Ohio State Leadership Studies: Consideration and Initiating Structure

The Ohio State Leadership Studies were a mid-20th-century research program that asked a simple question: what do leaders actually do? Its answer was two independent dimensions of behavior. Consideration is how much a leader shows trust, respect, and warmth toward the team. Initiating structure is how much a leader defines roles, channels, and methods for getting the work done. Every leader sits somewhere on both.

That answer sounds modest, but it reshaped how organizations think about managers. Before this work, most leadership thinking was about who a leader is. The Ohio State researchers measured what a leader does, and that opened the door to training and coaching. This guide covers where the studies came from, how the two dimensions work, how they compare with neighboring frameworks, and how you can use them on your own team.

What are the Ohio State Leadership Studies?

The Ohio State Leadership Studies were a research program run at The Ohio State University in the 1940s and after, built around a questionnaire that asked group members to describe how their leader behaved. The analysis of those descriptions produced two main factors: consideration and initiating structure. Together they form one of the foundations of behavioral leadership theory.

Key Facts

• The program ran under Dr. Carroll L. Shartle, and the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ) came out of the university's Personnel Research Board (Ohio State Fisher College of Business).
• The Air Force adaptation of the questionnaire was analyzed using 300 B-29 crew members who described 52 aircraft commanders (Ohio State Fisher College of Business).
• A meta-analysis of 163 correlations for consideration and 159 for initiating structure found average relationships with leadership outcomes of .48 and .29 respectively (Judge, Piccolo and Ilies, 2004, Journal of Applied Psychology).
• Consideration related more strongly to follower satisfaction, motivation, and leader effectiveness, while initiating structure related slightly more strongly to leader job performance and group performance (same meta-analysis).

Where the studies came from

The research began in the 1940s as part of a broader push to study leadership scientifically. According to a standard organizational behavior text, the Ohio State and University of Michigan programs were two major efforts launched in the late 1940s to look at leadership through behavior rather than personality (OpenStax, Organizational Behavior).

The Ohio State program was directed by Dr. Carroll L. Shartle. Within it, the Personnel Research Board developed the LBDQ. Hemphill and Coons built the original form of the questionnaire, and Halpin and Winer later reported an Air Force adaptation of it. That adaptation is where the two dimensions were named, after a factor analysis of crew members' descriptions of their aircraft commanders (Ohio State Fisher College of Business).

Why does the context matter? Because the people being described were not abstract "leaders." They were commanders, foremen, and supervisors with real crews. The questionnaire asked subordinates what the boss did, not what the boss was like. That shift from traits to observable behavior is the core idea you inherit when you use this model.

The two dimensions

The Ohio State team described the two factors in specific terms. Initiating structure is the leader's behavior in defining the relationship between leader and group, and in working to establish clear patterns of organization, channels of communication, and ways of getting the job done. Consideration is behavior that signals friendship, mutual trust, respect, and warmth between leader and group (Ohio State Fisher College of Business).

Initiating structure: how the work gets organized

Initiating structure is the task side. Leaders who score high here clarify who owns what, set goals and deadlines, explain how work should flow, and hold standards. In a team that is drifting, this is the behavior that creates a floor to stand on.

Typical behaviors include:

• Assigning clear roles and decision rights.
• Setting deadlines and checking progress against them.
• Defining the process, the tools, and the quality bar.
• Asking people to follow standard procedures when consistency matters.

Consideration: how people are treated

Consideration is the relationship side. Leaders who score high here listen, explain their reasoning, show appreciation, and treat people as individuals rather than as capacity. It is not the same as being nice. A considerate leader can still deliver bad news. What marks the behavior is respect and trust running in both directions.

Typical behaviors include:

• Listening before deciding, and acting on what was heard.
• Recognizing effort and contribution in specific terms.
• Being approachable when someone brings a problem.
• Looking out for the wellbeing of the team, not only its output.

Why independence is the big idea

The most important result is that the two dimensions are separate. A leader can be high on both, low on both, or high on one and low on the other. That ran against an older assumption that more attention to people meant less attention to results. A standard text describes this finding directly: leaders can show both behaviors in any combination (OpenStax, Organizational Behavior).

The four-quadrant model

Because the dimensions are independent, plotting them against each other gives four leader profiles. The grid below is the commonly taught 2x2. The labels are a teaching convenience, not terms the original researchers used.

Here is how each quadrant tends to show up at work.

High consideration, low structure. People like this manager. But priorities blur, work is duplicated, and deadlines are soft. This profile can work for a team of experienced specialists. It struggles with a new team or a messy project.

High consideration, high structure. The profile most teams prefer to work for. Expectations are clear, people feel respected, and feedback runs both ways. Many practitioners treat this as the target, but the evidence (covered below) suggests the best mix still depends on context.

Low consideration, low structure. The manager is present on the org chart but absent in practice. Teams in this quadrant tend to improvise their own processes and lose their strongest members first.

Low consideration, high structure. Work is organized, and people feel managed rather than led. Output can hold up for a while. The cost shows up later in morale and retention.

What the research found

Early studies produced mixed signals. One standard account notes that most people reported greater satisfaction when leaders acted considerately, yet consideration showed no clear effect on performance, and results varied by organization (OpenStax, Organizational Behavior).

A later quantitative review settled much of the debate. Judge, Piccolo and Ilies (2004) pooled 163 independent correlations for consideration and 159 for initiating structure in the Journal of Applied Psychology. They found moderately strong relationships with leadership outcomes, .48 for consideration and .29 for initiating structure. Consideration did better on follower satisfaction, motivation, and perceived leader effectiveness. Initiating structure did slightly better on leader job performance and group or organizational performance. The validities varied by how leadership was measured, but in most cases they generalized across measures (Judge, Piccolo and Ilies, 2004).

Read that carefully, because it is easy to over-claim. Three practical takeaways follow:

1. Both behaviors matter. Neither dimension is noise. Each links to outcomes you care about.
2. They matter for different outcomes. Consideration is the stronger lever on how people feel and engage. Structure is the (slightly) stronger lever on performance results.
3. The numbers are averages. A correlation across many studies does not promise a result on your team. Treat it as a reason to check both behaviors, not as a guarantee.

How Ohio State compares with related frameworks

The Ohio State dimensions echo through later leadership models. This table shows how they line up.

The pattern is clear. Ohio State supplied the vocabulary. The later models either made the dimensions prescriptive (Blake-Mouton) or made them conditional on the situation (Fiedler, Hersey-Blanchard, path-goal). If you want the full picture of how these fit together, see our overview of leadership theories.

How to apply the Ohio State model today

You do not need the original questionnaire to use the idea. Here is a practical sequence you can run in about a month.

1. Describe the behaviors, not the person. Write five specific things you did last week that were about structure (for example, "clarified who signs off on the proposal") and five that were about consideration ("asked Priya what was blocking her").
2. Score yourself on each dimension. Use the self-assessment grid below. Be honest and specific, and use concrete weeks, not impressions.
3. Get the team's view. Ask three to five direct reports to rate you on the same behaviors, anonymously if you can. The LBDQ itself works on this logic: it is filled out by the people who work with the leader, not by the leader alone.
4. Plot both views. Place the self and team scores on the 2x2. A gap between them is usually the most useful finding.
5. Match to the situation. A new team, an ambiguous project, or a crisis calls for more structure. A burned-out team or a group of senior specialists often needs more consideration. Pick which dimension to raise.
6. Choose two behaviors to change. One small, visible change per dimension is plenty. Say them out loud to the team so they can notice.
7. Re-measure in 4 to 6 weeks. Repeat the same questions. Did the team's view move?

Self-assessment template

This grid uses paraphrased behaviors written for this guide. It is not the LBDQ and does not reproduce its items. Rate each from 1 (rarely) to 5 (almost always). Ideally, you rate yourself and a few teammates rate you.

Scoring. Add items 1 to 5 for your initiating structure total (5 to 25). Add items 6 to 10 for your consideration total (5 to 25). A score of 18 or higher is high, and 17 or lower is lower. Place yourself and your team's average on the 2x2 above.

Two cautions. Self-scores tend to run higher than how others see you, so the team column matters more. And a single number is a conversation starter, not a verdict.

Examples by business function

The same two dimensions play out differently depending on the job.

Sales. A sales manager with high structure sets pipeline stage definitions, forecast rules, and a call cadence. High consideration shows up in coaching on real calls and handling a missed quarter without blame. A hypothetical team with strong structure but low consideration may hit numbers while experienced reps leave.

Engineering. Structure looks like code review standards, sprint boundaries, and clear ownership of services. Consideration looks like protecting focus time and taking incident reviews seriously as learning, not punishment. Senior engineers often want less structure and more consideration. New hires usually want both.

Customer support. High structure means escalation paths, response-time targets, and clear macros. Consideration means checking in after a difficult ticket and noticing who is carrying too many hard cases. This function often leans heavily on structure because the work is repetitive, so consideration is where a good manager stands out.

Operations and manufacturing. Safety procedures and process control demand strong structure. A supervisor who adds consideration, such as listening to line workers about equipment problems, tends to hear about issues earlier.

Marketing. Creative work needs fewer rules and more trust, so structure is usually light and focused on briefs, review stages, and deadlines. Consideration is about honest feedback that respects the creator's effort.

HR and people teams. Structure shows up in clear policies, timelines for performance cycles, and consistent processes. Consideration is how those policies are communicated and how exceptions are handled.

Do's and don'ts

Limitations to keep in mind

The Ohio State work has aged well, but it has real gaps.

• It is a description, not a prescription. The studies show what leaders do and what it correlates with. They do not prove that high-high is best everywhere.
• Context is mostly missing. The same behavior can land differently in a hospital, a startup, or a factory. This gap is what the contingency models later tried to fill, as covered in our guide to contingency and situational leadership.
• It leaves out much of modern leadership. Vision, ethics, and change leadership are not captured by two behavior dimensions.
• Measurement depends on perception. Ratings reflect what followers notice, which can differ from what a leader intends.
• The original items are dated. The questionnaire was written for mid-century settings, so many teams now prefer modern instruments or custom checklists.

None of this makes the model obsolete. It makes it a starting point. The meta-analytic evidence suggests the two dimensions still connect to outcomes people care about, and the framework gives managers an easy language for a hard conversation.

Where to go from here

The Ohio State studies left managers with a pair of questions that are still worth asking. Is the work clear enough that people can do it well? And do people feel respected enough to bring their best judgment to it? Most leadership problems trace back to a weak answer to one of them.

Start with the self-assessment, ask your team for their view, and pick one behavior to change this month. If you want to see how the idea evolved, read about the Blake-Mouton grid, the Fiedler contingency model, and path-goal theory. The sequence shows how a simple two-dimension finding grew into a family of leadership models.