What Is Leadership Style

Leadership Styles

Clancy Yarter

Central Texas College

Leadership is a quality many of us strive to achieve. To be an excellent leader has been an elusive quest. However, the pursuit of excellent leadership is movement in the right direction. In this paper we will examine the major types of leadership styles. The three types are, Participative or Democratic, Laissez-Faire, and Authoritative.

Participative (Democratic) leadership is, as its name implies, a participation of the group. The participants all collaborate in the decisions the group must make. “Researchers have found that this learning style is usually one of the most effective and lead to higher productivity, better contributions from the group members, and increased moral.”

Webster’s dictionary defines Laissez-Faire as “a philosophy or practice characterized by a usually deliberate abstention from direction or interference especially with individual freedom of choice and action.” Webster’s goes on to say “Laissez-Faire is a French word meaning let the people do as they please.”(Miriam-Webster, 2014) This leadership style is “a style in which the leader provides little or no direction or supervision, and prefers a hands-off approach.” (Frandsen, 2014 p 2) As we can see decisions are not usually made or if they are, they aren’t completed. This style is often seen with new leaders who have not explored other leadership options, have little knowledge of the goals the group is seeking, an older leader who is ready to turn the reins over to his successor. This style seems doomed from the very start. If the group is left to do as they please with no direction from the leader, the group’s decision making ability is endangered by the very fact there is no true

Some more so than others, but all have their place. One of THE most important things an effective leader must possess is integrity. Integrity is the cornerstone of an effective leader no matter what style he or she chooses to use. As you can see the Laissez-Faire style lacks a leader with integrity. The group must be able to count on the leader’s knowledge, skills, dependability and their ability to make a decision and support that decision. More often than not a blend of all three types is seen. The Democratic style gets the ideas moving, when the leader sees the group is managing the problem solving well he or she may switch to the Laissez-Faire and use the hands off approach if the problem is not being solved or gets out of control, then the Authoritative style may be more effective in getting the result