Adedeji Awolesi

Awolesi Adedeji Israel

Leadership is the way of directing, implementing and motivating people and there are different management styles of leadership. In 1989, Kuyt lewin led a team of researcher to identify the main styles of leadership and their early study established three leadership style (Lewin, 1939). The Autocratic Leadership style is when managers tell subordinates what to do and how to do it without getting any advice from the subordinates. The Participative or Democratic leadership style is manager’s ability to involve some of the subordinates in the decision making of the organisation. While this occurs, the manager still has the final say in the decision making process. The Delegative or Laissez- faire leadership style involves managers letting subordinates make the decision. However, the manager is still responsible for the decision made.

According to cmi (2013), managers need to understand these styles and choose the appropriate style depending on a particular situation or circumstances. There is no leadership style that fits any organisation because there are always changes in market circumstance, internal issues, pressure and stability but a good manager needs to understand when to switch from one style to the other or incorporate any in their organisation. In Rent-A-car Enterprise, CEO Andy Taylor operates an ‘open door policy’ which enables employees or subordinates to have direct contact with senior managers. Sometimes Andy Taylor uses the autocratic style; in 1994 he instructed that all branches use the ESQI to measure customer satisfaction because it was part of the business objective (Staff, 2006) and he also allows managers and staff to make decisions to meet the changing need of customer satisfaction.

During my university days, I was in a theatre group and the leader of the team was autocratic in his management style. He never listens to anyone’s opinion about plays, acting, songs or title. He picks on anyone to take a particular role, he gives scripts out to anyone and there is no pre-informed information about play. Most times, the result of the play are always not satisfying enough because when the team goes out to act out the play on stage, few audience applaud to the acting. After 2months, the leader was impeached and a better, understanding and democratic leader was elected and there was a massive change in the team, people were eager to come for meetings, people were eager to take up acting role and people’s performance on stage change and our theatre group was awarded the best theatre group in the city and even represented the city in staging a play to the government executives of the state.

With this experience, while I was the team leader in the leadership seminar in my MBA class, I was more democratic in my leadership style, engaging my team members in decision making and in task. We did most of the tasks together and got desired result. My team members describes me as a transformational (someone who helps and develop team members) and a transaction leader (someone who build others to become leaders for the benefit of the team) and this increased their motivation level to put in the best for the team. According to Maslow (1943), employees need to have ownership of their activities which will boost their motivation the organisation that will have an impact on their different needs.

Managers need to be situational in their approach of leadership (task behaviour and relationship behaviour (Hersey and Blanchard, 1993). They need to be flexible with their leadership styles to be more effective and result oriented in their objectives or daily task. It makes leaders adapt and adjust to leadership styles depending on the difficulty of the task and maturity of team members. This tends to have its own merits likewise its limitation. It recognises need for flexibility on part of the leader and encourages leadership behaviour based on the follower’s attitude while this does not define ‘maturity’ and who quantifies it.

In conclusion, a good manager needs to be situational in all aspect of leadership in the organisation. The manager needs to know the extent to which he or she provides direction for action, goals, define roles and who to undertake roles by subordinate. The manager need to engage a two way communication, listen and provide support and encouragement to the subordinates. This will enable him or she understands how to adapt and switch management styles to suit and bring out expected result from employees to boost organisation performance.

References

CMI (2013) Understanding Management Styles Checklist 236, Chartered Management Institute: London

Hersey, P. and Blanchard, K. 1993. Management of organisation behaviour: Utilizing human resources. Sixth edition. Prentice- Hall.

Lewin, K., LIippit, R. and White, R. K. (1939). Patterns of aggressive behavior in experimentally created social climates. Journal of Social Psychology, 10, 271-301

Maslow, A. H. (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370-96.

Staff, C. 2006. The Enterprise Story—Measuring What Matters – Chief Marketer. [online] Available at: http://www.chiefmarketer.com/database-marketing/loyalty-crm/the-enterprise-story-measuring-what-matters-14062006 [Accessed: 5 Sep 2013].