Leadership styles and Management
What is a leadership style?
A leader’s leadership style describes how he or she directs, motivates, guides, and manages groups of people. Political movements and social change can be inspired by great leaders. They can also inspire others to excel, create, and innovate.
When you consider some of the people you consider to be great leaders, you will notice that there are often significant differences in how each person leads. Fortunately, researchers have developed various theories and frameworks that help us better identify and comprehend these different leadership styles.
The different types of leadership I have come across and applied are as follows:
- Transformational Leadership.
- Transactional Leadership.
- Authoritarian Leadership.
- Participative Leadership.
- Delegative Leadership.
- Charismatic Leadership.
Transformational Leadership
The leader in transformational leadership inspires his or her followers with a vision and then encourages and empowers them to achieve it. The vision’s leader also serves as a role model.
Transformational leaders inspire and educate by sharing a common vision of the future. They communicate effectively. They motivate their team by expecting the best from everyone and holding themselves accountable as well. Transformational leaders typically exhibit the following characteristics:
Integrity
Self-awareness
Authenticity
Empathy
Transactional Leadership
Transactional leadership styles rely on “transactions” — rewards, punishments, and other exchanges — between a leader and his or her followers to get the job done. The leader establishes clear objectives, and team members understand how they will be rewarded for their cooperation. This “give and take” leadership style is more concerned with efficiently carrying out established routines and procedures than with bringing about transformational changes in an organization.
Members of a group may also be motivated to perform well to receive rewards. One of the most significant disadvantages of the transactional style is that it tends to stifle creativity and out-of-the-box thinking.
Authoritarian Leadership
Authoritarian or autocratic leaders set explicit expectations for what must be done when it must be done, and how it must be done. This leadership style places a great emphasis on both the leader’s command and the followers’ control. A significant distinction exists between the leader and the members. Authoritarian leaders make choices on their own, with little or no involvement from the rest of the group.
Employee feedback is not taken into account under this sort of leadership, which limits their originality and innovation. Furthermore, because the boss is in the spotlight rather than the employees, the collaboration between them will be decreased. On the other side, this leadership style consistently produces excellent results.
Participative Leadership
Democratic ideology underpins participatory leadership styles. The goal is to have team members participate in decision-making. As a result, team members feel included, engaged, and inspired to participate. In most decision-making processes, the leader will have the final say. When there are conflicts within a group, however, reaching a consensus can be a lengthy process.
Employees will always feel included, motivated, and have a high level of job satisfaction under this leadership style. This will boost the team’s creativity while also increasing productivity.
The downsides, on the other hand, are that because so many people are involved in the process, decision-making will always take time. Communication can also go wrong at times.
Delegative Leadership(Laissez-Faire leadership)
A delegation leadership style, often known as “laissez-faire leadership,” emphasizes delegating initiative to team members. If team members are skilled, take responsibility, and want to work alone, this can be an effective technique. Disagreements among members, on the other hand, can break and divide a group, resulting in low motivation and morale.
The benefit of such leadership is that innovation and creativity are constantly recognized here, with senior employees utilizing their knowledge and expertise. On the other side, this leadership style has a hard time adapting to changes that occur.
Charismatic Leadership
Charismatic leaders are those who can walk the talk. This style’s leaders are experts of communication and persuasion with a charming demeanour. They possess a certain charm, attractiveness, and magnetism. It aids them in persuading others to follow their lead. They motivate, excite, and enthuse the members of the team.
The Dalai Lama and Gouthama Buddha are two charismatic leaders that come to mind. When they walk into a room, they emanate warmth and presence. It’s what they refer to as the aura!
Some people are charismatic from birth, while others develop it over time and experience and this is one of my favourite types of leadership.
Charismatic leaders are self-assured in their approach. They rarely have second thoughts about their choices and have a powerful personalities.
They can sway a vast number of people.
They energise employees’ motivations and have faith in their abilities.
They set high standards for themselves and their staff, and they serve as role models for them.
The gist of the overall leadership keeping followers in the picture.
Conclusion
In my experience, I’ve learned that being a successful leader, as well as being ambitious, requires compassion and understanding. I gained a viewpoint on being a leader and how to achieve/approach the aim of being compassionate toward people through the books, workshops and various seminars.
