While this is a very common question, “best” needs to be considered through two lenses: a.) what goal are you trying to achieve, and b.) what is the context of your environment. But first, let’s just select a few leadership “styles” to test these questions against.
There are many leadership styles that you will find written about with many differing and overlapping names and attributes. For our discussion we will define these six as they are very common in the business world.
- The Commanding Leader – Direct, strong-willed, focused, dominant, autocratic, tells you what to do and expects it will be done
- The Inspiring Leader – Charismatic, energetic, fun-loving, group-oriented, people person, sensitive to relationships
- The Expert Leader – Very detailed, questioning, data-driven, scrutinizing, very intelligent, quality driven
- The Bureaucratic Leader – Process / procedure oriented, compliance-driven, rules-focused, risk averse, facilitates i.e., knows how to use “the system”, doesn’t want to “make waves”
- The Delegating Leader – More manager than leader, manages work to be done by delegating the work to others, low level of control and participation
- The Participative Leader – Consensus-driven, everyone gets to be heard prior to decision making, may decide issues by group voting, sensitive to others’ opinions.
Now considering the lens of what you are trying to achieve, in the case where certain work absolutely MUST be done, possibly within a certain timeframe, the Commanding or Inspiring leaders may have the advantage. This would be particularly true if in their context, their team members were not highly self-motivated, were not very experienced, and/or needed strong direction. On the other hand, these styles may not be suited for experienced teams that already know what to do and how to deliver. These teams could feel the leader is being condescending to them.
When trying to achieve a result of great precision, having an Expert or the Bureaucratic leader can be useful. Things will get done right and by the book. In the context of highly regulated industries or high consequences of failure, with a team of very competent people, these styles would be useful. With a less experienced team, these styles still would be capable of teaching the team what to do. But they could offend team members that want to do “real work”, if micromanagment is used.
In the case that the work is large or cross-functional, the Delegating or Participative leaders are often encountered. Breaking down the work into manageable chunks done across teams / organizations or when trying to reduce the risk profile of the endeavor, these styles are suitable. However, the context requires competent and dependable team members / organizations as these styles utilize less control. And if the context requires speed, this style is less desirable due to multiple possible failure points on any given piece of work or falling into “consensus-paralysis” trying to get everyone in agreement.
Again, these styles may be mixed and matched in many combinations. Note that their success also depends on the competency of the leader. None of the styles are inherently good or bad – just more or less appropriate. It can be useful for leaders to use differing styles for different situations (but they need to be careful not to appear capricious, because teams need to see consistency in their leadership).
When you want to decide which style is best, ask which is best for your goal and your context.
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