Leadership Styles

The style of leadership that would be the most comfortable for me would be delegation.

One of the first signs of good supervision is effective delegation. Delegation is when supervisors

give responsibility and authority to subordinates to complete a task, and let the subordinates

figure out how the task can be accomplished. Effective delegation develops people who are

ultimately more fulfilled and productive. Managers become more fulfilled and productive

themselves as they learn to count on their staffs and are freed up to attend to more

strategic issues.

Delegating is a critical skill for supervisors. Delegating involves working with an

employee to establish goals, granting them sufficient authority and responsibility to achieve the

goals, often giving them substantial freedom in deciding how the goals will be achieved,

remaining available as a resource to help them achieve the goals, assessing their performance,

addressing performance issues and/or rewarding their performance. Ultimately, the supervisor

retains responsibility for the attainment of the goals, but chooses to achieve the goals by

delegating to someone else. True delegation means giving up a little of what we would like to

hold onto while keeping what we might prefer to give up.

Participative style of leadership would be least comfortable for me. A participative

leader, rather than making decisions, looks to involve other staff in the process. Often however,

as it is up to the manager to decide how much influence others are given, this style can only

work well, when both managers and staff understand and are in agreement about which tasks are

important. The staffs expertise, experience and intuition need to be encouraged, not stifled, if

challenging situations are to be negotiated.

The goal of the participative leader is to persuade followers to share their values and

connect with their vision. It appears to me, to be obvious that most large organizations, the

federal government, the military, etc., require leaders and followers that possess the same core