What kind of leader are you?

At one point in your career, you’ll find yourself a leader, whether it’s leading a meeting, project, presentation or even a whole company. In this situation, you’ll have to employ a certain leaership style to get the best out of those you are leading.

There are a few that describe a leader, starting with these three main ones we’ve all heard of:

• Autocratic: The leader employs a ‘my way or no way’ style to delegating tasks
• Democratic: The leader takes advice from one or more employees before making the final decision
• Laissez-fair: Literally means ‘leave to do’. The leader pretty much lets her employees do whatever they see fit to get the job done.

Then as time went by, experts came up with a few more styles popular these days, such as:

• Coach: Similar to a sports coach, this leadership style is focused around the team and the strengths each member possesses. This requires the ‘coach’ to identify the strengths of his members and formulate strategies that can help achieve goals. This method is however quite time consuming.
• Transformational: This method revolves around effective communication to set high targets with tight deadlines. Tight deadlines are met with the team working together in unison to achieve the shared goal. The hard part? Subordinates must share the same vision as the leader and should be able to complete the tasks given with minimal supervision.
• Bureaucratic: Arguably the least effective leadership style, leaders employing this method go by the book because rules are rules. It’s more common and fitting for highly regulated industries like government offices.

But wait – there is no a one style fits all; many leaders employ a mixture of the different styles depending on situation and how best to achieve results. Which means, you can be a democratic coach if that fits your style better.

So which one are you or which one do you think suits you best?

Photo by Jehyun Sung on Unsplash