Leadership and Leadership grid

Leadership

People often confuse Leadership with Management. Management is more about managing and organizing people. A manager may not be a leader. However, a leader certainly has to be a good manager, along with being able to inspire, guide and motivate his followers. A leader is one who is charismatic, courageous, a visionary, honest, sincere, committed, wise and many other adjectives. A leader must be selfless and have an honourable character. Some principles of Leadership are mentioned below. Be accountable – Be responsible for your actions. Always accept your mistakes and search for ways to rectify it rather than blaming someone else for your actions. Take charge of a situation – Take charge of the situation, whether it is a moment of crisis where a choice must be made or a business plan waiting to be launched. Control situations and don’t allow a situation to control you. Master your trade – Ensure that you know your job, and can guide your business successfully. You must be able to guide your employees as well as far as professional knowledge is concerned. Know your employees – Make an effort to get to know your employees as much as possible. This will help you form a relationship with them. It is easier for people to follow someone they know and respect. Listen – Be an attentive listener. Give everyone an opportunity to put forth their views. This will make them realise their importance in your organization. Be honest – Be honest to your employees. To be able to win their trust, you must always be honest with your employees. Know yourself – You must know yourself, your strengths and weaknesses be able to create the best team possible. Be a role model – You will always be observed by your employees, your every action will be carefully watched and probably imitated. Therefore always be careful you don’t sent out the wrong messages with your behaviour. Behave the way you expect your employees to behave. Communicate – Be clear with your instructions to your employees, and make sure you are completely understood. Be there to supervise and assist in case you are needed. Encourage team spirit – Teach your employees to work together, and as a team. Show them the power of working in a team and its advantages. Leadership Styles A leadership style is the manner of approach to leading a team. The leader must choose his leadership style according to the situation. A good leader knows when to switch leadership styles when the situation demands it. Some of the common leadership styles are explained below. Autocratic Leadership In this type of leadership, a leader tells his employees exactly what must be done, and how it must be done. No suggestions or advice from the employees is heard. Some misinterpret this style and adopt it the wrong way by yelling at their employees or using abusive language. However, that is completely unprofessional behaviour and is definitely not what this leadership style is about. This kind of leadership style may be adopted, when there is a crisis and there is not time for the leader to explain the situation to the employees. However, this style must be used rarely, as even when used professionally, has a negative effect on the employees. Nobody likes to be treated like this and can lead to a lot of negativity in the team. This can have an impact on the employees work as well. Democratic Leadership In this style of leadership, the leader involves one or more members of his team to assist him in the decision making process. However, the democratic leader himself makes the final decision. This style of leadership is more successful than aristocratic, because the act of involving some of the employees is a sign of encouragement for them. This gives the employees the feeling that they have some control over the outcome of the situation, and helps motivate them. This also tests and helps develop the decision-making skills of the employees. This style is generally used when the leader in not fully informed, and needs employee inputs as well. This style works both ways, as it makes the team feel important and useful and helps the leader at making better decisions. This style of leadership is usually takes longer with decision making as compared to autocratic, but with better results. It is useful, when quality is of essence as compared to speed of delivery. Delegative or Laissez-faire Leadership Laissez-faire is a French phrase meaning “let it be” or “leave it alone”. It precisely describes this leadership style. In this style, the leader allows the employees to make decisions, though he must take responsibility for their actions. When a lot of work must get done, the leader delegates some of the work to his employees, and goes about doing his own work. This style of leadership can be successful if the leader periodically monitors the progress of his team members. This style must be used when the leader completely trusts the team members to be able to accomplish the tasks he assigns to them. It is an effective style if used wisely. Leadership Grid The managerial grid model (1964) by Robert Blake and Jane Mouton is a behavioural leadership model based on concern for people and concern for production.  It is a tool for appraising leader behaviour based on these attributes. This leadership grid describes the process through which leaders aid the organization in reaching its goals via concern for people (relationship behaviour) and concern for production (task behaviour). Concern for People consists of the leaders’ attitude towards their co-workers as well as superiors. Apart from this, it also refers to areas including the quality of work, job security, conditions under which work is done, job satisfaction, etc. Here the leader takes into consideration the needs and requirements of the people when deciding how to reach and accomplish a task. Concern for Production, on the other hand, refers to the amount of importance laid upon objectives, productivity, etc. while deciding the route to reach a task. This even refers to the expected outcome or production that the team has to produce. The grid comprises of two axes: X-axis and Y-axis. The Y-axis represents the concern for people attribute on a scale of one to nine. The X-axis represents the concern for production attribute on a scale of one to nine. It defines seven basic leadership styles based on the attributes. These styles are: Indifferent (1, 1) – Popularly known as the Impoverished Style In this leadership style, leaders have little concern for the people as well as the production. This is often a tactic used by leaders to stay away from problems possibly arising from bad decision-making. Their main concern is not getting involved in these kinds of troubles. This is obviously not a very good leadership style and can de-motivate the employees, which could directly affect their work. Thus, neither the employees are happy, nor the organizational needs are met. Status Quo (5, 5) – Popularly known as Middle-of-the-Road Style In this leadership style, leaders try to keep up a balance between the employee needs and organizational needs. It is a weak balance though, which is just enough to get the work done. This leadership style also neither meets the employee needs or the organizational needs. Accommodating (1, 9) – Popularly known as Country Club Style In this leadership style, the leader has high concern for the employees and a low concern for production. The employees are the priority for the leader. This style of leadership may or may not be productive. The leader keeps the employees happy so that they are satisfied with their work and work environment. Whether they reciprocate with productive work to meet organizational needs is a matter of debate. Dictatorial (9, 1) – Popularly known as Produce or Perish Style This type of leadership style is the exact opposite of the accommodating style. Here, the leader has a high concern for production and low concern for the employees. Such a leader is very task oriented and expects the employees to complete tasks on time and obey strict rules and regulations. A dictatorial leader believes that paying money to the employee is enough to get the job done. Even though this kind of leadership style may make the employees work productively and deliver results, their turnover rate will also be high due to employee dissatisfaction. The Sound Style (9, 9) – Popularly known as Team Style In this leadership style, the leader has high concern for the employees and the production. The leader constantly encourages the employees and promotes teamwork. Even though the leader has high concern for the employees, he also encourages them to be productive. He shares his goals and objectives with them, so that they can together work towards achieving those goals. He makes them feel a part of the organization. Opportunistic Style This leadership style was added to the grid model long after the first five styles. They do not have a fixed place on the grid and choose whichever style that works to their benefit. Paternalistic Style This leadership style was also added to the grid model after the five initial styles. In this style the leader switches between the accommodating and dictatorial styles as need be. Even though they encourage the employees, they don’t like to be challenged in their thinking. In better understanding the different styles, people can get a clearer idea about the various approaches as well as gain an insight into their individual strengths and weaknesses.