Leadership Styles and Theories

NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.

NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Leadership Styles
Leadership Theories
My Leadership Style Model: Participative Leadership.
Conclusion
References

Introduction

Leadership is mainly associated with an individual’s behavior, traits, and role relationships. Therefore, leadership can be described as the behavior of an individual in directing employee’s activities towards an organization’s goal. According to Yukl (2010, p 4), a leader is the individual with the responsibility of the leadership role, while the rest of the member are followers.

Nevertheless, leadership falls in different categories, including direct vs. indirect leadership, with direct leadership involving engaging employees in communication via memos, reports, emails, or meetings and indirect leadership involving cascading that follows a channel, from the CEO to the manager down to employees.

Indirect leadership may involve an executive changing the organizational structure or rewards systems. According to Yukl (2010, p.7), “leaders value flexibility, innovation and adaptation; they care about people as well a economic outcomes and have a longer-term perspective with regard to objectives and strategies.”

This creates a difference between managers and leaders; however, managers are concerned about how tasks are done while initiating performance.

Leaders are mainly concerned with what things mean to employees and thereafter coming to an agreement on the most important things that need to be done. The author further adds that leadership effectiveness is determined by the performance of a team in the attainment of goals.

Therefore, a leader is expected to contribute to the team by enhancing cohesiveness, cooperation, confidence, problem solving, decision-making, and commitment.

Leadership Styles

Leadership styles can be described as the methods through which leaders demonstrate the motives, plans, and influence on employees in pursuit of predetermined goals. These styles include authoritarian, participative, and delegative style.

According to Robbins and Judge (2011), successful companies will need to have level-5 leaders, who posses essential qualities such as individual capabilities, teamwork competence, and managerial competence Authoritative leadership occurs when leaders give orders to their employee without consulting them first.

Hence, leaders have no concern on the employees’ opinions, as they are expected to do exactly as the rules and regulations demand. An example of such a leader is Donald Trump (Dubrin, 2008, p350).

Participative style involves allowing employees to take part decision-making, despite the fact that the leader will have the last say on the most appropriate course of action. In this style of leadership, employees are able to contribute their ideas that may be helpful in making better decisions. Lastly, the delegative leadership style allows employees to make decisions but hold the leader responsible for the decisions made.

Therefore, this style requires that leaders have full confidence and trust in employees (Pride, Hughes, & Kapoor, 2011, p181). Moreover, Robbins and Judge (2011) are on the view that effective leaders need to take the interests of groups in decision making process, rather than making self-governing decisions.

Leadership Theories

Some of the theories associated with leadership include trait theories, contingency theories, situational theories, participative, management, and behavioral theories. Trait theories normally assume that individuals inherit leadership qualities, specifying that some people are naturally leaders. This theory defines leaders in terms of values, personality, skills, and motives.

Behaviorist theories concentrate on what leaders do and ignore their qualities, and believe that great leaders are not born but actually made by learning or observing. Participative theories hold that, an effective leadership puts the opinion of others into consideration.

This type of leadership encourages contributions of employees in decision-making. Situational theories emphasize on uniqueness or sameness in a leader’s behavior in different types of organizations. For instance, some situations may require a leader to use autocratic style while others require participative leadership.

According to Yukl (2008, p.5), flexible leadership theory emphasizes on use of management decisions on programs, systems, strategies and organizational structure, which determine a manager’s decisions and actions in consistence with the organization’s competitive strategy.

Transactional theories focus on a manager’s role of supervision and employee’ performance; when employees succeed in a task, they are rewarded, whereas when they fail, they are punished. Path goal theory of leadership entails that a leader’s responsibility is to grant desired and valued rewards to employees and further elaborate the kind of behavior required to achieve these rewards (Griffin 2006 p293).

Contingency theory explains that leadership applies only in some situations and not all. Lastly, descriptive contingency theory explains how a leader’s behavior may vary from one situation to another; however, prescriptive contingency theory specifies effective behavior of each situation (Yukl, 2010 p22).

My Leadership Style Model: Participative Leadership.

According to Dubrin (2008, p348), participative leadership style involves sharing decision-making process with the employees. Employees’ opinions are considered, as a leader cannot know everything. Therefore, there is need to consider several opinions in regard to employees’ knowledge, skills and abilities, before making a decision on a certain task.

As a manager, it is my duty to offer guidance to my subordinates; hence, the inclusion of employees’ contribution will assist in making quality decisions. In addition, they will be motivated, thus improve on performance, which in turn will result to high productivity.

The level of participation of employees sometimes depends on the decisions at hand. A group enhances collaboration as opposed to competition, as they are working towards the same goals. Participative leadership has the advantage of developing potential leaders of the future in the organization. Employees are also motivated when their opinions are considered.

Positive team spirit is built as employees work together for a common goal, hence contributing to productivity (Ricketts & Ricketts, 2010, p.30).

Since decision-making is compromised of many minds, there is no possibility of the decision being inappropriate, as opposed to autocratic leadership, whereby, decisions are made by only one person; hence, possibility of ineffective decisions is likely. However, this leadership style fits well in a large organization where there are a big number of shareholders.

However, this style is faced by weaknesses such as; it can be hypocritical when managers ask for employees’ opinions and thereafter ignore them, thus employees may view this action as a betrayal. The decision making process is long, thus consuming a lot of time due to the involvement of many people.

Sometimes, some employees may view this method as monotonous, since they have to attend meetings regularly to discuss on arising matters that need decision making (Ricketts & Ricketts, 2010, p.30).

In the absence of effective communication skills, important opinions of employees may be left out; whereas, this style is ineffective with unskilled employees. Sensitive information may be shared with employees, which may cost an organization if such information is leaked to competitors.

Conclusion

In today’s competitive world, an effective type of leadership is essential in any organization. Therefore, for a leader to drive employees towards achieving the organization’s goals and objectives, he has to maintain good relations with his employees, while working with them. Therefore, participative leadership addresses employees’ interests and a manager gains trust of his subordinates.

These quality relations drive employees towards attaining the organization’s objectives. Participative leadership is an effective leadership, as employees are able to utilize their skills to the fullest, leading to increased employee output.

References

Dubrin, A. (2008). Essentials of Management. Edition 8. OH: Cengage Learning Publisher.

Griffin, R. (2006). Principles of Management. OH: Cengage Learning Publishers.

Pride, W., Hughes, R. and Kapoor, J. (2011). Business. Edition 11. OH: Cengage Learning Publishers.

Ricketts, C. and Ricketts, J. (2010). Leadership: Personal Development and Career Success. Third edition. OH: Cengage Learning Publisher.

Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2011). Organizational behavior. 14^th edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Yukl, G. (2010). Leadership in organizations. Seventh edition. NJ: Prentice hall publishers.

Yukl, G. (2008). The Importance of Flexible Leadership, UAlbany. San Francisco, CA. Web.

Click Here To Order Now!