Leadership plays a key role in shaping an organization’s growth trajectory and fulfillment of its objectives. An organization can be a corporate, a unit, a division, a department or a team. Leadership influences the organizational efficiency and effectiveness through the utilization of the organization’s human resources and guiding its corporate culture. Leadership style is nothing but expression of the leadership qualities, capability, inner strength and personality of a leader. Leadership qualities include selflessness, character, courage, will-power, initiative and knowledge (of the job, handling the people and self). Presence or absence of those qualities gets reflected in the style of functioning of a leader. Leadership style of a leader leaves significant influence on the motivation level of the people of an organization, their decision making ability, self-initiative potential, team spirit and commitment to work, thereby, impacting meaningfully their efficiency and, hence, overall efficiency of the organization.
Various Leadership Styles and their Impact on Organizational Efficiency
A leadership style can broadly be classified into two types-authoritarian and participative.
Authoritarian Style
In authoritarian style, the leader makes decision on his own without involving those who are affected by the decision. The leader may not have the complete idea and understanding of the situation, circumstances and the purpose, but, still prefers to be sole decision maker only to satisfy his own ego and vested interests. Also, sometimes, a leader may feel a sense of insecurity from others, which discourages him to involve others in decision making. Obviously such a decision may not serve the organization’s interests and fulfill its objectives. Furthermore, as those affected are left out of decision making process, they get demotivated and demoralized. Their decision making ability, self-initiative power, commitment to work and team spirit get eroded. All those factors lead to loss of individual and organizational efficiency.
Participative Style
On the other hand, participative style requires participation of all the affected in decision making process. The leader allows everyone to express his ideas and views freely and fearlessly. As a result, a well thought decision emerges out. Such a decision aims at fulfilling organization’s interests and objectives instead of any individual’s interests. Moreover, it gives a sense of belongingness to all the concerned and acts as a great source of motivation to them. This increases their efficiency and overall organizational efficiency. Further, decision gets implemented easily and smoothly as all the concerned have already been involved in decision making. Decision is perceived well by everyone and no one has any element of doubt or suspicion about the repercussions of the decision. The Leader may also allow the sub-ordinate to function with autonomy within limits defined by him. This develops the sub-ordinate’s decision making ability and infuses into him the sense of self-responsibility and self-accountability.
Other Styles
Authoritarian and participative styles are the two extreme ends. However, in practice, a leadership style varies between the two extreme ends depending upon the situation, task and the group to be led.
A leadership style can also be viewed as a mix of persuasion, compulsion and self-example. In certain situation, persuasion is the most effective way to motivate the people to fulfill the organizational task. When the people understand the purpose and circumstances, they put their best efforts to perform even most challenging task. Compulsion in certain circumstances is used as a measure of last resort to discipline the crooked, incompetent or mischievous. A leadership style of self-example is considered as most effective one. If the leader himself demonstrates the example of sincerity, honesty, integrity, commitment, or whatever, it automatically percolates through the people in most effective way. People follow the standards set by their leader, and, therefore, self-example is the most potent way to influence them.
Concluding Note
A leadership style has significant impact on the efficiency of the people and the organization as a whole. An authoritarian style can demotivate the people, reduce their decision-making ability and self-initiative capability. Thus, it hinders the optimum utilization of the human resources of the organization leading to loss of organizational efficiency. On the other hand, a participative style enhances motivation level of the people and infuses a sense of belongingness into them. This results into optimum utilization of the human resources leading to enhanced organizational efficiency. A leadership style of personal example is considered as the best and most effective style. By setting the personal example, a leader can inspire the people most effectively to do something which he expects them to do.