Think before reading who motivates you! Your inspiration is a person who intensifies your work. You can call him/her as a leader. Leaders can be in higher positions but this is not always true. Some authors believe that leaders have been identified in various aspects, such as politics, business, students, defense, and other fields. In this article, we are going to highlight organizational leader means business leader. There are different types of leadership styles among these leaders.

What is Leadership Style?

A style that follows a leader or a situation and how the leader faces or reacts to cope with it. Briefly, we can say that a method or strategy is applied by the leader to motivate, manage and direct to peoples for achieving their goals. In most cases, leaders absorb their styles of leadership to suit their circumstances.

Why It’s Important to Know Your Leadership Style?

Knowing your style of leadership provides you with a bunch of feedback on the effectiveness of your leadership style. By finding your leadership style you can make decisions, considerations and strategies, in the process of making business decisions. Also, it can help you with your views on the world. Your perceptions of the world can be expressed and learning about other perspectives can be a positive experience for you by knowing your style of leadership. In addition, becoming familiar with your leadership style accelerates your personal growth. Where improvements or adjustments are needed and enable you to learn new something which is required for your current job role.

1. Transformational Leadership

A focus on the future, change and people are all about transformational leadership. This style indicates transforming the employee or business by inspiring them to achieve the goal. In this type of leadership, leaders draw a future path to achieve the goal and to complete the mission, what has been done and what needs to be done, they shared with the team. Also, they are comfortable with the change and prepare the team to cope with the change. In addition, the transformational leader makes a great effort to find out the potential expertise of everyone in their group.

Pros

• Defines a clear vision and goal for the project by which members are more motivated and dedicated at work
• In addition, they create ownership and a supportive work environment and it draws motivation, satisfaction and morale among the group.

Cons

• Emphasizes the long-term goals instead of short-term goals for the project. It can lead to overlooking the short-term object in the organization.
• Also, this leader has high expectations of creativity and challenge. It may lead to overloaded work for individuals.

2. Authoritative Leadership

This leadership is characterized by Just ‘follow me’. Quicker decision-makers adopt this leadership style. Without listening to other team members, this leader makes the decision is called an authoritative leadership style. This is the opposite style of democratic leadership. In this leadership, productivity is high but creativity is less.

Pros

• Remove the pressure for other team members to decide on any results because of having a maker who is making decisions which is fit for the situation.
• Also, Specifying the structure and job details to members to perform their challenges and duties, it makes easier to understand what the leader wants.

Cons

• Decrease the making of fresh ideas which is a major disadvantage of this style which may lead to slower corporate growth.
• Furthermore, the absence of micromanagement for employees is detected since autocratic leaders control assignments, projects and daily tasks; for this reason, employees can feel the pressure to update their task

3. Democratic Leadership 

‘Raise your voice’ is the main concept of democratic leadership. This style ensures the participation of members. When a leader fixes a business decision according to subordinate opinion then it’s called democratic leadership. The study found that this leadership style is the most effective and popular style where members can feel equal at work.

Pros

• Input new ideas by discussing with the team members, and consequently, faulty live projects can be removed or improved.
• Make a connected and supportive work environment in to office and members can feel like valued resources themselves.

Cons

• Fails sometimes to complete the project due to unskilled members.
• Escalate decision-making time because of the participation of team members in making decisions.

4. Bureaucratic Leadership

‘Go by the book’ is an appropriate phrasal verb for Bureaucratic leadership. Everything is written to perform the task. As per policy, processes and regulations must be followed. Strictly, these rules and policies are monitored by a bureaucratic leader.

Pros

• One of the main advantages is accountability because of having fixed centralized decisions, policies, rules and regulations, as a result, an action can be imposed for breach of any regulation.
• Focus on the past, any initiative that had excellence and helped the organization. A bureaucratic leader will follow the same thing.

Cons

• Not supported innovation in this style, all processes have been documented in a detailed way; it is impossible to prescribe external actions.
•  Furthermore, the lack of flexibility may lead to employees feeling pressure at work.

 5. Transactional Leadership

‘Give and Take’ is characterized by transactional leadership. Transaction leadership is based on reward and punishment. It can be defined as managerial leadership. Based on the reward system, a leader sets some requirements to achieve the goal. Furthermore, the transaction leader expresses how an employee or team would be recompensed or punished.

Pros

• Easy to understand system due to clear framework.
• Increase employee engagement to work effectively and efficiently.

Cons

• Fails to draw a vast picture or plan for the organization due to no long-term vision in this leadership.
• Lack of personal growth and building relationships because of not having any conditions like extracurricular activities and employee relationships.

6. Servant Leadership

‘Team first with putting their needs’ is defined as Servant leadership. Servant leaders build a strong relationship with their team members which creates a positive environment, high values and good morality. Employees can be ensured to get everything need from their servant leader.

Pros

• Increase the level of respect, trust, satisfaction, and personal and professional growth.
• Moreover, Progress employee’s skills faster and they are well prepared to serve the company.

Cons

• Not faster organizational outcome
• Not very familiar with this term in this world.

How to Recognize Your Leadership Style

This is a quite difficult thing when a professional wants to know his or her leadership style, then it is more critical when he or she does not have more than 5 years of experience. However, if leadership style has been revealed, it greatly impacts professional life. Four steps can be stated below to find out your leadership style.

1. Know your road

Keep a clear goal and vision of what is your vital needs. Also, identify your tools which can be used by you to go ahead. By formulating this thing, you can communicate easily with others and it can be easy to share your thoughts. After that, you can take a snapshot of how the employees are responding to your words.

2. Assess on existing leadership style

An assessment can present a clear picture of what you are pursuing currently. One popular test name is ‘SWOT’ which can be stated as S = ‘Strength’, W = ‘Weakness’, O = ‘Opportunity’ and T = ‘Threats’. This assessment brings out your possibility and states your improvement area.

And, another rating for leadership style is the personality and leadership inventories test. This type of assessment expresses your blind spot and strength in the leadership style.

3. Give thought to the attributes of others

Spending your time in the corporate world, you have found a bunch of skilled leaders who are engaging their subordinates effectively and efficiently. Evaluate their actions and determine which qualities you appreciate about them.  By formulating their leadership type, you can understand which one is close to you and your approach can be applied in that style.

4. Seek feedback for input

Create an open communication environment and ask to team or others who know your leadership style. Take some feedback, on how your team and other followers perceive you. It is an essential part, it can be noted that leadership is not just about your personal space; Also, the perception of your followers must also be taken into consideration.

Lastly, we can say, though leadership is a single word it has depth of thought. It involves passion, habit, patience and learning. Consequently, it will not become in a day. Try it to go in-depth, your return will be remarkable.