leadership; like books on leadership styles, techniques and also biographies of leaders that have inspired people to action. While this is true, there is the everyday leadership and a slightly different outlook to leadership as well. Here are a few of them.
There Are Different Kinds of Leaders
Among leaders are formal and informal leaders. Formal leaders are elected to their positions like congressmen, senators and office bearers of clubs. Informal leaders on the other hand are those we look up to because of their
Experience and wisdom.
This could be your parents, grandparents or whatsapp data elders in your community. Informal leaders can also be those that are respected because of their expertise and contributions in certain fields such as Albert Einstein in Theoretical Physics and Leonardo de Vinci in Arts. Whether formal or informal, these leaders practice certain styles. This could be
Lewin's 3 basic leadership styles.
autocratic or authoritative: the leader takes decisions without consulting with others
democratic or participative: the leader involves the people in the decision-making
laissez-faire or delegative: the leader's involvement in decision-making is minimized
Likert's 4 leadership styles
- exploitative authoritative: the leader has a low concern for people and uses such methods as threats and other fear-based methods to achieve conformance
benevolent authoritative: the leader adds concern for people to an authoritative position
consultative: the leader makes genuine efforts to listen carefully to ideas, but major decisions are still largely centrally made
participative: the leader makes maximum use of participative methods, engaging people lower down the
Organization in decision-making.
is empathetic, and explains how and why people's efforts contribute to the 'dream'
coaching: the leader listens, helps people identify their own strengths and weaknesses, counsels, encourages, and delegates
affiliative: the leader promotes harmony, is nice, empathetic, boosts moral, and solves conflicts
democratic: the leader is a superb listener, team worker, collaborator, and influencer
pacesetting: the leader has a strong drive to achieve, has high standards, initiative, but low on empathy and collaboration, impatient, micromanages and is numbers-driven
Commanding, threatening.
has tight control, monitors studiously, creates dissonance, contaminates everyone's mood, and drives away talent
Leadership Skills Can Be Developed
For some people, leadership seems to be most natural, that it makes you wonder if it is a quality that they are born with. Even if this may be true, without exposure to the right environment, it is possible that they may not develop to their full potential.