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Leadership style Leadership development is considered as one of the key success of management of organizations and companies. Leadership development is involved in the process of improving managerial skills of leadership, realizing both the nature of each organization and the nature of management team in order to implement the right leadership styles. Academic researchers have looked into different management leadership styles and have come up with wildly known three main leadership styles.
According to Kurt Lewin (1939), leadership can be categorized to three main leadership styles which are autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire. Each type of leadership can be applied depending upon each organization and in some circumstances. Every leadership styles have their own characteristics which have both strangeness and weakness. Therefore the differences of structures and cultures in organization are needed to be considered as well. Autocratic style
The first type of leadership is called autocratic style; this style is used when leaders tell their employees what they want and how they want it accomplished, without getting the advice of their followers. Leader is centralizing the power and limit employee participation. Prescott (1981) mentioned that autocratic is “The leader was seen as the expert who was capable of making effective decisions on most work matters since he dealt with a pattern of recurring work problems”. Autocratic provides management with both advantages and disadvantages.
First of all advantages are mentioned as autocratic can help to reduce stress due to increase control for management. Colvin et al, (1997) Manager has ultimate power to control everything whatever they done. Moreover autocratic manager can help to stimulate poor employee work perform and manager exerts over subordinates improve their working speed. Short term project with complex element and highly technical skills is the most preferable work situation of autocratic. Advantages of autocratic prove to fasten and make the work more efficiency. Disadvantages of autocratic are needed to be mentioned.
While autocratic is enable the faster process of work project in the short term, subordinates or lower work forces miss the opportunity to learn or gain any experience of their own leadership development (Park, 1996) The in- experience work forces will affect the organization in the long term as they are de-skilling by management which will lead to poor decisions and productivity within the organization. However the autocratic can be perceived as having poor leadership skills, manager with poor leadership skills could decrease the effective and leadership ability within the organization. (Adeyemi-Bello, 2001)
Democratic style The second type of leadership is called democratic which mainly involves the sharing of responsibility, workforce consultation and exercise of negotiation. Democratic consists of many characteristics, such as, manager is tend to listen from subordinates and let them sharing decision. (Johansson, 2004) Manager encourages lower workforce to be a part of leader which is involved in leadership development. Manager passes on responsibilities to subordinates then let them take control of their tasks. As the same as autocratic, democratic has many advantages toward organization.
First of all, positive work circumstance, where employees are given responsibilities and are allowed challenging themselves then they feel more enthusiastic. Secondly, there are more ideas and more creativity to solve problem in organization. Thirdly, reducing friction, by allowing lower workforce use their idea they will gain credit which is reducing tension of employees. On the other hand, seeking consultation over every decision it can lead to be slow that can cause miss some opportunities. In some case, managers just pretend to be a democratic leadership.
Managers only want to be appreciated by opening to employee’s opinion; however, they do not really value their suggestion. (Johansson, 2004) Finally employees would stop being supportive to managers as they know that manager simply exert autocratic leadership in disguise. Democratic style can be effective in professional organization where emphasis is clearly on training, professional and leadership development and quality of work performed. (Johansson, 2004) Employees are motivated and being supported by managers and their organization which benefit both party in the long run.
Laissez fair style The last leadership style is called laissez faire which means “delegate” approach. This style is being considered as the less productive out of the three approaches. Laissez faire is offered less guidance to employee within the organization. Employees are left with more independent and ability to work on their own. Managers watch the overall project or final result without any interruptions during the process. (Park, 1996) This method could be very effective if the employees were considered to be highly qualified and skilful in their area of work.
Xirasagar (2008) said that “employees are left to evaluate, analyze and transform issue and problems by themselves”. Laissez faire is suitable for mature and experienced team members who are full of confidence in handling problem and decision. However, the rate of success by laissez faire is pretty low regarding in-experienced workforces or inability employees who could lead to poor work load and lack of motivation. It is required a lot of trust for managers to place most of the decision in employee’s hands. (Xirasagar , 2008) As conclusion, each leadership style has its own characteristic, advantages and disadvantages.
It depends on the motivation towards good leadership and the output of employees that results a dimension for managers to use forward their goals. According to the theory of leadership styles that are mentioned above, it can be implemented in the project. The scenario mentions about placing lap-top campus across the system to the college, democratic style seems to be fitting in the project. This project has never been used before. It could not successful by one person controlling the whole project, there will be many party involved.
As a consequence democratic style leaves opportunities for involved party to be able to fully integrate into their best ability in order to make the system work. It can be simply explained of how democratic will works. Each department is important and related to one another other. Strictly control and definite plan would not work for the new plan implementation, while flexible order and problem solving should be used as part of the success. For example, management comes up with the idea of using lap-top campus across the system. IT system which plans and controls the system, then the team sets up the system on primary basis.
After the plan has been implemented, the team would have received feedback from the end users which are lectures and student within the campus. During this stage, IT is the one who does all the work by managing and solving problems. Then IT system reports back to management team which is the one who takes all the responsibility for the whole project and also make all the decision about the existence of the project in the future. It is obvious that this case study works as a system like in the organization. Management is the top level who takes control over the project while IT is the one who manages over the project.
IT manages and solves the problem. Lectures and student are the end user within the system which can be compared to the workforces of the system. Reference and Bibliography Covin,T. , Kolenko, T. , Sightler, K. and Tudor, R. (1997) “Leadership style and post-merger satisfaction” The Journal of Management Development, 16(1) , pp. 22-33. Park, D. (1996) “Gender role, decision style and leadership style” The Journal Woman in Management Review, 11 (8), pp, 13-17 Adeyemi-Bello, T. (2001) “The impact of leadership style on organizational growth” The journal of work study, 50(4) pp. 50-154. Schou A. J. and Storm P. M. (1980) “Leadership & Organization Development Journal” 1(2), pp . 26-28 Johansson, O. (2004) “Democracy and leadership ??? or training for democratic leadership” The journal of Education Administration, 42(6), pp. 620-624. Xirasagar, S. (2008) “Transformational and laissez-faire leadership among physician executive” The journal of health Organization and Management, 22(6), pp. 599-613 Crawford, C. B. (2005) “Effects of transformantional leadership and organizational position on knowledge management” The journal of knowledge management, 9(6), pp. 6-16