Path Goal Theory

432 Words2 Pages
Path-Goal Theory Path-Goal theory of leadership suggests that a manager’s objective is to show his/her employees how their performance directly affects his/her reception of desired rewards. Stephanie and Alex have two different bosses with different leadership behaviors. Stephanie’s boss showed the Supportive as well as the Achievement behavior. Using the Supportive behavior, Jonathan, Stephanie’s manager, tells his employees what to do in a friendly manner. A lot of employees want to work for him because his management style is relaxed and he also assigns his employees to work on different stations at the grocery store so they do not get bored. Jonathan also uses Achievement behavior by setting difficult goals so that his employees can express and demonstrate confidence to measure up to the challenge. He, however, makes sure that the goals are not so challenging that they will think of them as impossible and just give up. For instance, when Jonathan assigns Stephanie to work in the culinary center, she becomes responsible for taking customers around the store to look for ingredients needed for the recipe, and she also cooks new recipes for the customers to try. Not only that, Jonathan also set a goal for Stephanie to sell 10 bottles of truffle oil for next week. He said he will give her an incentive of $75.00 if she meets this goal. He made sure that even if the goal she set for her is challenging, it is still achievable. Alex’s boss, Dan, however, has a different leadership behavior. Using the directive behavior, Dan simply tells his employees what to do and how to do it. This type of leadership is kind of a ‘no-more-no-less than what I say’ kind of behavior. In contrast to Jonathan’s perspective, Dan thinks that sticking to the same area is the best way to master the job. He did not think that this will cause boredom to his employees, and eventually might
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