S/he will just tell the team or individuals what s/he wants to be done, when to do it and even how to do it without consultation from the team members. If you are short of time this might be the best way to get your employees motivated. People see this style of leadership as the wrong way of motivating individuals and leaders using this style can appear bossy. Some also argue that this style of leadership must be used sparingly and the best way of motivating your team would be to use the democratic style. • Democratic This leadership style is used when the leader wants to involve the team members in the decision making process.
Decision making with your employees will let them gain respect for the leader and become more determined. This style will bring strength between you and your employees. Laissez-Faire-This style is used when the leader is lazy or distracted, it’s more of a you do what you want style. This style can be used when the team is highly capable and motivated, it’s when the team doesn’t need close monitoring or supervision. This style can cause failure when the leader expects the group to make the decision between themselves when they are un sure about what they need to achieve and how they need to accomplish the task.
Leaders have to set the standard by being empathic, supportive and use a range of different leadership styles to develop and maintain the team, they also have be fair and consistent, as workers that feel they are unfairly treated by a manager will not show loyalty and will do the minimum. The leader also has to demonstrate capability and experience, as having workers that are more highly achieving than the leader breeds resentment. Tuckman (1965) described the stages of team development as ‘Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. As teams travel through these stages trust, respect and understanding of individual’s strengths and tolerance of their weaknesses is established. This process allows individuals to learn about each other personalities, coping strategies and response to pressure, allowing for bonds between members to be formed.
Contingency Theories of Leadership To successfully run an organization, many aspects must work together to ensure that everything runs efficiently and effectively. A major part to the effectiveness of the organization internally is leadership among the organizations staff members. But what is leadership and why is it important? We define leadership as the ability to influence group towards the achievement of a vision or set of goals (Robbins et al 2011). Without being able to communicate, direct and inspire people like leaders do, organizations would struggle to be successful as they would not be able to do effectively communicate visions and help overcome hurdles to the best of their ability.
Different Types of Leadership for Project Management The types of leadership or leadership styles are considered as the possible success factors for project managers. It is a skill being ignored in training as it is not easy to measure the leadership style of a person in the situations of training. The behaviour of leadership can be considered as autocratic, democratic, and bureaucratic while being dependent on the situation (Nixon, et al., 2012). The following leadership styles are common in the domain of project management: • Autocratic: The manager of a project is expected to make the decisions while dominating the team members. This approach results in the passive resistance from the members of teams while requiring the consistent pressure as well as direction from the leader for getting things done.
Style 2 Coaching – Leader gives instructions/directions, employee closely monitored leader would make decisions but give explanations to employee; leader elicits suggestions on completing task and supports employee progression, communication from leader with input from employee. Level 2 Competence/ commitment – Employee has some/limited competence, knowledge, experience and training but low commitment for task. Style 3 Supporting – Leader would not give instructions on how to do task but supports, encourages, employee makes decisions in agreement with leader, two way communication between leader/employee. Level 3 Competence/commitment -
Different leadership styles will each have a different effect on how a service runs. The autocratic leadership style is often seen as the classical approach. An autocratic leader likes to feel that they have complete power over their employees. The workforce will not be invited to put forward their views or ideas. Even if these views or ideas are beneficial to the team.
The appropriate form depends on the kind of task or environment one is dealing with. Effective leader know that there is no one best way to manage people. Instead, they adapt their style according to the development level of the people they are managing. For example; manager looking to improve their ability to lead people to higher levels of performance need to adapt their style to match the development level of the people they are managing. It is a proven approach that will help managers lead people to their best performance every time.
In my opinion, I think that leadership style does have an impact on subordinates’ performance. In this paper, I am going to look at how leader’s traits and situations affect one’s leadership style as well as leadership styles’ influence on employee’s work performance, , according to Trait Theory and Contingency Theory. Leadership Styles and Traits Leaders’ traits take an important part in deciding their leadership style and their influence on followers. The ineffectiveness of the business may be caused by the leaders’ characteristics and personality. The leader may be too inexperienced for the position or too emotionally fragile.
S2 – Selling / Coaching – The leader still defines roles and tasks, but seeks ideas and suggestions from the worker. Decisions remain the leaders but communication is much more two-way. This style is used in situations where a worker has some competence but lacks commitment. The worker may need direction and supervision because they are still relatively inexperienced. They also need support and praise to build their self-esteem and involvement in decision-making to restore their commitment.