Julio Warner Loiseau, BSc.

MPA

Different types of Leadership People are exposed to a broad and ever growing variety of theories that explains the concept and the practice of leadership, albeit, todays leadership experts still cant dare ignore theorists like, Maslow, Smith, Barnard, Deming, Mayo, Fayol, Weber, Hamel, etc who have crafted the most fundamental definitions of leadership and its countless characteristics. Some of the types of leadership were selected to help leadership students and readers understand this concept with a little more clarity. My main purpose here is to provide a brief overview of the more dominant types of leadership. It is important to note that this submission attempts to single out some types of leadership models not all. It is not intended to introduce any new theory. It is posted to help some of you who had requested my opinion about different types of leadership. Autocratic Leadership The autocratic leader is given the power to make decisions alone, having total authority. They stand in master of the people and impose their wills and no one is allowed to challenge them. This is the style used by the Catholic Church for example, dictators and monarchs. On the other end, this leadership style is seems to be good for employees that need close supervision to perform certain tasks. Creative employees and team players resent this type of leadership, since they are unable to enhance processes or decision making, resulting in job dissatisfaction (Lewin, Lippitt, & White, 1939). Bureaucratic leadership The bureaucratic leader believes more in very structured procedures and tends to bend over the pre-established measures rather it was successful or not. This type of leadership has no space to explore new ways to solve problems and is usually slow paced to ensure adherence to the ladders stated by the company. Leaders ensure that all the steps have been followed prior to sending it to the next level of authority. Universities, hospitals, banks and government usually require this type of leader in their organizations to ensure quality, increase security and decrease corruption. Leaders who would like to speed up the process will experience frustration and anxiety and are not welcome (Weber, 1905). Charismatic leadership The charismatic leader leads by infusing energy and eagerness into their team members. A charismatic leader is someone who is often on the run. S/he is not someone who feels pleased with any type of stationary situation. This type of leader has to be committed to the organization for the long run. If the success of the division or project is attributed to the leader and not the team, charismatic leaders may become a risk for the company by deciding to resign for advanced opportunities. It takes a company time and hard work to gain the employees confidence back with other type of leadership after they have committed themselves to the magnetism of a charismatic leader (Weber, 1905). Democratic leadership or participative leadership The democratic leader listens to the teams ideas and studies them, but hold the responsibility to make the final decision. Team players contribute to the final decision therefore increasing people satisfaction and ownership, feeling their input was considered when the final decision was taken. When changes arises, this type of leadership helps the team assimilate the changes better and more rapidly than other styles, knowing they were consulted and contributed to the decision making process, minimizing

Julio Warner Loiseau, BSc. MPA resistance and intolerance. A shortcoming of this leadership style is that it has difficulty when decisions are needed in a short period of time or at the moment (Lewin, Lippitt, & White, 1939). Laissez-faire leadership The laissez-faire leader gives no continuous feedback or supervision because the employees are highly experienced and need little supervision to obtain the expected outcome. This type of style is also associated with leaders that dont lead at all, failing in supervising team members, resulting in lack of control and higher costs, bad service or failure to meet deadlines. In government this is what the type of leadership which may drive to anarchy (Lewin, Lippitt, & White, 1939). People-oriented leadership The people-oriented leader is the one that, in order to comply with effectiveness and efficiency, supports, trains and develops his personnel, increasing job satisfaction and genuine interest to do a good job (Fiedler, 1967). Servant leadership The servant leader facilitates goal accomplishment by giving its team members what they need in order to be productive. This leader is an instrument employees use to reach the goal rather than a commanding voice that moves to change. This leadership style, in a manner similar to democratic leadership, tends to achieve the results in a slower time frame than other styles, although employee engagement is higher (Greenleaf, 1977). Task-oriented leadership The task-oriented leader focuses on the job, and concentrates on the specific tasks assigned to each employee to reach goal accomplishment. This leadership style suffers the same motivational issues as autocratic leadership, showing no involvement in the teams needs. It requires close supervision and control to achieve expected results (Fiedler, 1967). Another name for this is deal maker and is linked to a first phase in managing change, enhance, according to the organize with chaos approach (Rowley & Roevens, 1999). Transactional leadership The transactional leader is given power to perform certain tasks and reward or punish for a teams performance. It gives the opportunity to the manager to lead the group and the group agrees to follow his lead to accomplish a predetermined goal in exchange for something else. Power is given to the leader to evaluate, correct and train subordinates when productivity is not up to the desired level and reward effectiveness when expected outcome is reached (Burns, 1978). Transformational leadership The transformation leader motivates its team to be effective and efficient. Communication is the base for goal achievement focusing the group in the final desired outcome or goal attainment. This leader is highly visible and uses chain of command to get the job done. Transformational leaders focus on the big picture, needing to be surrounded by people who take care of the details. The leader is always looking for ideas that move the organization to reach the companys vision (Burns, 1978). Environmental leadership The environmental leader is the one who nurtures group or organizational environment to affect the emotional and psychological perception of an individuals place in that group or organization. An understanding and application of group psychology and dynamics is essential for this style to be effective. The leader uses organizational culture to inspire individuals and develop leaders at all levels. This leadership style relies on

Julio Warner Loiseau, BSc. MPA creating an education atmosphere where groups interactively learn the fundamental psychology of group dynamics and culture from each other. The leader uses this psychology, and complementary language, to influence direction through the members of the inspired group to do what is required for the benefit of all (Carmazzi, 2005).