Leadership Types
Most common Leadership Types
Autocratic Leadership
Autocratic leadership is an extreme
form of transactional leadership, where a leader exerts high levels of
power over his or her employees or team members. People within the team
are given few opportunities for making suggestions, even if these would
be in the team's or organization’s interest.
Most people tend to resent being
treated like this. Because of this, autocratic leadership usually leads
to high levels of absenteeism and staff turnover. Also, the team's
output does not benefit from the creativity and experience of all team
members, so many of the benefits of teamwork are lost.
For some routine and unskilled jobs,
however, this style can remain effective where the advantages of control
outweigh the disadvantages. Learn
more...
Bureaucratic Leadership
Bureaucratic leaders work “by the
book”, ensuring that their staff follow procedures exactly. This is a
very appropriate style for work involving serious safety risks (such as
working with machinery, with toxic substances or at heights) or where
large sums of money are involved (such as cash-handling).
In other situations, the inflexibility
and high levels of control exerted can demoralize staff, and can
diminish the organizations ability to react to changing external
circumstances. Learn more...
Charismatic Leadership
A charismatic leadership style can
appear similar to a transformational leadership style, in that the
leader injects huge doses of enthusiasm into his or her team, and is
very energetic in driving others forward.
However, a charismatic leader can tend
to believe more in him or herself than in their team. This can create a
risk that a project, or even an entire organization, might collapse if
the leader were to leave: In the eyes of their followers, success is
tied up with the presence of the charismatic leader. As such,
charismatic leadership carries great responsibility, and needs long-term
commitment from the leader.
Democratic Leadership or Participative
Leadership
Although a democratic leader will make
the final decision, he or she invites other members of the team to
contribute to the decision-making process. This not only increases job
satisfaction by involving employees or team members in what’s going on,
but it also helps to develop people’s skills. Employees and team members
feel in control of their own destiny, and so are motivated to work hard
by more than just a financial reward.
As participation takes time, this style
can lead to things happening more slowly than an autocratic approach,
but often the end result is better. It can be most suitable where team
working is essential, and quality is more important than speed to market
or productivity. Learn more...
Laissez-Faire Leadership
This French phrase means “leave it be”
and is used to describe a leader who leaves his or her colleagues to get
on with their work. It can be effective if the leader monitors what is
being achieved and communicates this back to his or her team regularly.
Most often, laissez-faire leadership works for teams in which the
individuals are very experienced and skilled self-starters.
Unfortunately, it can also refer to situations where managers are not
exerting sufficient control.
Learn more...
People-Oriented Leadership or
Relations-Oriented Leadership
This style of leadership is the
opposite of task-oriented leadership: the leader is totally focused on
organizing, supporting and developing the people in the leader’s team. A
participative style, it tends to lead to good teamwork and creative
collaboration. However, taken to extremes, it can lead to failure to
achieve the team's goals.
In practice, most leaders use both
task-oriented and people-oriented styles of leadership.
Servant Leadership
This term, coined by Robert Greenleaf
in the 1970s, describes a leader who is often not formally recognized as
such. When someone, at any level within an organization, leads simply by
virtue of meeting the needs of his or her team, he or she is described
as a “servant leader”.
In many ways, servant leadership is a
form of democratic leadership, as the whole team tends to be involved in
decision-making.
Supporters of the servant leadership
model suggest it is an important way ahead in a world where values are
increasingly important, in which servant leaders achieve power on the
basis of their values and ideals. Others believe that in competitive
leadership situations, people practicing servant leadership will often
find themselves left behind by leaders using other leadership styles.
Task-Oriented Leadership
A highly task-oriented leader focuses
only on getting the job done, and can be quite autocratic. He or she
will actively define the work and the roles required, put structures in
place, plan, organize and monitor. However, as task-oriented leaders
spare little thought for the well-being of their teams, this approach
can suffer many of the flaws of autocratic leadership, with difficulties
in motivating and retaining staff. Task-oriented leaders can benefit
from an understanding of the Blake-Mouton Managerial Grid, which can
help them identify specific areas for development that will help them
involve people more.
Transactional Leadership
This style of leadership starts with
the premise that team members agree to obey their leader totally when
they take a job on: the “transaction” is (usually) that the organization
pays the team members, in return for their effort and compliance. As
such, the leader has the right to “punish” team members if their work
doesn’t meet the pre-determined standard.
Team members can do little to improve
their job satisfaction under transactional leadership. The leader could
give team members some control of their income/reward by using
incentives that encourage even higher standards or greater productivity.
Alternatively a transactional leader could practice “management by
exception”, whereby, rather than rewarding better work, he or she would
take corrective action if the required standards were not met.
Transactional leadership is really just
a way of managing rather a true leadership style, as the focus is on
short-term tasks. It has serious limitations for knowledge-based or
creative work, but remains a common style in many organizations.
Transformational Leadership
A person with this leadership style is
a true leader who inspires his or her team with a shared vision of the
future. Transformational leaders are highly visible, and spend a lot of
time communicating. They don’t necessarily lead from the front, as they
tend to delegate responsibility amongst their teams. While their
enthusiasm is often infectious, they can need to be supported by “detail
people”.
In many organizations, both
transactional and transformational leadership are needed. The
transactional leaders (or managers) ensure that routine work is done
reliably, while the transformational leaders look after initiatives that
add value.
The transformational leadership style
is the dominant leadership style taught in the "How to Lead: Discover
the Leader Within You" leadership program, although we do recommend that
other styles are brought as the situation demands.
Using the Right Style – Situational
Leadership
While the Transformation Leadership
approach is often highly effective, there is no one “right” way to lead
or manage that suits all situations. To choose the most effective
approach for you, you must consider:
- The skill levels and experience of
the members of your team.
- The work involved (routine or new
and creative).
- The organizational environment
(stable or radically changing, conservative or adventurous).
- You own preferred or natural
style.
A good leader will find him or
herself switching instinctively between styles according to the
people and work they are dealing with. This is often referred to as
“situational leadership”.
For example, the manager of a small
factory trains new machine operatives using a bureaucratic style to
ensure operatives know the procedures that achieve the right
standards of product quality and workplace safety. The same manager
may adopt a more participative style of leadership when working on
production line improvement with his or her team of supervisors
Three Classic Leadership Styles
One dimension of has to do with control
and one's perception of how much control one should give to people. The
laissez faire style implies low control, the autocratic style high
control and the participative lies somewhere in between.
The Laissez Faire Leadership Style
The style is largely a "hands off" view
that tends to minimize the amount of direction and face time required.
Works well if you have highly trained and highly motivated direct
reports. More info...
The Autocratic Leadership Style
The style has its advocates, but it is
falling out of favor in many countries. Some people have argued that the
style is popular with today's CEO's, who have much in common with feudal
lords in Medieval Europe.
The Participative Leadership Style
It's hard to order and demand someone
to be creative, perform as a team, solve complex problems, improve
quality, and provide outstanding customer service. The style presents a
happy medium between over controlling (micromanaging) and not being
engaged and tends to be seen in organizations that must innovate to
prosper.
Determining the Best Leadership Style
Situational Leadership. In the 1950s,
management theorists from Ohio State University and the University of
Michigan published a series of studies to determine whether leaders
should be more task or relationship (people) oriented. The importance of
the research cannot be over estimated since leaders tend to have a
dominant style; a leadership style they use in a wide variety of
situations.
Surprisingly, the research discovered
that there is no one best style: leaders must adjust their leadership
style to the situation as well as to the people being led.
The Emergent Leadership Style
Contrary to the belief of many, groups
do not automatically accept a new "boss" as leader. We see a number of
ineffective managers who didn't know the behaviors to use when one
taking over a new group.
The Transactional Leadership Style
The approach emphasizes getting things
done within the umbrella of the status quo; almost in opposition to the
goals of the transformational leadership. It's considered to be a "by
the book" approach in which the person works within the rules. As such,
it's commonly seen in large, bureaucratic organizations.
The Transformational Leadership Style
The primary focus of this leadership
style is to make change happen in:
* Our Self,
* Others,
* Groups, and
* Organizations
Charisma is a special leadership style
commonly associated with transformational leadership. While extremely
powerful, it is extremely hard to teach.
Visionary Leadership
Visionary Leadership, The leadership
style focuses on how the leader defines the future for followers and
moves them toward it.
From the short review above, one can
see that there are many different aspects to being a great leader; a
role requiring one to play many different leadership styles to be
successful.
Other leadership styles include:
Strategic Leadership
Strategic Leadership is practiced by
the military services such as the US Army, US Air Force, and many large
corporations. It stresses the competitive nature of running an
organization and being able to out fox and out wit the competition.
Team Leadership
Team Leadership. A few years ago, a
large corporation decided that supervisors were no longer needed and
those in charge were suddenly made "team leaders." Today, companies have
gotten smarter about teams, but it still takes leadership to transition
a group into a team.
Facilitative Leadership
Facilitative Leadership. This is a
special style that anyone who runs a meeting can employ. Rather than
being directive, one uses a number of indirect communication patterns to
help the group reach consensus.
Leadership Influence Styles
Leadership Influence Styles. Here one
looks at the behaviors associated how one exercises influence. For
example, does the person mostly punish? Do they know how to reward?
Cross-Cultural Leadership
Cross-Cultural Leadership. Not all
individuals can adapt to the leadership styles expected in a different
culture; whether that culture is organizational or national.
Coaching
Coaching. A great coach is definitely a
leader who also possess a unique gift--the ability to teach and train.
Level 5 Leadership.
Level 5 Leadership. This term was
coined by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great: Why Some Company’s Make
the Leap and Other Don’t. As Collins says in his book, "We were
surprised, shocked really, to discover the types of leadership required
for turning a good company into a great one."
Servant Leadership.
Servant Leadership. Some leaders have
put the needs of their followers first. For example, the motto of the
Los Angeles Police Department, "To Protect and Serve." reflects this
philosophy of service. One suspects these leaders are rare in business.
References
http://www.legacee.com/Info/Leadership/LeadershipStyles.html
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_84.htm |
