Leadership styles

Leadership style — leadership features associated with the preference for a particular type of influence and personal characteristics of both the leader and the employee (or team).

What is leadership style

The main axes along which different leadership styles differ are

• Influence (Pressure or Support)

You can influence through pressure (creating feelings of guilt and lowering self-esteem), or through support (demonstrating trust and increasing employee self-esteem)

• Description of the desired process (Detailed or General direction)

When giving a task, you can describe everything in detail: both a step-by-step sequence of necessary actions, and criteria for the desired result, or you can only give general guidelines and options)

• The possibility of discussing the order (Authoritarian or Democratic).

In one case, we do not need to discuss the order and do not allow it, in the other we allow it, we consider it desirable and necessary.

Combinatorics of all possibilities gives a wide variety of leadership styles: order, briefing, remark, scolding, criticism, instruction, approval, meeting, hint … See Leadership Styles for more details

Basic Leadership Styles

There are different classifications of leadership styles. According to the Situational Leadership approach, it is useful to distinguish the following four styles of leadership:

Directive — business approach (no support, nothing personal) combined with tight briefing and detailed instructions.

Mentoring is a warm, personal approach (high level of support, personal relationships) coupled with tight coaching and detailed instructions.

Partnership is a warm, personal approach (high level of support, personal relationships) combined with trust and collaborative discussions.

Delegation is a business approach (no support, nothing personal) combined with trust and joint discussions.

Leadership style and personality traits

In life, managers often lead not in the way that is more effective in general in a given situation and with these employees, but in a way that is more convenient and easier for him, the leader. Sometimes they lead in the style that he does best. And they don’t lead in a style that comes out tight for him. Only those leaders for whom positive thinking is natural (there are few of them) can lead on the positive. For other leaders, talking about the effectiveness of this style is an empty phrase, because they simply don’t know how to lead like that. See Personality type

Is there a difference between female and male leadership styles? — Of course, there is. Although it would be more correct to speak not about specific differences, but only about trends that are most often characteristic of leaders of one sex or another.

Women leaders are generally more loyal to employees. More often they use different methods of management, they act more flexibly, while male bosses usually stick to one strategy. Most often, this is a command-administrative style of personnel management.

However, in practice, much depends on the culture of the organization itself. If a “male” culture prevails in a company, and the leadership style of a female manager is closer to “female”, then there is a high risk that she will be assessed as an ineffective leader, since she will not meet the expectations of her environment. However, just as a woman can manage in a “masculine” style, so can a man in a “feminine” one: gender characteristics are not the key to effective leadership.

When is a Leadership Style Needed?

See Situational Guide