The Leadership DNA Test & the Managerial Grid, Explained

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The Leadership DNA Test & the Managerial Grid

Foundations of Leadership · Chapter 6: Leadership Power, Styles & InfluenceSection 6.2 · lesson 28 of 908 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

Using the Managerial Grid to locate, name and develop your default mode.

  • Describe what a default behavioural style is, and why it matters
  • Identify the two axes of the Managerial Grid
  • Distinguish the five named styles
  • Critically evaluate the claim that 9,9 is universally optimal

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Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (1,053 words). Read along, or search it.

Leadership Power, Styles & Influence

Your Leadership DNA

Most students of leadership can name half a dozen leadership theories. Before they can describe their own leadership style in twenty words. The previous section introduced leadership in the abstract. This one makes it personal. The premise is simple. Every leader, however experienced, carries a default behavioural signature. A kind of leadership DNA, that emerges under pressure. And Blake and Mouton's Managerial Grid offers the most enduring framework for naming it.

The Premise

Theory Is Easier Than Self-Description

Start with an observation about how leadership is usually studied. It is far easier to learn theories than to describe yourself accurately. And the claim this section rests on is that you have a default. A behavioural signature that emerges when you are under pressure and stop choosing deliberately. Locating yourself on the Grid is not an end in itself. It is the starting point for deliberate development.

The Idea

Under Stress, People Narrow

Researchers in personality psychology have long observed something about stress. Under it, people revert to a narrow set of characteristic behaviours. And leadership is no exception. The leadership DNA metaphor captures the observation that every leader has a small number of moves they reach for most often. Some default to crisp directive control. Some default to warmth and reassurance. And some default to splitting the difference between the two. Now, none of these defaults is wrong in itself. The problem arises when a leader treats their default as the only available response. Which is why the first task of leadership development is not acquiring new behaviours. It is becoming honest about which behaviours currently dominate. Self-assessment instruments are useful for precisely that reason. They make the invisible visible.

The Framework

Two Independent Axes

Robert Blake and Jane Mouton's nineteen sixty-four contribution was a simple structural claim. That all leadership behaviour can be sorted along two independent dimensions. Concern for production captures the leader's preoccupation with task accomplishment. Deadlines. Output. Quality. Results. Concern for people captures preoccupation with the humans doing the work. Their wellbeing, their growth, their morale, and their relationships. And here is the crucial insight, which is very easy to miss. These two concerns are not opposite ends of a single scale. A leader can score high on both. Low on both. Or anywhere in between. Each axis is scored from one to nine, which generates a nine by nine grid. Eighty-one possible positions. Blake and Mouton named five of them, because each represents a recognisable pattern. With distinct strengths, and distinct pathologies.

The Grid

Five Named Positions

Here is the Grid, with the five named positions plotted. Concern for production runs along the horizontal axis. Concern for people runs up the vertical. One corner is low on both. The opposite corner is high on both. And the two remaining corners are high on one, and low on the other. With a compromise position sitting in the middle.

In Detail

What Each Style Looks Like

Take each of the five in turn. The one-one impoverished leader shows low concern on both axes. Going through the motions. Avoiding conflict. Passing problems upward. The one-nine country-club leader prioritises a warm atmosphere over results. People feel supported, and goals drift. The nine-one authority-compliance leader treats employees as instruments for producing output. Results are reliable. Turnover and disengagement are high. The five-five middle-of-the-road leader compromises on both axes. Achieving adequate results and adequate morale, without excelling at either. And the nine-nine team management leader sustains high concern for both. A demanding combination that, in Blake and Mouton's view, produces the most durable performance. Because employees internalise the goals as their own.

Challenge

Why Not Just Aim for 9,9?

So why not simply aim for nine-nine? The position is appealing, because it sounds like the answer to everything. Care a great deal about results, and a great deal about people. But in practice, nine-nine is exhausting. And rarely sustainable in pure form. Especially in crisis or turnaround conditions. Decades of research support the general direction of the claim. While complicating the universal-optimum reading of it. In certain crises, a nine-one style may save lives. And a one-nine style may be exactly what rebuilds morale after a layoff. Modern situational research argues that effective leaders move around the Grid, in response to context. Rather than parking permanently in one cell. Which is why the Grid remains useful even though its optimum is contested. It names the default each leader reverts to under pressure. And knowing your default is the first step in escaping it.

Case

The 9,1 Manager Who Lost Half the Team

A case that shows the diagnostic doing real work. Priya was promoted to lead a thirty-person operations team. Because she consistently hit her own production targets. Within nine months, her best two engineers had quit. And her engagement scores had collapsed. A three-sixty review revealed a nine-two profile. She was running the team as if every member were a younger version of herself. Now notice what the intervention was not. It was not to abandon her standards. It was to spend the first ten minutes of every one-to-one on the person in front of her. Rather than on the project tracker. Within a year her people scores had climbed to a six. Still not a natural strength. But enough to retain the team that delivered her results.

Practice

Taking the Assessment

A practical version of the assessment is easy to run on yourself. It asks you to rate statements on a scale of one to nine. Statements like, I make sure deadlines are met even when feelings get bruised. That is a production item. Or, I notice when team members seem off, and follow up privately. That is a people item. Average the production-leaning items to get one coordinate. Average the people-leaning items to get the other. Then plot the pair. What you get is a starting point. Not a verdict. And most students discover that their score sits two or three points lower on one axis than they expected. The interesting question is always why.

Consolidate

What to Do With Your Coordinate

So what do you do with your coordinate once you have it? A leader who scores eight-four has genuinely useful information. Their relationships are an under-developed asset. Not a fixed limitation. That distinction is the whole value of the exercise. The Grid is a mirror. It is not a scoreboard. It names the mode you fall into when you stop choosing. And everything you do deliberately after that is development. The next section takes the same question outward. Having named your default, how do you read a situation well enough to know when to leave it?

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About The Leadership DNA Test & the Managerial Grid

What is the Blake and Mouton Managerial Grid?
The Managerial Grid is a 1964 leadership model by Robert Blake and Jane Mouton that plots behavior on two independent dimensions: concern for production and concern for people. Each axis is scored from 1 to 9, giving 81 possible positions. Because the two concerns are separate scales rather than opposite ends of one scale, a leader can be high on both, low on both, or anywhere in between.
What are the five leadership styles on the Managerial Grid?
The five named styles are impoverished (1,1), country club (1,9), authority-compliance (9,1), middle-of-the-road (5,5), and team management (9,9), with production listed first and people second. Impoverished leaders go through the motions and avoid conflict. Country club leaders favor a warm atmosphere while goals drift. Authority-compliance leaders get reliable output with high turnover. Middle-of-the-road leaders get adequate results and morale. Team management leaders sustain high concern for both.
Is 9,9 team management always the best leadership style?
Not in every situation. Blake and Mouton saw 9,9 team management as producing the most durable performance, because employees internalize the goals as their own. In practice it is demanding and hard to sustain, especially in a crisis or turnaround. A 9,1 style may save lives in certain emergencies, and a 1,9 style may rebuild morale after layoffs. Situational research suggests effective leaders move around the Grid as context changes.
How can a leader find their default leadership style?
A leader can find their default style through honest self-assessment, such as rating statements from 1 to 9 and averaging the production items and the people items to get a Grid coordinate. Under stress, people revert to a few characteristic behaviors, which can be called leadership DNA. The result is a starting point, not a verdict: a low score on one axis marks an underdeveloped asset to work on, not a fixed limitation.

About the Foundations of Leadership course

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Foundations of Leadership (Business 205) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
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