Leadership refers to the ability of a person to influence other people to do things, which they would not have done without the influence. People with this ability are referred to as leaders. Leaders are found in different settings and contexts such as the family, in schools, government and in formal and non-formal organisations. There are three main styles of leadership, namely transformative, participative and task-oriented leadership.
Transformative Leadership
Transformative leadership involves various aspects, one of them being charisma, which involves, among other things developing motivation, morale and performance of teams through variety of mechanisms.
The charismatic leader connects to the follower’s sense of identity, challenges the team to take greater ownership for their work and understanding the strengths and weakness of the team so that he or she can align it with tasks that it can perform well. Transformative leadership, through the charismatic aspect helps in realising positive change.
This is because charismatic leaders are energetic, enthusiastic, inspiring, motivational and passionate about their organisational success and development. In this sense, the leaders are concerned, involved and also focused on helping every member of the group to succeed.
Transformative leadership has got multiple routes to innovativeness in an organisation. The first one is that it leads to establishment of teams which work together. These teams give themselves a social identity which bonds them.
This social identity and bonding lead to cooperation among the team members in all aspects, which leads to multiplicity of ideas about how to undertake the tasks, consequently leading to innovation within the team. The other route to innovation is that transformative leadership directly leads to cooperation within an organisation whereby the employees do not personalise problems or success.
This leads to innovation because the employees are more committed to the success of the organisation and to them, motivation comes as a result of organisational success, not individual success. Every employee, therefore, brings his or her ideas in the organisation. These ideas are combined and transformed into new ways of doing things in a more efficient and effective manner.
Transformative leadership may directly lead to innovation because the transformative leaders are knowledgeable and possess high technical know-how, especially in research and development.
This knowledge and technical know-how by the charismatic leaders when coupled with their other transformative characteristics directly provokes employees’ thinking on how to improve the functions, processes and procedures of their organisation, thus leading to innovation.
Participative Leadership
In participative leadership philosophy, all members of the team are involved in identifying essential goals and development procedures for reaching those goals. In participative leadership, the teams give their suggestions freely and are involved in decision making.
Morale, capacity and relations between the leader and team are greatly improved. This leadership style contributes to teamwork and employee performance as well as contributing to productive work environment.
Task oriented Leadership
Task-oriented leaders are those who concentrate on the task being undertaken, with the belief that their followers would emulate their actions and likewise commit themselves in getting the task accomplished.
A task-oriented leader, focuses on the tasks being undertaken by the employees to ensure that they pay attention to details so as to complete the tasks in a comprehensive manner. Through task-oriented style of leadership; leaders are able to spearhead the development of their organisations.