Leadership, now a day, is no longer restricted to the concept of getting the work done. With increasing globalization and opening up of opportunities, leadership has got burdened with additional challenges of keeping the workforce motivated and optimizing their talent. Succinctly, recent years have seen a shift in leadership orientation from the employer to the employees. Obviously, they are concerned with organizational goals, but they need to take care of employees' concerns also at the same time. So, it is now more of a balancing act that requires additional skills to be successful.
This paper aims to analyze the leadership styles of two different leaders through the lens of relevant theories. By discussing leadership styles in-depth, it will present a holistic view on the challenges involved in leading along with some recommendations to be an effective leader.
Leader Profiles for the Purpose of Comparison
Challenges/ Initiatives: Behavioral Details
Initiative-Followed an open-door policy. Fund-raising for an NGO was a tedious task with upper management emphasized on collecting funds by garnering political support and associating with other institutions. By contrast, team members wanted to involve masses in the campaign by raising awareness regarding the needs of educating poor children. It was a challenge before the leader because there existed contradictory views; opposing the views of senior management could have proved counterproductive.
Despite the conflict of opinions, the leader accommodated most suitable views and rejected the notion of political support in fund raising. Instead, he gave opportunities to volunteers, and younger team members to share their opinion on the matter. Going against the management decision, he sided with the opinion of mass awareness and funds collection through masses rather than institutions and political parties.
Initiative - Skills' development programs for volunteers. Mr. Anthony realized that motivating factors lacked for volunteers who put their time and resources for a good cause. It may be the reason that participation of volunteers remained very low in previous programs. Mr. Anthony convinced authorities to initiate skills' development training for volunteers also so as to reward their efforts.
After thorough discussion and planning, a short training program was designed for volunteers to sharpen their convincing and persuasive skills. At the same time, the program included a brief discussion on internal intricacies of an NGO with an emphasis on why NGOs require volunteers. Later on, certificates were given to those who successfully completed the program.
Challenge- Lack of assistance. With the organization facing strong challenge from established competitors, Mr. Stefelbauer researched that launching men's range could be fruitful as there was a market gap in these products. Thus, the author was asked to prepare research reports on possibilities of business expansion, the target market, and other related details.
Challenge- Showing lack of vision. The author worked with him in another small project that involved providing the prototype of a product to the client. The client asked some changes in the product line that, the author felt, were not feasible given the statistics( regarding customers' taste and preferences) revealed by his research reports. Mr. Stefelbauer simply ordered the author to accommodate those changes and did not pay proper heed to the reasoning given by the author. The author feels that the leader behaved like a dictator with no concerns regarding problems encountered by employees' in official work.
Despite lack of support by the leader, he made due efforts to accommodate changes by discussing with seniors and colleagues and convinced the client about modification that were not practical at that point of time. The client approved the prototype that was a big achievement for the organization and the project. However, Mr. Stefelbauer did not bother to appreciate his efforts and good work in any form(cash or kind).
Initiative- Team meetings with members. On a project, Mr. Stefelbauer initiated the concept of regular team meetings involving all employees( on that project) irrespective of their tenure and designation. The author feels that these meetings were one-sided though. In an instance, the author voiced the opinion of keeping the product price low given customers' income level in a specific region. By contrast, a senior member argued about competitor's pricing policy on a similar product. Mr. Stefelbauer just overlooked those views without exhibiting any opinion. The author felt there were several instances which revealed that those meetings were one-sided, only to listen Mr.Stefelbauer. He did not accommodate peers' opinions.
Leadership Style: An Analysis of Theories
Participative Leadership Style: Mr. Anthony
The behavioral traits of Mr. Anthony best depict him as a participative leader who emphasizes involvement, encouragement, facilitation, and consultation between leaders and subordinates in decision-making. Participative leadership style is best- described by joint or shared decision- making, and this trait was predominant in Mr. Anthony's approach. Accommodating all views, he selected best possible routes to work that led to a successful campaign of fundraising in the organization.
As the term 'participation' itself suggests, participative leaders encourage team participation and remain open to suggestions. By hearing to volunteers' opinions, Mr. Anthony boosted their morale and ensured better involvement in the project. Researchers have stated that participative leaders empower others also. Giving opportunities to employees to make decisions, they exhibit due faith in their capabilities. At the same time, they try their level best to grow their staff professionally and personally. Living up to this trait, Mr. Anthony invested in training of volunteers and skills' development programs.
The leader appreciated collaborated efforts by accommodating conflicting ideas and methodologies. He tried to make a balance between subordinates and upper management and initiated ways to increase volunteerism in the organization. Table-1 presents participative leadership traits that are well exhibited in Mr. Anthony's leadership style.
Experts have identified different underlying principles for participative leadership style. One of the principles is that greater participation satisfies higher-needs of employees. In this context, it is important to mention two concepts: deficiency-motivation and growth motivation. If employees are deficiency motivated, they can work under strict authoritarian control, but growth-motivated employees may find it derisive and dehumanizing.
Research has proved that younger employees prefer growth and development. Mr. Anthony understood the underlying growth pursuit of young volunteers very well and tried to be as open to them as possible. This preference become prominent in the case of volunteerism where most of the volunteers do not expect monetary gains, rather non-monetary awards(People in Aid, 2007). Amidst this scenario, initiatives to organize training sessions exhibit that Mr. Anthony followed an austere approach that is very important to be an effective leader.
Power sharing is another important underlying principle for the concept of participation. Though behavioral traits of Mr. Anthony do not reveal any direct power sharing, other traits of his behavior do signify that he is open to that provided the workforce is skilled enough to share authority. Based on the theory, Mr. Anthony demonstrates leadership strength in collaboration, encouragement, and employees' involvement.
However, team building seems lacking in his style that he can improve for more effective leadership approach. For instance, he could have made small teams of volunteers to accomplish the objective. Team building is one of the important aspects of participative style and helps in better supervision of employees' performance. It promotes productivity and creativity at workplace; Mr. Anthony must make efforts to strengthen his team building skills.
Mix of Bureaucratic and Authoritarian Styles: Mr. Stefelbauer
Behavioral snippets of Mr. Stefelbauer reveal that he was not open to employees' opinions and would not consider their suggestions. He would just ignore conflict of ideas rather putting them to table for discussion. Last but not the least, he was oriented to customers and employer and ignored the needs and problems of fellow employees. Succinctly, this style resembles a mix of authoritarian and bureaucratic leadership.
Organizations, these days, are switching from these traditional styles to more encouraging transformational and participative approaches. Authoritarian approach is neither fruitful for organizations nor for employees. It hinders the implementation of fresh and creative ideas while de-motivating employees' creativity at the same time. Likewise, bureaucratic style and strict adherence of rules and procedures is more suited to stereotype jobs and not to creative jobs like research report writing; it caused resentment in author and other employees.
Based on these theories, Mr. Stefelbauer exhibits weaknesses in team-handling, employees' encouragement, and performance optimization. He needs to be more open and embracing in his approach so that fresh ideas are put on board. It will be a win-win situation for both, employees as well as the organization.
Secondly, he needs to be selective and adopt authoritarian approach only when speedy decisions are required. However, he must practice more resilience in cases where there are chances of optimizing employees performance and increasing their participation.
Conclusion
The paper has juxtaposed the leadership style of two different leaders based on the personal experiences of the author. Mr. Anthony reflected participative approach and offered significant opportunities to team members to grow. At the same time, he accommodated their views, encouraged them and initiated efforts that led to better participation and low absenteeism. His leadership style put a positive impact on the author's development and increased his level of satisfaction.
The paper, as a suggestion, recommends a shift towards participative style of leadership as it involves necessary behavioral traits of employees' inclusion and participation. It is a top-up approach that is required to enhance creativity levels in the organization.
These personal experiences have developed deep insights in the author's mind, and if given a chance, he would prefer to adopt an approach more near to participative style than authoritarian and bureaucratic styles.
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