Task oriented vs people oriented leadership: How to find the right balance

Two marketing teams are closing in on the deadline for their big year-end project for a high-profile client. The leader of one team takes the reins tightly. They know their team members’ strengths, so they delegate tasks, clearly define everyone’s roles, and set out a concrete work timeline. Ultimately, the team delivers the project on time, meeting the client’s standards easily.

The second team’s leader takes a collaborative, democratic approach. They seek feedback on handling the project and use it to help their employees develop different skills. 

The project doesn’t make the deadline, but its more creative approach far exceeds the client’s expectations.

These two approaches are known, respectively, as task-oriented and people-oriented leadership. Neither style is inherently better – each brings a different look to a project. 

The best leaders leverage both leadership styles to mitigate these weaknesses.

In this blog, we look at people-oriented vs task-oriented leadership styles in detail, examining their pros and cons and providing examples to teach you how to leverage both approaches effectively. 

What is task-oriented leadership?

Task-oriented leadership focuses on achieving outcomes through a highly structured approach, marked by efficiency, timeliness, and frequent employee feedback to ensure everything runs smoothly.

A good example of a task-oriented leader is someone who knows their team’s innate strengths and existing skill gaps and can assign tasks based on them to achieve results.

This type of leader ensures their team always meets deadlines, and if they see any snags, they redeploy their team accordingly. 

Task-oriented behavior is crucial in high-stress, time-sensitive industries such as tech and healthcare.

As expected, goal-oriented leaders possess stellar organization and attention to detail. Even if a leader is more people-oriented vs task-oriented, with the right coaching and development, they can develop the organizational skills necessary to leverage this approach.

The advantages of task-oriented leadership

This rigorous approach brings with it tangible benefits for an organization.

1. Defined expectations

For a task-oriented leader, every team member is a cog within the greater machine that keeps the business flowing. Everyone has concrete, well-defined roles and responsibilities.

Role clarity boosts the team’s productivity and ability to achieve its goals and makes team members happier and more likely to stay with the company.

Despite this, only 53% of employees feel they have high role clarity, so task-oriented leadership is key to reaping these benefits.

2. Improved efficiency

Task-oriented leaders are highly attuned to the hard and soft skills of each of their team members. 

They put their employees in roles where their skills can shine, leading to improved efficiency within the team as each member flourishes within their specialization.

As Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s former chief executive officer and a famously task-oriented leader, says, “Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.”^[1]

Task-oriented leaders are also helpful when it comes to strategic workforce planning. Since they know what skills they can use, they can tell whether or not they’ll need extra help on upcoming projects, giving the HR team a more accurate picture for its hiring decisions.

3. Accountability and productivity

As sticklers for deadlines, task-oriented leaders do an excellent job keeping their team on track, ensuring everyone is making the most of their time. Because of this, a task-oriented leadership approach works well with employees who lack effective time management skills. 

Task-oriented leaders also offer frequent feedback to their employees to see the team succeed – and good feedback can boost an employee’s productivity by up to 20%.^[2]

The disadvantages of task-oriented leadership

Task-oriented leaders can achieve solid results, but they also have a reputation for being micromanagers or whip-cracking taskmasters.

Let’s look at some drawbacks of this approach.

1. Weaker communication

Although task-oriented leaders offer feedback to their employees, it’s often a one-way street, meaning upward feedback gets stifled. 

This lack of interpersonal collaboration can lead to a lack of innovation within the team.

2. Reduced empathy

An example of a task-oriented person is someone who prioritizes results above everything else, even if that comes at the expense of other people’s feelings. 

This approach can often go overboard, breeding a negative work culture and resulting in employees quiet quitting. It underscores the need to strike a balance between a people-oriented vs task-oriented leadership style.

3. Overfocused on results

Their fixation on results means that task-oriented leaders can harm their team members’ mental and physical wellbeing.

The pressure to hit every deadline can cause employee burnout – leading to absenteeism and decreased engagement. 

What is people-oriented leadership?

A people-oriented leadership or relationship-oriented leadership approach prioritizes team members’ ideas, relationships, and wellbeing. People-oriented leaders actively seek individuals’ opinions on projects, fostering a highly collaborative environment.

An example of a people-oriented leader is someone who builds a strong team culture, makes employees feel valued, empathizes with team members’ problems, and appreciates the cultural add each individual brings to the table. 

These leaders also emphasize their employees’ personal development, engaging them in learning opportunities and often playing the role of a good mentor.

People-oriented leaders have high emotional intelligence, contributing to their ability to support their employees. 

Task-oriented leaders also nurture empathy in the workplace by building relationships and mixing in this more sympathetic approach when deadlines aren’t as tight.

The advantages of people-oriented leadership

In comparing people-oriented vs task-oriented leadership, although the benefits may not be as overt, they are just as important.

1. Better teamwork and collaboration

The people-oriented approach considers every team member’s views equally, leading to improved teamwork and an environment where everyone feels their managers hear them.

This style of leadership focuses on collaboration and leads to increased creativity and innovation, which greatly benefit an organization’s overall success. 

After all, 84% of chief executive officers say that innovation is tied to growth. An inclusive and cohesive work environment is also key to building a good company culture. 

Organizations with a strong company culture have a 13.9% turnover rate, compared with a 48.4% rate in companies with weaker cultures.^[3]

People-oriented leaders excel at nurturing this culture, whether with an in-person team or a remote one.

2. Agile decision making

People-oriented leaders tend to be more agile. Agility in leadership refers to a manager’s ability to adapt to uncertain challenges, a key factor in keeping a team afloat during difficult times.

This agility stems from a leader’s emotional intelligence because they can maintain resilience in the face of stress and provide team members with whatever support they need. 

Ultimately, a people-oriented leader’s agility and adaptability trickle down to the rest of the team.

Because a people-oriented environment welcomes everyone’s opinions and ideas, it also facilitates the team’s problem-solving abilities. When the team sees more options, it can tackle more problems, making it more resilient to change.

3. Increased job satisfaction and engagement

Finally, the focus of people-oriented behavior on employees’ wellbeing leads to happier workers, which increases job satisfaction.

Employees who feel unheard or unvalued feel disengaged and disgruntled with their work, whereas those who feel heard are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered in their work.^[4] 

An example of a people-oriented person is someone who enables this empowerment by actively listening to their team members.

This attitude also helps retain talent. An IBM study found that 90% of employees were more likely to stay with a company that listened to feedback.

Transparent leaders who encourage dialogue are also a critical factor in employee engagement. 

They tell employees their feedback matters, improving motivation because their employees feel like they can play an active role within the company.

Doing this pays dividends in your bottom line because engaged employees show 21% higher profitability than disengaged ones.^[5] 

The disadvantages of people-oriented leadership

Because people-oriented behavior focuses less on visible goals, this form of leadership has some cons that can be tough to overcome without a more task-oriented approach.

1. Time-consuming

Managing your people, their problems, and their development can take up a lot of time, which leads to not meeting strict deadlines or delaying deliverables. 

It’s important to mix in a task-oriented approach when your team is under pressure to deliver.

2. Conflict avoidant

Another key difference between a people-oriented vs. task-oriented leadership style is that the former has difficulty confronting employees when things aren’t running smoothly – they’d rather try to maintain harmony.

When the leader must let go of an employee, or a conflict in the workplace rears its ugly head, this attitude causes a roadblock. 

3. Difficulty challenging employees

The people-oriented leadership style also has trouble confronting employees when their performance isn’t quite up to par, such as in the case of a bad hire. 

They may also avoid challenging productive employees to improve, preferring not to rock the boat.

Because of its more direct attitude, task-oriented leadership is usually the better choice.

Task-oriented vs people-oriented leadership: What's the difference?

Let’s quickly compare task-oriented vs people-oriented characteristics to clearly define their differences.

Task-oriented vs people-oriented examples: Real-life scenarios to help you pick the right approach

Remember, good leaders should be able to adjust their leadership style according to the problems at hand. 

They may swap between the task-oriented and people-oriented approach from project to project, month to month, day to day, or even minute to minute. 

We collected some examples of the task-oriented vs people-oriented leadership styles in the real world to help you better understand which situations each is best for.

Summary of task-oriented vs. people-oriented examples

1. During crunch time

Every company experiences high-stress “crunch” times in its work, whether it be a deadline approaching, peak season, or the rush to get work done before a holiday.

Such intense times often lead to workplace conflicts, delayed due dates, and teams floundering because they struggle to keep up with demands. 

These are exactly the times when task-oriented leadership flourishes. 

Because of their excellent time management skills and focus on meeting due dates, task-oriented leaders can successfully guide their team under pressure, delegating tasks and serving as the ship’s captain to keep things afloat.

This approach takes much of the stress off employees’ plates because they know exactly when to do things and can rest assured the rest of their team is pulling their weight, enabling them to focus on their roles. 

2. A complex project for a new client

A marketing agency has just received a new project from a big-name client looking to develop a multimedia campaign across several online channels, including videos on LinkedIn and SEO on their website. 

It’s a skill-intensive project, and the agency has difficulty fitting it in with its already existing workload. Still, it’s simply too big of an opportunity to pass up.

To facilitate the project, the director opts for the task-oriented approach. They take careful stock of their workforce planning and review team members’ skills and existing workloads to take a data-driven approach in assigning the most suitable workers to the new project.

Moreover, because of the agency’s emphasis on skills and development, they can shift other team members around to plug skill gaps that open up because of this project and use them as a learning opportunity for their workforce.

When the project begins, the structured approach ensures everyone knows their responsibility, so no time is wasted wondering who must fill which roles.

3. Dealing with a bad hire

Feedback has been coming in from the team that the latest hire has begun to slack off and neglect deadlines after having a stellar start. 

Their productivity has dropped off in recent weeks, and they’ve been vague and, at times, unresponsive when team members have asked them for updates. It’s beginning to bring the team’s morale down as it struggles to make up for what seems like a bad hire. 

The most effective approach here is a direct, task-oriented one. The leader should go straight to the employee in question and remind them of their role, deadlines, and the importance of their productivity for the team’s success.

There are two possible outcomes here:

• The approach kickstarts the employee’s performance because they recognize they can’t get away with lazy behavior. They ultimately become a highly valued and respected member of the team.

• After continuing to monitor the employee’s progress, the leader realizes they simply aren’t up to standards and lets them go. However, the task-oriented manager supports their team and ensures they still meet all their deadlines until a more qualified candidate joins the company.

Though these are two distinct routes, each results in long-term success and increased productivity.

4. Brainstorming ideas for a creative project

A game development team has just finished up its most recent project. There was a big rush to get it in before the deadline, during which time the manager adopted a task-oriented approach to great success, but now they’re wondering what to work on next.

The manager can switch from task-oriented to people-oriented mode. With no impending deadlines, they can focus on building team relationships and helping everyone de-stress from the last project.

Most importantly, the people-oriented approach fosters a more innovative environment in the team because it invites everyone to share their opinions openly and collaborate – a vital approach for a creative team. 

The diverse range of ideas borne out of this environment lays a solid foundation for the next project so that once crunch time hits again, the team is already set up for success.

5. A company with a high voluntary turnover rate

The numbers have come in at your company, and you have a significantly higher voluntary turnover rate than other organizations within your sector. 

You distribute employee surveys to get to the heart of the matter. It seems that a recurring theme in the response you get is not enough work-life balance and a poor communication style – not uncommon in companies with high turnover rates.

Your employees do not feel valued or safe sharing thoughts and opinions within their teams.

To counter this alarming trend, you begin educating your managers in the people-oriented approach. 

Because of its focus on employee wellbeing and open communication, it’s the perfect choice for reversing a toxic environment and building psychological safety at work.

After a year of emphasizing this approach, you see a noticeable improvement in your turnover rate. The next yearly employee survey is positive, and your workers repeatedly bring up a feeling of unity and pride in the organization.

6. Following an organizational shake-up

A company has just undergone a substantial organizational restructuring, leading to shaken-up team compositions, elevated stress levels as employees struggle to adjust, and uncertainty about the future and the direction of the business.

Team members are beginning to question the company’s culture – the stability managers always promised seems to have gone out the window.

People-oriented leadership plays a pivotal role during chaotic times. Leaders who adopt this approach can better empathize with their workers’ doubts and concerns. 

They take a personal approach to the issue, listening to their team members’ problems and reiterating that they are all in the same boat, fostering unity.

They also continue to reinforce the company’s values to the team through their actions, nurturing trust levels back to where they were before the restructuring.

This highly adaptable approach ensures that the team continues to succeed through this stressful period.

Task-oriented vs people-oriented leadership: A careful balancing act

There is no “better” option between task-oriented vs people-oriented leadership.

Each approach has its benefits, and by recognizing the appropriate times and situations for the two leadership styles, you can leverage them to the fullest effect.

Task-oriented leadership is most successful when:

1. Deadlines are quickly approaching

2. Team productivity is lagging

3. Roles and responsibilities need to be defined

People-oriented leadership excels at:

1. Building communication

2. Fostering company culture and values

3. Navigating uncertain waters

You can use the Leadership & People Management test to find leaders capable of adjusting their style to each situation.

To read more about effective leadership, check out our blog on hiring great leaders adept in different leadership styles with talent assessments.

Sources

1. Byrne, John A. (April 17, 2013). “Sheryl Sandberg’s Inspiring Speech at Harvard Business School”. LinkedIn. Retrieved December 13, 2023. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130417200657-17970806-sheryl-sandberg-s-inspiring-speech-at-harvard-business-school/ 

2. Warrilow, Garrett D. (2017). “The Effects of Feedback Modality on Performance”. Western Michigan University. Retrieved December 13, 2023. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1946&context=masters_theses 

3. “The Statistical Case for Company Culture [Infographic]”. LevelingUp. Retrieved December 13, 2023. https://www.levelingup.com/management/statistical-case-company-culture/ 

4. “The Impact of Equality and Values Driven Business”. (2017). Salesforce. Retrieved December 13, 2023. https://www.salesforce.com/content/dam/web/en_us/www/assets/pdf/datasheets/salesforce-research-2017-workplace-equality-and-values-report.pdf 

5. “State of the American Workplace”. (2017). Gallup. Retrieved December 13, 2023. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/238085/state-american-workplace-report-2017.aspx