Leadership Styles

On other occasions I have spoken to you about the 6 types of leadership styles
according to Daniel Goleman; this time, emphasizing the quantity, I believe that, in my
way of seeing things, there are more styles.

A leader is a person who influences a group of people towards the achievement of a

goal, while command is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards the
achievement of a common goal.

Different leadership styles will have different impacts on the organization. The leader
has to choose the most effective approach to leadership style according to the
situation because leadership style is crucial to team success. By understanding these
leadership styles and their impact, everyone can become a better and more flexible
leader.

1
Transactional Leadership
This leadership style begins with the premise that team members agree to obey their
leader completely when taking on a job. The “transaction” is typically that the
organization pays team members in exchange for their effort and performance. As
such, the leader has the right to “punish” team members if their work does not meet
the predetermined standard. Team members can do little to improve their job
satisfaction under transactional leadership. The leader could give team members some
control of their earnings/rewards by using incentives that encourage even higher
standards or greater productivity. Alternatively, a transactional leader might practice
“management by exception,” whereby, rather than rewarding better work, he or she
might take corrective action if required standards were not met.

Transactional management is really just a way of managing; or rather, a true

management style, as the focus is on short-term tasks. It has serious limitations for
knowledge-based or creative work, but remains a common style in many
organizations.

2
Autocratic leadership
Under autocratic leadership styles, all decision-making powers are centralized in the
leader; as one might expect, such leaders are therefore dictators. Autocratic leadership
is an extreme form of transactional leadership, where a leader exerts high levels of
power over his or her employees or team members. People within the team are given
few opportunities to make suggestions, even if these would be in the interest of the
team's organization.

Autocratic command is often considered the classical approach. It is where the

manager retains as much power and decision-making authority as possible. The
manager does not consult employees, nor does he allow them to give any input.
Employees are expected to obey orders without explanation. The environment of
motivation is produced by creating a structured game of rewards and punishments.
Autocratic leaders make decisions without consulting their teams. This is considered
appropriate when decisions really need to be made quickly, when there is no need for
input, and when team agreement is not necessary for success.

Many people are offended by being treated this way. Because of this, autocratic
command often leads to high levels of absenteeism. Also, the team output does not
benefit from the creativity and experience of all its members, thus, the advantages of
teamwork are lost.

For some routine and unskilled jobs, however, this style can remain effective, where
the advantages of control outweigh the disadvantages.

3
Transformational or adaptive leadership
Transformational leadership is a style defined as leadership that creates valuable and
positive change in followers. A transformational leader focuses on “transforming”
others; transforming them to help each other, to take others into account, to make
work encouraging and harmonious, and to look “outward” to “see” the organization as
a whole. In this direction, the leader increases the motivation, morale and
performance of his follower group. A person with this leadership style is a true leader
who inspires his team with a shared vision of the future. Transformational leaders are
highly visible, and spend a lot of time communicating. They do not necessarily lead
from the front, as they tend to delegate responsibility among their teams. While their
enthusiasm is often “infectious,” they may need to be supported by “detail people.”

In many organizations, both transactional and transformational leadership are needed.

Transactional (or accountable) leaders ensure that routine work is done reliably, while
transformational leaders nurture initiatives that add new value.

4
Servant Leadership
This term, coined 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, takes
it upon themselves to simply meet the needs of their team, he or she is described as a
“servant leader.” This Servant Leadership approach is about the leader as servant,
with their fundamental role being to develop, enable and support team members,
helping them to fully develop their potential and deliver their best. In many ways,
servant leadership is a form of democratic leadership, since the entire team tends to
be involved in decision-making.

Proponents of the servant leadership model suggest that it is an important way

forward in a world where values are increasingly important, and in which servant
leaders achieve on the basis of their values and ideals. Others believe that in
competitive leadership situations, people who practice servant leadership may find
themselves “left behind” by leaders who use other leadership styles.

5
 Charismatic leadership
The Charismatic Leader and the Transformational Leader may have many similarities,
in this the Transformational Leader can also be charismatic. Their main difference lies
in their basic focus. While the Transformational Leader has a basic focus on
transforming the organization and, quite possibly, his followers, the Charismatic
Leader may not want to change anything. A charismatic leadership style may appear
similar to a transformational leadership style: the leader injects huge doses of
enthusiasm into his or her team and is very energetic.

However, charismatic leaders may tend to believe in themselves more than in their
teams. This can create a risk that a project, or even an entire organization, could
collapse if the leader were to leave because in the eyes of his followers, success is tied
to the presence of the charismatic leader. As such, charismatic leadership carries great
responsibility and requires the leader's long-term commitment.

6
Democratic or participatory leadership
Although a democratic leader will make the final decision, he or she invites other team
members to contribute to the decision-making process. This not only increases job
satisfaction by involving employees or team members in what is going on, but also
helps develop people's skills. Employees and team members feel in control of their
own destiny, and are therefore motivated to work hard for more than just financial
reward. Democratic leadership can produce high-volume work over long periods of
time. Many employees like the trust they receive and respond with cooperation, team
spirit and high morale.

Because involvement takes time, this style can lead to things happening more slowly
than an autocratic approach, but the end result is often better. It may be more
appropriate where teamwork is essential, and where quality is more important than
speed to market or productivity.
 7
Laissez-faire leadership
The hands-off policy style of command is also known as the “non-intervention style.” It
is one in which the manager provides little or no direction and gives employees as
much freedom as possible. They give all authority or power to employees and must
determine objectives, make decisions and solve problems alone.

Does this French phrase mean laissez-faire? and is used to describe a leader who
abandons his colleagues to get on with his job. It can be effective if the leader monitors
what is being achieved and communicates this back to his team regularly. Most often,
hands-off leadership works for teams in which individuals are autonomous,
experienced, and expert. Unfortunately, it can also refer to situations where managers
do not exercise sufficient control. The advantage of this kind of style is only positive in
the case where employees are very responsible and in case of creative jobs where a
person is guided by his own aspirations. In these cases, where less direction is
required, this style may be fine.

8
Bureaucratic leadership
This is the leadership style that emphasizes historical procedures and methods,
regardless of their usefulness in changing environments. Bureaucratic leaders attempt
to solve problems by adding layers of control, and their power comes from controlling
the flow of information. Bureaucratic leaders work “by the book,” ensuring that their
staff follows procedures exactly. This is a very appropriate style for jobs that involve
serious safety risks, such as working with machinery, with toxic substances, at heights
or where large sums of money are involved, such as cash-handling.

9
Informal Leadership
Informal leaders are people who can be found at work, in personal life, in the family or
in a group of friends. They are people who often do not hold a position of
responsibility or act as managers. Therefore, they are not the ones who lead or make
decisions directly. They normally play a prominent role in informal communication and
have considerable power in the organization, in the group, in family environments,
friendships, etc.

10
Constructive and functional leadership
Constructive leaders are those who we understand do not only try to climb a ladder,
but make everyone climb together, but to do so they build from the bottom up and
often grow from the bottom up, so we can detect them as people who make each
member of the team grow, looking out for the good of all, that is, they begin to
excavate the organization from the bottom up, as if we were raising a building
upwards, but around the excavation itself they also build support points until they
become an integral member of the construction that supports the rest of the
organization. We understand that digging is harder than climbing, and that the more
responsibility we take on as leaders, the more weight we can all bear together.

We could use all of these three types of leaders that I talked about in What type of
leadership culture are we promoting?:

11
The leader of the revolver
Normally, in these cases, the leaders point the gun loaded with “fire” bullets at the
managers, directors and executives to remind them that they are still “alive” within the
company, and so on in a staggered manner within the company's own structure, given
that, from one moment to the next, the action can change. They often make them feel
as if they are on the brink of disaster. They focus on activities, such as getting boxes
loaded onto trucks, processing new orders rather than results, achieving goals on time
within budget, or planning the next strategy to increase on-time delivery. In other
words, managers and supervisors who use the gun methodology toward their
supervisors lack the “big picture” of leadership skills.

12
The old school leader
Old-school leaders focus on numbers, facts and data, completely ignoring those who
work for them. The numbers are more important because they think the numbers
show what is really happening in the department.

Although an old-school leader may produce consistently good results, there is no real
strategic plan when he is in charge, as he tends to follow the trends of the previous
months. And if things are working, why change? Anything new he hears about other
reactive managers or how they interpret it in books he tries, but if it doesn't work out,
he gets frustrated, and does the same thing again, without wanting to investigate.

13
The leader of the curve
I call it the leader of the curve because, really, if we think of a reliable environment, of
trust, of communication, respect, and not of fear, it could be called a happy
environment, so the curve is like a curve of happiness, like a smile on our faces. Having
explained this detail, the leader who practices what he preaches is a type of leader
who always puts people before his own successes. These leaders are often seen as
“lucky” by their colleagues, as they seem to have everything going for them, and their
achievements are often impressive. But this is not a result of luck; far from it, these
leaders have worked hard for their success, taking advantage of their greatest assets,
their people, to achieve the greatest benefits.

We can see that all leadership styles have a place in companies, they exist and will
continue to exist. It is from the human resources departments, from the company
strategy, that we must define what type of leadership we want to promote.
In other situations, inflexibility and high levels of control can demoralize staff and
reduce the organization's ability to react to changing external circumstances.

The different leadership styles discussed above demonstrate that leadership styles are
the defining characteristics of criticism of leaders in organizations. They are a mix and
match of several traits, and go a long way in influencing the culture of the entire
company and organization.

These types of leadership styles will influence whether the type of organization is able
to generate ideas in the future and changing markets in which we currently find
ourselves.

 Affiliative leadership. Their motto is “people first,” which makes this

type of leader have an extraordinary relationship with others, who are
approachable and have an important familiarity with their team. However,
he often forgets about results, which makes his style not the most
resonant. He is very good with people, but not so much with results.
This leadership is ideal when the team you are leading is new to you, or
when the team has changed and suffered a lot for some reason. Imagine
a team that has suffered a 50% reduction in its members. Would you be
authoritarian with them or would you regain their trust and create team
spirit and a good atmosphere? Use this equipment to gain commitment,
involvement and achieve a good atmosphere in a team.

 Helmsman leadership. Here the leader tells what needs to be done,

monitors it and corrects it. His role, like that of the helmsman of a ship, is
to set course and maintain it. It is a very effective leadership and
perhaps one of the most used. However, it is not sufficiently effective in
developing talent and enhancing personal qualities, as well as in
inspiring others. In the long run, talent ends up escaping if this leader
does not enrich his style with more resonant ones.