page: 1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.10.11.12.13.14.15.16.17.18.19

Beyond the Cain-Abel Culture, page 8
 

The Affiliative Leadership Style

An affiliative leader focuses on people rather than goals. He/she tries to keep people happy, creating a good atmosphere and harmony. That has a positive effect on communication and trust, which in turn helps flexibility – the freedom to innovate and take risks.

Affiliative leaders give a lot of feedback and build a sense of belonging. It may be the style of choice for every day situations when no crisis is looming.

However, it has its obvious limitations. As it focuses on praise, good feelings and harmony, standards may suffer as mediocrity seems to tolerated. When a clear direction is required, affiliative leaders offer little help. Thus this style is best use in conjunction with another, like, for example the authoritative style.

The Democratic Leadership Style

A democratic leader tries to get the support of his/her people by spending time to inform them and get their feedback. By giving the people the information they need to understand the situation, democratic leadership builds trust and commitment. The information improves clarity of purpose. People who have a way to contribute to the decision of matters that affect them are more willing to take responsibility. Flexibility – the willingness to take risks and innovate – also improves.

Even when in the end an issue is not decided by a democratic vote, people are more willing to accept the decision as they are aware of the contributing details.

The democratic style has its limitations, too. The democratic process takes time and that’s a problem in a crisis situations. In general the process may lead to prolonged discussions and endless meetings with no clear outcome. Or, people may not be competent enough to offer advice.

An example where the style works well may be a university environment, where the individual faculty members are all specialists in their respective fields.

Some undecided leaders may use the style to procrastinate, putting of solutions and rather spend time in discussion or to reduce accountability for the problem.

I also experienced that a coercive leader opened the floor for discussion or asked people to offer solutions. But when people presented their opinions all of them were passed off with the statement that these won’t work due to situations on which information was withheld – due to confidentiality. A pre-fabricated solution was then offered, based on the ‘overwhelming’ insight of the leader. This kind of experience then has a disastrous effect on climate.
 

Copyright © Cultural Communications, foreignlands.org, 2005 - 2008. All rights reserved.

the old man

Best viewed with: