Leadership Styles Explained (Kurt Lewin)

hello and welcome to today's lesson where we're looking at leadership styles as described by kurt lewin now your leadership style is the way you feel most comfortable leading others to achieve your vision there are many different styles of leadership and understanding which type you are will make you better equipped to avoid the common pitfalls of that particular style now some of the best leaders are able to adjust their style based on the situation they find themselves in so for example turning around a failing organization might require a very different approach to being asked to grow an already successful organization so let's look at the four leadership styles as described by Kurt Lewin a German American psychologist and once we've done that we'll look at a simple framework that helps you visualize the differences between these leadership styles and any other Styles you encounter so the first style we're going to look at is autocratic leadership and this style of leadership is centered around and focused on the leader now with this style of leadership all decision-making resides with the leader and decisions are made by the leader without much or sometimes even any consultation with some ordinates now an autocratic leader will reach a decision themselves communicated with their team and expect the team to execute with no questions asked now an example of an autocratic leader is Martha Stewart now there are some advantages to autocratic leadership and firstly decision-making is fast with no consultation required the leader can make very quick decisions it can improve performance in certain situations so managers are motivated to perform because they have this feeling the leader is watching them all the time and also it can be less stressful in certain circumstances so for managers and other subordinates it can result in less stress as the leader is shouldering all the responsibility for outcomes all the decision-making responsibilities now there are also disadvantages to autocratic leadership so it can be frustrating for subordinates so communication is one way which obviously people could find frustrating fear and resentment and frustration are common as people don't like being bossed about and criticized more often than praised it can result in a paralyzed organization and this can happen when the leader isn't present so the entire organization is dependent on the leader for instructions but when they're absent they can't do anything it can also lead to new opportunities being missed so unless the leader keeps pace with new trends as time goes on new opportunities could be missed and additionally the lack of flexibility in autocratic leadership doesn't lend itself to planning for long-term initiatives and finally there can be communication breakdown because directives flow downwards from the leader to subordinates misunderstandings and confusion can arise because of the lack of feedback that is allowed from subordinates so there are still many situations where you should use autocratic leadership such as when quick decisions are needed so autocratic leadership works best in situations where you need quick decisions such as in turning around a failing organization or in a military situation it's useful when close supervision is required so it can work well when existing management is too lenient and workers are not pulling their weight so the autocrat will issue directives to be followed and the activities performed as a results of these directives will be closely followed and it can also work well when workflows need to be streamlined quickly so autocratic leadership works really well when things just need to get done and this style enables subordinates to just get on with things without really worrying about the bigger picture so the second style of leadership according to Lewin is democratic leadership and this is focused on the leaders team and is characterized by decision-making being sure across the team now in stark contrast to the autocratic leadership style ideas are shared freely and open discussion is encouraged now although discussion is encouraged it is the role of the leader to guide and direct these discussions and ultimately make a decision as to which way to proceed now Democratic leaders expect their subordinates to have in-depth experience and to be self-confident and examples of democratic leaders include John F Kennedy and Larry Page now advantages of this style include there is a decreased risk of catastrophic failure so as decisions are made with the involvement of the entire group it provides a kind of a group sanity check meaning the leaders less likely likely to make a disastrous decision it creates a good working environment as subordinates at all levels can feel engaged in decision-making it creates high performance teams so subordinates are encouraged to solve problems under their own initiative which in turn can create a high performance team now disadvantages of Democratic leadership include decision-making is slow so by involving subordinates in decision-making you kind of dramatically slow down the process of making decisions and that can be a real problem in urgent situations there can be an over-dependence on the team so the leader can become overly dependent on the group and allow the group to make decisions which obviously isn't good they're sort of hiding within the team and finally there can be a collaboration burden so leaders can become overly burdened with the overhead of ensuring their team meet and collaborate so much so that they take their eye off what's really important to the organization and their foot kind of comes off the gas so when should you use this style of leadership well when subordinates are experts so Democratic leadership styles work well when working with domain experts so for example technology experts or pharmaceutical experts you should use it when it's necessary to create ownership amongst the team so by involving the team and decision making and planning you implicitly create buy-in both to the decision itself and to the plan to execute that decision and that makes your team members much more committed to the plan so the next style of leadership the third style of leadership is transformational leadership and a transformational leadership leader is one who models the behavior they expect to see sets clear goals and has high expectations whilst at the same time supporting and emotionally guiding subordinates to achieve now at the very foundation of transformational leadership is the consistent promotion of a compelling vision along with a set of values to live and work by now transformational leaders create a culture of no blame where the focus is on the problem at hand and how to solve it rather than who is responsible for creating the problem examples of transformational leaders include Peter Drucker and Barrack Obama transformational leaders are sometimes known as quiet leaders known for possessing a willingness to lead by example they often don't make detailed strategic plans but instead facilitate conversations between key people both within and outside of their organization to achieve this and now the advantages of transformational leadership are it creates balanced goals so transformational leaders balance the need for both short-term and long-term goals there is a lot of trust with transformational leaders so subordinates feel supported and deeply trust their leader because they behave with integrity and build strong coalition's and thirdly transformational leadership has a vision focused communication so these type of leaders are very focused on the long term strategic vision and by communicating their vision regularly and with passion and clarity they keep everyone onside bought in and motivated to eventually reach that vision now there are some disadvantages to transformational leadership it can be very ineffective in the beginning so because transformational leadership is built on trust so those transformational leaders can be ineffective at the start of their leadership journey as they have yet to really build trust with their team or build strong collaborations they're also not particularly detail-oriented so whilst transformational leadership leaders are characterized by inspiring others they can struggle with the detail of day to day implementation so when should you use transformational leadership well when it's necessary to have an inspiring long term vision of the future when the right to lead has been earned so transformational leadership is often not appropriate when you're new to an organization and both your leadership is unproven and you've yet to build the necessary trust with your team and you should also consider using it when an urgent short-term focus isn't necessary now because transformational leadership focuses so much on a vision of the future it isn't really appropriate when all the focus needs to be on the very short-term so the final style of leadership we're going to look at is laissez-faire leadership and this is where the leader doesn't actually lead the team but instead allows the team to be entirely self-directed now this style of leadership is also known as the hands-off style and in contrast to the other leadership styles we've looked at all authority is given to subordinates including goal-setting problem-solving and decision-making so from the leaders perspective the key to success is to build a really strong team and then stay out of their way now a common question when people first learn about laissez-faire leadership is what actually does a laissez-faire leader do because it can seem like they maybe do nothing well this will differ from leader to leader but typically they are more concerned with the creation and articulation of their vision and they're also concerned with which steps to take to help achieve the vision but once they've decided that it's then left to the team to work out how to achieve each of those particular steps now an example of a laissez-faire leader is Warren Buffett now a laissez-faire leadership style typically works best near the very top of the organization where senior leaders appoint other senior leaders to run their respective departments or business units and let them get on with it so you can think of a CEO having a head of engineering but all the detail within engineering you know it's decided not by the CEO but by the head of engineering now advantages of this style are that it creates personal responsibility laissez-faire leadership styles challenged subordinates to take responsibility for their work and the outcomes of that work it supports fast course corrections so motivated people working autonomously are typically able to overcome roadblocks and adjust course far more quickly than when they need to seek approval and it supports higher retention so when successful it can result in higher retention of subordinates as motivated people arrive in this kind of environment now in terms of disadvantages there can be a lack of accountability because there is nobody accountable to take the credit in cases of success or to take the blame in cases of failure it can cause higher stress levels so if the boards can suffer from higher stress if they feel unsupported by their leader and it can result in missed deadlines you know self-organizing teams without oversight or direction are prone to miss deadlines so when should you use this style well it's good to use it when you're working with creative experts it's good to use it with people who are proven and it's also you know good to use this style of leadership when your team is very very driven when your team is motivated to succeed on their own so so far we've looked at four leadership styles but now we want to take a look at a framework that can help me make sense of those four leadership styles and any others you might encounter now in addition to the four Styles we've looked at there are many many other styles including strategic leadership servant leadership coaching style of leadership bureaucratic leader leadership there's many many more but to make matters even more complex no two leaders will be exactly the same and may in fact have characteristics borrowed from other leadership styles you know to suit their needs as they feel best and with all those factors this diagram you see here can be really helpful in thinking about where different leadership styles have their main areas of focus and you can use this framework to think about any leadership style you can encounter so what you can see here is autocratic leaders have a high emphasis on tasks and quite a low emphasis on people and Democratic leadership have a high emphasis on tasks but also a high emphasis on people and you can see as we work around eventually we get to laissez-faire leadership and they have a low task emphasis and equally a low people emphasis now the keen are eyed amongst you will have noticed these boxes are labeled one two three and four that is to do with subordinates now the higher the skill level of your subordinates the higher the box number that will be appropriate as a style of leadership so autocratic leadership is good for people with very low skill levels for as little as a fair leadership works well for people with a very high degree of skill and self-direction so essentially the leaders behavior should change according to which quadrant their subordinates or their followers capabilities fall within now another point to note from this diagram is that the abilities of the leader both in terms of soft skills and hard skills must increase as you move from box 1 to 4 so basically saying that being an autocratic leadership who requires a much smaller set of skills and is less nuanced than being a laissez-faire leader so in summary there are as many different leadership styles as there are leaders but broadly they can be categorized according to people focus and task focus now Lewin described four leadership styles autocratic democratic transformational and laissez-faire now although we've only looked at those four styles in this video the model described should help you understand and category categorize any style of leadership you encounter so that's it from me really hope you enjoyed this lesson and I look forward to speaking to you again soon

Channel: EPM

Views: 80,195

Rating: 4.8947368 out of 5

Keywords: leadership styles, lewin, advantages and disadvantages

Id: RmqsV1293Rk

Length: 16min 57sec (1017 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 03 2020