11 Effective Leadership styles
In today’s competitive environment, effective leadership style is need of the hour.Effective leadership styles is the only way to accomplish herculean organizational goal.
If we analyze historical evidences, great leaders have emerged with particular leadership styles in providing direction, implementing plans and motivating people.Leadership styles has direct impact on effect the performance and productivity.
Fortunately, business people and psychologists have developed useful frameworks that describe the main ways that people lead.In today’s world, you can find success stories about any kind of leader.Whether they were political, financial, philosophical, or managerial, each of these leaders has his or her style. That doesn’t mean one is better than the other — it all depends on what you want to accomplish.
Leadership style is the way a managerial leader applies his influence in getting work done through his subordinates in order to achieve the organizational objectives.These can be broadly grouped into different categories.In this blog, we’ll explain some of the most effective leadership styles,its advantages & disadvantages.
Leadership style
1.Charismatic
Charisma has different sources and any attempt to pin it down to a specific set of human qualities would be useless. And charisma is not only about words, ideals and getting elected. It can get things done and it is good for business.The charismatic leader is visionary and works by infusing high amount of energy and enthusiasm in his team. He sets as role model for his team and drive others to show high level of performance.
The presence of charismatic leader works as a boost for rest of the employees and therefore such type of leader should be committed to the organization for the long run.Charismatic leadership may pose as a risk to the organization if he decided to leave to explore new opportunities .In such instance, organization has to take lots of efforts to win the confidence of the employees.
Max Weber defines charismatic leader as:
” A certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he or she is set apart from ordinary people and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities”.
Advantage
- Establishes process & get results
- Provides opportunities to think differently
- Creates shared Identity
- Sets clear goal & metrics
- Creates emotional appeal
Disadvantage
- Harms long term morale
- can be used for selfish ambition
- Restricts ideas
- Disregards individual follower
2.Autocratic
Autocratic leaders make decisions and issue orders over his followers for complete control. He centralizes all power in himself and does not delegate any authority to them and tactfully provide clear direction but leave no doubt about what is expected or who makes the final decisions. He loves power and dominates his group by coercion and command.
This type of leaders become all in all in this style of leadership style. Rewards and penalties are used in this leadership style. Some people tend to think of this style as a vehicle for yelling, using demeaning language, and leading by threats. Therefore, this leadership is also called negative style and is also not recognized a rational style.
Some of the appropriate conditions to use this style is when you have all the information to solve the problem, you are short of time, and your followers are well motivated. Autocratic style should normally be used on rare occasions. If you have the time and want to gain more commitment and motivation from your employees, then you should use the democratic style.
Advantage
- Takes faster decisions
- Thrives under consistency
- Removes pressure
- Accomplishes goal quickly
- Keeps team members on tasks
Disadvantage
- Create unwelcome culture
- Discourage creativity
- Joyless experience for team
- Allows abuse of power
3.Laissez-Fare
Contrary to autocratic leadership style,in this leadership style the leader depends entirely on his followers to establish their own goals and to make their own decisions. He lets them plan, organize and proceed. Once the policies, programmes and limitations for action are determined by the leader, the entire process is left to followers. He is there to guide his followers if they are in need & provide resources to accomplish the goals. This kind of leadership is desirable in mainly professional organizations and where the employees are self-motivated. Leader works here just as a member of the team and encourages good teamwork and creative collaboration among team members.
Laissez-Fare style promotes to develop independent personality. The role of leader in this style is almost neglected. Being the minimum role of leader this style is not suitable for business organizations.
Advantage
- Encourages creativity & new ideas
- Allows faster decision making
- Encourages personal growth
- Provide occupational freedom
- Promotes employee self rule
Disadvantage
- Lack of role clarity
- Fosters potential poor time management
- Passivity
- Lacks of accountability
4.Visionary
Visionary leadership was first devised by Daniel Goleman in 2002. Goleman defines visionary leadership as “the ability to take charge and inspire with a compelling vision” and postulates that this type of leadership is best used when changes require a new vision or when a clear direction is needed. This style is also authoritative, but rather than simply telling people what to do, these leaders gain support by expressing clearly their challenges and responsibilities in the organization’s overall strategy.
This makes goals clear & concise, increases commitment and energizes a team. It is best used by people with a high personalized power drive under low-stress situations and people with a high socialized-power drive when stress is high
Advantage
- Inspire unity in teams
- Foresee challenges
- Creates emotional appeal
- Places high value
- Helps other to see goal & stay there.
Disadvantage
- Less emphasis on small issues
- Less accountable team members
- Loses sight of present problem
- Often loses momentum to excite team members
5.Democratic
Democratic leaders believe team members should take part in the decision-making process. Their basis of decision making relies on consensus of the entire team members. They listen to suggestions, ideas, and problems of team members & involve them in decision making process. However, the leader maintains the final decision making authority. Using this style is not a sign of weakness; rather it is a sign of strengthening team members & developing them as a future leader of the organization. He does not take a unilateral decision and believes in decentralization of power in decision making.
This is normally used when you have part of the information, and your employees have other parts. Using this style is of mutual benefit – it allows them to become part of the team and allows you as a leader to make better decisions. It is otherwise called a participation style of leading a team & totally opposite to autocratic style of leadership.
Advantage
- More efficiency & productivity
- Creates high employee morale
- Maximizes fairness
- Less labour turnover
- Creates positive work environment
- Develops team strength
Disadvantage
- Adversely impact performance
- Leaving employee feeling direction & leaderless
- ineffective during crisis situation
- Encourages workplace procrastination
6.Transactional
To understand this leadership style in simple way is just to think like the leaders lead the organization and tell his/her followers what is their duty because they get salary for it. The roots of this leadership style are-reward, penalty, economic exchange, emotion, corporeal and other transactions between leaders & their followers. Center of attention of this leadership style is on the responsibility of administration, organization, and group performance.
Transactional leaders give lead to uphold the chain of rules and regulations, their approach is not looking to change the future. The followers are expected to obey the transactional leadership instructions because of the higher position and title that the leader holds.
It contrast, involves management by- exception, intervention, and punishing those who made errors. This approach would also require close monitoring of their followers, who would surely not like it. Followers who are self-motivated & work independently would feel suffocated under this type of leader. Transactional leaders are great for organizations or teams tasked with hitting specific goals such as sales and revenue, it’s not the best leadership style for driving creativity.
Advantage
- Achieve short term goal quickly
- Rewards & penalties are for team members
- Clear Structure
- Defines reward & punishment
- Easy to implement & give direction
Disadvantage
- Overemphasizes on set routines and methods
- Sees the leader more reactive rather than proactive
- Opposes changes
- Doesn’t reward personal initiative
- Discourages out of box thinkers
7.Transformational
The leaders who believe in redial change in the existing culture & system of the organizations are known as Transformational leaders. These leaders are typically self-aware,authentic and empathetic. Transformational leadership motivates & inspire through shared vision, expect best from each team member & held them accountable for their actions. Organizations that operate under this style shoot to be the first to do something major in their organization.
Transformational leadership encourages new ideas, promotes disciplined and free-thinking teams & driven by a commitment to the organization’s objectives. It demands a certain level of strategic vision and intellectual stimulation to initiate change in oneself and others in an organization.
Since these types of leaders spend much of their time on the big picture, this style of leadership is best suited to handle many delegated tasks without constant supervision.
Advantage
- Reduces turnover cost
- Accepts new ideas
- Creates & manage change
- Gives employees freedom to work
- Motivates team leader
Disadvantage
- Requires continuous feedback
- Can be risky & disruptive
- Conflicts with bureaucracy
- Shows too big pictures
- Lead employee burnout
8.Bureaucratic
This leadership style is very similar to Autocratic leadership in which followers are supposed to follow rule & procedure exactly same as directed. The main difference between autocratic & bureaucratic is that, in later type of leadership, leaders might consult the team members for any viewpoint but the whole authority to take the final decision is in the hands of leader. Each employee has their fixed role & responsibility that they have to discharge.
People who have to go through those steps might refer to them as “red tape.” It is based on administrative needs of the organization. There is very less scope for any creativity & new ideas implementation in their workplace. It is highly effective and productive in department like security, hospital & finance.
Advantage
- Creates strong level of job security
- Offers upward scalability
- Centralized duties of employees
- Establishes repeatable & reliable systems
- Operates under clear objectives & metrics
Disadvantage
- Challenge to increase productivity
- Disregards individual employee
- Does not offer freedom of creativity
- Harms long term morale
- Delays in decision making
9.Coaching
Coaching leadership is a style that encompasses and facilitates the engagement of people and empathizing with their specific and individual motivations. It involves the executive in long-term professional development and mentoring of employees. A coaching leader is someone who can quickly recognize their team members’ strengths, weaknesses and motivations to help each individual improve their performance.
In today’s scenario when organization are adopting flatter structure, flexible work hour & remote working, old fashioned style of leadership becomes irrelevant & coaching leadership style is being accepted.
This type of leadership style often assists team members in setting smart goals and provides regular feedback to promote growth. The coach leadership style is one of the most advantageous for employers as well as for employees they manage.
Advantage
- Improve results significantly
- Individual feels valued
- Develops sense of importance
- Gets fast & constructive feedback
- Develops future leader
Disadvantage
- Too much time-consuming and resource draining
- Does not work if leader is incompetent
- Employee feels fearful of negative feedback
- Does not work in stressful work-culture
10.Strategic
Strategic leadership talks about the leader’s potential or capability to express a strategic vision for the organization and to persuade them to pursue that vision by applying different strategic tools. This leadership style believes in empowerment & creates leaders who are well-trained and well-equipped to deal with unforeseen risks and threats.
Aim of strategic leadership always includes an aspect of transformation which helps organization to achieve their goals. It stimulates leadership to ensure that all of the organization’s efforts are moving the organization toward successfully achieving its vision.
Strategic leadership style is not a quick fix, as it requires the organization to look to the future whenever it is implementing a new strategy & making a decision.
Advantage
- Clarity in decision making process
- Provides organizational perspective
- Develops structured & organized pathway
- Builds commitment
- Avoids competitive convergence
Disadvantage
- Forecasting may leads to inaccurate results
- Hinders short term profitability
- Lacks flexibility
- Can arcade growth of organization
11.Servant
Servant Leadership is a selfless leadership style that focuses on improving both employee and organizations. Primary objective of this leadership is to serve and meet the needs of the people in organization, Great servant leaders typically have good listening skills, lots of empathy, ability to develop others, good persuasion skills and big picture thinking abilities. Regardless of level, Servant leader leads simply by meeting the needs of the team. people who practice servant leadership focus on the people who made them a leader.
They foster a goal-driven community around them and they value that community on a personal level. Because of high integrity &generosity of servant leaders , follower blindly believe in & trust them. Servant leaders lead the team by setting example & create a positive work culture to help organization in achieving their goals
Advantage
- Focuses on big picture
- Enables others to lead themselves
- Recognizes diversity in groups
- Builds strong & focused teams
- Removes ego in leadership
Disadvantage
- Lack of authority
- Depends heavily on trust & loyalty
- Confusion regarding goals of leadership
- Does not define roles
Conclusion
Leading an organization is a complex process. Organization varies in their size, culture, people & above all their values & vision. To deal with these variability, we need a leader who can understand all the variable factors & lead the organization to achieve the goal.
Because of the complex nature of leadership, a specific and widely accepted definition of leadership does not exist .Hence leader has to adopt different leading style as the situation demand. No any leadership style is good or bad, it is the context of the organization, suitable leadership style needs to be applied for its effectiveness.