Leadership Styles in Business

Besides, research shows that all great business leaders have common traits in aspects such as being good listeners, knowing how to manipulate resources in order to achieve goals, and the ability to change in consonance to the external environment. An effective business leader can influence employees to follow a desired direction in order to achieve goals. Different leadership styles have the power to affect organizational performance and effectiveness. Analysis The link between entrepreneurship behavior and leadership has been used to inform practice in contemporary times. Within the dynamic and uncertain business environment, a form of entrepreneurial leadership is often required, which should influence the behaviors of the leader. To quantify the success of business leaders in the present time, there has often been an effort to consider how transactional and transformational leadership can create successful entrepreneurs.

Hence, the emergence of entrepreneurial orientation cannot be gainsaid. According to Won, Wan, & Sharif, (2017), entrepreneurial leadership emerged as a consequence of the need for change. Hence, it is common to find many of the successful business ventures abiding by the entrepreneurial conception. Some scholars have in fact suggested that entrepreneurial leadership is more inclined to transformational than transactional leadership styles. Hence, the advent of the internet could have provided sufficient reason to believe that a demanding leader would ensure that decisions are made with speed and with little consultation. Those conversant with the leadership style of the Apple CEO admitted that as a dictatorial leader, he was expected to be much intelligent than all the staffs who worked under him, such that the decisions made could be vindicated with time.

However, it is noteworthy that the leadership style portrayed by Steve Jobs was unique to his organization, which was highly innovative. The CEO understood the details of the organization more than others, and this is the reason as to why he could make decisions immediately and without making any consultations. Sethuraman & Suresh, (2014) acknowledged that in the high technology era, speed is of utmost importance and that consultation with others can waste time. The need for leadership training New inputs are more required now than ever, and many researchers believe that the lack of good leadership should demand training. Maak, Pless, & Voegtlin, (2016) acknowledges that the current competitive intensity, increasing complexity, the need for change, a failure that is costly and the impatience of shareholders are demanding that new leadership styles be created.

However, it is noteworthy that there exists a distinction between the natural attributes of a leader and the need to train them in accordance to new environments. Apparently, many companies in the US have initiated leadership training as envisaged in the number of dollars that they have spared for such an exercise. For instance, statistics indicate that many organizations spend approximately $12 billion annually on leadership development (DuBois, Hanlon, Koch, Nyatuga, & Kerr, 2015). Attributes that are worth being developed include functional and technical skills, reputation, industrial experience, organizational knowledge and industrial network. The aspect of training leaders is also geared towards ensuring that organizations can be able to thrive in chaos and derive comfort in uncertainty. For instance, current uncertainties such as recession and climate change may demand that leaders should be able to take advantage of such occurrences to make their organizations to become profitable.

Hence, such unpredictable occurrences demand that leaders must be trained with new capabilities to overcome complexities. Representative leadership styles As a new form of leadership style, Vann, Coleman, & Simpson, (2014) appreciate its significance in influencing the failure and success of an organization. Moreover, the amount of responsibility given to each member can also determine the empowerment that can be provided. Therefore, creating a robust organizational climate is one of the rarest skills that can be possessed by a leader. In essence, the best leaders are those who can empower their staffs and team to achieve their individual goals. Creating such an environment would include the provision of both financial and non-financial rewards to the teams that excel. The role of a leader in such a case is to focus more on empowering his subordinates with objectives, vision, structures, and purposes so that the organization can even run in his absence.

Although highly adaptable to low cadre employees who lack the technical know-how of the process, the bureaucratic leadership approach cannot be used for highly gifted and talented workforce, who would often desire to have the liberty to explore ideas. However, the leadership style cannot be ignored, considering that there exist many multinationals whose central role is to produce goods to the demanding market. Without bureaucratic leadership, it would be difficult to supply the goods that are needed within the capitalistic market. Even then, good leaders must not maintain their employees for a long time in the production process, which is often associated with strict regulations. In many ways, organizations should use the bureaucratic leadership style at the entry level of new recruits, so that their capabilities can be scrutinized before being given greater responsibilities (Javed, Jaffari, & Rahim, 2014).

Basically, the world is fast changing, and some decisions require speed, and this is the reason as to why a dictatorial style may be appreciated. However, the need to have a set of representative leadership that encompass all styles signifies that some employees need to be managed at different levels of their growth within an organization. Hence, it is difficult to just have one leadership styles. A bureaucratic or dictatorial style may be used for new recruits, but when they grow within the firm, they may need to be provided with much freedom to explore their skills through servant or democratic leadership style. References DuBois, M. , & Hassan, H. The leadership styles dilemma in the business world. International Journal of Organizational Leadership, 5(4), 411-425.