Most common Leadership Types are:

- Autocratic leadership.

- Bureaucratic leadership.

- Charismatic leadership.

- Democratic leadership or participative leadership.

- Laissez-faire leadership.

- People-oriented leadership or relations-oriented leadership.

- Servant leadership.

- Task-oriented leadership.

- Transactional leadership.

- Transformational leadership.

Autocratic Leadership

Autocratic leadership is an extreme form of transactional leadership, where a leader exerts high
levels of power over his or her employees or team members. People within the team are given
few opportunities for making suggestions, even if these would be in the team's or organization's
interest.

Most people tend to resent being treated like this. Because of this, autocratic leadership usually
leads to high levels of absenteeism and staff turnover. Also, the team's output does not benefit
from the creativity and experience of all team members, so many of the benefits of teamwork are
lost.

For some routine and unskilled jobs, however, this style can remain effective where the
advantages of control outweigh the disadvantages.

Bureaucratic Leadership
Bureaucratic leaders "work by the book", ensuring that their staff follow procedures exactly. This
is a very appropriate style for work involving serious safety risks (such as working with
machinery, with toxic substances or at heights) or where large sums of money are involved (such
as cash-handling).

In other situations, the inflexibility and high levels of control exerted can demoralize staff, and
can diminish the organizations ability to react to changing external circumstances.

Charismatic Leadership

A charismatic leadership style can appear similar to a transformational leadership style, in that
the leader injects huge doses of enthusiasm into his or her team, and is very energetic in driving
others forward.

However, a charismatic leader can tend to believe more in him or herself than in their team. This
can create a risk that a project, or even an entire organization, might collapse if the leader were to
leave: In the eyes of their followers, success is tied up with the presence of the charismatic
leader. As such, charismatic leadership carries great responsibility, and needs long-term
commitment from the leader.

Democratic Leadership or Participative Leadership

Although a democratic leader will make the final decision, he or she invites other members of
the team to contribute to the decision-making process. 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 own destiny, and so are motivated to
work hard by more than just a financial reward.

As participation takes time, this style can lead to things happening more slowly than an
autocratic approach, but often the end result is better. It can be most suitable where team working
is essential, and quality is more important than speed to market or productivity.

Laissez-Faire Leadership
This French phrase means "let them do" and is used to describe a leader who leaves his or her
colleagues to get on with their work. It can be effective if the leader monitors what is being
achieved and communicates this back to his or her team regularly. Most often, laissez-faire
leadership works for teams in which the individuals are very experienced and skilled self-
starters. Unfortunately, it can also refer to situations where managers are not exerting sufficient
control.

People-Oriented Leadership or Relations-Oriented Leadership

This style of leadership is the opposite of task-oriented leadership: the leader is totally focused
on organizing, supporting and developing the people in the leader's team. A participative style, it
tends to lead to good teamwork and creative collaboration. However, taken to extremes, it can
lead to failure to achieve the team's goals. In practice, most leaders use both task-oriented and
people-oriented styles of leadership.

Servant Leadership

This term, coined by Robert Greenleaf in the 1970s, describes a leader who is often not formally
recognized as such. When someone, at any level within an organization, leads simply by virtue
of meeting the needs of his or her team, he or she is described as a "servant leader". In many
ways, servant leadership is a form of democratic leadership, as the whole team tends to be
involved in decision-making.

Supporters of the servant leadership model suggest it is an important way ahead in a world where
values are increasingly important, in which servant leaders achieve power on the basis of their
values and ideals. Others believe that in competitive leadership situations, people practicing
servant leadership will often find themselves left behind by leaders using other leadership styles.

Task-Oriented Leadership

A highly task-oriented leader focuses only on getting the job done, and can be quite autocratic.
He or she will actively define the work and the roles required, put structures in place, plan,
organize and monitor. However, as task-oriented leaders spare little thought for the well-being of
their teams, this approach can suffer many of the flaws of autocratic leadership, with difficulties
in motivating and retaining staff. Task-oriented leaders can benefit from an understanding of the
Blake-Mouton Managerial Grid, which can help them identify specific areas for development
that will help them involve people more.
Transactional Leadership

This style of leadership starts with the premise that team members agree to obey their leader
totally when they take a job on: the transaction is (usually) that the organization pays the team
members, in return for their effort and compliance. As such, the leader has the right to punish
team members if their work doesn't meet the pre-determined standard.

Team members can do little to improve their job satisfaction under transactional leadership. The
leader could give team members some control of their income/reward by using incentives that
encourage even higher standards or greater productivity. Alternatively a transactional leader
could practice "management by exception", whereby, rather than rewarding better work, he or
she would take corrective action if the required standards were not met.

Transactional leadership is really just a way of managing rather a true leadership style, as the
focus is on short-term tasks. It has serious limitations for knowledge-based or creative work, but
remains a common style in many organizations.

Transformational Leadership

A person with this leadership style is a true leader who inspires his or her team with a shared
vision of the future. Transformational leaders are highly visible, and spend a lot of time
communicating. They don't necessarily lead from the front, as they tend to delegate
responsibility amongst their teams. While their enthusiasm is often infectious, they can need to
be supported by "detail people".

In many organizations, both transactional and transformational leadership are needed. The
transactional leaders (or managers) ensure that routine work is done reliably, while the
transformational leaders look after initiatives that add value.

The transformational leadership style is the dominant leadership style taught in the "How to
Lead: Discover the Leader Within You" leadership program, although we do recommend that
other styles are brought as the situation demands.
Using the Right Style: Situational Leadership

While the Transformation Leadership approach is often highly effective, there is no one right
way to lead or manage that suits all situations. To choose the most effective approach for you,
you must consider:

- The skill levels and experience of the members of your team.

- The work involved (routine or new and creative).
- The organizational environment (stable or radically changing, conservative or adventurous).
- You own preferred or natural style.

A good leader will find him or herself switching instinctively between styles according to the
people and work they are dealing with. This is often referred to as "situational leadership"

For example, the manager of a small factory trains new machine operatives using a bureaucratic
style to ensure operatives know the procedures that achieve the right standards of product quality
and workplace safety. The same manager may adopt a more participative style of leadership
when working on production line improvement with his or her team of supervisors.