Do You Know the 5 Areas of Leadership Concern?

Kurt Lewin a German-American psychologist is credited with labeling the basic leadership styles in 1939. I found it very interesting that Lewin and his researchers used schoolchildren with an arts and crafts project while a team of observers watched the children’s behaviors and responses to different varieties or styles of leadership.

The idea was to determine which style was most effective to use in business. Due to this research Lewin identified three styles of leadership: Autocratic, Democratic, and Laissez-faire.

Over time, more leadership styles have emerged, and one that is commonly grouped in with Lewin’s three is Transformational Leadership. Today, there are a variety of leadership styles in business, but the four primary leadership styles we are all exposed to include:

• Autocratic
• Democratic
• Laissez-faire (Permissive)
• Transformational

You may be wondering why I bring this topic up. It is very simple; I volunteer with a wonderful charity, and I recently got a new supervisor, manager or ‘boss’. I jokingly called her my boss the other day. She took it very well, then went on to say that she is more my supervisor. I can understand that with her character and not wanting to sound pushy she wanted to tone it down. It almost seems as if she thinks that I believe a BOSS means ‘Barking Orders So Snidely.’ But she is not type of a person.

When I look at the 4 Leadership styles above, I would say that she is a mix between a Democratic and a Transformational Leader.

To help you understand your Leadership style consider these explanations;

• Autocratic – Is when all determination of strategy or policy is by the leader.
• Democratic – Is a matter of group dialogue and decision are encouraged and supported by the leader.
• Laissez-faire (Permissive) – Is when complete freedom is given for group or individual decisions, without any leader involvement.
• Transformational – Is all about encouraging, inspiring and motivating employees to perform in ways that create meaningful change.

It was in the 1970’s when leadership expert James MacGregor Burns is credited with coming up with the concept of Transformational Leadership. Organizational change and leadership development expert Kevin Ford built off this model that Burns initially identified. According to Mr. Ford, there are three effective leadership styles:

• Tactical leaders focus on solving clear-cut problems with an operations-pointed knowledge.
• Strategic leaders are future-focused and have an ability to sustain a detailed vision and having an ability at predicting industry and market trends.
• Transformational leaders spend less time on making decisions or launching strategic plans, and more on facilitating or enabling collaboration in the organization that can help propel a vision forward.

So, when do you use the styles?

It all depends on the stage your business or organization is in.

Now with this background we can now answer the question; Why is it that so many people have leadership troubles?

According to Kerry Siggins is the CEO of StoneAge, a global leader of high-pressure waterblast cleaning equipment, there are 5 areas of concern;

• They lack leadership abilities.
• Confidence turns to arrogance.
• They can’t build a team.
• They disregard details.
• They fail to communicate.

Now that you see the 5 areas of concern in leadership, a question; How can you improve your leadership style?