Determining the Best Style of Leadership for Your Organization

Just as finding employees with the right personality and work ethic to “fit” into your company’s culture is important, so is finding the right style of leadership.

Have managers who engage in leaderships style that goes against the grain of your company’s “personality” and you’ll no doubt notice that it has a big negative impact on your staff’s morale and even sales. Have a leaders with styles that bolster the culture of your company and the opposite is more likely to happen.

Put another way, the way a manager leads has terrific influence on the people around her, allowing the leader to reap a maximum benefit from a company’s top resource: its people. In addition, a leader’s effectiveness – or lack of it, because his or her style clashes with the organization’s culture – can move – or not – team members to a shared vision, thus helping the company succeed – or not.

Read below for some different types of leadership styles as well as for the circumstances under which they are most affective – or when they can cause the most damage.

Autocratic. These leaders are the quintessential “Do as I say and ONLY what I say” type of leaders. Autocratic leaders lead by force; their subordinates follow them only because they must. Creativity and commitment to the company tends to decline precipitously under an autocratic leader.

Charismatic. These types of leaders tend to be the most successful. They have a personality workers want to emulate and follow. Charismatic leaders tend to have a vision, and their subordinates buy into it. A big problem arises, however, if the charismatic leader leaves; her departure can result in a big decline in morale, with employees feeling as if they are floundering.

Democratic. While on the face of it, this type of leadership sounds ideal, it does have problems. When everyone is asked to be a participant in leading a department or company, things often don’t get done because it can take far too long to build consensus among managers and employees.

Bureaucratic. These types of leaders tend to rely on policies and procedures, which means that policies tend to dictate direction. This can lead to challenges because problems often aren’t discovered in the policies until the damage is done. What’s more, policies in and of themselves rarely are enough to get workers fired up and engaged in the goals the policies are supposed to make come about. Blindly following policies can leave workers demotivated and disengaged.

Transformational. These types of leaders use expertise, vision and knowledge to change their subordinates so that the subordinates become highly engaged and dedicated to the goals and tasks before them. Transformational leaders also tend to lead to engagement and commitment in workers that lasts even if the leader leaves the company.

Take a look at your supervisors and managers now. What types of leaders do they appear to be? Are they the most effective for your company?

When looking for managers and workers for your Ontario company’s temporary, temp-to-hire and direct-hire opportunities, call upon the recruiters at Arrow Staffing. We look forward to hearing from you.

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