The Concept of 'style'

Leadership can be linked to the success or the undoing of an organization (Acona 2005). Since this is a generally agreed upon organizational premise, virtually volumes have been written on the subject. Every organization seeks to have the most efficacious leadership paradigm and this has led to much theory and business related intelligence seeking to help organizations develop a sound balance between leaders and managers. While in principle, attention to leadership is a good thing, it also has created competing theories and over amounts of attention being paid to leadership style labels. Virtually any academic discourse surrounding leadership will have some mention of leadership style. While understanding leadership style is important, it can be an oversimplification of principles and it also has the propensity to undermine other more important variables in leadership efficacy, like emotional intelligence. High functioning organizations are better served focusing on result oriented leadership development than labeling structures. Leadership Styles

There is no one singular successful way to lead that works in all situations (Mind Tools 2012). Famous leaders from Martin Luther King Jr. to Winston Churchill have led using different styles and personalities to accomplish their respective aims (Mind Tools). Researchers have expressed a variety of leadership styles in hopes to capture all related elements to different manners of leadership that have been used successfully.(REAL LIFE) Unfortunately, there is no singular categorization system that all stakeholders would agree upon as being suitable to express all of these complex dimensions. One near complete system, however, has expressed 10 basic types of leadership styles that are suitable for covering a wide range of approaches. Within this context, the following 10 leadership styles have been established: transactional leadership, autocratic leadership, bureaucratic leadership. democratic/participative leadership, laissez faire leadership, task oriented leadership, people oriented leadership, servant leadership and transformational leadership (Mind Tools). Transactional leadership is leadership based on managerial transactions and it is heavily reliant on rewards and punishments (Mind Tools 2012). Though frequently used synonymously, management and leadership are two different distinctions. A manager is a formal vested position of authority and a leader does not have to have any vested position of authority beyond an influence over followers (The Wall Street Journal 2012). Subordinates follow managers because they have to and they have accepted such a transaction. Followers, on the other hand, choose to follow leaders. Organizations need both leaders and managers. In the best case situation, managers and leaders are one in the same. Autocratic leaders simply use command obey structures, this is common in the military and more common in Twentieth Century organizations (Acona 2005). A bureaucratic leadership situation is one that is done completely by the book (Mind Tools 2012). Charismatic leaders use their own personalities to gain followers. While this can work for a given time period, charisma can also be the undoing of leaders (Drucker 2012). Democratic or participative leaders generally manage and use the perspectives of their followers as the means for selecting a given direction.

Laissez Faire leadership embraces the concept of employee driven tactics and is far less formal than some methods like bureaucratic principles. Task oriented leadership focuses on a particular task and the leader will use principles necessary for that task to get accomplished (Mind Tools 2012). People oriented leadership focuses on human capital and this is very similar to the servant leadership model (Mind Tools 2012). These models focus on followers and the people/community