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Part 1: What is Your Leadership Style?

 

Your leadership style dictates so much of how and what you achieve in life. This is why it’s so important for you to know your leadership style and how to adjust it as needed to work with a team, your coaching clients or even as a member of a team.

 

When coaching clients, we have shared that it is important to assess and meet them where there are. This two-part series is designed to give you a deeper understanding of leadership styles – so that you can see where you fall and how to be most effective.

 

You may find a few styles that you align with, which is completely possible, as leadership styles need to be situational.

 

Here are the Top 5 Leadership styles as shared by the Small Business Chronicles

 

Laissez Faire Leadership

One type of leadership style is lassez faire, where managers keep current processes going without intervening. This type of leadership can be used when a new manager takes over a department. However, it should not be used long-term because it does not improve team building. Instead, the manager may want to assess the situation first, until they develop a rapport with the employees.

Authoritarian Leadership

An authoritarian or autocratic leadership is one where the boss dictates they way a department or organization runs, according to MindTools.com. The authoritarian manager seeks no input from the team. Whatever they say is how employees must complete their work. Authoritarian leadership can be highly detrimental to team building. Managers who use this style of leadership do not fully utilize the talents of their workers. Moreover, authoritarian leadership can also reduce employee motivation, especially among high-achieving employees who want to advance into management.

Participative Leadership

Participative leadership is one of the most effective leadership styles for team building. Everyone is given a role within the department. For example, a vice president may form a team of managers from various departments to oversee the roll-out of a new product. All managers will be assigned certain aspects of the project. Finance will study the sales and profit figures; advertising will manage the television and print. A participative leadership style promotes creativity as well as productivity within a team environment.

Situational Leadership

Small company managers sometimes use situational leadership for handling different tasks. A situational leader can be a hybrid of an authoritarian and participative leadership style. For example, a manager may choose to use authoritarian leadership if a quick turnaround is needed on a project. In that case, the manager would tell people what tasks to complete and when they are due. They would not seek any input. Contrarily, the manager may need to delegate more responsibilities if they need to travel for a week. Therefore, they would likely ask employees to make some decisions in their absence.

Transformational Leadership

A transformational leadership style is designed to make drastic changes to a management team. The leader is often highly charismatic and visionary, with specific plans on how to change the department or organization. Transformational leadership can be good for team morale and performance, especially if the company was disappointed with previous leadership. However, transformational leaders must be careful not to change things too quickly. Some team members will react positively to this type of leadership. Others who have contributed a great deal to certain projects may feel resentment, especially if some of their work responsibilities are changed.

 

There are positives and negatives to each style – check in with yourself and see where you are spending the majority of your time and perhaps adjusting that could be the key to increasing your positive outcomes.

Next week we will dive into how to adjust your leadership style, based on where the person or team you are working with is, to support them towards optimum performance.

 

To your Success,

 

Jairek Robbins

 

 

 

 

Source: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/leadership-styles-team-building-4833.html