Common Leadership Styles

To decide on the “best leadership style” one has to enumerate the merits and demerits of each, evaluate their effectiveness and efficiency and more than anything else, see whether they deliver the goods”. Analysis of the various leadership styles conclusively proves that there does not exist something as the “best” leadership style. If there existed one, it should have proved successful under all circumstances. It can be observed that different leadership styles produce the best results under different conditions and circumstances.

That which results in the most favorable and desirable outcome under any particular circumstances is the “right” leadership style in that context.The success of the manager depends on his/her ability to identify the “right” leadership style in any given situation and then exhibit enough flexibility and adaptability to practice hat style.

Sources of Leader Influence on Followers

What provides a leader with the capacity to influence followers? Why will subordinates respond to the influence attempts of a leader by doing that the leader intends or wishes them to do? In other words, what is the source of the leader’s power over subordinates? Five distinct sources of leader power or influence have been identified. Any particular leader may have at his or her disposal any combination of these different sources of power.

1. Reward Power refers to the leader’s capacity to reward followers. To the extent that a leader possesses and controls rewards that are valued by subordinates, the leader’s power increases. Rewards at a leader’s disposal fall into two categories. Rewards such as praise, recognition and attention are sources of personal power possessed by the leader as an individual. In addition, a leader also usually controls certain organizational rewards, such as pay raises, promotions and other perquisites. These are sources of power that depend upon the leader’s position in the organization.

2. Coercive power is the flip side of reward power and refers to the leader’s capacity to coerce or punish followers. Sources of coercive power also break down into personal and positional components. Leaders personally possess coercive power to the extent that followers experience criticism or lack of recognition from their leader as unpleasant or punishing. In addition, leaders possess coercive power to the extent that their position permits them to administer organizational sources of punishment (such as demotion, with holding of pay increases or firing) to followers.

3. Legitimate power refer to the power a leader possesses as a result of occupying a particular position or role in the organization. In every organization, certain types of requests and directions issued by leaders to subordinates are viewed to be legitimate and valid. Subordinates are obligated to comply with such requests because of the norms, policies, and procedures accepted as legitimate by all members of the organization. Legitimate power is clearly a function of the leader’s position in the organization and is completely independent of any of the leader’s personal characteristics.

4. Expert power refers to power that a leader possesses as a result of his or her knowledge and expertise regarding the tasks to be performed by subordinates. Subordinates are most likely to respond positively to a leader’s attempts to influence their behavior if they view the leader as a competent and in possession of knowledge and information regarding effective task performance that they themselves lack. The possession of expert power by a leader obviously depends upon the personal characteristics of the leader (ie. his or her personal expertise) and is not determined by the formal position that the leader occupies in the organization.

5. Referent power is dependent upon the extent to which subordinates identify with, look up to and wish to emulate the leader. The more that subordinates admire and identify with the leaders, the greater the leader’s referent power over subordinates. Referent power, like expert power, is totally dependent upon the personal characteristics of the leader and does not depend directly upon the leader’s formal organizational position.

Current Issues in Leadership

In addition to focusing on the different powers discussed above, leadership researchers have also recently identified a number of new and important issues that deserve our attention.

Leadership as Mutual Influence

The very term leadership naturally serves to draw our attention to leaders themselves and focuses our interest on the ways in which leaders influence their followers. As a result, research on leadership has tried to understand how different types of leaders and different types of leader behaviors cause follower to react in different ways.

An important contribution of recent research on leadership has been to point out the shortsightedness of this view of leader-follower relations. While it is no doubt true that leaders can and do influence their followers, it is also true that leaders and followers engage in interaction with one another, which necessarily implies the existence of mutual influence. In other words, not only is it true that leaders influence followers, but it is equally true that followers influence leaders.