A leadership style that doesn’t accommodate contrary opinions, however good, is a leading cause of workplace hostility. According to Daniel Goleman, “being a great leader means recognizing that different circumstances may call for different approaches.” Wise team leaders debate personal agendas, goals, and insights with the group and strike a balance to avoid formal conflicts.
Great leaders understand how team involvement and their administrative style affects formal conflict. There are five symptoms of bad leadership that suffocates healthy debate:
- Poor communication channels.
- Leadership without thoughtful direction.
- Inexistent formal authority.
- Absentee leadership.
- When workers lose trust in leaders or administrative approaches.
Goleman’s Six Leadership Styles
There’s plenty of research on common workplace leadership styles and how people professionals can choose a working formula. In a Harvard Business Review article, Leadership that Gets Results (2000), Goleman, D. identifies six styles that form effective leadership frameworks. HR managers can adopt one – or a working combination – of these approaches to fulfill unique workplace needs.
1: Authoritative Leadership
Leaders who use this style mobilize people towards a vision with a strong conviction and sound understanding of events. If there’s room for debate, this model is almost frictionless.
2: Coercive Leadership Style
This high-handed approach demands immediate compliance without a care for the workers’ opinions. Contrary to (#1) above, most workplace disputes originate from bureaucratic leadership.
3: Pacesetting
In this hands-on style, leaders become role models. They work alongside employees, exemplifying excellence in expectations while allowing the worker self-direction. It is the ideal leadership style to confront formal conflicts if combined with (#1) above.
4: Affiliative Leadership Model
Autonomous affiliate leaders emphasize on building emotional bonds with their team. The laissez-faire approach isn’t effective for innovative, core business tasks, and it doesn’t stop formal conflicts from happening.
5: Democratic Stewardship
Here, leaders create consensus. Coupled with an authoritative pacesetter, there’s no better leadership style to counter workplace drama.
6: Coaching
Unlike pacesetters, semi-autonomous coaches focus on developing and preparing workers for a future task. This leadership style isn’t fully independent, and cannot solve present-day formal conflicts.
The Best Forms of Corporate Leadership to Avoid Formal Conflicts
Office hostility, employee demotivation, poor productivity, and low organizational success always point to poor leadership. Research isolates two forms of HR leadership that encourage debate to avoid workplace conflicts. They are:
- Transactional leaders are concerned with goal-setting and rewards, driving diversity of opinion and thereby influencing employee productivity and subdued disputes.
- Transformational people professionals motivate and inspire workers, leading to utmost workplace efficiency and job satisfaction. Formal conflicts are rare under transformational managers.
Different leadership styles can either motivate or demotivate employees, affecting their productivity and, ultimately, the organization’s success.
Reference
- Goleman, Daniel. “Leadership that Gets Results”, Harvard Business Review (March – April 2000 Issue).
- Handling Different Types of Workplace Conflicts.