Leadership Styles

I have summarized seven prominent leadership styles here and identified three ways in which they differ.

Charismatic Leadership

Charismatic leaders have charisma, purposes, powers, and extraordinary determination that differentiate them from others. Charismatic leaders have a vision, masterful communication skill, the ability to inspire trust and the ability to make group members feel capable. They inspire others with an uplifting and attractive vision. They communicate their visions, goals, and directives in a colorful, imaginative and expressive manner.

Situational Leadership

Situational Leadership is based on the assumption that the best action of the leader depends on a range of situational factors. Factors that affect situational decisions include motivation and capability of followers. This, in turn, is affected by factors within the particular situation. Leaders here work on such factors as external relationships, acquisition of resources, managing demands on the group and managing the structures and culture of the group.

Participative Leadership

Participative leadership style describes decision making with group members. Participative leader encourages employees to participate in making the decision. The leader asks for and receives input from the group. The atmosphere is one of trust, honesty, and open communication. The leader demonstrates to followers that their inputs are valued. This style is well suited to managing competent people who are eager to assume responsibility.

Autocratic Leadership

Autocratic leaders are task-oriented and retain all decision-making authority. They make decisions confidently, assume that group members will comply, and are not overly concerned about group members’ attitude toward a decision. Usually negative side effects result from the use of an autocratic leadership style. Followers are often resentful and hostile Autocratic leadership suppresses conflict and internal motivation. It minimizes creative problem solving.

Entrepreneurial Leadership

The entrepreneurial style of leadership stems from leader’s personal characteristics and circumstances of self-employment. It includes a strong achievement drive and sensible risk taking; a high degree of enthusiasm and creativity; the tendency to act quickly on opportunities; hurriedness and impatience; a visionary perspective; a dislike for hierarchy and bureaucracy; a preference for dealing with external customers; and an eye on the future.

Transformational Leadership

Transformational leadership focuses on what the leader accomplishes rather than on the leader’s personal characteristics and his or her relationship with group members. Transformational leaders help bring about major, positive changes by moving their group members beyond their self-interests and toward the good of the group, organization or society.

Transactional Leadership

Transactional leaders identify desired performance standards, recognize what types of rewards employees want from their work and take actions that make receiving these rewards contingent upon achieving performance standards. They operate within the existing culture and employs traditional management strategies in getting the job done.

How Approaches Differ

The approaches differ in many different ways. I have identified the following three ways:

Tactics vs. Strategy — To what extent the leadership styles are good for addressing short term tactics against long term strategy.

Team Motivation — How motivated the team is normally under the leadership style.

Team participation in decision making — What is the level of participation of team in decision making.