Leadership Styles Adapting

In a modern society competition exists in every scope and businesses are not exceptional. As companies struggle to get more efficiency and profitability good management is certainly needed. It is argued that a qualified leader should know how to motivate people and deal with problems in the most effective way. Moreover, managers have to set objectives for companies in order to check whether the labours are working in a right direction and tasks are doing properly. However, not the same as before, business and situations are changing all the time. Facing a more complicated condition and people with different backgrounds, I believe that different leadership styles should be adopted to meet different kinds of situations and employees although it is difficult to realize. Generally there are four types of leadership styles which are Autocratic, Democratic, Paternalistic and Laissez-faire (Clark, 1997). The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate why they should be changed to suit various situations. Mainly to say there are five reasons for that.

The first reason for why I think leadership style should be adapted is that business structures may be different. We know that some businesses tend to be large and have a narrow span of authority. As there are many layers or decision making is centralized, a more autocratic style, which means that workers have no control of the job, should be used because the levels of employees are different. It is much easier to control the business by just giving direct instructions to workers especially the ones who are in the basic level. Otherwise, the business will be in a disordered condition as people are not all working for business objective and giving own opinions for decision making. On the other hand, a smaller group or decentralized structure is likely to run in a democratic way which is opposite to autocratic because less staff it has easier the information can be collected. In addition, MaslowЎЇs hierarchy of needs theory can be adopted to motivate workers by satisfying them with esteem needs and self actualization. (Marcouse, 2003)

Secondly, the type of work force is different. If the labours are all highly skilled and creative they have the confidence to manage their own tasks effectively. What companies need to do is give some advices and let them go. Those employees donЎЇt need too much instructions but a good working condition or freedom of work. In order to achieve this, Laissez-faire is more likely to be used. For example, Microsoft is a company which treats its qualified workers like this. However, it can sometimes cause a poor productivity and bad motivation because the incentive of working hard is very few. On the contrast, a group of low level workers tend to be controlled stricter by managers because of the lack of efficiency and skills. Managers will choose to give them a time limited of producing a particular amount of products. Bonus or punishment is also needed in order to motivate them.

Furthermore, the nature of task might affect the leadership style which depends on whether it needs a quicker response or precision (Chambers, 2004). If it needs an immediate result an autocratic style of leadership may be required. It is because the high speed of decision is needed and there is no time for any lower levels to argue. In addition, a perfect procedure is more preferred by producing this sort of goods such as medicine. Fourthly, being strong connected to the task, time is an important reason for varying styles of management. As the companyЎЇs project needs to be finished more quickly, communication and feedbacks are not accepted due to the limited hours. All these might lead to a poor motivation because of less communication with workers and lack of job empowerment.

The last but not the least, group personality does a big deal with changing the type of leadership styles which is linked to the motivation mostly than others. It can be testified by McGregor (Accel-Team, 2005)ЎЇs Theory X and Y which described the two different kinds of motivation by dealing with different personalities. If people are responsible, committed and enjoy having control over work, leaders will treat them in Democratic or even ÐŽ®let it beЎЇ styles which means employees can work more flexibly without being checked by managers all the time. However, some people are lazy and have no passions on their work. Maybe the own purpose for them to work is money. Professor Hall (Chambers et al, 2004, p72) mentioned that:

Some people prefer to be directed rather than contribute,

either because of lack of interest, previous experience, or

because