Leadership style free essay sample

Robert â€Å"Bob† Gale was the first sales manager ever worked with at Baxter Healthcare’s Renal Division. Although Bob never had a political agenda, when it came to managing the Hemodialysis Sales Team, he demonstrated many traits of a transforming leader. According to Yukl, â€Å"These leaders seek to raise the consciousness of followers by appealing to ideals and moral values.† (p. 347). The first advice this manager bestowed upon the team was that he would support any decision or action team members made as long as said decision or action satisfied three criteria. Those criteria were team sense, business sense, and common sense. The transforming leadership style is a sub-style of ethical leadership, which has many values emphasized. Bob Gale’s willingness to support his team’s efforts despite the ramifications exhibits an altruistic character. Yukl describes an ethical leader who is altruistic as one who, â€Å"Enjoys helping others, is willing to take risks or make sacrifices to protect or benefit others, puts the needs of others ahead of own needs. The coercive style should be used with extreme caution, as in during a crisis, for its impact is ruinous to the group. This style of leadership used by Kim Jung-Un has close supervision and comprehensive control systems, reinforced by a hierarchical structure and a narrow span of control. Following is a critique of autocratic Leadership Style, along with its pros and cons. Ken Jong-Un Autocratic Leadership: The major autocratic leadership style characteristics include: The autocratic leader retains all power, authority, and control, and reserves the right to make all decisions. Autocratic leaders distrust their subordinate’s ability, and closely supervise and control people under them. Autocratic leaders involve themselves in detailed day-to-day activities, and rarely delegate or empower subordinates. The autocratic leader adopts one-way communication. They do not consult with subordinates or give them a chance to provide their opinions, no matter the potential benefit of such inputs. Autocratic leadership assumes that employee motivation comes not through empowerment, but by creating a structured set of rewards and punishments. Autocratic leaders get work done by issuing threats and punishments and evoking fear. The primary concern of autocratic leaders remains dealing with the work at hand and not on developmental activities. Autocratic leaders assume full responsibility and take full credit for the work. Are There Advantages of Autocratic Leadership Style? Autocratic leadership creates a centralized chain of command with heavy involvement of the leader in all gamut’s of operations. This leads to the formation of a hub and spoken type of organizational structure that helps in many ways, such as: getting things done quickly improving communication and logistics. Better response to changes in the external environment putting forth a more coordinated approach toward fulfilling organizational goals. Anticipating problems in advance, and better realization of consequences of an action by one section on other sections. Proponents of the autocratic leadership style advocate it as an ideal method to extract high performance from followers without putting them under stress. They insist the close supervision and monitoring leads to a faster pace of work with less slack, where the leader assumes full responsibility for the decisions and actions, ultimately creating reduced stress for subordinates. What Are Disadvantages of Autocratic Leadership Style? Disadvantages of autocratic leadership notwithstanding, this leadership style has borne the brunt of heavy criticism in the last several decades, where the move toward systems thinking and empowering people have led to the perception of â€Å"autocratic† and â€Å"centralized command† as negative and undesirable traits. This assumes that ambitious and self-motivated followers enjoy their mental and physical work duties. Such followers possess the ability for creative problem solving, but most organizations under-utilize their talents. This theory holds that followers seek and accept responsibility and exercise self-control and self-direction in accomplishing objectives, provided the conditions remain congenial for such an approach. The autocratic leadership style remains wholly unsuited for followers and does not rank among modern leadership styles in a changing world. What Are The Criticisms Levied Against Autocratic Leadership? The major criticisms levied against autocratic leadership include the following: contrary to claims of close supervision with detailed instructions to reduce stress and improve productivity, research suggests that such actions actually unmotivated followers, and cause them to become tense, fearful, or resentful. Lack of involvement from the followers in the decision making process leads to followers not assuming ownership of their work, contributing to low morale, lack of commitment, and manifesting in high turnover, absenteeism, and work stoppage. The heavily centralized command of autocratic leadership style ensures that the system depends entirely on the leader. If the leader is strong, capable, competent, and just, the organization functions smoothly, and if the leader is weak, incompetent, or has low ethical and moral standards, the entire organization suffers for the sake of a single leader. All power vested with the leader leads to risk of leaders with low moral fiber exploiting followers, indulging in favoritism and discrimination, and the like. Weak autocratic leaders tend to take decisions based on ego rather than sound management principles, and punish followers who dare to disagree with such decisions. The leader reserving the right to make all decisions leads to subordinates becoming heavily dependent on the leader. The team thereby becomes useless in running operations if they lose contact with their leader, and absence of the leader leads to total collapse and shutdown of operations. The one sided communication flow in an autocratic leadership style restricts the creative and leadership skills of the employees and prevents their development. This harms the organization as well, for the followers remain incapable of assuming greater responsibilities, or to perform anything outside the routine. The autocratic leader, by taking all responsibility and involved heavily in day to day operations, remains forced to work at full capacity, leading to stress and other health problems. Autocratic leaders usually remain unpopular and damage working relationships with colleagues. This leadership style is unsuited to build trusting relationships. Is There Any Good Application of Autocratic Leadership Style? A critique of autocratic leadership style reveals that it remains best suited in certain situations such as: occasions when the situation requires a strong centralized control with detailed orders and instructions, such as in the military or during surgery. When leading an extremely large group, such as in assembly line factories, where the wide span of control not only makes it impossible but also counterproductive to elicit the views of all employees. When followers are new or inexperienced, or lack the qualifications, skills, or talent to respond to any participative leadership styles, or remains unmotivated and non-committed workers. During occasions of contingencies, emergencies and other situations warranting on the spot decisions. When dealing or negotiating with external agencies or departments. The autocratic leadership style on the whole remains a short-term or quick fix approach to management. The ability to make decisions faster, while helping the organization in the short term, actually harms the followers leading to poor decision-making capability and low productivity in the long run. This leadership style survives by default because it comes naturally to most leaders, especially in times of low morale or insubordination.