week 3 VHA theories in action

A theory that I find to be relevant to the operation and effectiveness of the Virginia Housing Alliance is Blake and Mouton’s leadership grid. The leadership grid was designed to explain how leaders help organizations to reach their purpose, either maintaining a primary focus for production or for people. Concern for production looks at how a leader is concerned with achieving organizational tasks, and a concern for people is how a leader attends to the members of the organization who are trying to achieve its goals. Leadership grid components include country club management (1,9), impoverished management (1,1), middle of the road management (5,5), team management (9,9), paternalism/maternalism (1,9; 9,1), and opportunism. I find that the organization style at Virginia Housing Alliance and the executive director, Brian Koziol’s specific leadership style best matches middle-of-the-road management (5,5). This style of leadership can be understood as an adequate organizational performance possible through balancing the necessity of getting work done while maintaining satisfactory morale. Essentially, the middle-of-the-road approach can please more followers. Followers work well with different types of leadership (as seen with Hershy Blanchard model), and with the middle-of-the-road approach, there is a mix of the leadership styles and orientations (relation or task) which will most likely please more followers and their performance readiness. At the Virginia Housing Alliance, Brian maintains a leadership style that allows for assigning tasks but also fostering friendly and strong relationships. He builds trusting connections with all employees and has a strong understanding of what projects they can handle and what requires his assistance or further support. Koziol is very focused on the organization achieving its goals but also finds interpersonal relationships incredibly important due to the nature of the work. Brian Koziol distributes projects for team members to work on, but there is also time allotted for group discussion, collaboration, and just catching up with one another. There is little to no conflict at Virginia Housing Alliance and if there is, Brian softly distinguishes it. Virginia Housing Alliance is a very welcoming environment but also produces a lot of important work in the Virginia General Assembly. 

I believe that due to the nature of the organization and being a nonprofit advocacy group it is natural to take on the middle-of-the-road approach. There is definitely a lot of work to be done, but because of the work they do relating to ending homelessness and advocating for affordable housing, they are genuinely concerned with building relationships. In this type of business, you must foster strong relationships in and out of the internal organization.