Combinative aspects of leadership style - The ordering and temporal spacing of leadership behaviors

This article introduces the concept of combinative aspects of leadership style, which addresses elements of leadership style such as the ordering and temporal spacing of leadership behaviors. The major purpose is to show that perceptions of leadership are influenced by the manner in which leadership behaviors are combined. Different combinations of task-oriented leadership statements and socioemotionally oriented leadership statements were examined. All of the participants were full-time employees. In all three of the studies, combinative aspects of leadership style clearly influenced perceptions of leadership statements. The findings indicate that task-oriented leadership should not be provided without socioemotional leadership and that socioemotionally oriented leadership should generally be provided immediately before task-oriented leadership. Further work is needed to investigate the applicability of combinative aspects of leadership style to components of transactional and transformational leadership. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.