The only thing a leader has to do is lead his subordinates to win. But how can a leader lead his subordinates to win? How can leaders motivate employees to create the best performance? The study of Hay/MCber in the United States may give us some advice. His research found that there are six main leadership styles adopted by leaders, and different leadership styles will have different effects in different situations. Effective leaders can always adopt the most appropriate leadership style according to different situations.
16 leadership styles
（1） Autocratic leadership style
Its distinctive feature is that it demands immediate obedience from its subordinates. Its behavioral characteristics are: constantly giving orders to tell subordinates what to do and what not to do, instead of listening to or allowing subordinates to express their opinions, once given an order, they hope that subordinates will obey it immediately and strictly implement it. When the subordinates make mistakes, they will severely criticize them, and sometimes even take embarrassing methods to force them to obey.
A computer company In the midst of the crisis, its sales and profits are constantly declining, its stock market value has dropped by a thousand pieces, and its shareholders are in an uproar. For this reason, the Board of Directors hired a new CEO. This man is famous for turning the corner. The CEO adopted an autocratic leadership style. After taking office, he began to lay off staff and sell his division. He made a decision that should have been implemented several years ago. Finally, the company was saved, at least in the short term through the crisis. But the good times didn't last long. Because he practiced the "rule of terror", he intimidated and belittled his managers, and was furious at the slightest mistake in their work. His arrogance and violence led to the betrayal of others and the collapse of the company's top management. His direct reports were scolded because they were afraid to tell him bad news, and no longer provided him with any bad news. The morale of employees was the lowest at the beginning, and the company fell into trouble again after a short recovery. Finally, the company's board of directors had to remove him.
The above examples show that leaders should think twice before adopting the authoritarian leadership style, and can only consider using it as a last resort. Generally speaking, authoritarian leadership style is applicable to the following situations: crisis situations, such as when the company is turning losses into gains, or when it is facing hostile takeover; The task is simple and clear, the subordinates need clear instructions, and the superiors know more than the subordinates. Under these circumstances, the autocratic leadership style can quickly cut through the mess and inspire people to adopt new working methods. This kind of leadership is not easy to adopt in the following situations: when the task is more complicated than teaching, autocracy may lead to rebellion; It is not applicable to high-quality employees who are self motivated, capable of self guidance, monitoring their own work, and hope to be independent or have personal expertise. In addition, leaders should pay attention to that if they adopt this leadership style for a long time, such disregard for employees' morale and emotions will make their subordinates resist, slack off or leave their jobs, and cause devastating effects.
（2） Authoritative leadership
Its distinctive feature is to provide employees with long-term goals and willing police, and call on employees to fight for it. Its behavioral characteristics are: can outline the long-term goal and vision of blocking development; Guide rather than force employees to understand the vision and the best way to achieve it; Regard the inculcation of long-term goals and visions as an important part of leaders' work; Firm the vision based on the long-term interests of the organization and employees; Establish a performance management system related to the vision; Reasonable use of positive and negative feedback to strengthen incentives.
The research shows that among the six leadership styles, the authoritative leadership style is the most effective and can play a positive role in every aspect of the work atmosphere. Authoritative leadership style is applicable to almost any business environment due to its positive role, especially for enterprises with unclear goals. Authoritative leaders can describe new directions and bring new visions to employees. However, although this kind of leadership is powerful, it is not applicable in every situation. For example, when a leader faces a group of experts or colleagues who are more experienced than himself, people will think that he is arrogant or puts on airs; When subordinates distrust leaders, it is difficult to achieve good results by adopting such leadership. Another limitation is that when leaders become arrogant and overbearing due to excessive pursuit of authority, they will destroy the team spirit.
（3） Affinity leadership style
Its distinctive style is to establish emotional ties between employees and between leaders and employees to create a harmonious atmosphere. If expert leaders require "do as I say", and authoritative leaders encourage everyone to say "follow me", then affinity leaders will say "employees first". This leadership style is employee centered, and its advocates believe that individuals and emotions are more important than tasks and goals. Affirmative leaders try to make employees happy and create a harmonious relationship among them. He manages by establishing a strong emotional bond, which is the loyalty of employees. Affirmative leaders never grudge praise, and always give timely positive feedback - recognition or reward - to excellent work performance. Such rewards include
A special power, because most of them are
When people do not get feedback from leaders in their daily work, even if they do, it is often negative feedback, which makes the praise of friendly leaders more incentive. In addition, affinity leadership is also good at cultivating employees' sense of belonging. For example, they may invite their direct reports out for dinner, or have a drink for one-on-one communication to learn about their recent employees. Sometimes they also buy a cake to celebrate the team's achievements.
The overall impact of affinity leadership is positive, so it is suitable in various environments. This type can especially play a role in creating team harmony and anger, improving employee morale, strengthening communication and exchange, or repairing trust. Although the affinity leadership style has many advantages, it should not be used alone. Overwhelming praise may lead to poor performance that cannot be corrected. Employees think mediocrity is acceptable. This style should not be used when a clear direction and control are needed in a crisis or complex situation, and when employees are task oriented and are not interested in establishing friendship with their supervisors. In addition, since affinity leaders seldom guide their subordinates to improve, they always let them ponder on their own, so when employees encounter complex problems and need clear guidance, they will lose direction. In fact, if an organization relies too much on this organizational style, it will fail. Because of this, it is generally necessary to combine affinity type and authority type closely. They describe the vision and goals, set standards, and let employees understand that the realization of team goals depends on everyone's efforts; At the same time, they also care about the growth of employees and pay attention to the cultivation of talents. Facts have proved that this kind of leadership style that pays equal attention to grace and authority is very effective.
（4） Democratic leadership style
Its remarkable feature is to reach consensus through participation. Leaders who adopt this style believe that employees have the ability to find the right development direction for themselves and the organization; Enable employees to participate in decisions that affect their work; Regularly convene meetings to listen to employees' opinions; Reward positive performance and rarely give negative feedback or punishment. Using this leadership style can win the trust, respect and support of others. Improve employees' recognition of work objectives.
However, the democratic leadership style also has its shortcomings. The most troublesome thing is the endless meetings, which exchange views over and over again, but reach consensus is far away. The only tangible result is the schedule of more meetings. What's more, these democratic leaders will delay decision-making on the pretext of disagreement. As a result, employees feel puzzled, like a headless fly
. People oriented leadership style will even aggravate contradictions and conflicts.
So, under what circumstances is democratic leadership most effective? This leadership style is ideal when leaders themselves cannot determine the best direction and excellent employees are required to give advice. Even if the leader has a clear vision, the democratic leadership style can still brainstorm new ideas to help achieve the vision. Of course, if the ability of employees is weak or the information is not good enough to provide constructive advice, then the democratic leadership style will have little meaning. In addition, it is unrealistic to try to reach consensus in a time of crisis.
（5） Leading leadership style
Its distinctive feature is the pursuit of excellence and the setting of relatively high performance standards. Using this leader will generally set high performance standards, and always take the lead. He is obsessed with keeping improving, and he also requires his subordinates to perform equally well. He will immediately point out those employees who perform poorly and ask them to improve. If it still does not meet the requirements, he will let someone with stronger ability take it, or go out in person. You may think that this is an ideal leadership style, but it is not. Many employees are afraid of the excessive requirements of such leading leaders, and their morale drops accordingly. At the same time, employees will also feel that the leaders do not trust them, do not let them work in their own way, and do not encourage them to take the initiative. The dedication and sense of responsibility of employees have decreased, and doing work is to complete the task step by step. And once such leaders leave, employees will lose their sense of direction, because they are used to the "expert" system. Of course, this does not mean that the leading leadership style is useless. If all the employees in the organization are full of passion and ability, and almost do not need any knowledge or coordination, then this kind of leadership will be of great use. For example, for highly skilled and self motivated professionals, such as research groups or marketing groups, it will have a positive effect, and people can always complete tasks on time or even ahead of schedule under the leadership of such leaders.
（6） Coaching leadership style
The distinctive feature of coaching leadership style is to train employees for the future. Coaching leaders help employees recognize their unique strengths and weaknesses, and connect them with their personal ambitions and career development. They encourage employees to set long-term personal development goals, help employees develop specific plans to achieve goals, agree with employees on their roles and responsibilities in implementing the plans, and give them sufficient guidance and feedback. Coaching leaders are very good at delegating, and they assign challenging tasks to employees, even if these tasks cannot be completed quickly. In other words, these leaders can tolerate the failure of their subordinates, as long as the failure is a warning and reference for the future.
Although coaching leadership style is applicable to most business environments, it is most effective only when employees are "willing". On the contrary, when employees refuse to learn or change themselves for various reasons, adopting coaching leadership is like casting pearls before swine. Moreover, if leaders can not be persuasive, then this leadership style will also play no role.
It is worth mentioning that the study found that among the six leadership styles, coaching leadership style is the least used one. Many leaders believe that under the heavy pressure of the current economic situation, they simply have no time to teach and train employees. Such work is slow to achieve results and boring. However, after the first round of coaching, the next coaching hardly requires any extra time. Leaders who ignore this approach actually give up a powerful tool. It is important to know that coaching leadership style will significantly promote work atmosphere and work performance.
II. Become an Effective Leader
Leaders need multiple leadership styles
The more colorful the leadership style displayed by leaders, the more effective their leadership will be. Mastering a variety of leadership styles, especially the authoritative democratic affinity and coaching leadership styles, can create the best working atmosphere and business performance. If a leader finds that he or she lacks a certain style or styles, he or she can develop a reasonable training and training plan to improve his or her abilities in these aspects according to the abilities required for each management style. For example, if you find yourself lacking in authoritarian leadership style, you can improve your achievement orientation, initiative and self-control through training and cultivation, so that you can have authoritarian leadership style. In addition, if leaders find that they lack a convenient leadership style, they can also provide assistants with such leaders to make up for their lack of convenience here.
Use the most appropriate leadership style as appropriate
Every leadership style has its most appropriate application time, and some management styles would be better if they could be used at the same time. To become an effective leader, you must adopt the most appropriate leadership style according to different situations. Leaders can review what management styles they often displayed in their past work, what management styles were appropriate under what circumstances, and what management styles were inappropriate according to the description of each style. Then, make corresponding adjustments in the future work to ensure that the management style is inappropriate in each case. Then, make corresponding adjustments in the future work to ensure that the appropriate management style is adopted in every situation. In addition, we must also focus on the combination of different leadership styles, such as the combination of compatible leadership style, such as the combination of compatible leadership style, authoritative leadership style and authoritative leadership style.
Profession is good at work, but poor at play
The business environment we are in is changing rapidly, and leaders play a more important role in the enterprise than ever before. Leaders must make reasonable choices. Leaders must cultivate rich leadership styles and make reasonable choices. Leaders must practice every day like golfers. Players need to choose different clubs according to different positions of the ball, and hit the ball with the right strength at the right time; The same is true of leaders, who must be measured at an appropriate time and adopt an appropriate leadership style. If you do this, you will become an effective leader
