Various Leadership Styles – Discovering What Works

Your leadership style is instrumental to being an effective leader, it helps you find the most efficient way of managing your team while at the same time promoting employees’ personal and professional development.

Authentic leaders care about their employees and form genuine relationships, they value their team more than themselves thus increasing employee’s morale and involvement levels.

Transactional

Transactional leadership focuses on the results above everything: in situations where short-term objectives and quotas are crucial, this methodology works best; financial rewards motivate team members to achieve targets; however, discipline follows if they fail to meet the desired goals.

Think of trainers at a circus; through transactional leadership these professionals are able to teach wild animals how to juggle, stand on their heads or even jump through rings of fire. This also serves as a motivational tool for line workers, sales teams and military service.

Another leader who relied heavily on transactional leadership for success is Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks. Unfortunately, this approach can have disastrous implications in companies that place a premium on creativity and human-job relationships thereby making many eschew its usage where possible; it’s significant that each leader understand this management style’s limitations before embracing it.

Authoritarian

Autocratic leaders do not value feedback from their teams nor do they seek ideas or input from others before making decisions alone. They make decisions alone with strict obedience expected of followers – this kind of leadership is best when fast decisions need to be made or highly structured work environments like military service are involved.

Pros: In battle or crisis situations authoritarian leaders can give clear instructions and enforce discipline easily as opposed to other types of managers. Also such leaders tend to complete projects within time limits while taking into account safety rules.

Cons: Team members may become envious towards one another due to a lack of creativity that comes as a result of this form of management style leading to reduced morale among them. Another effect is lack of accountability as managers do not follow up on subordinates to find out how they are performing.

Transformational

Not all leadership styles work the same way for all groups; observing your role models will help you understand your preferred approach but be ready to adapt it for each group you lead.

Transformational leaders make their team members strive for goals beyond those that are prescribed. This kind of leadership style can prove particularly helpful when firms go through changes or encounter unexpected problems.

These leaders also take into account the individual needs and objectives of every employee in decision making which is called individualized consideration, thus helping these managers form teams that harmonize well together. Additionally, errors, variances in methodology or self-directedness are tolerated by these managers.

Democratic

Democratic management style allows all team members to provide their input during decision making processes, fosters teamwork and facilitates brainstorming sessions – this has been a successful approach for companies seeking innovative problem-solving techniques.

These leaders often involve themselves in meetings and receive ideas from every employee, which could improve communication at work. They also listen attentively to team members who need help or have concerns and provide support when necessary; they may even open it up to voting to make sure that everyone is involved.

This leadership style can be especially useful for innovative companies or large teams with diverse skills. To promote this style in your organization, you might consider training or coaching your leadership teams; by doing so, the company will adopt only effective leader styles for development.

Laissez-faire

Laissez-faire leadership can be an effective strategy as long as it is adjusted based on the nature of the task and your team. In this approach, decision-making responsibility is given to the group while still maintaining overall accountability and authority.

In this type of leadership, understanding the capabilities and skill sets of your team is very important to successful management. You should also know when more guidance or training opportunities are required besides regularly monitoring performance thus enabling quick identification and redressal of any problems encountered.

While both authoritative and laissez-faire styles of leadership may be successful, a mix of approaches is considered ideal for enabling a productive team. By blending different styles together you may come across what combination works best for making your team flourish.