Effective Leadership Styles

Posted by Aleksandar M. Velkoski on November 15, 2009 under General Leadership | Be the First to Comment

As we have stated many time here at The Prime Leader, there is more than one way to effectively lead people. In fact, there are several commonly recognized leadership styles that can have a positive impact on a leader’s effectiveness. Learning the difference between the styles and determining which is best suited for you, and which is best suited for the situation that you face, is the first step towards becoming an effective leader.

First, it is critical that a leader carefully review their strengths and weaknesses. Leadership traits like communication, vision, strategy and the ability to motivate should all be carefully considered. Once a leader has a clear view of their abilities, determining the most effective leadership style is easy.

• Laissez Faire Leadership: This leadership style is defined by the ‘hands off’ approach. Leaders who utilize this style typically have a team of highly trained and effective employees who do not need to be micromanaged.

• Autocratic Leadership: Once popular, the autocratic leadership style has begun to experience a fall in popularity. This style advocates ‘laying down the law‘ and is sometimes likened to Medieval Europe and the feudal lords who ruled the land. Although this leadership style is often viewed as negative, it can be effective in certain situations.

• Participative Leadership: Participative Leadership is quickly becoming the most popular leadership style. This style blends the ‘hands off’ approach with a degree of micromanaging, and when done correctly offers the best of both worlds. Employees realize that they must self-motivate and complete assigned projects and tasks on their own, but know their manager or ‘leader’ will be available to assist them with direction as needed.

It is interesting to note that some (maybe even most) people will not accept a new manager as a ‘leader’ until they have earned that title; therefore, effective leaders need to take steps toward modifying, and integrating, their leadership style appropriately into the various organizations that they operate (we’ll take a closer look at emergent leadership in a few weeks).

Great leaders take the best of various leadership styles and mold them to fit their particular needs and position. They also, some would argue, need to rigidly adhere to the style they have chosen (hopefully a blended style), allowing their employees to experience a level of certainty and reliability from their managers.  In other words, if an employee took the same action twice he shouldn’t receive two different responses from his manager.

Leadership style is as much dependent on personality as it is theory. Carefully determining what style works best for you in a given situation is an important step toward becoming an effective leader.

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