We all know one or more people who seem to have been born with a special gift: knowing how to lead, organize, command, order, innovate, motivate, or direct the actions of others. You could talk about dozens of functions that would form different types of leadership, however, it is easier to review the characteristics of each.
First of all, it should be noted that the attitudes of the different types of leadership are based on several pillars that we can easily identify, for example, in the development of good social skills, the ability to empathize without harming the group’s ultimate goals, intuition. that gives you time to quickly and effectively choose relevant aspects instead of distracting ones, etc.
- Certainly each of us has met one or more people like these throughout our lives.
- Or maybe we are even ourselves.
- But look.
- We can’t fall in the right direction.
- Because we have to have two aspects in mind when we talk about leadership.
As mentioned above, there are two things to consider before you can call a person a leader, regardless of the type of action you are taking:
Touched by a wand? The issue is more complex. Yes, more than magic or the fact that we talk about a skill in which our genetics can have a great influence.
To make this brief introduction, we set aside a certainty that cannot be forgotten when we go further: a person who is a good leader for a group (which has certain characteristics and objectives) does not have to be a leader for one group of another. A fantastic example of this is offered by team sports.
It’s rare to have a weekend when a coach isn’t relieved of his duties. Most of the time, coaches are fired for not being able to adequately guide the group they lead, not because they are more or less experts in instiling techniques aspects related to the sport they practice.
In psychology, the word leadership is linked to a name and an experiment: the word performed by Kurt Lewin in the context of World War II During this historical stage, we have witnessed the rise to power of several dictators who have managed to make many people believe in his project, whether true or false.
Thus, an always relevant question arises simply because it seems obvious: for a new leader to emerge, there must be a power vacuum or a strong questioning of what has already been established.
If we continue to draw the line in world history, we can see how interest in the study of leadership that first emerged in the military and political hierarchy has spread to other areas, such as education, sport (such as the example we gave earlier) or business. .
Today, unfortunately, we don’t have a single classification of leadership types, so let’s describe one of the most practical and recognized by group psychology, this classification differentiates five types of leadership, two more than Kurt Lewin had originally established.
When you exercise delegate leadership we are talking about the invisible or permissible leader, it is a kind of manager whose task is to distribute the tasks, it is particularly effective in groups made up of highly qualified and motivated people who only expect someone to give them direction.
That is, this type of leader is the one who seeks to make the guidelines serve as a link or means of communication with the rest of the group. The danger of the delegated leader is generated by situations in which his performance is necessary and he chooses not to intervene.
We are before a leader who, when it comes to sin, sins by default, and that is why it is easy for a destabilizing element to make everything uncontrollable. An example of a delegated leader could be Gandalf in this scene from the Lord of the Rings movie.
Unlike the previous leader, the autocratic leader is an interventionist leader, this leader’s channel is one-way, as he says alone, but he doesn’t listen to the group leading, on the other hand, it’s usually a very controlling leader who works. particularly well in groups that, motivated, have many doubts about how to carry out the tasks entrusted to them.
Finally, the autocratic leader generally has a sense of superiority over the people he leads, a contamination that can be far more dangerous than the warning described above. An example of an autocratic leader in history is Margaret Tatcher, who was once Prime Minister of the United States. United Kingdom.
As you may have guessed, this kind of leadership has a lot to do with the logic of many Western political systems. The democratic leader tries to raise two-way communication as much as possible. Lead, but not to mention the importance of being sensitive, to the feedback that the group gives to its decisions, besides, what characterizes this type of leadership is the element of permanent consulting.
It is a good leader for prepared groups, but they do not have much motivation, feeling listened to can be the best remedy for this deficit, greatly increasing the interest of the actors, both in the procedures and in the objectives. An example of a democratic leader in history is former South African President Nelson Mandela.
Transactional leadership is goal-oriented. The leader assumes the role of guardian of the group‘s motivation and works by awarding rewards or imposing penalties based on the performance or interest of the group members.
This type of leader, if he is intelligent in his task, is good for long and tedious processes in which the group does not find and cannot easily find an intrinsic motivation (associated with the task itself) in what to do.
The danger of this type of leadership lies in what surrounds the objective, such as the environment within the group itself, many times degraded by competitiveness in the face of these rewards of which we speak (promotions, vacations, flexibility, etc. ). An example of transactional leadership is that of soccer coaches.
Transformational leadership has the leader focused on the motivation of the group, but based on the task, its intention is to get the group to achieve its objectives, but without underestimating the other objectives, these secondary objectives can be very different and varied: the acquisition of skills by the members of the group, the climate that is generated within the group , concern for the environment, etc.
This type of leader is particularly good when leading a group that does not have a high level of knowledge or motivation, and for which the pressure to achieve certain major goals is not so strong An example of a charismatic leader is former U. S. President John F. . Kennedy.
As we see, the types of leadership presented since group psychology research are very definitive profiles, however, when it comes to managing and leading a group, leaders don’t always behave in a way and diversity is often the rule.