Hello everyone, in the previous topic we were talking about Communication. Today we are going to talk about Leadership. In this topic, we will discuss – What is Leadership, leadership styles, qualities, and how we can improve our leadership skills.

What is Leadership?

INTRODUCTION

The simplest definition of a leader is someone who engages and empowers others in achieving a common goal. It means convincing people to do something cheerful for which they may be initially indifferent, reluctant, and unwilling to take on.

Leadership is about inspiring others to fulfill their potential and achieve their goal. When we lead a team that has a shared goal, the power of each individual is multiplied by the power of the team so with good leadership the common goal will be achieved more quickly and with great ease than if one individual was working alone.

To be a good leader we need to have the right attitude, beliefs, and behaviors. There we present you some famous definitions of leadership by famous persons.

According to John Quincy Adams, “Leadership means the actions which inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more”.

According to Dictionary Version, “Leadership is the trait that inspires an organization or a group to innovate a new idea to strengthen their business”.

According to John C. Maxwell, “A leader is the one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way”.

Leadership Styles

A leader is a person who influences a group of people towards the achievement of a goal while leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal. Different leadership styles will result in different impacts on the organization.

The leader has to choose the most effective approach of leadership style depending on the situation because leadership style is crucial for the team’s success. By understanding these leadership styles and their impact, everyone can become a more flexible and better leader.

1. Transactional Leadership –

Transactional leadership is a term used to classify a group of leadership theories that inquire about the interactions between leaders and followers. This style of leadership starts with the premise that team members agree to obey their leader totally when they take a job.

The “transaction” is usually that the organization pays the team members, in return for their effort and compliance. As such, the leader has the right to “punish” team members if their work doesn’t meet the pre-determined standard. Team members can do little to improve their job satisfaction under transactional leadership.

The leader could give team members some control of their income or reward by using incentives that encourage even higher standards or greater productivity. Alternatively, a transactional leader could practice “management by exception”, whereby, rather than rewarding better work, he or she would take corrective action if the required standards were not met.

Transactional leadership is really just a way of managing rather than a true leadership 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 the autocratic leadership styles, all decision-making powers are centralized in the leader as shown such leaders are 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 for making suggestions, even if these would be in the team’s or organization’s interest. The autocratic leadership style is often considered the classical approach. It is one in which the leader or manager retains as much power and decision-making authority as possible.

The manager does not consult employees, nor are they allowed to give any input. Employees are expected to obey orders without receiving any explanations. The motivation environment is produced by creating a structured set of rewards and punishments.

Autocratic leaders make decisions without consulting their teams. This is considered appropriate when decisions genuinely need to be taken quickly, when there’s no need for input, and when team agreement isn’t necessary for a successful outcome.

Many people resent being treated like this. Because of this, autocratic leadership often leads to high levels of absenteeism and staff turnover. Also, the team’s output does not benefit from the creativity and experience of all team members, so many of the benefits of teamwork are lost.

3. Transformational Leadership –

Transformational leadership is a leadership style that is defined as leadership that creates valuable and positive change in the followers. A transformational leader focuses on “transforming” others to help each other, to look out for each other, to be encouraging and harmonious, and to look out for the organization as a whole.

In this leadership, the leader enhances the motivation, morale, and performance of his follower group. A person with this leadership style is a true leader who inspires his or her team with a shared vision of the future. Transformational leaders are highly visible and spend a lot of time communicating.

They don’t necessarily lead from the front, as they tend to delegate responsibility amongst their teams. While their enthusiasm is often infectious, they can need to be supported by “detail people”. In many organizations, both transactional and transformational leadership are needed. The transactional leaders (or managers) ensure that routine work is done reliably, while the transformational leaders look after initiatives that add new value.

4. Servant Leadership –

Servant Leadership’s focus was on the leader as a servant, with his or her key role being in developing, enabling, and supporting team members, helping them fully develop their potential and deliver their best.

In many ways, servant leadership is a form of democratic leadership, as the whole team tends to be involved in decision-making. Supporters of the servant leadership model suggest it is an important way ahead in a world where values are increasingly important, and in which servant leaders achieve power on the basis of their values and ideals.

Others believe that in competitive leadership situations, people practicing servant leadership can find themselves “left behind” by leaders using other leadership styles.

Followers may like the idea of servant leadership so there’s something immediately attractive about the idea of having a boss who’s a servant leader. People without responsibility for results may like it for its obviously democratic and consensual approach.

5. Charismatic Leadership –

The Charismatic Leader and the Transformational Leader can have many similarities, in that the Transformational Leader may well be charismatic. Their main difference is in their basic focus.

Whereas the Transformational Leader has a basic focus of transforming the organization and, quite possibly, their followers, the Charismatic Leader may not want to change anything. A charismatic leadership style can appear similar to a transformational leadership style, in that the leader injects huge doses of enthusiasm into his or her team, and is very energetic in driving others forward.

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

6. Democratic Leadership or Participative Leadership –

Although a democratic leader will make the final decision, he or she invites other members of the team to contribute to the decision-making process.

This not only increases job satisfaction by involving employees or team members in what’s going on, but it also helps to develop people’s skills. Employees and team members feel in control of their own destiny, and so are motivated to work hard by more than just a financial reward. Democratic leadership can produce high quantity work for long periods of time.

Many employees like the trust they receive and respond with cooperation, team spirit, and high morale. As participation takes time, this style can lead to things happening more slowly than an autocratic approach, but often the end result is better. It can be most suitable where team working is essential, and where quality is more important than speed to market or productivity.

7. Laissez-Faire Leadership –

The laissez-faire leadership style is also known as the “hands-off ¨ style. It is one in which the leaders or managers provide little or no direction and gives employees as much freedom as possible.

All authority or power is given to the employees and they must determine goals, make decisions, and resolve problems on their own. This French phrase means “leave it be” and is used to describe a leader who leaves his or her colleagues to get on with their work. It can be effective if the leader monitors what is being achieved and communicates this back to his or her team regularly.

Most often, laissez-faire leadership works for teams in which the individuals are very experienced and skilled self-starters. Unfortunately, it can also refer to situations where leaders or managers are not exerting sufficient control. The advantage of this kind of style is positive only in the case when the employees are very responsible and in the case of creative jobs where a person is guided by his own aspirations.

In these cases, less direction is required so this style can be good. This style has more disadvantages because usually, it is the result of the lack of interest of the leader that leads to his adopting this style. It proves poor management and makes the employees lose their sense of direction and focus. The disinterest of the management and leadership causes the employees to become less interested in their job and their dissatisfaction increases.

8. Bureaucratic Leadership –

This is a style of leadership that emphasizes procedures and historical 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 work involving 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.

In other situations, the inflexibility and high levels of control exerted can demoralize staff and can diminish the organization’s ability to react to changing external circumstances.

The different leadership styles discussed above prove that leadership styles are the characteristics that critically define the leaders in organizations. They’re a mix-and-match of various traits, and go a long way to influence the culture of the whole company and or organization.

 

Qualities of a Good Leader

Our beloved Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam also talks about the 6 lessons that leadership gives us they are- When failure occurs the leader of the organization own the failure, When success comes the leader gives it to the team, Leader should have the courage to make decisions, the leader should have nobility in management, Every action of the leader should be transparent and last leader should work with integrity and succeed with integrity.

Leadership traits or qualities of leadership that will be common to all spheres of activity are given below-

1. Courage–

Physical Courage plays a major role in leadership. Even the leader is afraid, they must not show it to their juniors because it is extremely demoralizing. Moral courage is important for everyone. It takes a lot of guts to take tough decisions in any field. It is even tougher to take responsibility for failure. And toughest is to forego credit for the success. A good leader always distributes credits generously around the team. 

2. Knowledge-

Leaders must have a full grasp of their area of activity and employment of all the resources at their disposal.

3. Foresight–

The leaders have to have a long time vision. At the national level, a leader should have to able to see things at least for a decade.

4. Willpower–

Leaders ought to have a clear vision of their objective and the means at their disposal to achieve their excepted aims. It is the force needed to push ahead with one’s course in face of difficulties and conflicting advice.

5. Loyalty–

Loyalty towards superiors peers and subordinates. The leaders have to trust their teams when they are working together. 

6. Sense of Humor–

The leader all the time needs not to take them too seriously. Some room for light banter does not even harm a grim situation; if nothing else it spread positivity for the environment.

How to Improve Our Leadership Skills

Leadership The art of attracting people to follow lead willingly. If no one is following you, then we aren’t a leader, just a dictator going for a walk on our own. To develop leadership skills, consider the steps given below-

• Talk The Talk, Walk The Walk- If we want to develop our leadership skills, we will not only need to speak as if we are the one but also act like it too. We need to think like a leader like what would a leader do this in this situation? How they would react in this situation? These types of questions we have to consider if we want to be a good leader.

• Learn, Grow, Evolve- Leadership is an ongoing process. We should have to learn new skills, improve our academic knowledge; become acquainted with the new ideas.

• Build Networks With Other Leaders- Learn from leaders we admire. Attend events, courses, programs, or any activity related to leadership. We have to surround ourselves with other leaders because they can help us further develop our own leadership skills.

• Personal Reflection- When we begin to lead it’s very important to start recording our own progress so that we can learn from our own performance. By learning from how we lead we will improve and become better. As we reflect back on what we have written or recorded about our leadership we can tweak things so that we can have a solution that of any situation that is going to arises in the future.

• Respect is Vital- We can be a leader in our name but if we are not respected by our own followers we won’t be considered a good leader. Not only that, but we will find that we are under pressure from those that follow us. This pressure can then influence how we make decisions as a leader. Although many good leaders can be forgiven for making one bad decision. Leaders who are not respected in the first place will harshly judge and this can be the beginning of the end for those that start out in leadership.

• Welcome Personal Growth- Our leadership journey will change the way we think. We need to be open to this process. By being open we are going to become a better leaders now and in the future. Many people get promoted to leadership positions and have a set mind regarding how leaders should be. But followers can see that they have a limited ability or attitude towards growth and this can hinder how people who follow them then view them.

So, that is all for today guys see you in our next blog. If you like our article please doesn’t forget to share it with others.

Thank You,

Regards 

Grooming Urban. 

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