Do Leaders Use the Same Approach With Everyone?

Do you treat everyone the same, or do you treat your friends and favorite coworkers differently than you treat casual acquaintances or other coworkers? Perhaps you are more open, relaxed, and friendly with your favorite coworkers, perhaps even joke around a little with them and discuss personal issues. Perhaps with other coworkers you are polite, but your interactions are briefer and revolve more closely around specific work tasks. In the same way, leaders may have close, friendly, and personal relationships with some coworkers and subordinates and more formal, impersonal relationships with other teammates or subordinates.

Some leadership models assume that leaders have a specific leadership style, for example, a task leadership style, which they use with everyone. In contrast, leader-member exchange (LMX) theorists argue that leaders have individualized, personal relationships with each member of their group (Dansereau, Graen, & Haga, 1975; Graen, 1976; Graen & Cashman, 1975; Graen & Scandura, 1987). For example, with one group member, the leader may have a very friendly, relationship-oriented relationship. With a second member, the leader may have a moderately friendly connection. And with a third person, the leader may have purely task-oriented interactions. Consequently, leaders use a variety of leadership styles according to the type of relationship they have with each person. LMX researchers use the term dyadic relationship to refer to the one-on-one relationship between a follower and a leader (a dyad consists of two people who are linked in some way).

Although leader-member exchange theory focuses on individualized relationships, researchers often collapse the relationships into high and low relationship quality groups. The high quality relationships are often referred to as the in-group or cadre; whereas the low quality relationship groups are referred to as the out-group or hired hands. The members of the in-group are treated with a more considerate, friendly, and personal manner, whereas the out-group members are supervised in a more impersonal manner that focuses more closely on work tasks. However, more recently, scholars have renewed their interest in the individualized relationship aspect of leader-member exchange (Wallis, Yammarino, & Feyerherm, in press). These scholars have found evidence that leaders' effects on performance operates on one-to-one relationships with subordinates rather than at the subgroup (i.e., in-group vs. out-group) level (Markham, Yammarino, Murry, & Palanski, 2010).

Leader-member exchange scholars include the word exchange in the name of their theory because of the exchanges that take place between leaders and followers. Although the members of the in-group receive more friendly treatment, the early leader-member exchange scholars assumed that followers join the in-group by contributing more in the way of performance. In other words, in exchange for the privilege of being a member of the in-group, the in-group members produce higher quality work. In turn, the leader reciprocates by granting in-group membership and various perks and benefits.

Applications: Are there in-groups and out-groups at work, or do you think every relationship is different in some important way? Do leaders use different leadership styles with different people, or do they use the same basic style with everyone?