Blog 2: Contemporary Leadership Style: How relevant are they in today’s changing world?

 

Back in 19th century, leadership become an interesting topic and has been studies by generation to generation, because leadership style always changing (Early G., 2017). In the present business world, leader is the person who play an important role in the organization. With skilled leader who can influence, encourage, and lead their subsidiary, it will improve the company performance in many ways (Trapp R.,2014). Thus, many companies are seeking for the leader who have a contemporary leadership style.

 

Which Leadership style is the most useful?

 

Among many styles of leadership, Lewin ‘s leadership styles is widely known over the world. Lewin determines three types of leadership style which are Autocratic leaders, Democratic leaders, and Laissez-faire leaders, which focused on how leader let their team involve in the decision-making process (Fentiman-Hall S., 2017).

 

 

Autocratic leaders do not let anybody except himself involve in the decision-making process, which mean leader is the only one who have an authority in this process. This type of leadership style is very useful when the organization need to make a quick decision.

For the Democratic leaders, team members are able to give an opinion and show their creativity and participate in the process of decision-making. Nevertheless, leaders still have high power, where the final decision still depends on the them.

Laissez-faire leaders will have a little participate in the process and let the team members decide whatever they want. With this kind of leader, team member is able to work freely. However, the team member need to have high skill and knowledge in order to make it effectively.

 

 

Beside the Lewin ‘s leadership styles, there are more recent concept which are Transformational leadership and Transactional leadership. While transformational leaders use their communication skill to inspire the team to encourage them to have a better performance by sharing a vision and goal, transactional leaders encourage their team with rewards and punishment depends on their performance (Mindtools, 2018).

 

Tuckman’s team building stages

 

In 1965, Tuckman’s model has been established by Bruce Tuckman in order to explain the stage to build a team and finish the tasks. This team development theory is widely known and also used to improve the leadership skill (Teambuilding, 2018).

 

 

• Forming: In this first stage of team development, team member who just joined in and do not know each other will be independent and do not trust each other. Thus, it important to have a leader who respond a group.
• Storming: At this chaos stage, many ideas and opinions will come up in this stage which may ended up with conflict. So, leader is the one who control them and give some recommendation.
• Norming: During Norming phase, team member seems to have more trust and agree with each other. The team rules will be conducted in this stage. At this stage, the leader should monitor their team member to prevent them from losing motivation and creativity.
• Performing: As the relationship problems and conflicts has been solved, team members are ready to perform. With a good relationship and acceptable leader, the task will finish with high performance.

 

Challenges faced by leaders

 

Nowadays, there are many challenges for leaders who try to develop their contemporary leadership style. And, technology is an important one. Although, technology will benefit the company and be an advantage, there are many leaders who found it difficult to adapt. Furthermore, leaders need to understand that wages and salary may not affect the employee performance, but leadership, and motivation do. So, leaders have to use their communication skills to influence their employees and encourage them to do the better performance by using transformational leadership style (Caramela S., 2017).

 

Leadership of Tesco

 

 

          At Tesco, skill is not necessary for leaders as characteristic. Tesco’s manager need to be able to inspire their subsidiary with confident and positive mind. They provide a program for their employee to develop their leadership skill by using self-review and reflection. For example, Stephen, Tesco store manager applied Lewin’s theory as his leadership style, which allow the team to participate and give an opinion when he have to make a decision, but he have an authority to make the final decision. As employee are allowed to involve in the process, it will increase the employee satisfaction and also the leader will get fresh idea from the subsidiary. (Businesscasestudies, 2018).

 

What’s about the future?

 

 

Nowadays in 20^th century, everything is rapidly change especially technology which leads to the change of people thinking. Thus, many companies are investing in leadership development to make their leader keep pace with the new business world (Prokopeak M., 2018). Beside high skilled leader, the company need to find the leader with leadership style that fit to their organization. At present, good leader will be the one who represent the whole organization, such as Warren Buffett, Jack Ma, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk. These people are not only inspiring their employee, but also encourage and be a role model for everyone in the world. So, it necessary for the leader to develop their leadership style to understand and fit in the present world.

 

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References

• Business Case Studies (2018) Developing appropriate leadership styles A Tesco case study [online] available from <https://businesscasestudies.co.uk/tesco/developing-appropriate-leadership-styles/introduction.html> [20 July 2018]
• Caramela S. (2017) Are Your Leadership Skills Outdated? 5 Modern Workplace Challenges [online] available from <https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6279-modern-leadership-challenges.html> [20 July 2018]
• Early, G. (2017) A short history of leadership theories [online] available from <https://leadersquest.org/content/documents/A_short_history_of_leadership_theories.pdf> [20 July 2018]
• Fentiman-Hall S. (2017) Autocratic, democratic or laissez-faire – what’s your leadership style? [online] available from <https://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/autocratic-democratic-or-laissez-faire-whats-your-leadership-style> [20 July 2018]
• Mindtools (2018) Leadership Styles [online] available from <https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_84.htm> [20 July 2018]
• Prokopeak M. (2018) Building the Leader of the Future [online] available from <http://www.clomedia.com/2018/03/22/building-leader-future/> [20 July 2018]
• Teambuilding (2018) Tuckman’s Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing [online] available from <https://www.teambuilding.co.uk/theory/Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing.html> [20 July 2018]
• Trapp, R. (2014) Successful Organizations Need Leaders At All Levels [online] available from <https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogertrapp/2014/03/23/organizations-need-leaders-at-all-levels/#4682f5013ab1> [20 July 2018]