Before we look at the last two leadership styles remember the following; leadership is critical to every company; Workers need someone to look to, learn from and thrive with. Leaders do not exist to order their workers around. While they oversee their team, a true leader takes initiative and trusts their employees to perform efficiently and independently. Remember, most leaders borrow from a variety of styles to achieve various goals at different times in the business environment. While you may have excelled in a role using one type of leadership, another position may require a different set of habits to ensure your team is operating most effectively. By understanding each of these leadership types, and the outcomes they’re designed to achieve, you can select the right leadership style for your current situation. Bureaucratic leadership – Bureaucratic leaders are similar to autocratic leaders in that they expect their team members to follow the rules and procedures precisely as written. Bureaucratic leadership models are most often implemented in highly regulated or administrative environments, where adherence to the rules and a defined hierarchy are important. These leaders ensure people follow the rules and carry out tasks by the book. Naturally, this works well in certain roles – such as health and safety – but can stifle innovation and creativity in more agile, fast-paced companies. The bureaucratic leadership style focuses on fixed duties within a hierarchy where each employee has a set list of responsibilities, and there is little need for collaboration and creativity. This leadership style is most effective in highly regulated industries or departments, such as finance, healthcare or government. These are companies or organization that are operated by a large number of officials employed to follow rules carefully. Charismatic leadership– Charismatic leadership is basically a leadership style of encouraging particular behaviours in others by way of powerful communication, persuasion and force of personality. Charismatic leaders motivate followers to get things done or improve the way certain things are done. This is accomplished by conjuring up eagerness in others to achieve a stated goal or vision. In essence, the charismatic leadership style has its basis in a form of heroism. This leadership style is almost of divine origin. However, charismatic leadership is usually considered less favourable, largely because the success of projects and initiatives is closely linked to the presence of the leader. As previously mentioned, charismatic leaders are communicators who are extremely skilled. These individuals are very eloquent verbally and they have the ability to communicate with the people they lead on a profound, emotional level. One of the advantages of charismatic leadership is the ability of these individuals to articulate a captivating or compelling vision. They have the capacity to evoke strong emotions in their followers as well. In addition, charismatic leaders have the distinct ability to dissect and decipher any inefficiency within an organization. These visionary traits attributed to this leadership style often result from critical thinking, the compilation of facts and finding ways to solve a variety of problems. Barack Obama and Jeff Bezos (C.E.O. of amazon.com) are two examples of charismatic leaders. From next week we will start to get into the detail of learning to be a leader or developing the leader in you. Colin Powell said- “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” The writer is a Kigali based business consultant and strategist. www.gmskigali.com E-mail: john@gmskigali.com This article is the eighth of a series on leadership by the author.
