Task-oriented Leadership and Creativity of Employees

Creativity, defined as the production of new and useful ideas, is becoming increasingly important for companies. In today’s times of rapid technological change, globalization, and economic crisis, creativity of employees is important for companies to continue to do so in the top of business. Creativity is, among other things, related to the performance and effectiveness of organizations and this also increases the survival rate of companies in the long term. As a result, it is an important question for managers how they can stimulate the creativity of employees. Equally important is to know what managers should not have done -and that is, what behaviors of managers results in less creativity and why?

Task-oriented leadership. Task-oriented leadership is characterized by the application of structure in the work, the definition of work roles and the drop of clear goals. In particular, thistask-oriented leadership style focused on avoiding errors, a so-called leader prevention focus. Managers with such a leadership style set goals for their employees to ensure that the current situation is not worsened. So, to achieve that goal, staff will make every effort to make no errors, as it should, from their duties and fulfill their responsibilities. In short, staff will make every effort to maintain the status quo within the company.

Why does this type of leadership that employees have are less creative? This type ofleadership will lead employees’ conservative thinking, in order to ensure that no mistakes are made. Staff will not try new ways to complete their work, because this may cause the current situation deteriorated. Staff will follow rules and guidelines, and be cognitively less flexible – in other words, do not look beyond their noses. These do indeed show that such a leadershipstyle is strong and negatively related to the perceived creativity of employees, the direct supervisor of the employees assessed creativity.

An important reason why employees were less creative under this type of leadership, is that employees are more conformed to the manager. This result is also good theoretically. When employees perceive that they can not make mistakes and to ensure that the current situation remains stable, employees will be more inclined to do the very things that the manager does. In the eyes of employees, the behaviors that the manager shows the right ones to avoid errors and therefore employees will conform to the manager. Compliance means that employees do not start thinking about their work, and makes it harder to generate new ideas. The result is that employees are less creative.

From a practical point of view, these only mean that managers should think about how they articulate goals that must be achieve. Articulate a purpose to employees like “you can not make mistakes on this assignment” will ensure that employees will conform to the supervisor, and therefore be less creative. Since creativity is becoming increasingly important in business, it is wise for managers to reflect on how they articulate goals and what goals they set for employees.

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