|
The Right Style ( a.k.a The Silver Bullet )
Is there a style that works for all situations? The obvious answer: Of course, not.
It’s best if a leader learns several leadership styles to be equipped for situations. The best candidates are the authoritarian, democratic, affiliative and coaching styles. The coercive and pacesetting styles better be applied with extreme caution as they tend to have a bad effect on the working environment.
One good news is that leadership is a skill that can be developed – that seems to be the general consensus. While some talent and natural leadership skills can give a head start, in general these skills can be developed. Thus leadership is less of an art and more a science.
Leadership (un)defined
A final word on the term leadership: The term is used in various ways. One extreme is to use it for a position rather than the activity. A department head is thus called a department leader, group leader etc. However, depending on the position, the activity of the leader can be simply transactional, supervising a number of people and ensuring that instructions are implemented, schedules maintained, like for example for a line manager. In these cases the function of the ‘leader’ is simply administrational and many people don’t use the term leader for these positions.
|
