Leadership style

A leadership style is a leader's method of providing direction, implementing plans, and motivating people. Various authors have proposed identifying many different leadership styles as exhibited by leaders in the political, business or other fields. Studies on leadership style are conducted in the military field, expressing an approach that stresses a holistic view of leadership, including how a leader's physical presence determines how others perceive that leader. The factors of physical presence in this context include military bearing, physical fitness, confidence, and resilience. The leader's intellectual capacity helps to conceptualize solutions and to acquire knowledge to do the job. A leader's conceptual abilities apply agility, judgment, innovation, interpersonal tact, and domain knowledge. Domain knowledge encompasses tactical and technical knowledge as well as cultural and geopolitical awareness. Daniel Goleman (2000) in his article 'Leadership that Gets Results' talks about six styles of leadership. A leadership style is a leader's method of providing direction, implementing plans, and motivating people. Various authors have proposed identifying many different leadership styles as exhibited by leaders in the political, business or other fields. Studies on leadership style are conducted in the military field, expressing an approach that stresses a holistic view of leadership, including how a leader's physical presence determines how others perceive that leader. The factors of physical presence in this context include military bearing, physical fitness, confidence, and resilience. The leader's intellectual capacity helps to conceptualize solutions and to acquire knowledge to do the job. A leader's conceptual abilities apply agility, judgment, innovation, interpersonal tact, and domain knowledge. Domain knowledge encompasses tactical and technical knowledge as well as cultural and geopolitical awareness. Daniel Goleman (2000) in his article 'Leadership that Gets Results' talks about six styles of leadership. The authoritative leadership style particularly emphasises the distinction between authoritarian leaders and their followers. These types of leaders make sure to only create a distinct professional relationship. They regard direct supervision as fundamental in maintaining a successful environment and followership. Authoritarian leadership styles often follow the vision of those that are in control, and may not necessarily be compatible with those that are being led. Authoritarian leaders focus on efficiency, potentially seeing other styles, such as a democratic style, as a hindrance on progress. Examples of authoritarian leadership: a police officer directing traffic, a teacher ordering a student to do their assignment, and a supervisor instructing a subordinate to clean a workstation. All of these positions require a distinct set of characteristics that give the leader the position to get things in order or to get a point across. Authoritarian traits include: setting goals individually, engaging primarily in one-way and downward communication, controlling discussion with followers, and dominating interactions. Several studies have confirmed a relationship between bullying, on the one hand, and an autocratic leadership and an authoritarian way of settling conflicts or dealing with disagreements, on the other. An authoritarian style of leadership may create a climate of fear, leaving little or no room for dialogue, and where subordinates may regard complaining as futile. As such, authoritarian styles have sometimes been associated with reduced group-member satisfaction relative to more democratic leadership styles. Authoritarian leadership became trendy for a period in the inter-war years - witness for example Stalin, Mussolini and Pilsudski. The way a paternalistic leader works is by acting as a parental figure by taking care of their subordinates as a parent would. In this style of leadership the leader supplies complete concern for his followers or workers. In return he receives the complete trust and loyalty of his people. Workers under this style of leader are expected to become totally committed to what the leader believes and will not strive off and work independently. The relationship between these co-workers and leader are extremely solid. The workers are expected to stay with a company for a longer period of time because of the loyalty and trust. Not only do they treat each other like family inside the work force, but outside too. These workers are able to go to each other with any problems they have regarding something because they believe in what they say is going to truly help them. One of the downsides to a paternalistic leader is that the leader could start to play favorites in decisions. This leader would include the workers more apt to follow and start to exclude the ones who were less loyal. In today's market paternalism is more difficult to come by according to Padavic and Earnest who wrote 'business dimensional and Organizational Counseling.' They believe this because there have become more lay-offs and stronger unionization. This affects paternalistic leaders because the co-workers may not believe that their jobs are 100% ensured. When this happens, workers begin to look for bigger and better job opportunities instead of staying at one company for a longer period of time. Because of this, the leader may be thinking that you could be leaving and not fully believe you when you tell them something about a job opportunity. This could put the workers and leader at risk for a bad situation. According to B. M. Bass, who wrote Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations, workers who follow paternalistic leadership also have better organization skills. The leader encourages organization because they allow the workers to complete tasks so that they can stay on top of their work. The workers complete tasks this boosts self-confidence and it makes them work harder to reach a goal and exceed the goal to prove to their boss they are working hard. Having this style of leadership can also help implement a reward system. This system will allow their workers to work even better because there is something for them at the end of the tunnel. While doing this they will also be able to accomplish more work in a set time frame. Even though paternalistic leadership style is practiced in majority of places such as India, South east Asia, Middle East and Africa, there hasn't been concrete empirical research on the implications of this leadership style due to the pre-conceived negative notions of the Western Literature. These negative notions arise due to differences in the intrinsic cultural aspects defined by Geert Hofstede's study (1980). He stated that North American and Western European countries classify themselves as an individualistic culture that is centred around the principles of egalitarianism, lack of in-group interdependence, direct communication and low power distance. Therefore, from a western perspective, the authoritative aspects of paternalism are not accepted innately whereas the parental aspect of this leadership style is looked upon as an invasion of privacy as personal and professional lives are two separate facets of life. On the other hand, paternalistic leadership style is quite effective and successful in non-western cultures which are collectivistic in nature as these societies look upto their leaders as a fatherly figure and rely upon him for guidance and protection in return of deference and loyalty, thereby aligning with the principles of paternalistic style.