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Leadership is an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real changes and reflect their mutual purpose. With this definition, we accept the following attributes of 'leadership'
The concept of leadership has been quite visible in areas such as military operations, politics, and management. Within work organization, leadership is no longer exclusively spontaneous or emergent. Leadership can be assigned as a part of the requirement of exclusive jobs of individuals, teams or it can be part of the expectations that members of a role set have from individual teams. Leadership as a managerial function is no longer limited to the top officers. To become a great leader, check out this business speaker.
There are the different types of leadership styles that exist in work environments and advantages and disadvantages exist in each leadership style. Some companies offer same leadership style while others follow different leadership styles depending upon what task to perform. Its only the culture and goals of an organization that determines which type of leadership suits to the firm.
The recent authentic Leadership approach seems to have evolved in the light of major scams and scandals, a blind race for profits and personal gains and short term prospective, involving the CEO′s of top organizations. It focuses on the charter of the leader as the driver of positive interrelationships. Authenticity is about being genuine and not attempting to play a role; not acting in a manipulative way.
Autocratic leadership allows autocratic leader to take the ultimate control of taking decisions without consulting others. An autocratic leader possess high level of power and authority and imposes its will on its employees. This type of leadership proves to be useful where close level of supervision is required. Creative employees morale goes down because their output is not given importance and is often detest by employees. Since they are unable to take any part in decision making, this results in job satisfaction and staff turnover.
Under this type of leadership, a laissez-faire leader do not exercise control on its employees directly. Since employees are highly experienced and need little supervision, a laissez-faire leader fails to provide continuous feedback to employees under his or her supervision. This type of leadership is also associated with leaders that do not supervise their team members, failed to provide continuous feedback resulting in high costs, bad service, failure to meet deadlines, lack of control and poor production.
The Transformational leadership highlights a leader as a facilitator of change occurring, when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality. The process of transformational leadership aims at influencing changes in attitudes and assumptions held by organizational members and building commitment for organizational goals and objectives. High level of communication exits between managers and employees and it is under the guidance of leaders that employees meet their goals and enhance productivity and efficiency.
Transactional Leadership contrast, involves management –by- exception, intervention, and punishing those who made errors. This can lead to negative emotions and performance on the part of the subordinates. This approach would also require close monitoring of the subordinates, who would surely not like it, and if they felt constrained, their performance might not be best.
Additionally, some of their voluntary behaviors, like citizenship behaviors would be reduced. A manger lead a group of highly motivated individuals who follow his leadership and achieve their goals. Employees are trained or rewarded such as bonuses depending upon their performance.
Under bureaucratic leadership, a leader believes in structured procedures and ensure that his or her employees follow procedures exactly. This type of leadership leaves no space to explore new ways to solve issues and in fact work by book. This type of leadership is normally followed in hospitals, universities, banks (where large amount of money is involved) and government organizations to reduce corruption and increase security. Self motivated individuals who are highly energetic often feel frustrated due to because of organization inability to adapt to changing environment.
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. This type of leader is committed to the organization and believes more in him rather than his team. 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.
A charismatic leadership may pose as a risk to the company if he decided to leave to explore new opportunities and it might take lot of time and hard work by the company to win the confidence of its employees.
Also known as democratic leadership style, participative leadership consults employees and seriously considers their ideas when making decisions. When a company makes changes within the organization, the participative leadership style helps employees accept changes easily because they had given a big role in the process. Participative Leadership may be required for tasks that are non routine or unstructured, where relationships are non-authoritarian and the subordinate‘s locus of control is internal.
Directive Leadership provides guidance about what should be done and how to do it, scheduling work, and maintaining standers of performance. Thus, it may be inferred that directive leadership is effective as the subordinators has an external locus of Control, lacks experience, has a high need for clarity or a low need of achievement. Also, when the task is unstructured, or there is conflict between work groups, a more directive style would be useful.
Supportive Leadership show concern for the needs of the employees, leader is friendly and approachable. Supportive Leadership would be more suitable for highly structured tasks, under bureaucratic and formal authority relationship. In supportive Leadership, leader support to their subordinates officially and some time personally also. Leader always try to fulfill their requirements, it boost employees moral also.
Leaders are typically the figureheads of an organization and for good reason. Workers depend on a strong management team to coordinate and ensure that everyone else knows their job role. While in many cases this coordination involves overall strategic planning, it is important to also make room for the many soft skills that are generally found in great leaders. Technical training is helpful, but it is often the case that your soft skills are what inspires others to work.
One of the most important skills of a leader is the ability to communicate effectively. While the ability to strategize is also crucial, strategies are nothing without a team that understands how to carry them out. It is a leader's responsibility to ensure that the team both understands the tasks at hand and is motivated enough to give it their full attention.
A strong leader should also have an eye on the business process to learn which ideas are effective and which less so. In a sense, leadership depends on the ability to observe and to learn. If teams are not performing as well as they should, a leader should have the ability to figure out why and address the issue accordingly. Similarly, a leader must be aware of how businesses change over time and whether any industry-wide innovations could potentially affect competition or production.
Great leaders are not exclusively those who solely get results. Rather, leaders must also command respect and trust by being forthright with their employees and the greater industry of which they are a part. Teams may not always like what a leader has to say, but if the message is honest, they will often appreciate knowing the truth, rather than being fed lies and excuses. Ideally, a strong leader should also possess the ability to deliver harder truths diplomatically so as not to alienate workers.
For some people, it may seem like business is primarily about some form of production. However, production can proceed more efficiently when team members trust and work well with each other. In this sense, business is about networking and relationships. It is a leader's role to encourage healthy working relationships between team members, clients, producers, other managers and the community at large. When employees trust each other and the business as a whole, the entire organization stands to benefit significantly.
Strong leaders are typically creative and recognize when changes could improve the workflow. As well-planned as a business process can be, it will inevitably encounter some obstacle to overcome. An innovative leader is someone who takes responsibility for these obstacles and creates a path toward bringing the work back to its intended expectation.
It is sometimes said that great leaders are born, not made. While some people do undoubtedly contain a certain ability to connect with and inspire others, leadership skills can also be nurtured and developed.
By learning to listen, to take initiative, to understand when your instincts should be trusted and to discipline yourself, you stand to improve your role as a leader.
