Michigan Leadership Studies
Categories: Company Management, Education
What makes a good leader good and a bad leader bad? We could probably ask a hundred people that question and get a hundred different answers, but if we were to ask the University of Michigan in the 1950s, they’d tell us that the best leaders do their own work well, take care of their people, and manage without micromanaging. Said more technically, task-and-employee-oriented leaders with participative supervision skills tend to get the best results in terms of productivity and employee job satisfaction.
How do they know? Well, in the 1950s is when U Mich conducted its still-talked-about Michigan Leadership Studies. They took a bunch of empirical data, stuck it in a statistical analysis blender, and poured out those three essential leadership characteristics (task orientation, employee orientation, and participative leadership style). And even though we did say these studies are still talked about today, their findings were pretty general and took some heat. But in the decades that have passed, many organizations and universities (including the home of the Wolverines) have built upon and refined those studies into what we now know today as the wild and wonderful field of Organizational Behavior. Thanks, Michigan. You're awesome, no matter what they say.
