Leadership styles

Each leader has its own style and each style is categorized, according to Boldmal and Deal on 1991 leaders express their leadership through four different styles. However, their definition may differ from other authors were categorized leadership style in other different ways.

According to Boldmal and Deal we have:

Structural Style Leaders: Structural leaders focus in structure, ambiance, implementation, experimentation and adaptation. Good structural leaders are social architects mainly focused on the analysis and design.

Human resources focused leaders: These kinds of leaders believe in persons, they are accessible and encourage the participation of the teammates; they give support and share the information among the team.

Politic Style Leaders: These kinds of leaders are defenders on the coalition and construction. Analyze what they want and what they have, they assess power distribution and build alliances. They use persuasion and negotiation.

Symbolic based leaders: Visionaries whose leadership style is based in inspiration and enthusiasm. They always try to make something new and different; they share dreams and make changes.

Another author, Johnny Hurtado from Bolivia, defines leadership styles as follows: Autocratic, Democratic, Paternal and Anarchist.

Autocratic leader: Strong personality, dominant and at some point aggressive. They want all made in their own way. These kinds of leaders do not share power of decisions with others; they not allow other points of view or suggestions. Leadership is not promoted and neither support team initiative. It just bans, threats, demands and punishes. It’s the classic dictator.

Paternal leader: Uses overprotection and welfare. It wants to do all by itself, nor promotes leadership and tends to create and maintain immature team members. Everyone shall resort to him in order to solve a problem.

Anarchist Leader: It differs from other leadership styles because it does not take any decision, neither any initiative; they tend to leave the team to do what they want to do leading to conflict among team members.

Democratic Leader: It’s the ideal leadership style, promotes leadership and initiative among team members, and creates freedom scenery allowing communication and integration.

According to Johnny Hurtado each leader should combine each one of the leadership styles proposed by him, however, citing Boldmal and Deal whose styles differ from Johnny’s we may conclude our own categories basing on these leadership styles. Johnny’s styles are more like behavior-type styles so combining each style can make a good leader on the aspect of motivation. Boldmal and Deal styles are based on social structures where the main response can be seen on results.

Where can we use each leadership style?

All fits according to the situation, but mainly is about personality, even so, we should avoid getting stuck on profiles that destroy leadership. It’s always good to be versatile and fluid.