Taking a Look at Leadership Styles

In this assignment I aim to outline the advantages, disadvantages and overall effectiveness of the different styles of leadership.

Leadership goes beyond management, for some, leadership is instinctual and pours over into your personal life. This paper will discuss a leader I admire in my personal life, and analyze their leadership style. I will discuss how that leader has influenced my leadership style, as well as how things like environment and the economy affect my leadership approach.

When developing a template to assess which leadership styles are best suited to mitigate the effects of a decline in financial compensation, it is imperative to understand leadership theory. One of the first pioneers in leadership theory was Kurt Lewin. Kurt Lewin (1890–1947), was a prominent figure in psychology in his generation. He provided a solid foundation to the teachings of organizational development. In many circles he was known as the father of organizational development. He was best known for the development of field theory. Field theory was essential because it allowed business professionals to understand why undesirable behaviors was produced. It also taught how to bring about desirable behaviors. Field theory was developed in part because Lewin wanted to address organizational employee turnover.

According to Harold Koontz, “leadership is defined as an art or process of influencing people so that they strive willingly and enthusiastically towards attainment of group goals”.

A leadership philosophy helps to define and let others know what you expect, what things you value, and how you act as a leader. Different styles of leadership are needed for different situations. Every leader needs to know when and how to display a particular approach of leadership within a group. Leadership strategies define every leader’s personal leadership style. Three leadership styles of a counselor are the following: authoritarian style leaders, democratic style leaders, and laissez-faire style leaders.

Urban Meyer is the head coach for The Ohio State Buckeyes football team. He is 49 years old and was born in Toledo Ohio. He attended University of Cincinnati where he played football. Coach Meyer is married and has three children. Prior to coaching Ohio State he retired from coaching was working as a sports analyst for ESPN. Before retiring and working for ESPN, Coach Meyer was the head coach for the University of Florida. He led the Gators to two BCS championship wins and he held the highest percentages of wins for any active college football coach. (www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com).

Mr. Worthy led the division from an office at the top of the building far from the factory floor. He called up secretary two or three times a day to send memos and never went down and spoke to his employees himself. Mr. Worthy has an autocratic style of leadership where he made all the decisions from his office. He had only one-way communication.

According to J. Seyfarth, there are four types of leadership styles: directive, supportive, participative, and achievement-oriented leadership (Seyfarth, 1996). These styles vary from one another, but all may be visible within a school environment. During a recent interview with an elementary school principal, Amy Zilbar, she described her dominate leadership style as supportive (personal communication, April 25, 2013).

To successfully define, enter, and grow the new market segment, combination of team and transformational leadership approaches are highly recommended. This is a cultural shift from the leaders motivates followers by setting goals and promising a reward when those goals were reached; described by Robbins and Coulter (2012) as transactional leadership. Successful penetration of the new market requires a transformational leader with high degree of emotional intelligence, which includes self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill (Goleman, 2004). Transformational leader assesses the resources’ personalities, cultural contexts, and organizational behaviors. Leader applies appropriate leadership

One of the most important tasks any business leader must undertake is a personal assessment. An honest inventory of skills, strengths and weaknesses of a business leader can give insight into those areas that need improvement as well as those that can be accepted and learned to work around. A personal inventory also give the business leader the power of information, which a business leader can then use to create situations that emphasize strengths for more consistently positive outcomes. As a business

When it comes to contemporary leadership one size does not fit all. Contemporary leadership is a melting pot of theories, approaches, models, and styles that helps an individual lead a group or people or an organization. The trait theory is one example. It has its roots in leadership theory that suggested that certain people were born with special traits that made them great leaders (Northouse, 2013). Next is the skills approach which puts emphasis on the skills and competencies of the leader. Then there is the style approach which is strikingly different from the trait and skill approaches to leadership because the style approach focuses on what leaders do rather than who leaders are (Northouse, 2013). Another contemporary leadership

When asking twenty different people, “What is the correct way to lead?”, you will get twenty different responses. Most importantly, no response is incorrect and the variation of responses is expected because there are many ways to lead; every leader has their own leadership style. In her article, Johnson (n.d.) discusses five leadership styles: Laissez-Faire, autocratic, transactional, transformational and participative. Laissez-Faire has a French origin and it means “a policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering” ("Oxford dictionaries", 2016). When leaders take total control, such as making all decisions alone and does not ask for the input of the employees, they are using the autocratic leadership style. This style is similar to a dictatorship. Exceptionally dissimilar from Laissez-Faire and autocratic styles, leaders sometime use the “give-take” system. The transactional style lets the manager and employee agree on a goal and when the mission is completed, the leader will reward the employee for the great accomplishment. The same rule applies if the employee does not reach a set goal; they will be discipline accordingly. A morale boosting style is the participative style. Whenever a leader includes their employees in the decision making process, the employees tend to feel needed and essential. Even though the final decision is made by the leader, the employees’ input and suggestions is considered and incorporated in the final

Leadership is a concept most people feel informed enough to discuss, but that few are truly educated sufficiently to comment on. Therefore, it is instructive to consider the leadership styles of people with very different approaches both to better understand the diversity underlying leadership, as well as to appreciate the effective and less effective strategies that underlie different leadership outcomes. For that reason, this essay will consider the styles of two leaders who are less visible in this highly contentious presidential election season: Jill Stein (the Green Party nominee) and Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate. The leadership styles of both are very different, yet they are aligned in the sense that both are outsider candidates struggling to gain momentum from a disaffected electorate. This essay begins with a theoretical discussion of leadership more generally and then turns to the two leaders as case studies, comparing and contrasting them and drawing conclusions about how they both work within the same public sphere and for putatively similar ends (i.e., gaining votes).

When it comes to leadership, every leader needs to figure out which approach he or she is going to implement in order to meet an organization's overall goals. Based upon my various experiences with leaders in a professional setting, I find that the manager, John, at my first job was one of the most successful leaders I have encountered. John utilized a variety of leadership approaches to ensure that we were efficient in our tasks and duties through coaching and being affiliative in his leadership approach.

This paper is a critique of preceptor leadership methods. I will describe my current preceptor’s leadership style, giving an example of an observed valuable leadership strategy and why I found it to be successful. Shadowed by an example of an observed unsuccessful leadership strategy, how I responded, and a recommended strategy for the situation described. Ending with the type of leader I aspire to be in the future and my final thought regarding leadership.