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Popular Leadership Styles

The document defines and describes 10 popular leadership styles: autocratic, bureaucratic, charismatic, democratic/participative, laissez-faire, people-oriented, servant, task-oriented, transactional, and transformational. Autocratic leadership concentrates power with the leader and is effective only for some routine jobs. Bureaucratic leadership strictly follows rules and procedures. Charismatic leadership inspires people but relies too heavily on the leader. Democratic leadership involves employees in decisions. Laissez-faire leadership gives employees freedom but requires monitoring. People-oriented leadership focuses on developing employees while task-oriented leadership focuses only on tasks. Servant leadership serves employee needs. Transactional leadership relies on compliance while transformational leadership

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Lalit Jha
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143 views2 pages

Popular Leadership Styles

The document defines and describes 10 popular leadership styles: autocratic, bureaucratic, charismatic, democratic/participative, laissez-faire, people-oriented, servant, task-oriented, transactional, and transformational. Autocratic leadership concentrates power with the leader and is effective only for some routine jobs. Bureaucratic leadership strictly follows rules and procedures. Charismatic leadership inspires people but relies too heavily on the leader. Democratic leadership involves employees in decisions. Laissez-faire leadership gives employees freedom but requires monitoring. People-oriented leadership focuses on developing employees while task-oriented leadership focuses only on tasks. Servant leadership serves employee needs. Transactional leadership relies on compliance while transformational leadership

Uploaded by

Lalit Jha
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Popular Leadership Styles – A Glossary

The leadership theories and styles discussed so far are based on research. However, many more terms
are used to describe approaches to leadership, even if these don't fit within a particular theoretical
system. It's worth understanding these!

1. Autocratic leadership

Autocratic leadership is an extreme form of transactional leadership, where leaders have absolute power
over their workers or team. Staff and team members have little opportunity to make suggestions, even if
these would be in the team's or the organization's best interest.

Most people tend to resent being treated like this. Therefore, autocratic leadership usually leads to high
levels of absenteeism and staff turnover. For some routine and unskilled jobs, the style can remain
effective because the advantages of control may outweigh the disadvantages.

2. Bureaucratic leadership

Bureaucratic leaders work "by the book." They follow rules rigorously, and ensure that their staff follows
procedures precisely. This is a very appropriate style for work involving serious safety risks (such as
working with machinery, with toxic substances, or at dangerous heights) or where large sums of money
are involved (such as handling cash).

3. Charismatic leadership

A charismatic leadership style can seem similar to transformational leadership, because these leaders
inspire lots of enthusiasm in their teams and are very energetic in driving others forward. However,
charismatic leaders can tend to believe more in themselves than in their teams, and this creates a risk
that a project, or even an entire organization, might collapse if the leader leaves. In the eyes of the
followers, success is directly connected to the presence of the charismatic leader. As such, charismatic
leadership carries great responsibility, and it needs a long-term commitment from the leader.

4. Democratic leadership or participative leadership

Although democratic leaders make the final decisions, they invite other members of the team to contribute
to the decision-making process. This not only increases job satisfaction by involving team members, but it
also helps to develop people's skills. Team members feel in control of their own destiny, so they're
motivated to work hard by more than just a financial reward.

Because participation takes time, this approach can take more time, but often the end result is better. The
approach can be most suitable when working as a team is essential, and when quality is more important
than speed to market or productivity.

5. Laissez-faire leadership

This French phrase means "leave it be," and it's used to describe leaders who leave their team members
to work on their own. It can be effective if the leader monitors what's being achieved and communicates
this back to the team regularly. Most often, laissez-faire leadership is effective when individual team
members are very experienced and skilled self-starters. Unfortunately, this type of leadership can also
occur when managers don't apply sufficient control.

6. People-oriented leadership or relations-oriented leadership


This is the opposite of task-oriented leadership. With people-oriented leadership, leaders are totally
focused on organizing, supporting, and developing the people in their teams. It's a participative style, and
it tends to encourage good teamwork and creative collaboration.

In practice, most leaders use both task-oriented and people-oriented styles of leadership.

7. Servant leadership

This term, created by Robert Greenleaf in the 1970s, describes a leader who is often not formally
recognized as such. When someone, at any level within an organization, leads simply by meeting the
needs of the team, he or she is described as a "servant leader."

In many ways, servant leadership is a form of democratic leadership, because the whole team tends to be
involved in decision making.

Supporters of the servant leadership model suggest that it's an important way to move ahead in a world
where values are increasingly important, and where servant leaders achieve power on the basis of their
values and ideals. Others believe that in competitive leadership situations, people who practice servant
leadership can find themselves left behind by leaders using other leadership styles.

8. Task-Oriented leadership

Highly task-oriented leaders focus only on getting the job done, and they can be quite autocratic. They
actively define the work and the roles required, put structures in place, plan, organize, and monitor.
However, because task-oriented leaders don't tend to think much about the well-being of their teams, this
approach can suffer many of the flaws of autocratic leadership, with difficulties in motivating and retaining
staff.

9. Transactional leadership

This style of leadership starts with the idea that team members agree to obey their leader totally when
they accept a job. The "transaction" is usually the organization paying the team members in return for
their effort and compliance. The leader has a right to "punish" team members if their work doesn't meet
the pre-determined standard.

Team members can do little to improve their job satisfaction under transactional leadership. The leader
could give team members some control of their income/reward by using incentives that encourage even
higher standards or greater productivity. Alternatively, a transactional leader could practice "management
by exception" – rather than rewarding better work, the leader could take corrective action if the required
standards are not met.

Transactional leadership is really a type of management, not a true leadership style, because the focus is
on short-term tasks. It has serious limitations for knowledge-based or creative work.

10. Transformational leadership

As we discussed earlier, people with this leadership style are true leaders who inspire their teams
constantly with a shared vision of the future. While this leader's enthusiasm is often passed onto the
team, he or she can need to be supported by "detail people." That's why, in many organizations, both
transactional and transformational leadership are needed. The transactional leaders (or managers)
ensure that routine work is done reliably, while the transformational leaders look after initiatives that add
value.

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