Leadership that Gets Results

Question 1

Many managers wrongly assume leadership style as a function of leader's personality instead of strategic choice. I think Daniel Goleman is right in his theory that successful leaders possess strengths in key emotional intelligence competencies such as social skills, empathy, motivation, self-regulation and self-awareness. Goleman has rightly established a link between leadership styles and key components of emotional intelligence which in combination with the supportive organizational climate, allows leader to get things done and deliver the results. According to Goleman, each of the six basic leadership styles utilizes in different combination the key components of emotional intelligence. According to Goleman, successful leaders do not stick to just one style of leadership; rather they possess flexibility which allows them to switch between the different leadership styles that fits well to the situation.

Managers often fall short in appreciating the profound impact of organizational climate on the financial results of an organization. I personally believe, based on the business research I read in Harvard business review the other day, that supportive organizational climate accounts for nearly a third of organization's financial performance. In turn, the style of leadership profoundly influences organizational climate as its managers who motivate direct reports, make decisions, handle crisis, make change initiatives, and gather and use information. Daniel Goleman has described six fundamental leadership styles, each of them is a derivative of different emotional intelligence competences, choice on the part of leaders to use these styles is dictated by the circumstances as each of them works best in particular situations, and these leadership styles eventually influences the organizational climate in different ways (Ishaq, 2008).

The Coercive Leadership Style: In turnaround situations, working with problem employees, or dealing with natural disaster such as floods, this “do as I say” approach has proved to be most effective as it accelerates decision making time due to centralization. But this style of leadership calls for using force in getting things done which makes organizational culture quite stiff with less or no flexibility and ultimately hurt employee's motivation.

The Authoritative style of leadership: In this “come with me” approach, managers articulate goals to their subordinates but grant them freedom to choose their own means of achieving those goals. This style of leadership makes environment somewhat flexible and works well when manager's social skills and self-regulation skills are good. Otherwise it will take away discipline and motivation from employees as this style of leadership results in less supportive organizational climate as people are on their own to achieve their benchmarks which means this style of leadership can profoundly impact organizational performance.

The Affiliative Leadership Style: “People come first” attitude is the hallmark of this style of leadership. This style calls for “empathy” skills on the part of managers and helps them in increasing morale of their employees and building team harmony. But this style is exclusively focused on praise which often lets poor performance go uncorrected. Affiliative managers are not keen to offer their advice to employees which leave them in quandary and eventually ...