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Essay on A Look at Various Leadership Styles

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There has been debate over what constitutes a leader so there is no wonder that the styles of leaders vary. Leaders must be able to motivate, mentor, coach and inspire others to reach organizational goals. Leadership style is the manner and approach of providing direction, implementing plans, and motivating people (Medina, 2011). All leaders of effective groups have four characteristics in common. First, they provide direction and meaning to the people they are leading and are responsible for keeping team members aware of important stated goals and objectives (Howard, 2005). Second, they generate trust by acting in an honest manner that creates an environment of trust (Howard, 2005). Third, they prefer action and risk taking and are …show more content…

I currently manage a total of twenty-seven employees and have three who directly report to me. There are twenty-four who are at the other branches and are mostly managed via e-mail, memos and an occasional visit from me. The three in my office are quite diverse, Ann, a recently married young mother, Linda, a near retirement age older lady and Rohan, a recently immigrated Hindu young man. It is necessary to be participative in my style of leadership and use emotional intelligence to manage my relationships with them in a mature and constructive way. I must listen to their needs and we come to a solution without having a negative impact on their daily workload. My transactional leadership style is used with all three employees but I have to rely on it mostly with Ann, my youngest employee. Consistently her role as a dispatch clerk must be clarified and reiterated. She is not an employee who responds well when her mistakes are exposed, but responds best when she is shown how to accomplish the goal and correct her errors. I have learned that I have to monitor her progress toward goal achievement or she will miss the mark. Her rewards are in direct relation to her accomplishments, and when she misses the goals, we come up with new strategies to achieve them. Now years later, I understand that in order to motivate her, I must use different tactics that respond to her willingness to make goals but her inability to achieve those goals on her own. Linda is an

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