Psychology

The paper seeks to identify the writers predominant leadership style. The Situational Leadership theory is discussed. The paper evaluates the situations, in which the dominant leadership style works to the best of the leader and the organization. The recommendations for maximizing the benefits of the leadership style are provided.

Leadership style is the critical component of any organizations success, and it is important that leaders are able to identify and apply their leadership style to maximize their efforts and to improve the quality of interactions between followers. The current leadership theory differentiates between the four different styles  delegating, participating, selling and telling. Although they are never or rarely represented in pure form, it is easy and even desirable to identify the dominating leadership style to which a leader keeps in his daily performance. In the discussed case, participating style was identified as the basic way of taking leadership decisions  the style, which implies that in the major, if not all decisions, the leader engages team members in the discussion of what should be done but takes the final decision himself. However, that participating style promotes participation and empowers team members does not mean that it is equally applicable and useful in all business situations.

To make sure that this leadership style works to the best of the organization, leaders should know the situations when this style is the most appropriate. The Situational Leadership Theory identifies the situations, which are the best for each particular leadership style. In terms of participation, leaders will increase the overall efficiency of their decisions if applied to the situations with low level task behavior and high levels of relationship and support between team members and between them and their leader. In such situations, participating leadership style will work the best because it promotes open discussion and knowledge sharing, and enhances team members desire to perform.

It should be noted, that participating leadership style alone cannot promote the quality and efficiency of all organizational decisions. I would advice that participating leaders are able to balance their desire for participation with the desire to be directive and even selling telling, whenever each particular situation requires being this way. The extent, to which a participating leader is able to maximize his effort, depends on whether he is able to identify the situations when participation is necessary, and to restrain from participation when it goes against the major organizations objectives.