6 Effective Leadership Styles for Your Organization

Are you in search of that one thing that will help your company rise to the top? Do you wish to run your company like Tesla’s Elon Musk? Or perhaps lead your company to riches in the same way Richard Branson did for Virgin?

Here’s an important truth: copying ONE of these leaders isn’t necessarily what you need.

If you can peek into some of the most successful businesses of the 21^st century, you’ll find many different ways people take up the role of being a leader. Having an established leadership style is essential because effective leaders can drive both the members and the organization to grow further. Simply finding the type of leadership style that suits you and your team can be effective in driving company growth.

Basic Leadership Principles

To be a truly effective leader, you must know first yourself, your team, and the business as a whole. You must be able to understand and be 100% aware of your surroundings as well as your capabilities. This is important as being a leaders entails you knowing own strengths and weaknesses and how it will complement to the team and the business.

Every leader must be able to adjust themselves to their team and complement their weaknesses, strengths, and motivations. Knowing these aspects of each member of your team and the other people working in the business will help you be able to adapt and operate in a way that can lead to genuine business results.

Now, whether you’re an owner, a manager, or simply leading a team, consider how these wise and effective leadership styles can work in your environment.

6 Leadership Styles to Try with Your Team

Autocratic

The term ‘autocratic’ may have some bad connotations. In this scenario the team doesn’t have much input and action is guided by what management wants & thinks. Team members are closely supervised and not empowered to function independently.

This approach isn’t ideal when you need your team to be creative, but don’t disregard the power of an autocratic leadership style in times when decisions need to be made quickly and decisively. It’s also beneficial when you work with an inexperienced team that needs constant direction as you can be their guide for them to achieve results.

Transactional

Here you have a very organized approach to leadership because each team member is given a clear guideline of what is expected of them. The leaders will offer rewards in return for those tasks being completed; but also punishment when a goal isn’t reached.

As an example, a leader using this approach will value regular performance reviews and constant evaluation of key performance indicators (KPIs).

This approach results in high productivity and is an excellent option if you need results quickly. This also complements well with team members who are highly self-motivated. But, if you need your team’s creativity and genuine motivation for the values of the company, you’ll need to try a different approach.

Democratic

Your team members will appreciate the participative approach of the democratic style. Employees often feel more work satisfaction when their views are taken into account when making decisions. Therefore, this is an effective tool to boost a positive office atmosphere or use it if you want to improve everyone’s buy-in on a project or new company.

You may not always be able to use this approach though. It takes longer to make decisions when everybody gets a chance to share their views and ideas. Perhaps you can use this when you’re brainstorming new ideas or have long-term goals to plan for. But you’ll slow down productivity if all day-to-day decisions are managed this way. A democratic style of leadership wouldn’t also be effective in crisis-like situations where decisive action is needed.

Transformational

Here’s one that has seen a lot of success in recent years with innovation happening faster than a few decades ago. A transformational leader inspires and sets high goals for everyone in the company; often through collaboration between team members.

This is an excellent style to spark creativity in team members as innovation and cultivation of new ideas takes forefront.

However, business is about more than inspiration and ideas. Being too caught up in the creative process, can leave implementation and follow-through lacking. You may then need a different management style to ensure each creative idea actually becomes a reality.

Laissez-faire

Another approach that will allow team members’ creativity to come to the fore is the ‘Let it be’ approach. When you use this style, you allow your employees to make decisions as they see fit.

Many people appreciate it when you place trust in them and they may perform better than ever before. But make sure your team CAN be trusted to keep on doing what’s best for your business. Some employees may prefer better role definition, structure, and guidance, so this leadership style doesn’t work for all groups.

You can enjoy the benefits of a creative team that takes initiative AND ensure there’s still order by:

Improving communication
Occasionally monitoring performance
Giving feedback often
Providing advice on a regular basis, even if it’s not every day
Employing individuals who respond well to this office culture

It is also important for the employees as well be in-line with the company’s overall goals, vision, and direction.

Strategic

This is known as a very effective leadership style and is one worth practicing. Aspects that can help you reach goals while also ensuring you have a motivated team include:

Having a clear vision and communicating it often
Finding ways to have employees buy into the vision and take it on for themselves; they must see their roles in context of the bigger vision
Strategically managing employees by taking their views into account
Managing productivity through incentive programs
Engaging with team members socially to build relationship and trust

A strategic leader’s vision is a primary driving force and he or she succeeds in helping others commit to that vision too. By strategically balancing the needs and goals of the organization with those of the employees, effective strategic leadership can produce excellent growth results. However, it is also very difficult to implement and there are challenges to be faced as sometimes a compromise is needed when strategizing the employees and the company.

Conclusion

We hope you’ve realized an important thing while working through this article: it’s not really about discovering THE style, but rather mixing them up. You can use more than one leadership style approach in your overall leadership strategy. Assess each situation and people you face and determine which style will get you the best results.

And remember, leadership isn’t about showing everyone who is boss; rather you should discover what will make your team dream with you and act with you.

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