Task and Relationship Orientation of Aspiring Leaders: A Study of Male and Female Adults in Business Education

Leadership has many components, including being task and relationship oriented. There are creative, innovative, and tech-savvy aspiring leaders who are very good at building relationships but may experience some challenges in meeting deadlines regarding urgent and nonurgent tasks. This research aims to help managers and aspiring leaders better understand their dominant orientation as a leader and use whichever leadership dimension best matches a prospective project and its surrounding contextual elements. As such, respondents were asked to complete a leadership questionnaire for reflection on their dominant tendencies. The results of 3950 respondents (58.7% female and 41.3% male) showed a statistically significant difference in their task and relationship orientations, with the latter being a predominant skill for a majority. Furthermore, men are more task-oriented than female respondents, and women tend to be significantly higher on relationship orientation. These findings are useful for increasing diversity/gender equity in leadership positions and matching a current or prospective employee with a given project based on the criticality of meeting task deadlines and relationship maintenance requirements. Suggestions and implications for practice through a “person-job-fit” process are provided. Overall, this study explored the basics of leadership orientations based on quantitative research and provided information on the fact that females are more relationship-oriented than their male counterparts in the various fields of business education. Consequently, it would behoove organizations to increase the number of female managers, executives, and board members so firms can benefit from the diversity of their dominant styles in building stronger relationships at higher levels of the organization. Recommendations for discussion, reflection and training should be industry-specific and focused on the person-job-fit match to put the right people in the right jobs so aspiring leaders can be happy as they learn, grow, manage, lead, and become productive members of the organization and society at large.