Pros and Cons of Leadership Styles

Pros and Cons of Leadership Styles

Leadership style defines the character of a leader when involving a team to achieve a common goal and this process includes directing, guiding, motivating and managing people. Leaders can inspire and influence people to achieve the objectives.

The process of leadership, whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal (Rost, 1991).

We all might have come across many leaders, who have inspired us, but their behaviors and characteristics differ from one another. When each one of them is observed, we can see many differences in their approaches in achieving the goals.

Researchers have identified and developed different theories about these leadership styles for clear understanding. And the major leadership styles are:

·      Autocratic
·      Democratic
·      Laissez faire

Autocratic

This approach provides a clear idea of what has to be done, when it needs to be done and how it should be done. This style mainly focuses on command by the leader and control of the followers.

Shamir and Eilam’s (2005) description of the intrapersonal approach, they suggest that authentic leaders exhibit genuine leadership, lead from conviction, and are originals, not copies.

When leaders know themselves and have a clear sense of who they are and what they stand for, they have a strong anchor for their decisions and actions (Gardner et al., 2005).

Advantage	Disadvantage
Quick decision making and achieving goals quickly	Misuse of power
Keeps group on task	Discourages new ideas
Reduces employee stress	Negative impact on team behavior in long term

Democratic

This approach gives guidance and space to the members in the group to participate in decision making process. The final goal is achieved by the effort of all the members. However, the final decision will be made by the leader with the consideration of other members’ ideas.

‘Democratic leadership aims to create an environment in which people are active contributors to the creation of the institutions, culture and relationships they inhabit” (Philip, 2005).

Advantage	Disadvantage
Encourage new ideas and creativity	Delays and poor decision making by unskilled groups
High commitment from group members	Less efficient
High individual productivity	Communication failures and individual opinion overridden the majority

Laissez Faire

This approach gives little or no guidance to group members and leaves decision making up to the  group members itself, which is a very useful style when the group equipped with highly qualified experts.

Behavioral style of leaders who generally five the group complete freedom, Provide necessary materials, participate only to answer questions, and avoided giving feedback” (Bartol&Martin, 1994, p.412).The concept of laissez was also given by Osborn as “Abdicates responsibilities and avoiding decisions” (Osborn, 2008, p.258).

Advantage	Disadvantage
Motivated for teams with experts	Not suitable for teams with lack of knowledge members
High job satisfaction	Can result poor performance
Encourage creativity and more inputs	Confusion over roles in the group

Conclusion

As per the discussion, every style has its own pros and cons. Hence, there is no one specific style which is perfect forever. Good leaders should be a mix of all these styles according to his skills, team members’ skills and the situation. Leaders can use different approaches for decision making by clearly understanding who he is, who are his subordinates and the situation.

References

Bartol, K., & Martin, D.C. (1994).Management, 2nd edition, published by McGraw- Hill Inc.

Gardner, W. L., Avolio, B. J., & Walumbwa, F. O. (2005). Authentic leadership development: Emergent trends and future directions. In W. L. Gardner, B. J. Avolio, & F. O. Walumbwa (Eds.), Authentic leadership theory and practice: Origins, effects, and development (pp. 387–406). Oxford: Elsevier Science

Osborn, Schermerhorn, & Hunt (2008).Organizational Behavior (10thed.). USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Philip, A. W. (2005). Democratic Leadership in Education. California: Paul Chapman Publishing.

Rost, J. C. (1991). Leadership for the Twenty First Century. Westport, Connecticut, United States of America: Praeger.

Shamir, B., & Eilam, G. (2005). “What’s your story?” A life-stories approach to authentic leadership development. Leadership Quarterly, 16, 395–417.