7 common leadership styles
Leadership is all about understanding the needs and issues of the individuals working in your organization. To guide your team well and boost the productivity levels, you should adopt a particular leadership style. However, what approach you pick primarily depends on the goals, demands, and culture of the organization. One organization with numerous teams can utilize multiple leadership styles at the same time.
If you are a newly appointed manager or a team leader, then you should know these leadership styles commonly used in organizations. What you apply in your workplace, purely depends on the challenges that your organization is currently facing.
- Autocratic – In this type of leadership style, the leader can make any decisions without seeking the counsel of the fellow employees. Such kind of leadership approach is acceptable when the issue doesn’t necessarily require the attention of the subordinates. However, frequently implementing such leadership style can negatively impact employee engagement and the overall output. A work environment that only applies autocratic leadership usually has little or zero flexibility.
- Democratic – Unlike autocratic leadership, a democratic style involves all its employees in the decision-making process. The manager or the team leader makes the final call but only after considering the opinions of all the members.
The best part of the democratic leadership style is that it values competence, honest communication, and diversity. As a result, this increases the level of productivity in the teams. Transactional – In this kind of leadership style, leaders delegate tasks to the team members and based on their performance are offered tangible rewards. Both the leader and the employees set targets and deadlines together and come to a consensus about how they can be accomplished. Laissez-Faire – In Laissez-Faire, employees are given the freedom to strategize their work responsibilities. The seniors get involved if an individual needs advice. It has both positive and negative aspects. For instance, it instills accountability, creativity, and boosts the overall job satisfaction. Conversely, the approach lacks feedback. Also, if the autonomy is not managed well, then it leads to limited knowledge and skills, bad coordination, and missed deadlines. Transformational – Quite different from other leadership styles, transformational approach strives to bring a change in individuals and teams. Seniors encourage the employee to increase productivity and efficiency via effective communication. The management following transformational leadership should be deeply involved with all the teams of the organization. Coaching – The coaching leadership style entails training and supervising the junior members. It mostly involves the leader working closely with every employee and overseeing the performance and skill development. The great part about such style is that the employee is receiving feedback continuously, which can help hone his/her expertise faster. Cross-cultural – One of the most essential types of leadership style, the cross-cultural approach is indispensable to diverse economies like ours. Since there are people from across the world working in different types of organizations, it is critical to be sensitive to their cultural sensibilities. At the same time, such form of leadership also makes workplaces more inclusive and friendly, which leads to improved efficiency.
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