People Oriented Leadership: Benefits, Tips, And Examples

As a leader, you may have to think about your company’s objectives or the well-being of your employees.

The emergence of the pandemic has forced companies to outline a new way of undertaking their activities.

Especially remote working has given a complete turnover to the process of achieving company objectives.

For a leader, this presents new challenges. There is a need to undertake constant monitoring without losing track of the company’s objectives.

At this juncture, you need to think about the leadership model that you are implementing, and there has to be a balance between goals and achievements and the well-being of your team.

What Is “People Oriented Leadership”?

A “people leader” is an individual whose focus is on employee engagement and satisfaction.

Though there are numerous benefits to this form of leadership, a few significant challenges emerge.

An issue that often creeps up is that leaders cannot adopt this form of leadership style for every employee they manage.

What will work for one team may not work for the other. Another challenge that leaders face is that they need to be able to handle conflict effectively.

Employees are likely to come up with their concerns when they are unhappy. You listen to their concerns, and working together to resolve them is vital.

Benefits Of Using A People Oriented Leadership

There are numerous benefits of incorporating people-oriented leadership in leaders and companies. Some of the common benefits of this principle are as follows:

Benefits Of People Oriented Leadership Style

Higher job satisfaction
Having low turnover
Ability to take risks
Having mutual respect

Higher job satisfaction

An organization that implements a people-oriented leadership style will likely maintain and improve job satisfaction.

The reason is that such policies allow for an increased focus on individual work-life balance, improve work conditions, and enhance positive relations among the workers.

Low turnover

This impacts higher job satisfaction as it will lead to low turnover.

People-oriented leadership allows employees to work in an organization for a considerable period as their positions meet their expectations and needs.

Low turnover would decrease the training cost of an organization and develop experienced teams.

Ability to take risks

Since people-oriented leadership develops the individual thoughts of employees, they are more comfortable when it comes to taking risks.

The ability to take risks has potential benefits, as a few of them may stem up the productivity or revenue of an organization in an indirect manner.

Mutual respect

This leadership style allows the team members to share a respect for each other, increasing the possibility of developing meaningful relationships with teams.

Respectful and friendly teams are more comfortable taking tough decisions and working together to achieve a common goal.

Differences Between People-Oriented And Task-Oriented Leadership

The situation will dictate the leadership style and the leader’s willingness to adopt it.

The difference between the task and organizational environments will specify which leadership style will be used.

Here are a few major differences between the leadership styles.

A task-oriented leadership emphasizes the task at hand, whereas people-oriented leadership focuses on the people at hand.
A task-oriented leader is likely to impose a method on their team, whereas a people-oriented leader would work with them to be aware of how things are done.
People-oriented leaders will likely benefit from inspired and new ideas whose experiences differ from traditional leadership styles. Task-oriented leadership is less conducive to such an approach.
People-oriented leadership considers relationships to be vital components of managerial leadership.
The boundaries between leaders and their subordinates are clearly defined in task-oriented leadership. This leads to less ambiguity when it comes to their expectations. Such ambiguity can turn out to be negative too.

Reasons Why People-Oriented Leadership Has Gained Popularity

People-oriented leadership is a form of leadership that focuses on the employees first. This form of leadership has gained considerable popularity in the last few years as employees have realized the importance of employee engagement and satisfaction.

As a people-oriented leader, you need to prioritize the needs of your team and support them in their work.

Such a leadership style can significantly impact employee motivation and morale. Employees feel engaged and motivated; they are likely to be engaged in their work and committed to their team.
Numerous benefits accrue when a company opts for people-oriented leadership, like reduced employee turnover, increased productivity, etc.

What Are “People-Oriented” Leadership Styles?

This form of leadership may take numerous forms, but it is an extension of the forms that define people-centric relationships.

Below are some of the common examples of people-oriented leadership styles.

Rewards and recognition

People-oriented leaders understand the importance of recognizing and rewarding the achievements of employees.

Such actions give employees the feeling that their employer appreciates their hard work and is likelier to keep them performing at a high level.

The rewards can be materialistic, such as an increase in compensation.

Coaching

A major principle of people-oriented leadership is coaching.

This allows the employees to improve their skills or abilities without bearing the consequences.

People-oriented leaders often coach their employees in ways that employees can improve productivity and improve relationships with them.

Encourages positive relationships between employees

Leaders who practice people-oriented leadership facilitate positive relationships among all employees.

These leaders recognize employees as productive and are satisfied with their positions since they have positive relationships with their co-workers.

Due to increased productivity and job satisfaction, companies prefer people-oriented leaders.

Open communication

People-oriented leaders focus on delivering open and upfront messages to their employees, setting up an open dialogue about opinions and concerns.

Such a form of communication allows all employees to be valued, and this open communication approach sets the tone for diverse thoughts.

Tips For Implementing People-Oriented Leadership

Some common principles help people implement people-oriented leadership in an organization.

Promote from the inside.

Internal promotions are the best way to recognize employee achievements and reward them.

Such promotions lead to an increase in the compensation of the employees and allow the specialized skills to be put to good use.

Employees who come across a scope of internal promotion are more likely to be committed to their job

Allows for creativity and autonomy

Employees feel they need to be valued by their employers to make sound decisions. Setting the tone for increased creativity and autonomy can rekindle the productive workforce and cause the employees to have more respect for each other.

By increasing autonomy, workers take responsibility for their actions.

Identifying strengths

Every employee has specialized areas of strength that allow them to be efficient and productive when performing certain tasks.

Leaders interested in implementing people-oriented leadership skills identify their core strengths and place employees in those positions where they can use these strengths.

Conclusion

A people-oriented leader focuses on the overall success of a company by building positive relationships with their employees.

Such a type of leader does not care about schedules or tasks, as they think work culture is important.

They are keener to develop relationship-building techniques like team-building exercises and employee recognition.

FAQs

In which scenarios does people-oriented leadership turn out to be most effective?

People-oriented leaders recognize employees as productive, and since they have positive relations with their co-workers, they are satisfied in their job roles.

Due to increased job satisfaction, companies prefer people-oriented leaders over task-oriented ones.

Can a leader be people-oriented and task-oriented at the same time?

It is not possible for a leader to be task- and people-oriented at the same time, in most cases than not you need to decide which route you need to choose.

When is it appropriate to use people-oriented leadership in an organization?

In organizations where relationships are to precedence, people-oriented leadership skills must be used. The managers are increasingly aware of the importance of a work culture where people are involved and respected.