Question

Identify which leadership style you deem as most effective in today's society and why.

Answer 1

According to me leadership style most effective today is Transformational Leadership . It is one of the latest theories based on leaders who transform individuals to work as a unit and achieve common objectives which benefits the organizations as a whole . So here leaders create a total overall value for the organization which all employees influenced by the leader strive to achieve keeping their personal interests aside . Historically transformational theories have been all about the political leaders or leaders like Hitler . But of late the organizations have also started recognizing the relevance of the theory in organizational parlance . This theory firmly believes that the employees in the organization are most motivated by the task that they must perform under all circumstances . They have an underlining will and desire to accomplish the task. Here the greatest emphasis is on collective action and employees do not compete with each other . Employees exist within the context of the organization and the bigger task to be performed and every body has an important role to perform within the bigger task and contribution of each employee is critically and strategically important . The important aspect is there are no personal egos or interests. Employees with personal egos or interests are given a chance to improve or shown the door . In movies we consistently see the group leader of bad guys executing a bad guy within the group who shows a little bit of personal interest.

Now how does tranformational leadership works. Here the primary focus of the leaders is to gain compliance by showing the rewards and benefits followers will get on accomplishment of the job and by giving a few benefits and rewards and by withholding some higher rewards and benefits . They transform them by inserting a feeling of support for each other and selling the bigger organizational task to them . Here the followers have a great trust on the leader , they have a great respect and a great admiration for him or her . They are blown over by the charishma of the leader . They feel to him and work harder than are expected to work. So what we see a team led ably by the leader working tirelessly to accomplish most difficult of the tasks or even try to achieve impossible milestones .

Now lets move on to the strengths and weaknesses of the theory .

Strengths are :

1. The task is well defined .

2. All employees are given a meaningful job in the context of the main job to perform so we have employees inclusiveness , dedication and sincerety in achieving the objective .

3. Employees learn the nuances and advantages of cooperation .

4. Organization works as a well oiled machinery .

Weaknesses are :

1. The leader can use his influence negatively for wrong cause . For example we have leaders like Saddam Hussain & Hitler who were exceptional leaders but their cause was wrong .

2. There can be over dependence on leader resulting into delays in case leader delays decisions.

3. There are certain individuals who work best when they are working as individuals and not as a team . So the full potential of individuals may not be harnessed.