amazing book with actionable insights on how to improve on both People & Task.

🙇When I am around experienced Leaders who are good at both, I keep observing how they take care of their people & empower them along with accomplishing task oriented goals. It is interesting & a great learning experience to observe how good Leaders achieve this.

Have you tried the questionnaire and found your People, Task score & management style yet?