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Styles of Leadership

The styles of leadership we apply are crucial to our success as managers or coaches. While we do use different styles of leadership in different situations, each one of us has a primary leadership style that is our default setting in most situations.

Each leadership style has its own advantages and drawbacks and understanding your own leadership style along with the others can be vital in helping you to achieve success at work. Recognizing different leadership styles can also help you when dealing with your peers and supervisors.

      Autocratic Leadership – this is an extreme form of leadership where the maximum power lies with the leader and people are told what to do with little space to express their opinions. While most people resent this form of leadership it is best used for highly routine and unskilled jobs.

      Bureaucratic Leadership – is the by the book approach to leadership and places more emphasis on policies versus people, it is best for circumstances where compliance and procedures are vital.

       Charismatic Leadership – the leader injects huge does of enthusiasm which propel the team towards its goal. However, these leaders have more belief in themselves that their teams and they are vital to the team achieving goals.

      Democratic Leadership – this leader invites other team-members to play a role in the decision making process, although the final decision remains with him. It is the preferred style when quality is preferred over quantity.

        Laissez – Faire Leadershipis the leave it be style where the leader lets the team work on its own. This style works best when the team is assigned individual projects or the team members have numerous years of experience and skills. It can fail with more immature or younger teams. 


People Oriented Leadership – in this kind of leadership the people are the focus and leaders spend a lot of time and effort on grooming, leveraging and organizing their teams. While this is great for team work, the actual goal may not be at the forefront and hence may not be achieved. 

Servant Leadership – when any non-leader in the team or organization regardless of level becomes the leader to achieve a task, he or she becomes a servant leader. This also allows for a more democratic decision-making process within the team. 

Task Oriented Leadership  - this is a great leadership style to adopt when procedures, tasks and goals need to be set into place as a task-oriented leader will focus on getting the job done, he may tend to lose sight of his people’s needs though.  

 Transactional Leadership – this is one of the leadership styles where team members get the least satisfaction. In this style they recognize that all the control lies with the leader and that they are only paid to do certain ‘transactions’ for the company, in return for which they are paid. Failure to complete these transactions results in penalties or punishments. This is a good way to manage only short-term tasks. 

Transformational Leadership – this is a true leader who inspires his team by painting a vision of the future. They spend a lot of time communicating their vision and then allow their team members to decide how to achieve this vision. This is by far the best leadership style to aspire to as it achieve both people and task results.  


While there is no right or wrong way to manage teams, the term situational leadership is considered a highly effective style to use. Situational leadership means matching the leadership style to:

         The tasks to be achieved

         The people to be managed

        The organizations goals

         Your own style and preference 

      Styles of Leadership Related articles

      Types of Leadership

      Famous Leadership Quotes

      Management vs Leadership

      Authoritarian Leadership

      Participative Leadership

      

      

      

       Come back for new styles of leadership! We update our information on frequent basis.

     

                          Reccomended Resources on Styles of Leadership- Our Favorite Pick!


 

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Outstanding Leaders consider themselves a work in progress
 Dr Franklin C. Ashby 

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