Various Leadership Practice Styles Exploratory Essay

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Updated: Dec 21st, 2023

Overview: Personal Energy, Self-Believe, and Commitment Impact on Leadership

Leadership is the most essential bit in an organization. Leadership enables the successful achievement of set goals and objectives in an organization. Personal feelings and characteristics of a leader are capable of determining the direction and overall leadership success of a team or an organization.

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Various leadership styles exist, which enable leaders and managers to employ them to achieve the right results during varying conditions or situations.

While these leadership approaches are important, the individual characteristics of a leader, in terms of the self-belief, personal energy, as well as general commitment, play a crucial role in determining the success of the leadership in general.

Leadership Styles

Democratic leadership

This style is also known as participative leadership and encourages employees in an organization to give their contributions as far as the decision-making process in the organization is concerned.1

A democratic leader constantly informs his employees of the things that affect their work, sharing with them the responsibility of solving any arising problems as well.

The leader in this regard should be a coach with the final say, although the information to be used in making the final decision is actually gathered from the members of staff.

This style has the ability of producing both high quality, as well as high quantity of work for a significant period. Because of the trust that the employees receive from their managers, the workers respond with high degree of cooperation, high morale, and team spirit.

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However, the main drawback of the participative or democratic leadership style is the fact that it requires highly experienced employees.

Laissez-Faire leadership

This style is referred to as ‘hands-off’, where the manager offers very little, or in some instance, no direction at all to the employees.2 This alternatively gives the employees a lot of freedom in the performance of their work.

In this regard, therefore, the employees have full freedom to determine goals on their own, make decisions on their own, as well as find the perfect solutions on the problems that they encounter.

Adopting the Laissez-faire kind of leadership, however, calls for a highly skilled workforce, use of external experts to support the workers, as well as trustworthy and highly experienced workers.

Failure on the part of the manager to offer regular feedback and the lack of understanding of responsibilities could easily jeopardize the overall performance of this leadership style.3

Practical Value of a Leadership Style to a Manager

Working situation 1

A large multinational firm with operations that span across several nations may not necessarily require the physical presence of the company’s chief executive officer to ensure operations go on as planned.

Additionally, such an organization will face varying challenges to its subsidiary businesses because of the unique business environment that each country faces. This kind of a working environment would perfectly require a participative kind of leadership to ensure the organization’s objectives are easily met.

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Employing this leadership style would allow workers in the various countries where the firm owns subsidiaries to be the key players in decision-making.

Although the organization as a whole may have its chief executive at the headquarters as the final decision maker, the decisions he will adopt will have to bear the angle of the workers in the branches.

This style has the potential of influencing positive business performance of the organization as a whole because the decisions that will be adopted in each of the countries will be customized for the market.

Working situation 2

A large car company with significant varied operations divides its numerous operations according to departments, including new car sales, old or used car sales, and service related sales.

Workers in each of the departments will be required to focus on their specific areas, which will vary considerably with the operations and activities in the other departments but within the same organization. The laissez-faire type of leadership will be most appropriate in such a working environment.

Because of the varying working conditions and demands in each of the three departments, the leadership should allow the workers to set their own goals, and work towards achieving the goals.

However, these targets should be communicated to the company’s manager so that the expectations are evaluated against the actual performance. Equally, it would allow the overall company manager the many opportunities to plan on the resources needed to help in achieving the results.

Because it will be upon the department managers and their respective employees determine their own departmental goals and targets, this style of leadership will definitely result in healthy intra-organizational competition.

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Situational Variables Likely To Influence the Choice of a Leadership

Personal commitment, self-belief, and energy can potentially affect the overall performance of a leader and the general leadership style adopted.

When an individual leader understands what drives or motivates performance, he gets to understand the potential motivators that could as well influence the workers into providing the desired performance or results.

The organizational culture has the potential of determining the choice of leadership style to be adopted. Organizational culture literally spells out how leadership will be performed in an organization through execution of the numerous organizational processes.

Key influencers of the decision making process and general activities reflect on the things individuals constantly encounter and admire within their social environment.

If a person resides in an area that is socially deprived, there is a high likelihood that such constructs of the social environment would have a bearing on their behavior. Thus, leaders need to get counter-influenced by other stronger values, which will help in positively shaping their overall leadership styles and decisions.

Conclusion

Leaders can employ numerous leadership styles to help them achieve their organizational objectives and goals. These different styles of leadership include democratic leadership and laissez-faire. The democratic leader allows decision-making process within the organization to be provided by the employees.

The leader only collects the suggested decisions from the employees and implements them. The benefit of this style is in the confidence and self-belief that the employees build because of the role they play in making the organization’s decisions.

However, this type of leadership requires the workers to be highly skilled and in possession of significant work experience to be able to make reliable decisions on their own.

The laissez-faire type of leadership is a ‘hands-free’ kind of leadership that sets the workers free to set their own goals and objectives, and work towards achieving them.

The CEO only gets involved in terms of planning for the necessary requirements and offering support. Multinational organizations would perform well under such leadership style.

Bibliography

Daft, RL, The leadership experience, Thomson Higher Education, Mason, 2008

Kunstler, RA, & Daly, FS, Therapeutic recreation leadership and programming, Human Kinetics, Champign, 2010

Footnotes

1 RL Daft, The leadership experience, Thomson Higher Education, Mason, 2008, p. 44

2 RA Kunstler, & FS Daly, Therapeutic recreation leadership and programming, Human Kinetics, Champign, 2010, p. 278

3 Ibid, p. 279

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IvyPanda. (2023, December 21). Various Leadership Practice Styles. https://ivypanda.com/essays/leadership-practice-2/

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"Various Leadership Practice Styles." IvyPanda, 21 Dec. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/leadership-practice-2/.

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IvyPanda. (2023) 'Various Leadership Practice Styles'. 21 December.

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IvyPanda. 2023. "Various Leadership Practice Styles." December 21, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/leadership-practice-2/.

1. IvyPanda. "Various Leadership Practice Styles." December 21, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/leadership-practice-2/.


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IvyPanda. "Various Leadership Practice Styles." December 21, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/leadership-practice-2/.

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