In South Africa as in the rest of the world, leadership styles are used as a means of stereotyping managerial and leadership skills into specific buckets. The aim of this is often to understand how to deal with a specific leader or hone one’s own leadership skills.
Leadership Styles – Definition
A leadership style is a leader’s style, implementing plans, of providing direction and motivating people. There are many types of leadership styles in the political and business world.
Leadership Styles: Authoritarian – leader keeps close, strict control over followers by keeping close regulation of policies and procedures given to followers. E.g. police officer directing traffic, a teacher ordering a student to do his or her assignment. This type is associated with of fear, where there is little or no room for dialogue and where complaining may be considered futile.
Leadership Styles: Paternalistic (fatherly) – acting as a father figure by taking care of their subordinates as a parent would. One negative is that the leader could start to play favorites in decisions.
Leadership Styles: Democratic – consists of the leader sharing the decision-making – promoting the interests of the group members and by practicing social equality.
Leadership Styles: Laissez-faire (“Let it be”)The laissez-faire leadership style is where all the rights and power to make decisions is fully given to the worker.
Leadership Styles: Transactional – focuses on motivating followers through a system of rewards and punishments.
Leadership Styles – Training
While one can use leadership styles to understand basic leadership traits and qualities, another source of acquiring leadership skills is through training courses including:
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