Leadership and Management

Leadership and Management

Introduction

Leadership is the task of motivating, guiding, directing and leading others in the right direction in order to fulfil certain mutual aims and objectives. A leader through leadership role shows the right and correct path to his or her subordinates. Leadership provides subordinates a guidance with which they can bring improvement in their work. Leadership is a reciprocal process within a group context that occurs when a leader influences group members to make intentional change toward a shared purpose and goal attainment (Weick, 2007, 5-16). A leader is an individual who has the role of leading others. A leader can be considered as the captain of the ship. He leads and guides his or her team members in the right direction. In order to perform this task well he needs to have certain characteristics. In general it is said that a leader should possess few common qualities that lend a hand to him or her to perform the task well (Miller, 2007, 89-95).

Traditional Leadership Types

According to different schools of thought there are different styles of leadership. The three common sorts of leadership style that came into existence as a result of Lewin's theory are as follows:

Autocratic Leadership

In autocratic style of leadership, a leader does not take references from anyone else while making decisions. It is beneficial for those businesses that involves quick decision making. This style of leadership can create de-motivation and alienation of staff. In this sort of style of leadership, a leader ha true command and the organization depends on leaders to a greater extent (Hrivnak, Rebecca, Reichard, Ronald, 2009, 107-114).

Democratic leadership

A leader who adopts democratic style of leadership considers opinions of others and performs decision making process from different perspectives. While adopting this style of leadership, a leader takes others into consideration in two ways. First he can consult others while making decision and secondly he can make decision and then persuade others that the decision that he has made is correct (Paige, 2010, 77-82).

Laissez-Faire

In this style of leadership, responsibilities of leaders are shared with the every member of the organization. This style of leadership is fruitful for such business that involves high level of creativity. This style of leadership is considered as a great help because this style can highly motivate employees because employees get control over their work life. The successful implementation of this style of leadership mainly depends on good team work and effective and efficient interpersonal relationship (Komives, Lucas, McMahon, 2009, 44-56).

Contemporary Leadership Types

Adaptive leadership

This form of leadership also pays importance to the process and action. In this form of leadership a leader charges and mobilizes his or her followers so that they would become able to handle and tackle down all sorts of challenges and thrive.

Servant-Leadership

Greenleaf coined the term servant leadership in 1970 when he presented the concept that leaders are those who serve followers and that great leaders are first of all servants. According to Greenleaf and to those further developing his model, servant leadership is ...