How to Read Your PM Theory Leadership Results: What Your P, M, and PM Scores Reveal

PM Theory, developed by Jyuji Misumi at Kyushu University and refined through decades of organizational research, describes leadership effectiveness through two fundamental functions: the Performance function, which drives task accomplishment, and the Maintenance function, which builds and preserves team relationships.

Your CommStyle Leadership Assessment gives you a score on each function and a combined PM score. Understanding what these scores mean, and more importantly what their combination reveals, is the starting point for effective leadership development.

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How to Read Each Score: P, M, and PM Combined

The P function reflects behaviors that drive task completion and team performance: clarifying expectations, providing direction, maintaining quality, and holding the team accountable.

Higher scores indicate you're actively functioning in the performance dimension, giving clear direction and ensuring goals are pursued with appropriate rigor, since strong P function is associated with higher team productivity and clearer goal accomplishment.^[2] Lower scores may indicate performance management behaviors are underdeveloped, with teams reporting unclear expectations and difficulty achieving sustained results.

The M function reflects behaviors that build and maintain team relationships, trust, and psychological safety: showing genuine concern for team members, creating an environment for honest speech, and managing conflict constructively.

Higher scores indicate you're actively building trust and creating conditions for people to do their best work, and strong M function is associated with higher team member satisfaction and lower turnover.

Lower scores may indicate relational behaviors are less developed, with teams reporting feeling like instruments of task completion rather than valued contributors.

The PM combined score reflects the degree to which you're functioning effectively in both dimensions simultaneously, the most important indicator, since Misumi's research found the combination of both functions produced significantly better outcomes than either alone.

P without M tends to drive results through pressure, producing compliance but eroding motivation over time. M without P tends to create pleasant environments that fail to achieve sustained performance goals. PM together creates the conditions for both people and performance to flourish.

PM Type and Pm Type

PM type, high P and high M, means you're functioning effectively in both dimensions.

Research across multiple industries and cultures found that PM-type leaders consistently produced the best outcomes across both performance and people measures, higher productivity, lower turnover, higher satisfaction.^[1] Development direction: depth and situational flexibility, recognizing which function needs emphasis in specific situations and deploying the combination with increasing sophistication.

Pm type, high P and low M, means you're strong in task orientation but less developed relationally. Teams with Pm-type leaders tend to achieve results but experience higher stress and higher turnover than PM-type teams.

Development direction: developing M-function behaviors without sacrificing P-function strengths, becoming more humanly present alongside the performance focus, through genuine one-to-ones focused on the person and attending to the team's emotional temperature as a legitimate leadership responsibility.

pM Type and pm Type

pM type, low P and high M, means you're strong in relational leadership but less developed in performance management. Teams with pM-type leaders tend to be cohesive and satisfied but underperform their potential, since clarity of expectations is often low and poor performance goes unaddressed.

Development direction: setting clear expectations explicitly rather than assuming alignment, and addressing underperformance directly, which can be done humanely within a strong M-function relational context.

pm type, low P and low M, means both functions need development. This pattern is most common in new or inexperienced leaders who haven't yet developed either the performance management or relational leadership behaviors their role requires.

Development direction: prioritize M-function development first, since building the relational foundation creates the trust context in which P-function development is more likely to be received constructively, then add P-function structures progressively.

Reading Your Scores in Context

Team experience level matters, since more experienced teams require less P-function direction and more P-function accountability, while less experienced teams require more P-function clarity and structure.

Organizational culture matters too, since some cultures systematically suppress M-function expression as "soft" or reward P-function behaviors disproportionately, and in these contexts low M scores may reflect environmental constraint as much as individual developmental need.

Current team situation matters, since crisis situations genuinely call for more P-function emphasis, while long-term, stable teams may need more M-function investment to prevent complacency. Your score reflects your habitual pattern, but effective leadership adapts to the situation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is PM Theory the same as situational leadership?

PM Theory and situational leadership models share a two-dimensional structure, but they differ significantly.^[3] PM Theory is grounded in an extensive empirical research base, particularly Misumi's decades of field research in Japanese industries, and focuses on functions rather than styles.

The key difference is PM Theory's finding that PM combination consistently outperforms any single-function approach across situations.

Can my P and M scores change?

Yes. Both P and M functions are behavioral patterns rather than fixed traits, they're learnable and developable. Research on leadership development finds that behavioral coaching and deliberate practice produce measurable changes in both function scores over three to six months of focused effort.

My P score is much higher than my M score. Is that common?

In organizational contexts that heavily reward results and treat relational investment as optional, Pm patterns are common, particularly among leaders promoted primarily on the basis of individual performance.

The pattern is understandable given typical organizational reinforcement structures, and it's also one of the most addressable through deliberate leadership development.