Essay On Personal Style Of Leadership

Personal Style of Leadership

Jordan Luke

ORG300 – Applying Leadership Principles

Colorado State University – Global Campus

Sheila Landfairmueller

November 25, 2014

Personal Style of Leadership

In my view, people employ certain traits that differentiate us from our neighbor next door, and leadership is no different. The test produced by the University of Kent in the United Kingdom (University of Kent, n.d.) has developed a process that I feel accurately defines what sort of leader you are based on 50 simple questions. I was not surprised by the results and found them to be quite accurate and expected. In this essay, I will explore why I feel the test is an accurate way to determine your leadership style due to my personal experience with

I believe that a leader should be able to trust their employees to complete a given task in any method they feel fits their strengths. If a leader must tell the employee what to do and exactly how to do it (authoritarian leadership) then all uniqueness of the employee is lost. Mooney (n.d.) states that collaborative efforts define a participative environment. The leader guides their team to produce an enterprise that is a result of group accomplishment. To do this, they must meld a mix of diverse workers with sometimes conflicting ideas and methods. They work to use these differences to form a team that works efficiently and progresses through challenges both material and personal. Differences is what makes a team great. Without diversity, there would be no out of the box thinking or ideas, items that I feel are very important to successful leadership.

Personal Examples of Participatory Leadership

On projects I have taken the lead on, I have always valued input from other employees. This assumes the fact that the employee is competent in their area, and have a willingness to share ideas with management. I encourage active participation, and I am often surprised at some of the answers that have come out of collaborative meetings. When employees feel at ease to share their ideas, genuinely good things

Halal and Brown (1981) write that participative management may not only increase productivity and decrease operating costs associated with low morale, it may enhance flexibility through lowering the decision making process to the operational level. This is because the operational level is where the actual work is completed. The manager or supervisor does not always have the best picture of how a process is completed, and they can get lost in the details. The operational level knows the details, thus to work together collaboratively is key. According to Mooney (n.d.) the participative leader empowers others. This is someone who is willing to share the spotlight by giving their employees the opportunity to make major decisions. They are also there to support these workers when they make mistakes and need help in solving problems. This leader invests much of their own success by placing it in the hands of those they