Task orientation relates to Blake and Mouton's concern for production. It is the quality of a manager who maintains strong discipline to task completion and deadlines. A highly task-oriented manager maintains focus on timing and quality of work and, at the extreme, can lose sight of the importance of showing consideration for employees. A leader with strong orientation often gets labeled as an authoritarian leader because he puts his own plan into action with little employee involvement.
2. Employee Orientation(consideration)
Employee orientation, or Blake and Mouton's concern for people, is a trait of a manager who cares about the people who work for him. For long-term motivation, employees generally want to know their leader cares about them as people. Taken to the extreme, however, employee orientation can cause a manager to overlook task failures and missed deadlines. The employee-oriented manager often has a democratic style of leadership.
Task orientation and employee orientation are the two general components of the Blake Mouton Managerial Grid, a model of leadership Robert Blake and Jane Mouton developed in the early 1960s. This model depicts the balance of concern for production and concern for people that managers should have.
Blake and Mouton labeled the vertical axis on their matrix "Concern for People" and the horizontal axis "Concern for Production." They described five management styles based on position in the matrix. Country Club managers, in the upper left, have high people concern but little production concern. Produce or Perish leaders are very low on people concern but extremely high on production concern. Impoverished leaders are in the lower left, where low concern for both exists. Middle of the Road managers balance people and production but accept average performance on each. Team Leaders in the upper right have high people and production