What Is Leadership?

Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things
right. – Professor Warren G. Bennis
The word "leadership" can bring to mind a variety of images. For example:

 A political leader, pursuing a passionate, personal cause.

 An explorer, cutting a path through the jungle for the rest of his group to
follow.
 An executive, developing her company's strategy to beat the competition.
Leaders help themselves and others to do the right things. They set direction,
build an inspiring vision, and create something new. Leadership is about mapping
out where you need to go to "win" as a team or an organization; and it is
dynamic, exciting, and inspiring.
an effective leader is a person who does the following:

1. Creates an inspiring vision of the future.

2. Motivates and inspires people to engage with that vision.
3. Manages delivery of the vision.
4. Coaches and builds a team, so that it is more effective at achieving the vision.
Leadership brings together the skills needed to do these things. We'll look at each element in
more detail.
 STYLES OF LEADERSHIP

Leadership style is a typical behaviour pattern adopted by the leader for influencing his
followers or leading his people. An executive has to lead different types of subordinates and
has to adopt different styles for leading them at the workplace according to situation. The
style of leadership is based on the kind of control the leader exercises on a group and their
behaviour.

The types of leadership styles considered who is a leader, says and how he directs the
followers. This study used in approach of authority and decision making. However an
assessment on few selected leadership styles reveals a degree of leader’s accountability with
his employees.

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  Autocratic Leadership style:

The current generation of employees is resistant to autocratic leadership and hence received
lot of criticism from academicians. This type of leadership style is applicable in certain
situations where the staff is not well trained. In some cases where staff does not respond to
other forms of leadership can be dealt with autocratic leadership. The autocratic leadership
should not be used in where are staff would like to contribute with their inputs and
knowledge based projects.

The approach of autocratic leadership style concerned with the decision making power. This
leadership style doesn’t obtain contribution of their followers and they always fix that the
staff accept their decisions. These leaders suggest only structured and inflexible rewards but
they wouldn’t support performance related compensation. These leaders must not concern of
follower’s justifications even if they took wrong decisions. They often punish their sub-
ordinates and they have fixed behavior. Therefore the staff cannot feel they are the part of the
organization and there will not be any correlation. So the employee cannot contribute his
maximum effort.

Benefit:

 This leadership style usually get work done .

 Decision making is fast. With no consultation required the leader can make quick
decisions.
 Improves performance in certain situations. Managers are motivated to perform
due to a “leader is watching” feeling.
 Less stress in certain circumstances. For managers and other subordinates, it can
result in less stress as the leader is shouldering all responsibility for outcomes.

Drawback: 

 The sub ordinates just depend on the leader’s decisions and there is no participation in
making decisions. The follower’s personal growth put in risk.

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  Frustrating for subordinates. Communication is one way which can be frustrating for
subordinates.
 Fear and resentment are common as people don’t like being bossed about and
criticized more often than praised.
 A paralyzed organization. The organization is paralyzed when the leader isn’t present,
as the entire organization is dependent on the leader for instructions.
 New Opportunities Missed. Unless the leader keeps pace with new trends as time goes
on, new opportunities could be missed. Additionally, the lack of flexibility in
autocratic leadership doesn’t lend itself to planning for long-term initiatives.
 Communication Breakdown. Because directives flow downwards from the leader to
the subordinates, misunderstandings and confusion can arise because of the lack of
feedback that is allowed from subordinates

 Consultative Leadership

Consultative leadership is one of the leadership traits under the Bass and Colleagues’ Five
Styles of leadership. Consultative leadership is task oriented, and focuses on the end result
almost as much as the directive leadership style.
What sets the consultative leader above and beyond the directive leader is that she asks her
subordinates for input and opinions. While she ultimately has the authority to make the
final decision, she is willing to listen to the viewpoints of her team.
This is often because the consultative leader is in a position where she does not know the
whole situation and she requires the views and opinions of the team on the ground that she
may be able to make an informed decision.One example where this could happen is in a large
corporation in a specialized industry where the product experts are the engineers and
scientists working on the front lines.

 Bureaucratic Leadership Style

This leadership style strictly follows the policies, rules, procedures and regulations blindly.
This leadership style success where the repetitive work will be done frequently. In this style
if the decision making is not according to the policies and procedure then they will go for
another level of decision making. This kind of leadership well exist where dealing with

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accounting and cash in each section. But the staff may disinterest towards their work. This is
well applicable to those who have minimum skills and the performance is not up to the mark.

Benefits: Here every problem contains solution instantly without any practice.

Drawback: this is well organized and has a tendency to depersonalize their group

 Laissez Faire Leadership style

This kind of leadership style doesn’t influence the subordinate by guiding and directing.
These leaders make their sub ordinate to make decisions without restrictions and the
followers or subordinates make their decisions. This is the current leadership style where the
organizations are following. In this style the leader must aware of the knowledge of their
subordinates. Here the leader assumes, the staff is trained enough, intelligent and qualified. In
the organization where knowledge based for e.g. software companies employees are enjoy
working their own and solving problems. However this style of leadership may not worked
out where the job security is low. The group members are competitive but tere is no any
guidance and direction for the group therefore it creates problems.

Benefits: 

 each and every group member get the chance to make decisions.

 Creates personal responsibility. Laissez-faire leadership styles challenge subordinates

to take personal responsibility for their work and the outcomes of their work.
 Supports fast course corrections. Motivated people working autonomously are
typically able to overcome roadblocks and adjust course far more quickly than when
they need to seek approval.
 Supports higher retention. When successful it can result in higher retention as
motivated professionals and experts thrive in their work environment which supports
autonomous decision making.
Drawbacks: 

 This kind of leadership makes confusion among the team members as well as the
leader

 Creates personal responsibility. Laissez-faire leadership styles challenge subordinates

to take personal responsibility for their work and the outcomes of their work.

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  Supports fast course corrections. Motivated people working autonomously are
typically able to overcome roadblocks and adjust course far more quickly than when
they need to seek approval.
 Supports higher retention. When successful it can result in higher retention as
motivated professionals and experts thrive in their work environment which supports
autonomous decision making.

 Manipulative Leadership Style:

Under this style the leader tries to achieve organizational goals by exploiting the weak points
of employees. The needs and aspirations of employees are used as tools for achieving
organizational objectives. The employees are exploited through different means for
extracting more and more work from them and not compensating them for their additional
efforts. Employees generally resent this type of leadership. There is a feeling of distrust when
the manipulative nature of the leader is evident and the employees feel cheated.

Suitability:
(i) When co-operation of employees is needed urgently for a specific task

(ii) When the projects are of short durations.

(iii) When long-term relationship may not be required

CONCLUSION

There are as many different leadership styles as there are leaders, but broadly they can
be categorized according to people focus and task focus. Although we’ve only looked at
four styles in this article, the model described should help you to understand and
categorize any of the leadership styles you encounter.

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Difference Between Autocratic Leadership vs
Democratic Leadership vs Free-rein Leadership