Types of Leadership Roles

In organizations today, a leader has to deal with a variety of people with different backgrounds, knowledge, qualifications and skills. A leader may find himself dealing with a number of situations, emergencies, events and happenings in a single day. As the followers and situations which a leader comes across are not the same, similarly, the leadership styles that he follows to motivate others and to get things done through them cannot be the same either. So what are the different types of leadership styles that a leader has to follow working in modern businesses today? Let's find out.

Leadership Styles
There are four main types of leadership styles.

Autocratic Leadership Style
In this leadership style, most of the powers including that of decision making lies with the manager. He does not ask his employee's opinion or input on how things should be done. There is a fixed structure of punishments and rewards, which is applicable to all the employees, which helps them stay motivated. Autocratic leadership style should be used in situations such as when the employees do not obey their managers or start questioning his authority, when the employees morale is really low, when there is high turnover in the organization as well as high absenteeism and when the employees become too dependent on the manager and expect him to take all decisions.

Bureaucratic Leadership Style
Bureaucratic leadership style is that in which a leader follows the dictated policy and procedure to the tee. All he does to lead is to enforce the rules which are already in place. This leadership style can be effective if the employees perform the same routine tasks again and again, like in a production unit. This leadership style works well in organizations where employees are handling dangerous equipment or handling cash and hence, need to be very careful about the procedures used.

Laissez-faire Leadership Style
This leadership and management style involves giving full freedom to the employees to set their own goals, take their own decisions and do the tasks at hand the way they think is most suitable. The leader does not provide any kind of direction to the team members and has full faith in their ability to take care of everything. This leadership style works well when the team members are experienced, trustworthy, skilled and well educated.

Participative Leadership Style
Also known as the democratic leadership style, in this, the leader takes the opinion of his sub-ordinates before arriving at the final decision. A democratic leader involves his team members and keeps them informed about the latest happenings related to business. This leadership style wins a leader the loyalty and trust of his team members, as they feel valued when they are taken into confidence for everything. Another positive outcome of Participative leadership style is that it leads to leadership development among the subordinates. This style works well in situations where the leader does not know everything and hence has to depend upon the knowledge, information and skills of his subordinates.

Concepts of Leadership
There are four factors of leadership which every leader should understand.

Leader
To be a successful leader, a person has to win the loyalty and trust of his sub-ordinates. A person should be convincing enough that all team members readily become his followers. So, any person aspiring to be a leader should first understand who he is, what his positive points are and what all he can achieve.

Followers
A leader should be very good at people's skills and understanding human nature. He should understand the strengths, weaknesses, motivations of each of his team members.

Communication
A leader should know how to be a good communicator, as with the right communication skills, he can build good relationship with his followers and hence, convince and motivate them more effectively.

Situation
For effective leadership, a person has to adopt the different types of leadership roles from time to time, depending upon the demands of the situation. For example, if some project needs to be completed quickly, a leader might not have the time to ask for his subordinates' opinions. In such a situation, a leader has to be wise enough to follow authoritative leadership style.

This was in short about the leadership roles and styles. To be a successful leader, a person should be a thorough professional and display qualities such as commitment, competence, integrity and creativity. A leader should know who he is, what are his strengths and weaknesses. He should know his job as well as the organization he works for really well. He should be good at problem solving, communicating, supervising and evaluating his subordinates, only then he can be considered as an effective leader.