Perfect Position Determining Your Perfect

¶ … Perfect Position

Determining Your Perfect Position

In any environment, leadership is an important skill that helps the leader to create social influence on the followers in order to get their help and support to achieve a common task. There are different leadership styles with each style greatly influencing the reaction of the followers. The first leadership style is the transactional leadership which starts with an agreement of the followers to follow the leader. In this style, the leader has the right to execute punitive measures on followers who do not undertake their tasks and responsibilities. The second style is the autocratic leadership whereby the leader has complete power over their followers. This style is a dictatorship where the followers do not have a right to say anything to the leader other than to follow the laid down rules. The third leadership style is bureaucratic leadership where the leader follows a set of rules to ensure the followers follow them too. The fourth leadership style is the charismatic leadership whereby the leader inspires the followers and motivates them towards the goal. This style requires the leader to carry great responsibility and to have a long-term commitment. The fifth leadership style is the democratic or participative leader who is the final decision maker but includes the followers in the decision-making process. This encourages the creativity and diversity of team members to come up which creates motivation for the followers. The sixth leadership style is the laissez-faire leadership where the leader allows the followers to do things in their own way with the manager giving them complete freedom to do their work. The seventh leadership style is the task-oriented leader who only focuses on achieving the goal. This leader can be autocratic in terms of creating and maintaining performance standards for the followers. The eighth style is the people-oriented or relations-oriented leader who focuses on organizing and supporting the followers in order to foster good teamwork and creativity. The ninth form of leadership is the servant leadership which allows the whole team to be involved in decision-making and to be the final decision maker. The last style is the transformational leader who inspires followers because they expect the best from them. Each leadership style has its own advantages and disadvantages and requires a set of strengths in the person in order to succeed Schneider, 2002()

Personal leadership style

The personal leadership style in this case is the transformational leadership. This is where the leader inspires his or her followers and motivates them towards the achievement of the common goal because they expect the best from everyone. It is my belief that everyone has their own potential and once they realize it, they are able to bring in high productivity and engagement to the team in order for it to succeed. As a leader, the role is to be a role model to the followers in order to inspire and challenge them into taking greater ownership of their work and to understand their strengths and weaknesses and how to use them towards making themselves better people. The leader thus inspires the followers to change their life and redesign their perceptions and values and change their expectations to be in line with those of the team. This leader requires a great deal of trust, loyalty and influence in order for this style to succeed.

This leadership style focuses on motivating the people into realizing their potential. This is the major advantage of the transformational leadership style since it seeks to recognize and exploit the needs and demands of the followers towards skillfully motivating them. The second advantage is that it significantly lowers the employee turnover costs for organizations. This is because this style is tailored on retaining employees since they will be highly motivated and engaged in the activities of the organization. Another advantage of this leadership style is that it creates new initiatives in the team members since they are able to institute and maintain the change that leads them to realize their full potential. The transformational leadership is also advantageous for corporate learning since it helps to teach the employees and change their behavior towards the set goals and objectives of the business. Therefore, the transformational leadership style helps to increase the effectiveness of the team member by engaging them in building and strengthening organizational culture, providing stimulation of their intellectual ability and modeling positive behavior Barling, Christie, & Turner, 2008()

The transformational leadership style also has a downside. The first is that though the enthusiasm and motivation of the leader does help in creating high productivity, it depends highly on the individual and their willingness to change their life and values. This creates a challenge since there may be some reluctance on the part of the leaders to motivate the employees towards achieving this goal. Another major disadvantage of this leadership style is that it creates the potential for abuse by leaders who do not use this style morally. They may use the style for their own benefit instead of the common benefit of the followers. The transformational leadership style also does not incorporate the situational dynamics of the organization and the followers and makes the assumption that they all want to work together towards the achievement of the common goal Tucker, Turner, Barling, Reid, & Elving, 2006()

Comparison and contrast of leadership theories