Effective Leadership
... and seen by subordinates as imposing, unnecessary, close control. (House & Mitchell in Pierce & Newstrom, 2003, p.198). The democratic style however will do just the opposite. This is the current style I use and have been using for several years. I give each individual a copy of the schedule with their assigned tasks and due dates. I inform them that they have full reign to approach anyone that is in their way and preventing them from completing their tasks. The personalities in my group are quite varied ranging from the outspoken, cocky individuals who have no problem with confrontational situations, to the soft spoken, go with flow, relationship-oriented, people who are very uncomfortable when confronting others. This is where I step in and be the voice to resolve issues and knock down barriers. In support of the above, subordinates are satisfied with directive behavior in an unstructured task and are satisfied with non directive behavior in a structured task. (House & Mitchell in Pierce & Newstrom, 2003, p.197). Pierce and Newstrom (2003) refer to House and Mitchell when referring to leader behavior having four important dimensions: supportive, directive, participative, and achievement-oriented (p. 191). Leaders need to incorporate aspects of all these dimensions depending on the situation. While supportive and participative leadership work in some situations, other situations may require a bit of shift to the directive or autocratic style. For example, if I am notified that we will be missing a large amount of promise dates and shipments, then that situation may drive me to a more autocratic style of leadership and cause me to dig deeper into the process and closely monitor tasks to determine the root cause. This situation may also cause me to become more directive and even change the team strategy. This ability to apply different leadership styles to different situations is supported by Robert Hooijberg (1996) stating “A broad behavioral repertoire of leadership functions and the frequent performance of these leadership functions is positively associated with managerial effectiveness”. (in Pierce & Newstrom, 2003, p. 213). The results of testing of this hypothesis showed strong support. (in Pierce & Newstrom, 2003, p. 215). I can relate an incident with my previous company where an autocratic leader had his team so demoralized that they would miss schedule dates intentionally just to make him look bad. This missing of dates was in no way detrimental to the business because the leader’s measurement of success was performance on time to the exact day. The team members knew that all schedules have contingency built in and there was always some level of flexibility in the schedule dates. This team would miss the dates by just a day or two to make the measurement of the leader look bad, but not really affect the schedule of delivery to the customer. This is a perfect example of the detrimental influencing activity associated with transactional leadership and “associated dysfunctional game playing [which] may result in marginal organizational performance”. (Deluga in Pierce & Newstrom, 2003, p. 366-368) Transactional leadership as defined suggests that most managers engage in a bargaining relationship with emplo...