Functional leadership model

In the functional leadership model, one conceives of leadership not as a person but rather as a set of behaviors that help a group perform their task or reach their goal. The model says that the leadership function meets needs in areas:

• Task
• Team
• Individuals

These three areas are derived from John Adair's "three circles" model of leadership that has been used with some success in the British military. Although it is considered to be too much of an over simplification by many.

Leadership behaviors can be divided roughly into three types that meet needs in the above three areas:

• Substantive, or behaviors directly relevant to performing the group's task, such as proposing possible solutions or providing important information;

• Procedural, or behaviors that help direct the group's discussion, such as developing group procedure or testing the degree of agreement among members; and

• Maintenance, or behaviors that improve the relationships among the members, such as encouraging silent members or facilitating open discussion.

Any member can perform these behaviors, and so any member can participate in leadership. It was once thought that members always specialized in one type or another, but while that can happen it is not necessarily the case.

The functional leadership model places more emphasis on how an organization is being led rather than who has been formally assigned a leadership role. This allows the analysis to spend less time looking at the person who has formally assigned authority and instead focus on how the leadership function is actually taking place.

References

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