Know which leadership style best fits your team

Know which leadership style best fits your team

Leadership styles refer to an approach taken by the team leader to handle and make their team the most efficient. Having knowledge about your team and what works best for the team members will eventually increase their productivity.

Given below are the six common leadership styles.

The coercive leader

This type of leadership style is experienced by everyone at least once in their life. It is most commonly found in the basic leadership settings in business. This kind of leader is the one who puts themselves in the center of every decision-making process, who is not very forward minded, and discourages new and creative ideas. This kind of leader is more of narcissistic who will listen to themselves more than others. They tend to induce fear into everyone who work for them. People eventually quit, which in turn, drops the morale and productivity of the employees. The leader should use this style only in specific situations, which should be ended in short term. This kind of leadership can easily transform into dictatorship.

The authoritative leader

This leadership style is exactly opposite of the above style. The authoritative style is highly positive and most effective. This leader knows what they are doing and where they are going. They know their goals and visions clearly. You can see their passion and motivation in their talks and conversations. The authoritative leader inspires and motivates others to do their best by being friendly and not being bossy. Instead of being the center of attention, they tend to bring out creativeness out of others and gathering opinions of their teammates. People usually trust this kind of leaders more than others, and they tend to bring out more positive changes in the organizations.

The affiliative leader

This is one of the leadership styles that brings out the emotional quotient in the team. This leader is more sensitive to their team’s feelings and tries to keep everyone happy and in harmony at work.

In a way, this kind of leader is more aware of their teammates’ feelings and is like a meditator who keeps a positive environment in the organization. This, in turn, leads to a work culture where people are open to express their thoughts and thus have best of communications within the organization. This leader also is flexible and always gives constructive feedbacks. It is a perfect solution for a team who is not doing well and can be a medium for removing all the negativity from the organization. They make the team self-motivated and driven.

The democratic leader

Steve Jobs is known as one of the best leaders of all time. Steve Jobs used this leadership style and propelled Apple Technologies. Teamwork works best when people trust each other without having the need to watch their backs now and then. By letting employees be themselves and giving them a say in their work drives the morale and responsibilities of the employees and they will work on a more personal level with the organization. These leaders prefer to take a step back and sit and allow their employees to bring in their thoughts about how they want to work in the company. This leader invites collaboration among the team members without jeopardizing the main business decisions.

The pacesetting leader

Even though this leadership style looks like the best style at first, in the long run it might not be that effective. The leader usually sets high expectations and standards to follow. The leader also expects that all the employees should be their loyal followers. This leader is only concerned about how efficient the work is, the speed and its accuracy. If few members of the team are lagging, this leader usually challenges them or eventually just finds a replacement. This leader is therefore called a pacesetting leader as they are the perfect solution for a company to become more efficient. But in the long run, the employees are usually overwhelmed by this work environment and the expectations of the organization. While the leader aims to improve the team’s capabilities by demanding more but, it is working in the opposite direction.

The coaching leader

This kind of leadership style focuses on one-on-one training with a focus on making the employee more efficient. This style has recently caught attention because many people thrive on getting personalized feedbacks and converting them into actionable goals. This is the core objective of this style. The leader acts as a mentor and guides the mentees, i.e., the employees towards improvement and creates an encouraging atmosphere. This style has positive outcomes, both for employees as well as the organization.

From the above, you can decide which leadership style would suit your team the best and will work in your organization’s favor as well.