Progressive Leadership Styles

Early on in researching what type of leadership style I possessed, I concluded that I was a transformational leader because of my well rounded and easily approachable style of management. However, through the scope of learning in this class and my continued investigation of my leadership “self,” I refined my leadership style as more of a coaching/participative style. As a coaching leader I’ve attempted to tie together career aspirations and personal goals of my employees. I take a personal interest in wanting them to succeed and provide hands on instruction help make sure they understand what is being required of them (Money-Zine, 2013). Giving continued feedback on performance, delegating authority, and offering collaborative challenges to retain interest are part of my leadership style.

My democratic leadership style is also called the participative style. It is this style that helps me encourage my team mates to become active in the collaborative challenges I mentioned before. I try to keep my employees informed about everything that affects their work and shares decision making and problem solving responsibilities. This particular style compliments coaching as it requires me to be a coach who has the final say, but gathers information from staff members before making a decision. My style of leadership can be very successful; however, I must be careful not to overload my team mates and to make sure they are prepared to handle the different challenges offered to them (Changing Minds, 2013).

A leader understands that there is always room for development. Two areas that I need to work on are: clarity of ideas and/or instruction; and, establishing balance between worker and management. Decidedly the clarity of ideas I mentioned earlier is directly contingent to a clarity of communication. Misunderstandings between people can occur because of faulty assumptions people make about communication. Here are two faulty assumptions for example: 1) You should...