LEADERSHIP STYLE

PREAMBLE

Leadership has a direct cause and effect relationship upon organizations and their success. Leaders determine values, culture, change tolerance and employee motivation. They shape institutional strategies including their execution and effectiveness. Leaders can appear at any level of an institution and are not exclusive to management. Successful leaders do, however, have one thing in common. They influence those around them in order to reap maximum benefit from the organization’s resources, including its most vital and expensive:its people.

LEADERSHIP STYLE

Leadership style is a leader’s style of providing direction, implementing plans and motivating people. There are many leadership styles that can be exhibited by leaders in the political, business, management or other fields.

Leadership theories describe leaders based upon traits or how influence and power used to achieve objectives. When using trait-based descriptions, a leader may be classified as autocratic, democratic or charismatic. In viewing leadership from the perspective of the exchange of power and its utilization to secure outcomes, leaders are situational, transactional or transformational.  Below is a brief examination of each of the common leadership style listed above and their potential impact and associated problems.

AUTOCRATIC

Autocratic leaders are classic “do as I say” types. Typically, these leaders are inexperienced with leadership thrust upon them in the form of a new position or assignment that involves people management. Autocratic leaders can damage an organization irreparably as they force their ‘followers’ to execute strategies and services in a very narrow way based upon a subjective idea of what success looks like.

There is no shared vision and little motivation beyond coercion. Commitment, creativity and innovation are typically eliminated by autocratic leadership. In fact, most followers of autocratic leaders can be described as biding their time waiting for the inevitable failure this leadership produces and the removal of the leader that follows.

Some of the obvious problems of autocratic leadership style include the following:

i.                    Autocratic leadership style does not encourage cordial relationship between leaders and the subordinates because strict hands of the leader will not give a chance for sense of interaction.

ii.                  It does not encourage development of workers initiatives because the leaders under autocratic styles makes decision on his own without putting subordinate idea into consideration.

iii.                It does not guarantee employees freedom because in this style the subordinate are not fully empowered and opportuned to demonstrate their experiences.

iv.                 It can easily lean, d to failure in the employees because when autocratic style is applied workers will be performing task under fear which may in turn lead to failure on them

DEMOCRATIC

It sounds easy enough. Instead of one defined leader, the group leads itself. Egalitarian to the core, democratic leaders are frustrated by the enormous effort required to build consensus for even the most mundane decisions as well as the glacial pace required to lead a group by fiat. The potential for poor decision-making and weak execution is significant here. The biggest problem with democratic leadership is its underlying assumptions that everyone has an equal stake in an outcome as well as shared levels of expertise with regard to decisions.

That’s rarely the case. While democratic leadership sounds good in theory, it often is bogged down in its own slow process, and workable results usually require an enormous amount of effort. The problems of this leadership style are as follows:

i.                    Democratic leadership style causes the leader to be taken for granted because of making himself available to the subordinates.

ii.                  It can make subordinates to have much believes in financial incentives unlike autocratic styles where the subordinates hold contentions that the leader is strict and he cannot tolerate over demand of the workers.

iii.                It leads to slow adaptation to training and development particularly on the new recruited personnel who may not take leaders serious.

iv.                 Democratic leadership style may lead to denial of responsibilities by the subordinates.

BUREAUCRATIC

Bureaucratic leaders create, and rely on, policy to meet organizational goals. Policies drive execution, strategy, objectives and outcomes.

Bureaucratic leaders are most comfortable relying on a stated policy in order to convince followers to get on board. In doing so they senda very direct message that policy dictates direction. Bureaucratic leaders are usually strongly committed to procedures and processesinstead of people, and as a result they may appear aloof and highly change adverse. The specific problem or problems associated withusing policies to lead aren’t always obvious until the damage is done. The danger here is that leadership’s greatest benefits, motivatingand developing people, are ignored by bureaucratic leaders. Policies are simply inadequate to the task of motivating and developingcommitment. The specific risk with bureaucratic leaders is the perception that policies come before people, and complaints to that effectare usually met with resistance or disinterest. Policies are not in themselves destructive, but thoughtlessly developed and blindlyimplemented policy can de-motivate employees and frustrate desired outcomes. The central problem here is similar to the one associatedwith autocratic leaders. Both styles fail to motivate and have little impact on people development. In fact, the detrimental impact could besignificant and far outweigh any benefits realized by these leadership styles.

CHARISMATIC

By far the most successful trait-driven leadership style is charismatic. Charismatic leaders have a vision, as well as a personality thatmotivates followers to execute that vision. As a result, this leadership type has traditionally been one of the most valued. Charismaticleadership provides fertile ground for creativity and innovation, and is often highly motivational. With charismatic leaders at the helm, theorganization’s members simply want to follow. It sounds like a best case scenario. There is however, one significant problem thatpotentially undercuts the value of charismatic leaders: they can leave. Once gone, an organization can appear rudderless and withoutdirection. The floundering can last for years, because charismatic leaders rarely develop replacements. Their leadership is based uponstrength of personality. As a result, charismatic leadership usually eliminates other competing, strong personalities. The result of weedingout the competition is a legion of happy followers, but few future leaders.

SITUATIONAL

Situational leadership theory suggests that the best leaders constantly adapt by adopting different styles for different situations oroutcomes. This theory reflects a relatively sophisticated view of leadership in practice and can be a valuable frame of reference forexperienced, seasoned leaders who are keenly aware of organizational need and individual motivation. Most importantly, it allowsexperienced leaders the freedom to choose from a variety of leadership iterations.

Problems arise, however, when the wrong style isapplied inelegantly. Also, considering our earlier discussion regarding some of the more ineffective leadership styles like autocratic andbureaucratic, this style requires a warning or disclaimer related to unintended or less than optimal results when choosing one of thesestyles. With that said, situational leadership can represent a useful framework for leaders to test and develop different styles for varioussituations with an eye towards fine-tuning leadership results. Situational leadership, however, is most effective when leaders choosemore effective styles like charismatic, transactional, and transformational.

TRANSACTIONAL

The wheeler-dealers of leadership styles, transactional leaders are always willing to give you something in return for following them. Itcan be any number of things including a good performance review, a raise, a promotion, new responsibilities or a desired change in duties.The problem with transactional leaders is expectations. If the only motivation to follow is in order to get something, what happens duringlean times when resources are stretched thin and there is nothing left with which to make a deal? That said, transactional leaderssometimes display the traits or behaviors of charismatic leaders and can be quite effective in many circumstances while creatingmotivated players. They are adept at making deals that motivate and this can prove beneficial to an organization. The issue then is simplyone of sustainability.

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