Leadership Styles Essay

MOTIVATION Giving the input on leadership styles and influence process, we should presume the aim is to understand and improve the style of functioning as a leader. To start with, there must have clear idea as to what is meant by leadership. Leadership is the activity of influencing people to strive willingly for group objectives. This process is a function of the leader, the followers and the situation. In any situation trying to influence the behaviour of another individual or group, leadership is operating. Thus one tries leadership at one time or the other, whether activities are centred around a business, educational institution, hospital, political organization, Government organization or a family. As part of this process, one who attempts to influence the behaviour of others becomes a potential leader and the persons he is attempting to influence are the potential followers. This may happen irrespective of the fact that the leader may be their boss or a colleague (associate) or a subordinate or a friend or a relative. In other words through a style of. functioning he influences attitudes and expectations, which in turn encourage or discourage the follower’s activity or achievement, enhance or diminish the follower’s commitment to the work, etc. In our day-to-day life, we come across instances of how people are influenced by the activities or word of a person who is trying to lead them. We always make judgments about the leaders of our own office. In our mind, we make a difference between a good leader and a bad one, by judging his style or way of functioning and his influence on others. Hence, in understanding the phenomenon of leadership, priority must first understand the various styles of the leaders. [4] LEADERSHIP STYLES The word style is the way in which the leader influences followers. Person and environment function in conjunction with the behaviour itself and reciprocally interact to determine behaviour. A person, through his actions, produces the environmental conditions that affect his behaviour in a reciprocal fashion. The experience generated by behaviour also partly determines what a person becomes and can do. This in turn affects his subsequent behaviour. The theory is called social learning theory because, individuals learn in an environment in the process of interacting with each other which is a social process. The application of this theory in understanding the behaviour of a leader and the continuous reciprocal interaction between the   person (leader’s cognitions) and environment (including subordinates and their needs, experiences, objectives in the organization. abilities, skills, energy performance, etc. known as contingencies that regulate their behaviour).The three aspects of this theory of leadership assume that the leader knows how his behaviour is controlled by various needs, situations and experiences that he undergoes. The leader works with the subordinates to discover what those needs situations and experience. The leader and the subordinates jointly attempt to discover ways in which they can manage their individual behaviour to produce mutually satisfying as well as organisationally productive outcomes. In this approach, the leader and the subordinates have a negotiable and interactive relationship. They are continuously aware of how they can modify or influence each other’s behaviour by giving the rewards or holding back the performance respectively. [4,5,6] TYPES OF LEADER AND POWER CONCEPT Formal Leader A formal leader is selected by the organization. For example, a manager is a formal leader by virtue of the authority coming from the organization. He influences others to help accomplish the goals of the organization or unit. Such a leadership lasts over a long period of time Informal Leader An informal leader is chosen by the group. Thus, all managers are leaders if their authority is accepted, but not all leaders are managers. Informal leadership is leadership without position and may shift from one person to another. It may last for a brief time. Most people are leaders at one time or the other and they can have influence on others as defined by the concept of leadership. The ideal leader is the one who can combine the formals and informal leadership simultaneously within himself. SUCCESSFUL VERSUS EFFECTIVE LEADER As we have seen in the preceding discussions, leadership is the activity of influencing people to strive willingly for group objectives; it is the ability to persuade others to get something done. So the leader attempts to have some effect on the behaviour of another, which we call attempted leadership. The response to this attempt may or may not be successful. A basic responsibility of managers in any work organization is to get the work done with and through people. The success of managers is measured by the output or productivity of the group they lead. [8,10] LEADER BEHAVIOUR IN GROUPS The main aim apparently is to understand why individuals form groups. The solution lies in tracking the solution ideas: How old were you when you first joined a group? How many different groups do you belong to? How would you identify a group leader? Does your behaviour change when you are with different groups? Have you ever led a group? In what sense were you the leader? What were the results? If our own the questions should be answered, which leads to the understanding of group. Behaviour and the properties of groups are essential to being both a good manager and an effective member of groups. A manager spends half of his time in some formal or informal meetings, where a group of people get together to solve problems or make plans. So the manager himself acts as a member of a group with other managers or colleagues. Groups have a powerful effect on human behaviour. Any increase in output of those workers was because of the importance and attention given to the group of workers by their colleagues as well as their own interactions with each other about the quality and quantity of output they were supposed to produce. People are motivated to act in a certain way in a given situation and one should change the situation in order to make the people act the way one wants them to. There are also many examples where the manager decides to take a decision on his own or to rely on groups by holding meetings or making committees. In Management, small groups with which he interacts are very important for a manager. It may consist of his peers or colleagues, other managers, specialists or others who really help the manager to take an effective decision. There are instances of well knit and cohesive groups, which really make a superior performance under a good leader. For all these purposes gaining understanding of how to manage a group and how to become a more effective group member. In order to develop the above two objectives, point noted is that a group is part of a larger organization with which it interacts. [1,4] LEADERSHIP AND INFLUENCE PROCESS Authority is the right to command and extract obedience from others. It comes from organization and it allows the leader to use power. Power is the ability to exercise influence or control over others. In the functioning of a leader the ability to guide the action of others is achieved through his authority. Carrying out of these decisions is accomplished because of the power of the leader. The relationship between the authority and power of a leader as we go further to understand various types of power GROUP DYNAMICS Group Dynamics is concerned with the interactions and forces among group members in a social situation. In the path on management functions, it is important to understand dynamics of members of formal or informal groups in the organization. Group Dynamics is the interaction of forces among group members in a social situation. Authoritarian, Democratic and Laissez-faire, is having three different social situations for the three styles of leadership. In course of time various meanings were attached to the term ‘group dynamics’ One of the meanings suggest how a group should be organized and conducted. In democratic leadership, member participation and overall cooperation are emphasized. Another meaning of Group Dynamics is that it is set of techniques. In various group exercises it tries to make the leader as well as the member effective. An attempt made to make the above members play their roles in a management situation of group discussions, team building, finding out various solutions to problems by brainstorming and understanding ourselves in relation to others while we transact or interact with others. Such exercises are also provided in situations where only members are present and no leader exists to direct or control the group. All these exercises are techniques to develop both the individual as well as the organization in which he or she works. The meaning of the term Group Dynamic suggest internal nature of the groups as to how they are formed, what their structures and processes are and how they function. [7,8] COMPOSITION OF A GROUP In most organizations getting the work done requires group efforts. Thus, a manager must know how to manage individual by knowing the individual dynamics, such as his values. Personality, perceptions and attitudes. A manager must know how to manage a group by understanding Group Dynamics Each group has a common objective, but the members who belong to it may have other personal objectives. For example, a life insurance agent may like to become a member of a parent-teacher association of a school to help promote the development process of its students. But belonging to that association will also help him to increase his or her contact to ensure more and more people, so he gets more commission for as many members as he can sell the insurance to. What is most important in the content of the definition of a group is to be aware of each other in a group. This awareness is seldom there, when we look at an aggregation of people. They are mere collections, different from what we call a group, where members see themselves as belonging to a group in order to interact and achieve the common objectives of the group. Moreover, such kind of interaction may be over a long or a short period of time. [9,10] TYPES OF POWER Legitimate Power This power comes to the leader when the organisation’s authority is accepted. It comes from the rules of the organization. For example, parents, teachers, managers. police, etc. have legitimate power only when their authority is accepted in the positions they hold. Expert Power This is the power of knowledge and skill of special kind that are important in getting the job done. A person’s professional competence or knowledge gives him the expert power. His credibility increases. He can lead other persons to trust his judgments and decisions, as an expert like a physicist or a lawyer or a chemist or a computer programmer or a purchasing agent or a financial analyst. A leader himself may not be an expert in all fields, but he can certainly take the help of experts in particular fields. Charismatic Power This is the power of attraction or devotion, the desire of one person to admire another. A subordinate feels a positive attraction towards a leader by identifying himself with the leader, or gets influenced by the leader’s attractive power. This power helps the subordinate to understand and value the leader so much that he understands and acts according to the expectations of the boss or the leader. It helps him to act as his own boss, and behave in ways he thinks the boss will want. [15] Reward Power This power is the present or potential ability to reward for worthy behaviour. The superior or the leader has the power to give tangible rewards such as promotion, office space, time off from work, attractive work assignments and help to the subordinate. Also psychological rewards like praise, appreciation, approval and recognition can be given by the leader or the superior to the subordinate. The subordinate has to believe that he has access to higher authorities, therefore he can give rewards. This reward power of the leader can also increase the leader’s charismatic and legitimate power. Coercive Power This is the ability to threaten or punish. The leader can give tangible punishments like dismissal, demotion, low rating. less satisfying work assignments, etc. Psychological punishments include criticism, avoidance, disapproval, satirical remarks on the subordinate. The reward power helps to avoid something undesirable. Self-esteem of the subordinate increases because of reward power and decreases because of punishment or coercive power. Even a subordinate may withdraw or break the rules or become hostile. He may not feel attracted towards the charismatic power of the leader and at times may ignore the leader’s legitimate power. Having seen the reasons for differences between the authority and power of the leader, you should know the type of leaders as understood on the basis of their authority and power. [11,12] COLLECTIVE ACTION Interpersonal competence refers to the degree to which we are accurately aware of our impact on others and of the impact of others on us. It is the ability to engage in an mutually helpful relationships. It enables us to achieve your personal goals as well as task goals in the organizations where you we are a member. What are the effects of our interpersonal competence on our managerial behaviour? Interpersonally incompetent managers create an organizational environment in which members act very defensively to protect their own interests. Since everybody acts defensively in the organization. where roles and relationships are basically interdependent, neither the personal goals of the members, nor the task goals can be fully realized. Problems are not confronted and are kept hidden from each other for fear that exploring the problems will only aggravate the situation. In course of time, issues which were avoided and swept under the rug assume gigantic proportions and overwhelm the members. On the other hand, interpersonally competent managers allow their subordinates to challenge their views and to question the organisation’s norms, policies, rules and objectives. When these kinds of behaviour are tolerated, people are likely to discover problems and commit themselves to their solutions. Organizational effectiveness increases. 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