Question

What are the major leadership styles? Which style is optimal to use in which situation?

Answer 1

Introduction

Leadership is the process of influencing thoughts and actions of the other people to attain the desired objectives. Leadership is the way to achieve progress and success at individual level, at organization and society. Leadership is the important for an effective team, motivated to achieve success rather than merely be afraid of failure.

Definition of leadership

“The quality of behavior of individual whereby they guide people on their activities in organizing efforts.”                         - Chestar Barnaid

“Leadership is a process of influencing others to attain goals”                     - Little field

Different types of leadership styles include

1. Democratic Leadership

2. Autocratic Leadership

3. Laissez-Faire Leadership

4. Strategic Leadership

5. Transformational Leadership

6. Transactional Leadership

7. Coach-Style Leadership

8. Bureaucratic Leadership

1. Democratic Leadership – Commonly effective. It is one of the most effective leadership styles because it allows lower-level employees to exercise authority. It resembles how the decisions can be made in team meetings. Democratic leaders always get input and consider feedback from their team before making any decision. This type of leadership drives discussion and participation, it’s an excellent style focused on creativity and innovation. This keeps the tam engaged in process makes them motivated and creative.

For example, in a team meeting, a democratic leader gives the team a few decision-related options. They could then, open a discussion about each option. After the discussion, this leader might take the thoughts and feedback into consideration or might open this decision up to a vote.

2. Autocratic Leadership - Rarely Effective. This is inverse of Democratic leadership. All decision-making powers are centralized in the leader. In this leadership style, the leader makes decisions without taking input from anyone. Employees are neither considered nor consulted prior to direction and are expected to adhere to the decision at a time and pace stipulated by the leader. Their will be high degree of dependency on the leader.

For example, Manager changes the hours of work shifts of multiple employees without consulting anyone - especially the effected employees.

3. Laissez-Faire Leadership - Sometimes Effective. The style of leadership recognizing full freedom. The French term “laissezfaire” in the literature expressed as “let them do it.” This kind of a leader advises the process, by not participating in the process thus encourages followers to generate ideas, offers suggestions when asked by followers, and declares opinions. Although laissez-faire leadership can empower employees by trusting them to work however, they'd like, but it can limit their development and overlook critical growth opportunities. Therefore, it's important to keep this leadership style in check. Delegative leaders offer little or no guidance to team and leave the decision-making to team. This style can be useful in situations involving highly qualified experts, it often leads to poorly defined roles and a lack of motivation.

For example, in a new startup, manager who makes no major office policies around work hours or deadlines. They might put full trust into their employees while they only focus on the overall workings of running the company.

4. Strategic Leadership - Commonly Effective. Strategic leaders are the intersection between a company's main operations and its growth opportunities. They accept the burden of executive interests, ensuring that current working conditions remain stable for everyone else. This is a desirable leadership style because strategic thinking supports multiple types of employees at once. This is a powerful ability to drive progress in periods of change by inspiring employees and earning trust for new ideas.

For example, Manager starts a group at work for colleagues who want to help resolve diversity at work. The goal is to help team to better focus on work and finish task at given time. Testing methods were developed so they can find meaningful ways to help colleagues in a quick and efficient way.

5. Transformational Leadership - Sometimes Effective. This is always "transforming" and improving upon the company's conventions. Employees might have a basic set of tasks and goals which they should complete every week or month, but the leader is constantly pushing them outside of their comfort zones. This is a highly encouraged form because it motivates employees to do what they're capable of. But this can risk losing sight of individual’s learning curves if direct reports don't receive the right coaching to guide them through new responsibilities.

In this type, all employees might get a list of goals and deadlines to reach them. While the goals might seem simple at first, but due to deadlines or more and more challenging goals it might become difficult to achieve, but for this helps for personal growth along with company growth.

For example, Manager gives the goals to achieve for a month for all the employees. After each month’s evaluation, the goals for each employee differs.

6. Transactional Leadership - Sometimes Effective. This type is common today. These managers reward their employees precisely for the work they do. Transactional leadership helps to establish roles and responsibilities for each employee, but it can also encourage bare-minimum work. If employees know how much their effort is worth all the time, this leadership style can use incentive programs to motivate employees, but they should be consistent with the company's goals.

For example, Manger might make an incentive plan for all employees that motivates them to quickly master regular job duties. Getting bonus on additional responsibility handled.

7. Coach-Style Leadership - Commonly Effective. Like a sports team's coach, leader focuses on identifying and nurturing the individual strengths of each team member. They focus on strategies that will enable their team work better together. This style provides strong similarities to strategic and democratic leadership, thus provides more emphasis on the growth and success of individual employees. Thus, prevents forcing all employees to focus on similar skills and goals.

This leadership style builds a team with each employee’s has an expertise or skillset in something different. At long run this style focuses on creating strong teams that communicates well and embrace each other's unique skillsets in order to get work done.

For example, Manager with this leadership style helps employees to improve on their strengths, by giving them new tasks to try, offering them guidance, providing constructive feedback. This also encourages one or more team members to expand on their strengths by learning new skills from other teammates.

8. Bureaucratic Leadership - Rarely Effective. This type always - go by the books. This style might listen and consider the input of employees unlike autocratic leadership, but the leader tends to reject an employee's input if it conflicts with company policy or past practices. In this style of leadership employees might not feel as controlled as in autocratic leadership but still lacks freedom in their roles. This might shut down innovation and is not encouraged for companies with chasing ambitious goals and quick growth.

For example, Manager of old company which has their said rules and goals, might not accept or may resist the innovation or any new strategy of the employees, because the company has already been successful with current processes and trying something new could waste time or resources if it doesn't work.

Conclusion

Nurses are the part of heath care team, involved in the most important tasks of Patient care and education, effective communication, and clinical management. These tasks are closely related to leadership behavior. Nurses who exhibit leadership behavior will be pioneers in bringing the profession to its standards. Thus not just one style of leadership but different or combination of styles may be used to achieve the organizational goals.