Which is the Best Style of Leadership?

The style of leadership varies with every leader. It is difficult to predict the style of the next leader. The styles of leaders are decided not only on the basis of the personality of the person but also the situation and the type of followers. The leadership styles are broadly classified into three categories.

1. Authoritarian: The Leader decides everything without consulting anyone.

2. Participative (Democratic): The leader decides everything after consulting the people who shall be responsible for the implementation of the decision.

3. Delegative (Laissez-Faire): Leader delegates his power to another person who decides everything on behalf of leader.

A good leader uses all three types of styles to provide leadership to his people. Yet some styles are more suitable in a particular time and situations.

Authoritarian styles are best suited in war-like situation when there is a question of life and death. You cannot afford to waste your time on discussion and consultation. The leader has to take the call based on his intuition and best judgment. There is very little information available since it is difficult to know everything about the enemy. However, even in such situation, if the leader tries to force his decision, the followers may back out if they do not have much faith in the leadership. This may lead to the collapse of the leadership and defeat of the group. However, if the leader is the most competent person of the group and the followers have trust in his capability, authoritarian style can produce the best result in such situation.

The participative leadership style is best suited for realizing the long-term goals of the organisation. It is said that two minds are better than one. Hence if the decision is taken after the participation of many brilliant minds, the future strategy can be failure-proof. The brain-storming can be extremely useful to solve complex problems and find a lasting solution. However, the selection of the participants is extremely important in such decision-making. Even a single negative thinker or pessimist can really sabotage the efforts of many brilliant minds. This leadership works best when the leader and participants have similar intelligence and expertise in the matter and they have mutual respect for each other.

The delegative leadership style is best suited for larger organizations where the people with good talent is available at lower ranks. The leader instead of being expert in any field must be expert of the experts. He must have the capability to pick the best man from his team and assign the job which can be done by his men better than the leader. In the words of Theodore Roosevelt, The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

The nature of delegated work should be important but routine in nature and no major creativity should be required by the delegated leader. There must be absolute trust between the leader and the led. The delegative style of the leader makes the leader free to focus on the more important issues and concentrate his energy on realization of the vision of the organisation. It is difficult to say which style is the best? A good leader must use all the three styles of leadership for leading his people. Every good organisation has all three types of work, all three types of situations and all three types of persons. A leader must know how to make the best use of all for achieving the vision of the organisation.