Leadership Styles And Characteristics- A Literature Review

Introduction

Numerous explanations and theories have been proposed for many years to describe leadership styles and characteristics. Every organization whether they are a small or medium-sized business required leadership to attain maximum profits. For a prosperous and effective business sphere, leadership is considered as a vital part who delivers the company goals and objectives in mass. 

 

Many researcher and scholar have developed a consensus to analyze the progressive thinking of leaders and thus various theories framework has established. The type of theories applied reflects the high degree of precision-sensitive care and confidence level. 

 

When evident data is collected, it has seen in the global competitive environment, an organization must have an effective leader who will communicate objectives with team members and reduces the attrition rate. Henceforth depending on leadership theory and leadership style, an organization should adopt leadership progressive to enhance employee performances. This article analyzes and summarizes leadership styles, theories, and leadership characteristics.

Discussion

 

Leadership Style

 

Leadership is defined as the process of social influence in which leaders seek voluntary actions and participation of stakeholders to achieve the company’s objectives. Leaders can be a delegate who carry out the operation and efficiently execute them. Today organizations need effective leaders who not only understand the goals even know how to convince the stakeholder. 

 

Swami, 2017 posits his view and said, the relationship between the organization culture and factors affecting the leadership should be explored be it charismatic leadership, transformation leadership, transactional leadership.

Voon et. al explored the relationship between employee motivation and productivity of a Malaysian organization and expand leaders believe in contractual agreements as principle motivators. 

 

Transactional Leaders

 

Transactional leadership is comprised of three major components- contingent reward, management by exception ( active), and management by exception( passive). As per assignment helper Transaction leaders follow a contingent reward scheme; explain the process of performance execution of the followers and appreciating good performances. Transactional leadership often uses in business when employees are successful they get appreciation and when they failed to execute tasks, they are reprimanded. In nutshell rewards and punishments are contingent depend on employee performance. 

 

Transactional leadership actively monitors the subordinate work watch deviation from the work and then rectifies the mistakes. In conjunction with management by exception transaction leaders intervene when the standard doesn’t meet.

 

The subtype of transactional leadership or Laissez-Faire is when subordinates get many opportunities to make a decision. The leaders who avoid deciding on the group often lack direction. At last transactional leadership emphasis detailing the short term goals and standards procedure and rules

 

Transformational Leadership

 

Transformational leadership inspires changes and enables leadership to follow them executively. In most cases, transformation leaders seem to be energetic, passionate, and enthusiastic. James MacGregor Burns initially introduced the concept of transformational leadership and said it can be seen when followers and leaders work together and bring out the higher value of morale and motivation. 

 

Later Bass expand the ideas of transformational leadership defined the impact of tasks on the followers. Leaders with idealized influence demonstrate a high level of self-actualization, self-esteem, and self-sacrifice to achieve the organization objective over self-interest. Cumming et. al 2010 explained regardless of leadership style, an organization that practice transformation leadership had better outcomes than a democratic practising organization. To expand the relationship between transactional and transformational leadership, take online assignment help from SourceEssay experts anytime.

Components of Transformational leadership are-

Intellectual Stimulation: Leaders Encouraging The Creativity

Individualized Consideration: Leader support and offer individual encouragement

Inspirational Motivation- Leaders able to follow the follower passion in the same manner

Idealized Influence: Leaders serve as role model for the followers

Charismatic Leadership

Charismatic leadership is categorized by those leaders who use his/her communication skills, charm, and knowledge to influence others. Charismatic leadership helps the leaders to connect with the people in deep especially those who are valuable assets for the company. 

·         Every charismatic leader pose

·         Strong communication skills

·         Engaging and charming

·         Mean to be a born leader

·         Optimistic

·         And Confident

Charismatic leaders know for bringing change and influence people's thinking on average. They make followers feel heard and understood. But it has also been seen sometimes their decision is based on bias and affect the innovation.

Laissez-Faire Leadership Styles

Laissez-Faire leadership is directly opposite to autocratic leadership in which leaders are handing off allow a group member to participate in group decision making. Assignment writer of SourceEssay said form of leadership requires a great deal of trust. It allows faster decision making, personal growth and moreover encourages innovation. 

      Laissez-Faire leaders follow distinctive characteristics including-

      Hands Off approach

      Training and support provided by the leaders

      The decision left on the employee

      Accountability

Disadvantages

• Laissez-Faire leadership doesn’t define the leader's role clearly
• Sometimes leaders seem to be unconcerned with whatever happening in the group
• If goals are not, leaders tend to blame the team member
• Laissez-Faire leadership is often seen represent the passivity

Autocratic Leadership 

In management style, autocratic leaders control every function of the team. They make the decision-based on their own belief and also don’t involve other members in decision-making.

Characteristics Of Autocratic Leadership

• Autocratic leaders make all the decision
• Input from the team member doesn’t get included
• All the methods and processes dictated by the leaders only
• During the important decision, leaders don’t trust the teammates
• They tend to discourage creativity and out of box thinking
• Instigation of rule and its enforcement

Autocratic leadership can be beneficial when an organization need instant decision making rather than moving into the deep analysis. Like done in the courier industry.

Democratic Leadership

Democratic leadership is based on mutual interest because it is based on the collaboration of people and teammates both. Accepted by researchers, democratic leadership involvement would not be possible without the participation of the team members and leaders. 

Gastil defined democratic leadership as  

Distribution of the responsibility among the team members, aiding group member decision-making ability and empowering each member of the team

To know more about democratic leadership, ask immediate assistance from the SourceEssay do my assignment team.

Theories of Leadership

The Great Man Theory

Over a century ago, the effort towards the exploration of leadership characteristics has been described and defined by Thomas Carlyle in 1847. Carlyle claimed leaders are born and endowed with leadership qualities since their birth. He also said a hero is one who accomplished the goals besides the odd events. Ergo, due to heavy criticism by the beginning of the 19th century, theory name changed into Great person theory as a leader can be females too.

Trait Theory

The early theorists further defined born leaders are endowed with certain traits and personality characteristics that set them apart from the non-leaders. Max weber term them as charisma or the greatest revolutionary force who are capable of producing completely new orientation and complete personal devotion to the leaders.

Situational Theories

As per this theory, there is no single path to lead the follower, in fact, the leader should be focused on the leader and subordinate relationships. In common sense, it is the theory of theorized unsuppressed leadership.

Behaviour And Style Theory

The style theory acknowledges the necessary skills that leaders must pose and serves as enablers for them. The person serving the democratic leadership shows a high degree of cooperation, support, encourage and creativity as per this theory

Process Leadership Theory

This theory emerged as a ray suggesting work of the leaders should be focused on well being of their teammates and progressive growth. Leaders tend to align themselves with the vision of their colleagues. To know more about process leadership theory, ask immediate assistance from essay help team of SourceEssay team

Conclusion 

Advocates of the leadership are considered leadership as an effective way to motivate the employee and accelerate the growth of an organization. As per their definition, Leadership is considered as a process of social influence in which leaders seek voluntary actions and participation of stakeholders to achieve the company’s objectives. This is followed by theories where several researchers determine the characteristics and behavior of leaders. Amid the most famous theory is the great man theory in which Carlyle claimed leaders are born and endowed with leadership qualities since their birth. Similarly, we have drawn tables of types of leadership styles and finds out democratic leadership is the most effective form where the distribution of the responsibility among the team members, aiding group member decision-making ability and empowering each member of the team accelerates the company growth with the complete contribution of each stakeholder. 

References

Ahmed, Zakeer & Nawaz, Allah & Khan, Irfan. (2016). Leadership Theories and Styles: A Literature Review. Journal of Resources Development and Management. 16.

Badshah, S. (2012). Historical study of leadership theories. Journal of Strategic Human Resource Management, 1(1), 49.

Nanjundeswaraswamy, Dr & Swamy, D R. (2014). Leadership styles. Advances In Management, E-ISSN No.: 2278-4551. 7.

Leithwood, K., & Jantzi, D. (2005). Transformational leadership. The essentials of school leadership, 31-43.

STU(2020). What is Democratic/Participative Leadership? How Collaboration Can Boost Morale. Available at- https://online.stu.edu/articles/education/democratic-participative-leadership.aspx [ Data Accessed on 28 april, 2021]

Van Engen, M. L., Van der Leeden, R., & Willemsen, T. M. (2001). Gender, context and leadership styles: A field study. Journal of occupational and organizational psychology, 74(5), 581-598.

Winkler, I. (2010). Contemporary leadership theories: Enhancing the understanding of the complexity, subjectivity and dynamic of leadership. Springer Science & Business Media.