While there are many leadership styles, let us conclude the 5 most common ones, according to IMD.
Trasnformational Leadership focuses on creating a shared vision with unity amongst team members in order to work towards the organization’s future and goals. Leaders with transformational leadership style inspire their employees to achieve more which results in developing new leaders.
Delegative Leadership, also known as “laissez-faire” leaders, they focus on delegating tasks to team members. Micromanagement is not preferred as these managers trust in their employees to do their job. This leadership style work great with responsible and proactive team members, while newcomers and juniors not familiar with this style often find it confusing.
Leaders adapting authoritative leadership often pose as a mentor in front of their employees and expect them to follow. They provide the overall direction while motivating and guiding others to follow them. They focus on personal relationship with every team member and use hands-on leading style, which can sometimes turn into micromanagement.
Preferring structure over freedom, transactional leaders use reward and punishment systems. They establish roles, responsibilities and routines. However, they only focus on financially motivating employees, as in their eyes team member don’t work for a purpose, only for salary.
Participative Leadership, sometimes referred as “democratic leadership”, these leaders focus on listening to their employees and involving them in planning and decision-making. Communication is their main skill and they work towards sharing power and responsibility. This results in sharing success and accountability too amongst team members. Working with remote teams make spontaneous communication and collaboration harder which makes this leadership style less effective.
