Leadership is an inbuilt or an acquired trait. Exceptional leaders must demonstrate their potential skills during the hard times in their organizations and still grow during those times. Tenacity clearly distinguishes real leaders from ordinary managers. A true leader should not dominate over others, but he must positively influence those he leads, give them a sense of direction to act responsibly, and achieve goals successfully.
We have examples of great leaders with exceptional leadership traits in giving direction, implementing plans, and motivating people. Great leaders exhibit the following traits:
• Self-confidence • Intelligence • High ambition • Highly skilled in their job • Have high energy levels • Have an urge to lead • Honesty and flexibility Organizational Leadership Styles
These can be broadly grouped into five different categories:
• Authoritarian Leadership • Delegative Leadership • Transformational Leadership • Transactional Leadership • Participative Leadership
- Authoritarian Leadership: This style of leadership is rigid and dictatorial. Such leaders impose their thoughts and expectations on others and anticipate defined outcomes or results. Authoritarian leadership works best if the leader is highly skilled and the most knowledgeable individual in the team. Rigid leadership is efficient in time-constrained situations where team members need clear procedures to perform their duties.
Advantages of Authoritarian Leadership:
- Less time spent on making a critical decision
- A leader in the main chain of command
- Reduced mistakes
- Produces steady results
Disadvantages of Authoritarian Leadership:
- Strict leadership may lead to a high employee turnover rate or rebellion
- Rigid leadership kills employee innovation and creativeness
- It reduces morale and teamwork effort
- Overlooks group input
- Delegative leadership or laissez-faire leadership: focuses on assigning tasks to team members. This type of leadership requires skilled and competent team members. This leadership style works if team members take responsibility for their assigned tasks to achieve the team's overall goal.
Advantages of Delegative Leadership:
- Builds a favorable work environment
- Requires dedication from all team members involved
- Quick turnaround if all members deliver targets on time
- Suitable for seasoned employees
Disadvantages of Delegative Leadership:
- Lazy employees may not meet the shared responsibility
- Requires highly skilled employees who follow set rules and guidelines to the letter
- Over-reliance on a few team members to deliver organizational goals
- Transformational Leadership: the leader inspires his team members with positive affirmations and a clear vision, and then empowers everyone to achieve his dream.
Advantages of Transformational Leadership:
- Highly values corporate vision
- Lower turnover rate
- Employees feel empowered to achieve company goals
- Uses emotion and inspiration to evoke team spirit/cooperation
- It places high value on team relations
Disadvantages of Transformational Leadership:
- Leaders influence employees to think like them
- Employees require consistent motivation to perform
- Employees have to feel empowered to perform.
- Transactional leadership: Managers use rewards or "transactions" to get employees to complete their tasks or get the job done. This leadership is mainly seen in sales jobs where leaders set goals and expect results due to the rewards on offer. It's a give-and-take situation. This carrot and stick leadership style follows procedures to achieve set targets. In the end, both the leader and the team members deliver results since there are invested in the business.
Advantages of Transactional leadership:
- Managers set SMART achievable goals for employees
- Improves employee motivation and productivity
- Eliminates confusion in the chain of command
- It's straightforward to implement
- Employees get to choose a reward to work on
Disadvantages of Transactional leadership:
- It does not favor slow learners/performers
- Empathy is not valued
- Creates a sense of servant hood to team members
- Participative Leadership: is more of democratic leadership which involves teamwork and cohesion. Workers feel involved in the planning process, and they feel motivated to make impactful contributions. Some disagreements may occur when some team members need the right to be heard, slowing down the progress to reach a common goal/s. It can be a time-wasting process to reach a unanimous consensus.
Advantages of participative leadership
- It increases employee morale and job satisfaction
- It inspires the use of employee resourcefulness
- Helps in developing a solid team
- Team members achieve a high level of productivity
Disadvantages of participative leadership
- Slow decision-making processes
- Leaders do not have the upper hand
- Communication slows effort to reach agreeable decisions
- Security issues may arise due to sharing of information