Powerful Leadership Styles

 

Powerful Leadership Styles

While there have been plethora of theories over the past decades concerning the leadership styles and the patterns that impact and influences the followers and the organizations, still many leaders find it difficult to hone their leadership skills. This is due to many contradictions that arise between the leaders having different leadership styles. And some are even perplexed to decide which road to take.

However, a leader must always bear in mind that even though styles of leading an organization and manifesting the desired change might be different but the end is the same. And that is to reach to your objective, purpose or goals. A leadership style which is unique acts as a catalyst to your influence on the followers.

A leadership style can bring about two kinds of changes namely:

·        Organizational Change

·        Employee Engagement

Since Employee Engagement is directly linked with the organizational change, therefore, it is necessary for a leader to focus on people more than on the organization. If the leader can release the abilities of the employees by having a healthy relationship with them and providing them more & more opportunities for growth. Then the employees are automatically going to lead the organizational change. And therefore, employee engagement with its consequent impact on employee productivity is one of the key drivers of organizational performance; and organizational change often in turn have a significant impact on employee engagement.

The following are the different styles of leadership that a leader is given or sometimes inculcated by themselves. But before that, it should be kept in mind that no one style of leadership is universally applicable. Each of them has its own positives and drawbacks. A leader must choose his/her own leadership style depending upon the time of execution of a particular task.

1.     Authoritarian Leadership: This type of leadership style is also referred to as the autocratic form of leadership. In this style of leadership, the leader is the head of the organization and takes control of all the decisions and dictates processes & tasks to the organization. Leaders with authority make decisions on the basis of their own judgment and ideas. They rarely accept the advice of their subordinates.

Powerful Leadership Styles

It’s a style In which a leader seeks complete control over a group or a task in hand. The following are the traits that can be observed in authoritarian leadership:

·        Little input is taken from subordinates.

·        Followers do not have a  sense of significance with such leaders because of their rare engagement in the decision making process.

·        Leaders with this style have an aim to just get the job done and hence, there is no growth environment or empowerment enablers in that organization.

·        Relying on Authoritarian leadership over the long-term is generally not beneficial for the organization.

 

2.     Laissez Faire Leadership: This type of leadership style is completely opposite to the authoritarian leadership. Unlike an authoritarian leader, a Laissez faire leader provides complete freedom for the people to work and to make their own decisions such a leader provides little to no input to the people.

While the leader takes complete responsibility and management of the task, they provide their people to make decisions on their behalf which empowers them to achieve the goals with a greater level of motivation.

Leaders with this style simply acts as an incubator for the growth of their employees which ends up in the growth of the organization. Therefore, success of the company is solely dependent on the performance of the employees which is dependent on freedom that the leader offers.

The only disadvantage of Laissez Faire leadership is that leaving the employee with very little guidance makes them much more vulnerable to mistakes and there is also an uncertainty regarding the completion of the task.

 

3.     Servant Leadership: A servant leader is the one whose motivation is to meet the needs of his/her team members so that they could work without any ramifications or worries about their finances or other day to day activities.

A servant leader completely transforms an organizations which results in the establishment of trust within the team members which leads to an effective management and allocation of resources.

4.     Democratic Leadership: As the name suggests, it is a type of leadership where the process of decision making, sharing of views and opinions is valued. The benefit of this style is that it facilitates open discussion and the sharing of views and opinions thereby increasing the potential of the innovators and the organization.

This style of leadership is beneficial for many leaders as it provides a balance which is required for successful implementation. The decision making may not be so quick in this style, but the decision made in the end are much rational and produce more growth.

 

CONCLUSION

From the above discussion, we came to know about the various leadership styles that a leladers can exercise in their organization to accomplish the desired goals.

·        Authoritative leadership: This leadership style is totally based on the position aspect and does not promote employee engagement & growth.

·        Laissez Faire Leadership: A leader with this style provides little input& encourage employee freedom.

·        Servant Leadership: A servant leader is concerned about the needs of the people to create a healthy working environment

·        Democratic Leadership: Decisions are made keeping the opinions and views of the members equally important as that of the leader.