Learning to delegate appropriately is one of the hardest leadership skills to learn. It involves elements of some of the other skills, particularly understanding the capacities and limitations of followers. Leaders need to delegate responsibilities that followers can handle, but not overload them with too much.
The Ineffective Leader on the other hand, is generally autocratic because it holds every decision in his hold authority taking away the opportunity of team members to participate in the decision-making process.
There are a lot of skills that make up good leadership, but there is one quality that is possibly the most challenging, that is self-awareness, because self-awareness requires you to focus on yourself—not the easiest thing to do for an outwardly focused leader.
The democratic leadership style is one of the most effective because it encourages everyone to participate in all processes, share their opinions, and know that you will hear them. It also encourages employees to be engaged because they know you will hear their feedback.
The continuum describes the extremes of the two styles that we tend to see: "Coerce & Compel" on one extreme and "Wait & See" on the other.
Impactful employee engagement falls on leadership and the way they direct teams and individuals. And each successful leader develops a style based on their own personality, goals, and business culture based on one of these three leadership styles: autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire.
Micromanagement. Leaders that attempt to control every aspect of their employees' actions often lose the respect of their subordinates. By telling an employee what to do, when to do it, and exactly how to do it, a micromanaging leader undermines the confidence of their employees.
Leadership can be really hard. You have to juggle personalities, raise motivations, provide mentorship, continue learning, and meet the goals dictated down to you, all at the same time. On top of all that, the environment inside and outside your company is constantly shifting.
Effective leaders know that there is no one best way to manage people. Instead, they adapt their style according to the development level of the people they are managing.
The Autocratic Leader
Autocratic leaders can make it difficult for employees to express their opinions. These leaders often take all the credit for their team's work and discourage employee input. They also recognize and enjoy what they have done without giving any consideration to other people involved in projects.
Weak leaders focus on events and emotions. Strong leaders focus on results and relationships. The urgent will always be the enemy of the important. The valuable work that propels your team into tomorrow and truly makes an impact is always postponable because today has more than enough distractions.
Laissez-faire leadership often referred to as delegative leadership, is a style of leadership in which the leader stays out of the way and lets the group decide what to do. Researchers discovered that this leadership style causes group members to be the least productive.
Delegative Leadership (Laissez-Faire)
Lewin found that children under delegative leadership, also known as laissez-faire leadership, were the least productive of all three groups. The children in this group also made more demands on the leader, showed little cooperation, and were unable to work independently.
Weak leaders don't take responsibility for their errors but instead push it onto other people and create a culture that discourages experimentation, innovation, and autonomy. Weak leaders burn out and limit their opportunities to grow and make a difference.
On the contrary, the least effective leadership styles are opportunist and autocratic, due to their demand for control and egocentricism.
Leaders fail when they stop setting expectations and keeping track of everyone's progress. They fail when they lose a clear vision of their goals, and when they fail to drive the team so that everyone is delivering high-quality results.
Leaders are exposed to risk all the time, and they need to be consistently responsible for managing that risk. While communicating with people is not that difficult, it can be challenging to connect with the people you're leading. When there is panic in the room, leaders need to keep calm and diffuse the situation.
Micromanaging or micromanagement is a negative term that refers to management style. It is very well defined by Gartner: Micromanagement is a pattern of manager behavior marked by excessive supervision and control of employees' work and processes, as well as a limited delegation of tasks or decisions to staff.
The transformational leadership style is one that fosters the values of honesty, loyalty, fairness, authentic, morally and ethically centered and continually professes the organization values based on justice, equality and human rights. These are terms often described by Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle.
According to research, laissez-faire leadership is the least satisfying and least effective.
The egalitarian beliefs of Australians support a collaborative and participative management style. This means that Australians are very comfortable working in teams and do not expect to be singled out for their contribution.
Leaders who display authoritative traits tend to motivate and inspire those around them. They provide overall direction and provide their teams with guidance, feedback, and motivation. This promotes a sense of accomplishment or achievement.
The 10 Characteristics of a Good Leader. A good leader should have integrity, self-awareness, courage, respect, empathy, and gratitude.