Leadership/Authority
The belief is that one possesses an extraordinary ability to influence others and thus prefers positions of leadership and authority.
Leadership Types
There are four basic Leadership Types:
- Autocratic: With task-oriented decision making
- Democratic: With task-oriented decision making
- Autocratic: With emotional decision making
- Democratic: With emotional decision making
Autocratic Leadership
In this leadership, the leader holds authority and responsibility.
They reach a decision, communicate them to subordinates, and expect prompt implementation.
This style is used when leaders tell their employees what they want to be done and how they want it accomplished without getting the advice of their followers.
Some appropriate conditions to use this style are when you have all the information to solve the problem, you are short on time, and your employees are well motivated.
Some think of this style as a vehicle for yelling, using demeaning language, and leading with threats.
This is not the authoritarian style. Instead, it is an abusive, unprofessional style called “bossing people around.”
Democratic Leadership
The democratic leader holds final responsibility and is still responsible for delegating the tasks that must be completed.
However, the leader invites other team members to contribute to decision-making.
This is usually used when you have part of the information and your employees have other interests.
A leader is not expected to know everything, so you employ knowledgeable and skilled people.
Using this style is not a sign of weakness. Instead, it is a sign of strength that your employees will respect.
This not only increases job satisfaction by involving employees or team members in what’s going on, but it also helps to develop people’s skills.
Employees and team members feel in control of their destinies and are motivated to work hard by more than just a financial reward.
It is a favored leadership because of its fairness, competence, and creativity.
Task-Oriented Leadership
These leaders are no-nonsense people who work best from guidelines and specific goals.
Their priority is to organize and create guidelines and then assign duties.
They focus on the task and believe procedures are necessary to achieve the mission.
They are less concerned with the idea of accommodating employees.
They are technical and believe in a step-by-step solution to meet a specific goal.
They are highly logical and analytical and understand how to do the job by focusing on necessary workplace procedures.
However, under informal, well-coordinated, and well-controlled situations, they become more pleasant and pay more attention to the morale of their employees.
People-Oriented Leadership
Relationship-Motivated leaders treat all team members alike.
Most leaders with this leadership style are people-oriented, approachable, friendly, and pay attention to the well-being of their group.
They are concerned most with good interpersonal relationships, even to the point of letting the task suffer.
Relationship-motivated managers tend to become task conscious as they are pressured for greater productivity by upper management.
Narcissistic Leadership Traits
A narcissistic leader lacks empathy and constantly criticizes others.
Expect them to have difficulty understanding other points of view, relating to what people are feeling, and communicating meaningfully.
Frame what you must say cautiously and clearly, and never confide in them.
- Narcissists leaders profess company loyalty but are only really committed to their agendas.
- They pursue their interests rather than the organization's interests.
- Their organizational decisions are highly influenced by their agendas.
- Productive Narcissists have an interrelated set of skills, foresight, systems thinking, visioning, motivating, and partnering.
- Productive narcissists tend to be over-sensitive to criticism, over-competitive, isolated, and grandiose.
- Productive narcissists have a sense of freedom to do whatever they want rather than feeling constantly constrained by circumstances.
- Productive narcissists, through their charisma, can draw people into their vision and gather many followers who follow them.
- Narcissists Leadership is good for companies that need people with vision and the courage to take them in new directions.
- Narcissists Leadership can also lead companies into trouble by refusing to listen to the advice and warnings of their managers.
- Narcissists Leaders have difficulty forging long-term relationships because they continuously seek recognition from others to reinforce their self-worth.
- As leaders, narcissistic individuals have fantasies of power and success, an exaggerated, grandiose sense of self-importance, and little empathy or concern for the feelings and needs of others.
- Such innate characteristics lead to the exploitation and manipulation of others for the primary purpose of indulging a narcissistic leader's desire for personal enhancement.
- They expect special favors without needing to reciprocate and oversimplify relationships and motives.
- They have extremely bipolar worldviews, seeing things as either extremely good or bad and seeing others around them as either loyal supporters or mortal enemies.