Achar Ke Vichar - 7 classic leadership styles: time-tested with clear pros and cons

Achar Ke Vichar - ?7 classic leadership styles: time-tested with clear pros and cons

?

Authoritarian/autocratic leadership style

?

This top-down style of leadership is based on the idea that the boss is the boss, and that’s that. If you’re a leader, you make all the decisions, hold all the power, and have little desire or need to gather team input on a day-to-day basis. Employees and teammates are just people who follow orders. It’s a dated approach to management that belongs more in a mobster movie than in the modern workplace.

?

Where it falls short: In just about every respect. Authoritarian structures foster stressful work environments because of their rigidity. People who work under autocratic leaders generally find themselves looking for new jobs before long.

?

Bureaucratic leadership

?

As the cousin of the autocratic style, bureaucratic leadership runs on rules, policy, and maintaining the status quo. The standard procedure always wins out. Proponents of this style will listen to employees and may even acknowledge their good ideas, but if those ideas don’t fit within the established system, they’ll never get the green light.

?

Where it falls short: Because bureaucratic leadership is always beholden to business as usual, innovation is often stifled. This style of leadership is rarely effective in today’s workplace, especially if you want to actually, stand out in a competitive marketplace.

?

Democratic leadership style

?

The democratic approach to leadership relies on every team member providing input to help the team move towards the best decisions. The leader may still ultimately make the call, but it will likely be in sync with the conversations that have been happening across the team.

?

Where it falls short: This approach is highly valued but requires members to be capable of participation. If leaders or employees aren’t active and engaged, it falls apart. Apathy is the enemy of democratic leadership. Another danger is that decisions can drag out for weeks (or months!) while you’re gathering input and building consensus.

?

Coaching leadership style

?

Coach-style leaders look at their team members and see oodles of potential that can be unleashed and tapped into to help the company grow. As such, coaching leadership relies on your ability to connect your team’s capabilities to the right strategic opportunities. Chances are, you enjoy working with a wide variety of people and often make a massive positive impact.

?

Where it falls short: While typically effective, the Achilles’ heel of coaching leadership is that it’s really tough to scale. Leaders simply don’t have unlimited bandwidth when it comes to developing their people and, at some point, the quality of your mentorship starts to go downhill. Additionally, the best decisions for your organization won’t always be the best decisions for individual people’s development, which adds some tension to the equation.

?

Transformational/visionary leadership style

?

This is the style most-often revered in organizations that prioritize growth. Because you’re constantly challenging employees to not just meet, but exceed their goals, this leadership style requires dynamic communication skills to win people over to your vision of what’s possible – both for themselves and for the company.

?

Where it falls short: Because visionary leaders are always tinkering and reworking the structures of the company, employees can suffer innovation fatigue. Also, employee development can fall by the wayside because the leader is always thinking about the Next Big Thing?. Not to mention that even the grandest ideas are meaningless if they’re not paired with action.

?

Servant leadership style

?

The founding principles of servant leadership include nine behaviours:

?

1.???Serve first

2.???Add value to others

3.???Build trust

4.???Listen to understand

5.???Think about your thinking

6.???Increase your influence

7.???Demonstrate courage

8.???Live your values

9.???Live your transformation

?

In other words, you’re the type of leader who is focused on elevating their team members first, knowing that their success reflects well on you and that your own reward will follow. And, chances are, morale on your team is consistently high.

?

Where it falls short: Servant leadership can become a logistical drag. When quick, decisive action is called for, there probably won’t be time to listen deeply and build consensus across your team. It can also be difficult to find the right balance of developing your people and staying focused on your organization’s primary goals.

?

Laissez-faire leadership style

?

This ultra-hands-off style of leadership is purely delegative, as it essentially transfers all authority to employees. You’re always there to hook them up with whatever resources they need, but then you let them run with it while you attend to other matters. This means your team members can take more ownership of their roles in creative ways, which can be so empowering.

?

Where it falls short: Lacking clear direction, group members are left wondering what their collective goals are and what’s expected of them as individuals. This will leave some people feeling like they’ve been cast adrift and disillusioned because they don’t have what they need to succeed.

?

Leaders can carry a mix of the above leadership styles depending on their industry and the obstacles they face.?

#acharkevichar