There are many different methods of leading a group of people, a natural leader will often employ a number of these methods and adjust them in order to lead a variety of different people and personality types. If you’re struggling to connect with your employees and are looking for a way to get them to follow you without forcing them, you could attempt various approaches.
Why Is It Important For Leaders to Have Different Strategies?
It’s essential that a good leader knows a variety of styles and strategies on how to lead so that they can connect with each and every one of their employees in a way that means that they gain respect as well as give it.
As a leader or boss, you will come across various situations along your career that require different approaches. This is where an ability to call upon a diverse set of leadership styles will help you to successfully tackle these issues and prove to others why you deserve your role.
Leadership Styles
There are a variety of ways in which you can lead, here are a few of the different methods that can be used:
Leading From The Front
Charismatic Leadership
Autocratic Leadership
Bureaucratic Leadership
Utilising Different Leadership Strategies
A leader must adapt the way in which they lead and the strategy that they use to bring the best out of their employees and to gain the most from their workforce; here’s a guide to how and when you should use each of the aforementioned styles.
Leading from the front is where you set an example for other people to follow, you show others that something can be done and how to do it. This style is best reserved for members of your work force who are not capable of working without reassurance or a small amount of instruction. Everyone respects someone who takes control and does what is necessary. This could be putting in extra hours to finish a project or simply working to the best of your ability and being professional each and every day.
Charismatic leadership is where you use your personality to help drive productivity and motivate your employees. Monitoring the morale of your employees is an important task and there will be times when their motivation will wane. When this arises, you need to use your charisma to raise morale and show them that there is light at the end of the tunnel. This is closely linked to the first style but can include approaching employees and providing advice, help or words of encouragement.
Autocratic leadership can leave you isolated as you make all of the decisions and give instructions for those below you to follow. This is a difficult type of leadership for a number of reasons as not only does the majority of the responsibility fall on you, but you also have to deal with any consequences for when things go wrong. There will be times when you need to make the final decision and if people disagree, you have to explain your thought process and help them understand why you think your way is the best way to proceed.
Bureaucratic leadership is theoretically the easiest style of leadership for you to use. This is where you listen to the ideas of your workforce, discuss these ideas with them, collect information and learn from your employees in order to move forward with different projects or tasks. This helps to involve your staff in the process and they can feel as if they have an active input in the direction of the project. It also allows you to analyse your employees, noticing which of them are more skilled than others.
Being a leader is never easy but it is the ability to call upon various parts of your personality that makes it possible for you to hold this role in a company. Remember that a number of different situations will arise and that is when you use the various successful styles of a leader.
Author: Georgina Stamp is a dedicated member of the team at Marble Hill Partners. She believes that leaders and managers need certain characteristics if they are to succeed in interim roles.
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