Understand the Common Types of Leadership Styles

A leadership style mentions to a leader’s methods, characteristics and behaviors when directing, motivating, and managing their teams. Their leadership style is also the defining factor in how leaders grow their strategy, execute plans and respond to changes, whilst managing the expectations of stakeholders and the welfare of their team. As start to reflect some of the people who think of as great leaders, instantly see that there are often huge differences in how each person leads.

Types of Leadership Styles:

Authoritarian leadership style: Authoritarian also raised to as autocratic leaders have clear command and control over their peers. Decision making is centralized, meaning there is one person making the grave decisions. An authoritarian leader has a clear vision of the greater picture, but only contains the rest of the team on a required basis. Authoritarian leaders will be personal when giving others praise but clearly separate themselves from the group. While might assume an authoritarian leader would be unpleasant, this isn’t typically true.

Participative leadership style: Participative leaders welcome everybody’s opinions and encourage collaboration. While they might have the final say, these leaders allocate the responsibility of making decisions to everybody. Participative leaders are part of the team. They capitalize their time and energy in their colleagues' development because they know it will, in turn, help them reach the end goal.

Delegative leadership style: Delegative leaders offer very little guidance to the team. They permit team members complete freedom in the decision-making procedures. Delegative leaders detached themselves from the group and choose not to interrupt the present trajectory of a project. Their comments are rare. Group members even forget what this leader looks like by the time they finish the work.

Visionary leadership style: Visionary leaders have clear, long-term visions, and are clever to motivate others. This type of leadership is best used when there is a big change in the organization. In this case, people are looking for somebody they trust to follow into the unknown. It is less successful when other team members are specialists who have differing opinions than that of the leader.

Coaching leadership style: A coaching leader is able to classify other team members’ strengths and weaknesses and coach them to improve. They are also able to draw these skills to the company’s goals. Coaching leadership is successful when the leader is creative, eager to collaborate, and can give actual feedback. It’s also significant that the coach knows when to step back and give the person autonomy. If ever had a bad coach, then know that coaching isn’t for everybody. When done unwell, coaching leadership can be seen as interfering.

Affiliative leadership style: Affiliative leadership is relationship-focused. The purpose of an affiliative leader is to make harmony. This charismatic leader works to build and foster relationships within the workplace which chiefs to a more collaborative and positive work environment. An affiliative leader is helpful when making a new team or when in crisis, as both of these situations need trust. This leadership style can be destructive when the leader focuses too much on being a friend and is less worried with productivity and organization goals.

Democratic leadership style: All team members are encouraged to join and share ideas. As a result, the team feels authorized, even though the leader eventually has the final say. Democratic leadership is successful in extremely skilled teams, where members can deliver fruitful contributions. It is less impactful for junior teams that don’t have as much experience and knowledge on the topic. It also shouldn’t be used in situations that want instant action.

Pacesetting leadership style: Team members are fictional to follow their footsteps. If team members can’t keep up, pacesetting leaders will step in and complete the task properly. Pacesetting leadership is successful when the leader creates clear necessities and motivates team members to meet deadlines. It’s ineffective when team members lose trust in the leader and become stressed, overworked.

Commanding leadership style: In this style, the leader has clear purposes that they communicate to the team and assume others to follow. They put processes and policies in place to create structure. Commanding leadership is classically used when other team members don’t have skills. In this scenario, the members need structure in order to know how to finish their tasks. It is also successful in emergency situations when there is no time for conversation. This leadership style should be used in combination with the others, if used at all.

Transformational leadership style: In addition to leadership theory and the emotional leadership theory, there are two more remarkable styles of leadership: transformational and transactional.

Bernard M. Bass’s most popular theory is transformational leadership, also referred to as the four I’s. This theory was built on concept from 1978 in which he explained, "leaders and followers help each other to advance a higher level of motivation." In this transformational leader efficiently gain the trust and respect of others who want to follow them. The four I’s of transformational leadership are: individualized consideration, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and idealized influence. The four I’s are used to measure how transformational a leader is.

Transactional leadership style: Transactional leadership was first abstracted by sociologist Max Weber. It was then enlarged on by Bernard M. Bass in opposition to transformational leadership. Transactional leadership uses rewards and punishments to motivate team members. This type of leader trusts that a clear chain of command will lead to well performance. Team members essential to follow instructions and are strictly monitored by the leader.

Leadership essentials training will help to understand what is leadership and its fundamentals and how to excel as a successful leader in today’s context. This Leadership Essentials Training provides knowledge of leadership qualities and the time-tested principles of leadership, and also get knowledge of different leadership styles and the situations when they are effective or ineffective.