The study aims to find out the relationship between the task-oriented leaders' behavior and organizational performance in higher education institutions as well as to identify that how a taskoriented leader will perform to face the challenges of the gaps between planning and implementation of educational policy reforms in higher education institutions. A Multi-stage stratified cluster sampling method was used for the study. A total of 324 individuals, including the Deans of the Faculties, Heads of the Departments and Heads of Quality Enhancements Cells from HEC recognized general public and private universities in Punjab, participated in this study. To evaluate the task-oriented leaders' behavior, the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ) was administered whereas to assess the organizational performance of higher educational institutions, the researchers developed the Institutional Performance Questionnaire (IPQ) for the participants. Pearson's correlation coefficient was used to test the relationship between two variables of the study. The results showed that the leader who has high task-oriented behaviour displays a low degree of organizational performance in higher education institutions and particularly anticipates that the task-oriented leader has not a significant role to implement the policy reforms in higher education institutions. This paper contributes to the theoretical and practical understanding of leaders' behavior for the organizational performance and implementation of policy reforms in higher education institutions.