What is your leadership style?

Although people start notifying the difference between leadership and management, the public often mistakes leadership and management as the same thing, but they are very different.

The main variance between the two is that leaders have people who follow them while managers work for them. Mainly in small businesses, to be successful, the requirement to be both manager and a strong leader to get their team on board with working towards their vision of accomplishment.

Leadership is around getting people to comprehend and believe in the organization’s vision and achieve goals. At the same time, management is more about administering and making sure the day-to-day activities are happening as they should. For an organization to be successful, it requests management to coordinate, organize, and plan its staff while also motivating and inspiring them to perform to the best of their ability.

Leadership skills consist of influencing, motivating, and enabling others to contribute toward organizational success. Leadership refers to an individual’s ability, like most life abilities, earned through practice and hard work. However, there are many different ways to be a good leader. The necessary skills include problem-solving and decision making, planning, meeting management, delegation, communications, and self-managing. Those essentials are also the foundation from which to develop more advanced practices in leadership and management.

On the other hand, Management skills consist of planning, prioritizing, and organizing work efforts to accomplish objectives within a business organization, enclosing controlling a group or a set of entities to achieve a goal.

What separates managers from leaders is the inspiration and influence, not control and power. Great leaders often incorporate different types of management styles at different times. So what is the difference between management styles and leadership styles?

A management style is a particular way that managers go about accomplishing these goals. It includes how they make decisions, organizes and plan work, and exercise authority.

A leadership style refers to the leaders’ characteristic behaviors when motivating, guiding, directing, and managing people. Great leaders can inspire social change and political movements. They can also motivate others to create, innovate, and perform. Dr. Peter Northouse, a Leadership theory scholar, defines leadership as “a process whereby one person influences a group to achieve a common goal.” This definition clarifies that leadership is not a trait or behavior, and it is not a position.

What are the leadership styles?

A leadership style is a leader’s technique of implementing plans, motivating people, and providing direction. Many authors have proposed identifying diverse leadership styles exhibited by leaders in the business, political, or other fields. Studies on this style are conducted in the military, expressing an approach that stresses a complete view of leadership, including how a leader’s presence determines how others observe that leader. A leader’s conceptual abilities apply innovation, judgment, innovation, domain knowledge, and interpersonal tact. Domain knowledge encompasses technical knowledge and tactical as well as geopolitical awareness and cultural.

 In the mid-19th century, way back, the Great Man Theory was considered “Man” only was great enough to have leadership abilities.

No female empowerment in the 1800s was never scientifically proven, but everyone should say, “man,” agreed that the only male had the right characteristics to be leaders. They also theorized that we are born with management traits rather than having the ability to learn them.

In early 1939, Kurt Lewin led a team of researchers to identify different leadership styles. While further research has identified more distinct leadership types, this early study was significant and established three main leadership styles that have triggered more defined leadership models.

In Lewin’s study, children were assigned into three groups, one of the groups with a democratic, laissez-faire leader, or authoritarian. The children were then led in a crafts and art project while researchers observed children’s behavior in response to the different leadership styles. The researchers found that democratic leadership is inclined to be the most effective at inspiring followers to perform well.

In addition to the three theories identified by Lewin and his team in the middle of the last century, the study of leadership has grown; researchers have described numerous other characteristic patterns of leadership theories and frameworks for discovering what it means to be a leader. A few of the best-known include Leader-Member Exchange Theory, Adaptive Leadership, Strengths-Based Leadership, Servant Leadership, The Blake-Mouton Managerial Grid, Path-Goal Theory, Six Emotional Leadership Styles, Flamholtz and Randle’s Leadership Style Matrix, The Tannenbaum Schmidt Leadership Continuum, Bureaucratic Leadership, Charismatic Leadership, Strategic Leadership, Coach-Style Leadership.

Early theories about leadership and management style focused primarily on how authority was exercised. Based on studies carried out at the University of Michigan in the 1950s, Rensis Likert identified four different styles:

• Authoritative/exploitative – the leader has confidence or little trust in his subordinates, manages by issuing instructions, and uses punishment and fear as motivators.
• Authoritative/benevolent – the leader has some trust in his team members but treats them in a paternalistic and condescending manner.
• Consultative – the leader shows confidence and trust towards subordinates, pursues their ideas and opinions, but retains decision making power.
• Participative – the leader fully trust his team members, acts and seeks their thoughts, and involves them in setting objectives

Likert’s research suggested that participative and consultative styles were useful, but he did not reflect the context that management was being carried out.

Authoritarian Leadership (Autocratic)

Autocratic leaders, also known as authoritarian leaders, provide clear expectations for what needs, how and when it should be done. That leadership style is strongly focused on both control of the followers and command by the leader. There is also a division between the members and the leader. Authoritarian leaders make decisions independently, with little input from the rest of the group.

Scholars found that decision-making was less creative under this type of leadership. Dr. Lewin concluded that it is harder to change from an authoritarian style to a democratic style than vice versa. Misuse of this method is usually making followers viewing the leader as bossy, controlling, and dictatorial.

The authoritarian theory applies to situations where there is little time for group decision-making or where the leader is the most knowledgeable group member. The autocratic method can be a good one when the situation calls for quick decisions and critical actions. Still, it inclines to create hostile environments and even dysfunctional, often pitting followers against the domineering leader.

Participative Leadership (Democratic)

Lewin’s study found that democratic leadership, also known as participative leadership, is typically the most effective leadership style. The democratic leader offers guidance to group associates, but they also participate in it and allow input from other members. In Lewin’s study, schoolchildren in this group were less productive than the authoritarian group members, but their assistances were of a higher quality.

Participative leaders encourage members to participate but retain the final say in the process of decision-making. The members are more creative and motivated and feel engaged in the process. Participative leaders tend to make followers feel like they are an essential part of the team, fostering a commitment to their goals.

Laissez-Faire Leadership (Delegative)

Lewin found that children under this type of leadership, also known as delegative leadership, were the least productive of all three groups. In this group, the schoolchildren also made more demands on the leader, showed little collaboration, and could not work independently.

Laissez-Faire leaders offer no or little guidance to group members and leave the decision-making up to them. While this style can be useful in conditions involving qualified experts, it frequently drives to a lack of motivation and poorly defined roles.

Lewin noted that Delegative Leadership inclined to result in teams that lacked direction and members who blamed others for mistakes produced less work, made less progress, and refused to accept personal responsibility.

Transformational Leadership

Transformational leaders can direct positive changes in groups and inspire and motivate followers. It is the single most effective style. James V Downton first used the term ‘transformational leadership’ in 1973 and was popularized by James MacGregor Burns in his 1978 book Leadership. It has significantly impacted how modern leaders behave. These leaders tend to be energetic, passionate, and emotionally intelligent. They are committed to aiding the organization in achieving its objectives and helping group members fulfill their potential.

Research shows that this leadership style results in more improved group satisfaction and higher performance than other styles. A single study also found that transformational leadership led to enhanced well-being between members.

Transactional Leadership

In the 1970s and 1980s, the transactional leadership style was leading. This is based on an interchange between follower and leader where the interests of both parties are served. The efforts made by followers to achieve organizational aims are exchanged for specific rewards, which may be non-financial or financial.

The transactional leadership model views the leader-follower relationship as a transaction. By accepting a position as a group member, the individual has approved to obey the leader. In many situations, this involves the transaction, and the employee-employer relationship focuses on the follower completing required responsibilities in exchange for monetary compensation.

One of the key advantages of this style is that it creates clear roles. People know what they are obliged to do and what they will get in return. This leadership style allows leaders to offer a great deal of direction and supervision if needed.

Members may also be motivated to achieve well to obtain rewards. One of the most significant downsides is that the transactional leadership style tends to stifle out-of-the-box thinking and creativity.

Situational Leadership

Situational theories of leadership stress the critical influence of the situation and the environment on leadership. Hersey and Blanchard’s leadership styles are one of the best-recognized situational theories. First published in 1969, this style describes four primary styles of Leadership; Telling, Selling, Participating, Delegating.

Blanchard expanded upon the original Blanchard and Hersey model to emphasize how learners’ developmental and skill level influences the style that leaders should use. Blanchard’s SLII leadership styles model also described four different leading styles: Directing, Coaching, Supporting, Delegating.

Action-centered leadership

Another situational approach to leadership is action-centered leadership, made famous by John Adair. Action-centered leadership is perhaps more of an approach than a style. Still, it is very widely-taught in leadership and management courses and used by leaders globally, mainly in the United Kingdom.

Adair proposes that leaders need to be attentive to individual needs, group needs, and task needs. The best influential leaders balance all three areas, as verified by the Venn diagram. However, the leader may need to contrast the degree of emphasis given to each of the three gears in response to the situation at any time.

Leader-Member Exchange Theory

The individualized concern concept has some carry-over to our second theory, Leader-Member Exchange Theory (LMX). To understand this model, a leader only needs to think back to junior high; almost every scholar could be separated into two categories, unpopular or popular.

LMX theory explains that in any organization or group, there are out-group members and in-group members. Out-group members may hold dissenting opinions; they are less compatible with the leader; they may hold dissenting opinions, be less willing to take on extra assignments, or have clashing personalities. In-group members have a personality that fits with the leader’s, work well with the leader, and are often willing to accept extra responsibilities or tasks. Not surprisingly, in-group members are more likely to earn promotions; out-group members are more likely to leave.

Adaptive Leadership

One of the freshest leadership theories to emerge says that a leader mobilizes individuals to take on tough challenges, like inclusiveness. Adaptive tasks are challenges where solutions are not willingly apparent.

Leaders with this style make a distinction between authority and leadership. Authority requires power, and it is positional; Leadership, in contrast, requires the ability to mobilize influence. In the adaptive leadership style, the leaders are individuals who get results through their influence.

Strengths-Based Leadership

Running through many of these theories is the clue of strengths, attributes, or qualities that make an individual or a group successful. The leader often values in-group members for their exact strengths. When a leader gives the work back to the people, the leader gesticulates trust in the people’s competency and strengths.

Strengths-Based leadership is the concept of leveraging and identifying individual strengths and others’ strengths to achieve results.

The Blake-Mouton Managerial Grid

Working in the 1950s and 60s, Robert R Blake and Jane S Mouton identified two managerial behavior drivers: focusing on getting the job done and concern for the people involved. It highlights the most appropriate style to use, based on the concern for production/tasks and concern for people.

With a people-oriented style, the focus on supporting, developing, and organizing the team. This participatory style inspires creative collaboration and good teamwork.

With task-oriented leadership, the focus is on getting the job done, defining the roles required, putting structures in place, monitoring, planning, and organizing work.

According to this style, the best model to use is one that has both an excellent concern for the task and a severe concern for people – it argues that it should target both, rather than trying to counterbalance one against the other.

Path-Goal TheoryPath-Goal Theory, published in 1971, helps the leader think about what his team members want and need.

With Path-Goal Theory, Leaders can identify the best leadership approach based on their needs, the task they are doing, and the environment.

Six Emotional Leadership Styles

Annie McKee, Richard Boyatzis, and Daniel Goleman detailed their Six Emotional Leadership theory in their book Primal Leadership published in 2002. Goleman reported on research into the leadership styles of over 3,000 executives worldwide carried out by consulting firm Hay McBer.

The theory highlights the weaknesses and strengths of six common styles – Coaching, Democratic, Affiliative, Visionary, Commanding, and Pacesetting. It also shows how each model can affect the emotions of the members.

Flamholtz and Randle’s Leadership Style Matrix

It was published in 2007. Flamholtz and Randle’s Leadership Style Matrix show the best model to use, based on how programmable or “creative” the task is and how capable individuals are working autonomously.

The matrix is separated into four quadrants; each quadrant identifies two possible styles that will be effective for a given situation, ranging from “benevolent autocratic/ autocratic” to “laissez-faire/ consensus.”

The Tannenbaum Schmidt Leadership Continuum

In the 1950s, Warren H Schmidt and Robert Tannenbaum made an early contribution to the literature on leadership styles. They looked at the level to which a manager exerts authority or control and how subordinates have the freedom to act on their initiative. They suggested a ‘leadership continuum’ consisting of seven phases, moving from a situation where the leader takes all decisions to a context where the leader permits team members to make decisions independently within pre-designated limits. Seven styles are identified: shows, persuades, tells, consults, shares, involves, and asks.

They further suggested that a good leader judge the team’s capabilities and move between points on the continuum accordingly. Over time, as abilities develop, the manager may choose to accord a greater freedom level while retaining overall responsibility for the work.

Bureaucratic Leadership

Bureaucratic leaders follow the rules rigorously and ensure that their people follow procedures precisely. It is appropriate for work involving large sums of money or severe.

Safety risks (such as working with toxic substances, machinery, or dangerous heights). Bureaucratic leadership is useful for managing employees who do routine tasks.

Bureaucratic style is much less effective in organizations and teams that rely on flexibility, creativity, or innovation.

Charismatic Leadership

It resembles transformational leadership: both types of leaders motivate and inspire their team members.

The difference lies in their intent. Leaders who rely on charisma focus on themselves and their ambitions, and they may not want to change anything, while Transformational leaders want to transform their teams and organizations.

As was happens in the 2008 financial crisis, Charismatic leaders might believe that they can make no mistakes, even when others warn them about their path. This feeling of invincibility can severely damage an organization or a team.

Strategic Leadership

Strategic leaders stay at the intersection between a company’s growth opportunities and its primary operations. Leaders accept the burden of executive interests while ensuring that current working conditions remain stable for everyone else.

It is a desirable leadership style in many companies because strategic thinking supports multiple employees at once. However, leaders who work this way can set a dangerous model concerning how many people they can support at once and the best direction for the company if everyone is getting their way at all times.

Coach-Style Leadership

Like a sports team’s coach, this leader focuses on nurturing and identifying each member’s strengths in their group. They also focus on strategies that will support their teamwork better together. This style offers strong comparisons to democratic and strategic leadership and emphasizes individual employees’ growth and success.

Rather than driving all employees to focus on similar goals and skills, this leader might build a team with skillsets or expertise in something different. In the long term, this leader focuses on creating healthy teams that can communicate well and embrace each other’s unique skillsets to get work done.

A manager with this style might help teams improve their strengths by giving them new tasks to try, offering them guidance, or meeting to discuss constructive feedback. They might also encourage team members to expand on their strengths by learning new skills from other teammates.

Servant Leadership

Servant Leadership style originated in the writings of Robert K. Greenleaf. Servant style requires leaders to place the needs of others over their self-interests. Robert Greenleaf believed leaders have a social responsibility to care for the disenfranchised and serve first; he proposes shifting power to those being led.

Supporters of the servant model suggest an excellent way to move ahead where values are increasingly essential, and servant leaders can achieve power because of their ethics, ideals, and values.

However, others trust that leaders who practice this style can find themselves ‘left behind’ by other leaders, mainly in competitive situations.

The servant leadership style also takes time to apply correctly: it is ill-suited to situations where there is a necessity to meet tight deadlines or make quick decisions.

In the end, people can notice that management and leadership must go hand in hand, they are similar but not the same, and they are necessarily linked and complementary. Any exertion to separate the two within an organization is likely to cause more problems than it solves.

Leaders and managers have to notice that many of the theories are related and do not preclude another’s practice. For example, it is possible to be an adaptive leader and transformational who identifies the strengths of out-group members to get them into the in-group over servant leadership.

It is better for leaders to understanding theories and models of leadership, which helps explain why some leaders and teams succeed and others do not. Leaders can test several theories, or different pieces of theories, in their organization’s petri dish to find what works for them. Additionally, when something is not working on a team or in a company, the leadership theories can help recognize places where a shift in approach might lead to better results.