(1)Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your leadership style.
My leadership style is problem solver; this leadership style offers me the opportunity to utilize the knowledge and experience of my followers. I believe that I am more of this leadership style because I tend to accept input from group members when making decisions and solving problems. I do this because I feel that everyone in the group have something tangible to contribute to the group, and sometimes they might have access to key information that can help in my decision making. I take the information and put them together to use in reaching a decision, because I know that I will have the final say as the leader of the group. I believe that the group is put together for a reason, so no one should be made to feel that their input does not count, so I carry everyone along but reserve the final say to myself. I like to consult with all the team members before reaching a decision; I encourage and appreciate the efforts of my team.
Some of the strengths of this leadership style are that it increases job satisfaction by involving team members, and also helps to develop people’s skills. With this leadership style, team members feel in control of their destiny, so they are motivated to work hard by more than just a monetary reward. “The approach can be most suitable when working as a team is essential, and when quality is more important than speed to market, or productivity.” (Leadership Styles)
The weaknesses of this leadership style is that there is often no clear direction with several different people having differing views, it can be extremely ineffective style of leadership, when time is limited and the problem must be solved immediately. This leadership style leads to things happening slowly because you have to wait to get inputs and then make decisions based on the collective ideas, sometimes you can get confused if the ideas are voluminous. In situations where roles are vague or time is limited, this leadership style can lead to communication failures and uncompleted projects. Sometimes the group members may not have the necessary expertise to make quality contributions to the decision-making process.
(2) Compare your leadership style to that of two of your team members.
In comparing my leadership style to that of two of my team members, I chose to compare Robert Boyd whose leadership style is delegating – this is a leadership style where the leader leaves his or her colleagues to get on with their work, and Robert Kafka, whose leadership style is director – “an extreme form of transactional leadership, where a leader exerts high levels of power over his or her employees or team members. People within the team are given the opportunities for making suggestions, even if these could be in the team’s or organization’s interest.” (Leadership Styles: Understanding & Using the right one for your situation)
Comparing Robert Kafka’s Director Leadership style, I found...
