Chapter 6 provided the following styles of leadership:
1. Autocratic leadership is a task-oriented leadership style in which workers are told what to do with specific guidelines and rules. Unilateral decisions are made with no input from employees.
2. Participative leadership includes workers in the decision-making process. Employees have a higher level of commitment to reaching goals. Participative leaders can be classified into three groups.
a) Consultative leaders discuss issues with workers but retain the final authority for decision making.
b) Consensus leaders seek input from almost all workers and make final decisions based on their support.
c) Democratic leaders give final authority to the group.
3. Entrepreneurial leadership is personality-based with leaders being task-oriented, driven, charismatic, and enthusiastic.
Please:
1. Share a work example of a superior (past or present) that demonstrated one of the above styles of leadership. Was the style* exhibited by your superior effective for the task/situation? Why or why not? *Be sure to indicate the specific leadership style. If participative, indicate consultative, consensus, or democratic.
2. Do you believe there are times when a leader needs to be more autocratic? When might these be?
3. Which style of leadership do you prefer? Why?
Solution Preview
Leadership Styles
Our professor has used different leadership styles in the class to enhance learning through encouraging student participation. For example, he used the participation style to change the class time-table during the first semester of our second semester in college to change the time-table for his classes. The venue allocated for our class collided with another lesson; hence, there was a need to change our class to another day. Consequently, the professor asked us to offer our views about the ideal day and time to reschedule the two classes. Accordingly, the first class was rescheduled to Tuesday between 10 am and 12pm while the other one was pushed to Friday 9 am to 11am.
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