Early management science suggested that there were two schools of thought when it came to style: Theory “X” and Theory “Y”—with little in between.
With Theory X, managers believe that most workers have an inherent dislike for work and will avoid it if they can. They also wish to avoid responsibility and have relatively little ambition. Therefore, most people must be coerced, controlled, directed, or threatened with punishment to get them to put forth adequate effort.
With Theory Y, people enjoy work as a natural extension of their being. They welcome learning and actively seek responsibility. They exhibit self-control and self-direction in their efforts to achieve organizational results. They exercise a high degree of imagination, ingenuity, and creativity. To be properly managed, these people require more of a “laissez-faire” approach.
Over time, it has become recognized that these theories represent endpoints of the style spectrum, and there are variations based on factors other than a leader’s predispositions.
Today, research suggests that there are four distinct leadership styles, determined by situational considerations, as well as your assessment of your team members’ psychological maturity (their self-confidence and ability and steadiness to accept the job) and their job maturity (their relevant skills and technical knowledge). These styles include telling, selling, participating, and delegating.
Unlike times of business “status quo” when you utilize any one of these styles on any given day, you utilize each of these four leadership styles in an almost linear manner when leading organizational change.
In your fight against time, the first leadership style you gravitate toward is telling. Like a commander at the combat front, you draw upon your experience to provide specific instructions and closely supervise performance. You’re autocratic, fighting the clock. You identify and control what needs to be done, by whom, and by when. Your goal is to stop the hemorrhaging and shift the organization’s course as soon as possible. You’re also assuming the greatest professional risk for the results.
This is the most difficult style at a personal level. Undoubtedly, you have to play the bad guy and make unpopular decisions about products, services, or processes. It may be your word that closes manufacturing plants or service centers and causes job loss—potentially impacting employees who had little to do with placing the organization in its current state of vulnerability. This is personally painful. Lost sleep may be part of the process, and you will not win any popularity contests. Hopefully, this style isn’t needed for long—for any situation and for fewer and fewer individuals.
When the direction of the organization becomes less ambiguous and some short-term results come to fruition, your style will require more selling. Here, you explain decisions and provide opportunities for clarification. Your intention is to persuade people to voluntarily act in a supportive manner toward the information you provide.
This style employs your skills of charisma, as well as tests your levels of energy and enthusiasm. Your selling will likely prove frustrating as you try to get everyone as motivated and committed to the cause in the timetable you desire—and not everyone will be buying.
As the organization stabilizes, you should embrace a participative style, where ideas are shared and you play the role of facilitator. At this point, you still control (and always will) the decisions regarding strategy and resources, but you listen to the people in the organization closest to the work, as well as your customers, to develop related business plans.
This style involves giving select employees—if not everyone—a voice and some influence with the vote. It also requires letting people embark down a path that has some risk, and allowing them to be wiser for the experience, without your intervention.
You evolve into a delegating mode where you turn over responsibility for most day-to-day decisions and actions to the employees requiring the least amount of guidance, and with whom you have the greatest trust. With this style, you let your team decide the required processes, resources, structure, training, information system needs, and staffing levels, within the guidelines that you provide. You welcome their ideas and suggestions; you encourage their creativity and innovation. You want them to accept “ownership” and accountability for the development and execution of these plans.
In this latter stage, organizational change is clearly an underpinning of your culture, and you will spend more of your time with people, not budget summaries. It is personally most gratifying; however, you cannot let your guard down. With this style, you are also watching the horizon for changes in any key organizational, operational, or marketplace performance indicators that will cause you to manage people or the situation differently.