Leadership Styles

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Hi,

Interesting project! Let's take a closer look.

RESPONSE:

Because the situation at EEST/Quest and the specific changes that are ahead of you are not included in the scenario. In general, let's look at your natural leadership characteristics and compare them to leadership styles.

Which leadership styles have you researched? Leaders carry out their roles in a wide variety of styles, e.g., autocratic, democratic, participatory, laissez-faire (hands off), etc. Often, the leadership style depends on the situation, including the life cycle of the organization (http://www.managementhelp.org/ldrship/ldrship.htm).

As the manager, your beliefs, values and assumptions are of critical importance to the overall style of leadership that they adopt. You identified your STRENGTHS as achiever, strategic, learner, analytical and restorative. Although you identify yourself as a team leader, have you taken it to the next step and identified which leadership style will you use in the role of team leader? You can use your five STRENGTHS in each style, but you will need to consider which one fits best for you. However, like proposed below, you might decide to be a situational leader, using different styles throughout the problem solving process. When you say you are a team leader, it does not really tell us about your leadership style. Sometimes the team approach is considered participatory, which we look at below (e.g. collaboration, coordination, sharing power and sharing information). However, perhaps you will use a situational leadership style; employing the style that fits with the situation, while using your identified strengths throughout the process.

The classic leadership styles are autocratic, participative and laissez-faire. You either tell people what to do, you involve them in deciding what to do or you let them do what they want. To apply these leadership styles, however, we need to be more specific. Or, use a combination of these styles to get the job done (achiever).

So, let's look at four leadership styles, and perhaps looking at these leaderships styles, you might identify other traits as well e.g. autocratic, democratic, participatory, laissez-faire (hands off), etc. At other times, the role of leadership in management is largely determined by the organizational culture of the company. What is the culture at your organization? Each style has its own set of good and not-so-good characteristics, and each uses leadership in a different way. Perhaps you would discuss this with your supervisor, and explain how you could use your identified characteristics e.g. achiever, strategic, learner, analytical and restorative in certain situations.

1. The Autocratic Leadership Style (e.g. tell people what to do)

The autocratic leader dominates team-members, using unilateralism to achieve a singular objective. This approach to leadership generally results in passive resistance from team-members and requires continual pressure and direction from the leader in order to get things done. Generally, an authoritarian approach is not a good way to get the best ...