Leadership style could be explained as the way how specific leader guides, motivates, promotes and teaches its people. In other words, it is the leading manner that somebody has in a particular field like business, politics, sports, among others. Currently, there are multiple leadership styles, but in this article, we will see three of them and their characteristics.
A good leader, no matter what its leadership style be, adopts changes and makes them an opportunity for the team it leads. Besides, it must be opened to new ideas given for its people and understand that each member of its group has a different way of being and feelings that must be considered for a good team performance.
Companies have different leadership styles and every one of these has its advantages and disadvantages, so it is important to say that a particular leader with its leadership manners could be assigned for some team depending on the goals and purposes of the organization.
Democratic leader
The main distinctive of this leadership style is that leader shares its decisions with its team members, letting them to participate, opine and contribute about what leader wants and if it is good for the team or not. In addition, the democratic leader knows and recognizes their people needs and skills, giving them the opportunity to build together and make part of the choices that leader should take.
This leadership style is considered one of the most effective and successful methods because it involves all the team members with their opinions and needs. This not only increases productivity due to people consider themselves important, but also contributes to the creation of new ideas for the company, that is to say, stimulating and including people in decision-making, let them design new solutions for the company.
The democratic leader is good for those teams where people have a lot of commitment to the organization goals. For those groups where team members are not engaged with company purposes, this kind of leader would not work, because it would not have the participation and expected contribution in decision-making.
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Transactional leader
Basically, the transactional leader is the one who leads its people through rewards or punishments based on their performance and results. Under this leadership scheme, team members agree leader’s’ terms and means to led them. Put differently, a transactional leader is who plans and establishes by itself the way to get a specific goal, so its team will work under this guidance and based on a system of results and penalties.
There are two fundamental factors that support this kind of leadership; contingent reward, giving to employees’ rewards for their performance, which could be materialistic (like money, bonuses, among other things) or psychological (like free time, more vacations, etc.). The Management-by-exception, which is the way how a leader intervenes to improve the performance of any of its team members.
The transactional leader is a good alternative for those teams where people are very ambitious because they will put all its efforts to get the established results and reach the rewards set by their leader. In other words, a transactional leader is a perfect pilot for those persons who are motivated mostly by external rewards. This kind of leadership is bad for those companies or teams who want to promote the creation of new and creative ideas because people will be only oriented to get the rewards and avoid punishment.
Paternalistic leader
The main characteristic of this leadership style is that the leader takes care of its team members as a father would. Under this scheme, the leader worries a lot for its subordinates and treats them like if they were its sons. In other words, this kind of leadership works as a family, where the head of the group concerns about its employees in a protective way.
The paternalistic leader achieves high commitment, loyalty, and trust of its team members, due to the strong relationship formed between the leader and its subordinates. Under this kind of leadership, employees will do everything for the company and will work with total engagement and devotion, because the relation with their leader is so strong that workers would feel bad if they fail with their tasks.
The relation between employees and a paternalistic leader is not only in the working environment, it is also outside the office. Put differently, a paternalistic leader establishes an excellent relation with its team members both inside and outside the workplace.
This leadership style is one of the most important and accepted methods, but it has some disadvantages. For example, the leader can have some favorites employee’s, affecting the emotions and feelings of other company members. Besides, under this leadership style, when someone fails or low their performance, it will be very hard for the leader to exclude it from the team or the company.
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