Abstract
This report explains how the leadership styles suit individual member of a team. It also disuses the advantages and disadvantages of leadership styles and offers suggestions in what situation the company managers should choose to alter their leadership styles. This report concentrated on Goleman .D. 2002 leadership styles.
INTRODUCTION
Leadership styles is said to be the providing of direction, plans and also motivating people. It is important in a firm and does not matter if you manage a company of 150 employees or even if you are the only employee. It is enough to have only one way of leading, different circumstances requires separate method of management styles.
This report, I will give the various ways of leadership styles that will suit and individual in a firm or company. This leadership styles also has his advantages and disadvantages, but it is also important to know that some of them damages organizations in long-term by reducing flexibility and dedication of employees.
This primary aim of this report is to enable you know how all these leadership styles works in our life as we plan leading someday. Some of these leadership styles are directive leadership style which is known to be the oldest, participative, laissez faire and also adaptive, this one works into the environment and individual being.
An article Grown co conference of February 2012 talks about this leadership styles and states: ‘Adapting our approach to consider the context and individual we are working with is important in developing and leading a staff.’
Another article in my research by (Goleman.D.2002) created a six leadership styles and also discovered that leaders used one of these styles at anytime. Though they have their own description, when to use them and also their weakness. They are commanding/coercive, visionary/Authoritative, affricative, Democratic, Pacesetting and also coaching system of leadership style.
Goleman, D. Six leadership styles
The Coercive Leadership styles: This is a system of doing what is said, and this is only use when there is urgency or crisis, the Weakness in this style is that members do not feel free as they are treated like workers, and their opinion is not needed. When a firm needs complete turnover this style is always use since there will be no time for group discussion. Example are crisis or under performance employee or the enforcement of health and safety regulations. In order words short term purpose is what this style needed just for the job to be done, since the impact can be negative.
The Authoritative or visionary Leadership style: This style of leadership encourages people towards a vision. It should be best used when a new vision and direction is needed. The weakness of this style is that it lacks the ability to help members of a team understand when the goal or vision is gotten from. It is known to be the expert in the firm since it sees the way forward, directing the company to success, they lead the team to achieve their goal and this can be effective when there is a new direction.
The Afflictive Style of Leadership: this leadership style focuses on emotional needs over work, and is known to be used for getting through stressful conditions. This leadership styles helps in building a team in the firm, they put the employees first in the agenda in the aspect of encouragement and also feedback, and they also have a good relationship with the team. This style is mostly implemented when there is low morale or poor team work. Encouraging this method will help in providing good team performance. Though the negative aspect can be poor performance going without feedback. In this situation, you must be mindful to adjust this style to get the required or positive feedback when necessary.
The Democratic style of leadership: This style of leadership deals with the pattern of listening to both bad and good news, this helps in getting the required result from employees. The weakness can be, doing a lot of listening and very little action that is effective. It takes team vote to making decisions thereby causing improvement. The key to this is communicating and it can only be done when opinions are listened by group. It is only when the firm is ready for this style that working environment for employees will be good and the level of morale will be heightened. Workers always believe that their suggestions count, due to this thought they are committed in achieving the goals and aims of the organization. Moreover decisions are still to be made effectively and also in a timely manner.
The pacesetting leadership style: this is a method that brings out challenges and also exciting goals for people. This can be used when the team is totally motivated and reliable. It can only be used when the employees are self motivated and skilled. The setup a high level of performance for themselves and also the group as a perfect example of behaviour they seek from other members of the group.
The coaching leadership style: the styles helps people to find their strength and weakness and could be used when individual need to build longer term strengths. This style of leadership helps in focusing in their individual or personal development, and also achieving a goal in their job, this style helps in developing the unskilled members of the team to be successful working closely and also coaching them. This can only be achieved when employees acknowledge their weakness and be ready to improve on it by seeking for more ideas.
METHODOLOGY
This report was conducted with the help of articles found on the Internet, Books, Journal found in the Birmingham university electronic library, it has proven to be academically reliable website. Yahoo UK is also said to be a reliable source as it is a British newspaper. The primary source of information was the internet because of the amount of information or resources such as news, report and can provide up to date information which are important. Most of the information from this report is got from other website where people can openly post their articles, Articles are being referred to but not included in the report, as it is not from a reliable source like Wikipedia have be avoided.
FINDINGS
As explained by grown co Conference of 2010 leaders are expected to treat their employees as part of them, rather than making them feel like they are mere workers in the firm. Several benefits of these leadership styles are:
Coercive leadership style
‘
Democratic leadership styles
‘ It helps to develop peoples skills
‘ It encourages creativity
‘ Members have high job satisfaction which is productive because the team are involve in decisions.
Also in my finding, I discovered that though the leadership styles mention in this report is all helpful if implemented at the appropriate time, they also have demerit which are:
Coercive Leadership:
‘ It kills employees motivation and morale
‘ It can lead to a high level of employees’ turnover.
Authoritative Leadership
‘ Employees are not given opportunity to provide feedback.
Democratic leadership
‘ It is time consuming
‘ There is a delay in decision making
‘ There is a fall if skills and communication are not strong enough.
‘ It leads to hinder situation where speed or affiance is necessary
‘ It does not have direction since different people have different perspective, and could lead to ineffective style of leadership.
Coaching leadership style
‘ This style is said to be disadvantageous when the employees does not acknowledge their weakness.
‘ It does not have immediate result.
Afflictive leadership style
‘ There is a negative feedback from the employees when the leader does not take charge of affair and allows the member to take decision in goals and objective.
Pacesetting leadership styles
‘ In this leadership, leaders’ takes too much work for themselves and resist the issue of giving tasks to other member of their team, making it difficult to finish.
RECOMMENDATION
In my research I discovered that caching leadership style works best because it helps in improving individual performance and also achieving their goals to the goals of the organization. This works well when the employees acknowledge their weakness and wants more development. So my recommendation will go for the coaching leadership styles.
CONCLUSION
The coercive and pacesetting have their uses, it is also important to know that this style damages organizations in long-term by reducing flexibility and dedication of employee. So you must note that it should be in short term frame. In comparison the other four leadership styles has shown to be positive impact on our working environment.
An effective leader is someone that will be able to understand properly at least four out of the six mention leadership styles by Goleman and also can implement this style to suit the situation.
The coercive and pacesetting roles have to be use when the situation called for it.
REFERENCING
Bickerstaff, G. (2012) Grow co conference, leadership styles to master, v012. (Accessed 26th February 2014)
Schultz, Duane p. Schultz, Sydney Ellen (2010). (Accessed on 26th February 2014)
Psychology and work today: an introduction to individual and organization psychology (10th edition). (accessed on 26th February 2014)
Upper saddle river, N.J: pretence hall.p.201 (Accessed on 26th February 2014)
1SBN978-0205683581. (Accesses on 26th February 2014)
Benincasa, R. (2012) how winning works: 8 essential leadership lessons from the toughest team on earth. (7th edition) New York. (Accessed on 26th February 2014)
Murray, A. (2010) six leadership styles that works best. Volume12 (issue1) page2. (Accessed on 26th February 2014)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/78981417/Leadership-Styles (Accessed on 28th February 2014)
http://voices.yahoo.com/the-advantages-coaching-leadership-style-2439790.html (Accessed on 28th February 2014)
http://www.ehow.com/info_8245794_disadvantages-leadership-style.html (Accessed on 28th February 2014)