Leadership styles of managers. Management Research Paper

Leadership Styles of Managers
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Institution
Leadership Styles of Managers
Introduction
Managers adopt different leadership styles that help them guide, direct, and motivate employees towards achieving the organization’s goals. Some managers use a single leadership style, while others use two or more leadership styles depending on the situation. Those who use various leadership styles can influence their employees more because different organizational situations call for a different leadership approach. Each of the major leadership styles that managers adopt has different outcomes on employees. Leadership styles influence the performance, motivation, and commitment of employees, among other things (Wakabi 2016, p.412). This paper explores some of the common leadership styles and their corresponding effect on the employees.
Transformational Leadership Style
Transformational leadership involves creating a thriving working environment by enhancing positive changes not only on the organization but also on the employees. Transformational leaders are charismatic, inspirational, intellectually stimulated, and they attend to their employees’ needs (Anderson & Sun 2015, p.3). Transformational leadership requires a high degree of focus, especially when it comes to goal setting for both the leader and the followers. Due to their nature of attending to employees’ needs, transformational leaders can push their followers to greater heights by raising their awareness of their capabilities (Babalola 2016, p.939). Employees can move out of their comfort zones to achieve exemplary performance. Thus, the greatest effect of transformational leadership styles is improved employee job performance. However, this can also put too much pressure on the employees as they try to achieve the set goal. Also, Li, Mitchell, and Boyle (2015, p.21) indicate that transformational leadership improves team-level innovativeness and well-being. However, it harms individual-level innovativeness. This is surprising given the individualization associated with transformational leadership. Further, transformational leadership has been linked to increased employee work engagement (Faupel & Sub 2018, p.1). This is because transformational leadership motivates employees to step out of their comfort zone. As a result, transformational leadership is highly effective when an organization is going through change (Faupel & Sub 2018, p.1) because it encourages employees to support the change. 
Laissez-Faire Leadership Style
           Laissez-Faire leadership involves delegating work and decisions to employees (Babalola 2016, p.939). Managers who use this style also exercise little to no authority on the employees. Delegation allows employees to work under little to no supervision. According to Yahaya and Ebrahim (2016, p.192), “Leaders who demonstrate laissez-faire leadership are in-decisive and avoid taking leadership responsibility.” Employees who work under such leadership are free to do their work however they want. One of the negative effects of laissez-faire leadership is that employees are hardly committed to the organization (Yahaya & Ebrahim 2016, p.206). They do not receive any direction or guidance from their leader and as a result, they are likely to move to other organizations where leadership provides direction. Also, managers who adopt this style negatively influence an employee’s job performance. According to Wong and Giessner (2016, p.3), laissez-faire leaders ignore the concerns of their followers and limit their interaction with followers to a bare minimum. Thus, they are never aware of the challenges the employees are going through and even when they become aware, they hardly get involved. Besides, the laissez-faire leadership style has been linked to employees’ feelings of insecurity at the workplace (van Prooijen & de Vries 2015, p.9). As a result of this insecurity, employees are unlikely to remain at the organization because they lack the commitment and also they feel that their managers lack the commitment as well. This type of leadership is only effective for employees who are self-motivated and highly innovative because it gives them room for flexibility and experimentation.
Transactional Leadership Style
Transactional leadership entails the “exchange of valued benefit...