Leadership is not something that can be described in mere words. For companies and businesses, just like leadership styles for the head of a government, the role of a CEO or president is equally important. The top honchos of huge conglomerates or big multinational companies need to be extra cautious in their approach as their decisions and actions can have a lasting impact on the future of their businesses.
Today’s volatile market is all about positive sentiment and news so that stocks can stabilize as well as no negative news in the energy and gold sector. A news about a possible negative outcome between an oil-producing country and IMF/World Bank about its future can send the market down, especially the oil prices and the energy sector, and positive news can make the bulls back to the market.
Why is Leadership Style Important?
There are three main types of leadership styles that people at the top positions in companies will be discussed with examples so that you can understand the topic easily. Once you know more about these styles, you will be in a better position to know how projects can work in various ways and what is good for a project to complete early.
- Autocratic Leadership
This is one type of leadership that you will find in most of the IT companies and financial institutions, to name a few. Examples of autocratic leadership in tech companies include Apple when Steve Jobs was at the helm of affairs and Elon Musk at Tesla. Both these are visionary leaders, but they were very authoritative in their approach.
There are many aspects for which companies generally fare well under autocratic leadership, even though many employees are critical of what this leadership is all about. But you can bet not even a few companies around the globe can think of replicating the success of Apple and Tesla. Off late, Tesla is on a record-breaking spree, and its share broke the 1,000-dollar barrier.
From the above discussion, don’t get the notion that only autocratic leadership is the best way forward. Companies can work better in some other ways, too that I will try to explain in the subsequent paragraphs.
- Participative Leadership
In quite a contrast to the autocratic leadership, participative leadership is what gives the employees a chance to have a say in the proceedings. Although it is the leader or the CEO/President/Owner of a company who makes all the decisions, he allows some form of input from the employees or the workforce. So, is this beneficial for the employees and a perfect form of leadership? An example will be enough for you so that you can understand what I am trying to connote here.
Think of a financial company that is looking to launch a new product that can make its users use all of the financial services offered by them under one umbrella. It’s CEO is leaving no stone unturned to launch the product in a great way. He thinks that he can launch the product simultaneously all over the US. But some of the employees tell him otherwise. They believe that this product should be launched in a maximum of 8-10 smaller states, and after watching the reception, only then should it be launched all over the US.
The employees who believe that such a move will bear fruits for them is because they are experienced. They know that a nation-wide launch of such a product can be very expensive, and if won’t get the desired result, then it would be disastrous for not only the company’s reputation but also will make a dent in the accounts as a huge marketing campaign is required in this concern.
In the case of autocratic leadership, the CEO won’t listen to anyone, even if he knows that the suggestion is worth considering, but in this case, the owner or person heading the business will be inclined to give this a good hard look at it. In very little time, a person who is open to suggestions and criticisms will understand that the suggestion being given by the senior employees, in this case, is genuine and will work for the company.
Hence, participative leadership can get results for a company or business regardless of the industry in which they are working.
- Delegative Style
Another name for delegative style is laissez-faire. In simpler words, it is perhaps the best leadership style that can work for a company as the employees there would be highly motivated and charged to work. Let me offer you the reasons why.
A CEO or owner of a company practicing delegative style leadership sets goals and instructions for a project or projection for a year’s sale/revenue target and that’s it. Everything else is in the hands of employees who have total freedom to work as they want to be to achieve the results. But the responsibility of the employees makes them work hard and with full dedication as they will be responsible for everything that will happen during a period for which a target has been set.
The employees or team members working under a delegation leader are expected to analyze, evaluate and change how a project is being run. For this, they can employ anything that they deem will work in favor of the project. The use of a task management software, for example, will be one of them so that any resource can be assigned a task as soon as it is free.
While many aspects are in favor of delegative style, there are some critics of this style who say that giving employees too much authority and freedom in this concern is not a good thing. They argue that it has more harm than good and employees who are not controlled by a person or under control of the manager, will not work with that much dedication and zeal as is required.
Over to you
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