How Leadership Styles Affect Organizational and Employee Productivity

Understanding your leadership style and its effect on your team is an important step in finding ways to improve workplace productivity. When leadership is effective, it has countless benefits for the company, particularly organizational productivity, employee engagement and brand advocacy. Here, I’ll examine the benefits and disadvantages of seven leadership styles and share how each can be employed successfully to enhance productivity.

 

1. The Visionary

Visionary leaders are successful when they can lay out their long-term vision and get company stakeholders excited about the future. However, these long-term goals need to be crystal clear, and employees must know their role in the plan for it to be a success.  

Benefits of visionary leadership

• Attracts millennials, Gen Zs and creative talents
• Promotes an innovative work culture
• Encourages teams to work toward a common goal
• Makes every role essential to company success  

Disadvantages of visionary leadership

• May neglect day-to-day operations when too focused on the future
• Steps away from coaching, mentoring and supervising employees
• May intimidate rank-and-file employees who don’t feel they measure up

Compromise: To be most effective, visionary leaders need a grounded personality working alongside them. For example, when Steve Jobs had his second go-round at Apple^®, Tim Cook ran the company alongside him. Jobs was free to set the vision, and Cook managed the operations—a perfect team!

 

2. The Authoritarian

While the idea of a directive or authoritarian leader is generally negative, this type of leader is critical in many industries. For example, heavily regulated fields like banking and finance or safety-focused industries like construction or manufacturing need a firm hand at the top.

Benefits of authoritarian leaders

• Provides structure, a clear line of control and job clarity
• Emphasizes safety, security and rule-following
• Easiest style to learn (leading by telling)

Disadvantages of authoritarian leaders

• Having a hand in everything increases the leader’s workload
• May lead highly skilled or self-motivated employees to resent their lack of freedom
• Limits the benefits of collaborating teams  

Compromise: While the authoritarian style is suited for certain industries, it should be used sparingly in others, like creative fields. Authoritarians can affect talent acquisition of younger generations if employed in the wrong environment.

 

3. The Affiliate

The affiliate leader often builds a foundation of teamwork, communication and trust, which creates high morale in the company. Employees are happy, engaged and productive when the leaders are open and consistent in their messages.

Benefits of affiliate leadership

• Creates opportunities for feedback
• Resolves conflicts quickly
• Makes employee wellbeing a priority
• Allows employees to feel appreciated, decreasing turnover rates
• Helps employees recover from difficult incidents quicker

Disadvantages of affiliate leadership

• Avoids conflict
• Slow to address underperforming team members
• Proves difficult when offering negative feedback

Compromise: For the affiliate leadership style to work, these leaders must never lose sight of the overall corporate vision and continue to work toward company growth. To gain buy-in, affiliate leaders must model the same behaviors they want to see.

 

4. The Democrat

Leaders with the participative or democratic style are known for asking team members for their input. While team members may have positive reactions to their leadership style, companies can flounder under it if the team has too much power and the leaders lose the ability to direct their vision.  

Benefits of democratic leadership

• Spreads the feeling of ownership to employees
• Heightens job satisfaction, which helps productivity
• Maximizes problem-solving potential   
• Maintains a sense of quality control throughout the company

Disadvantages of democratic leadership

• Slows decision making
• Compromises organizational flexibility and agility
• May impact security if too many people are privy to proprietary business information
• May evade unpopular or tough decisions

Compromise: Judicious use of democratic leadership is best for most companies, especially when it happens in lower levels of the organization. When used as a tool by leaders, it is an incredible engagement practice.

 

5. The Pacesetter

With the proliferation of start-up companies, the pacesetting leadership style is becoming more widespread. The style is popular because it allows the organization to reach maximum outcomes quickly. Leaders truly lead by example—often at a pace no one else can match. Pacesetting organizations usually have a high turnover rate because employees can't keep up and often burn out.

Benefits of pacesetting leadership  

• Achieves results quickly
• Produces high-energy work environments and teams  
• Employs talented employees who are motivated and competent
• Exceptionally effective when used in short bursts

Disadvantages of pacesetting leadership

• Produces a fast-paced, results-driven environment that can lead to high turnover
• May lose high-performing employees due to burn out

Compromise: Company productivity depends on a full talent pipeline at all times. While the pace is fast and results arrive quickly, be mindful of employees who are not working at the same pace but can still be assets to the organization.

 

6. The Coach

When done right, the coaching leadership style produces a positive workplace environment. A coaching leader puts most of their time and effort into building up their employees’ skills, experiences, confidence and knowledge. The result is a staff of highly trained and competent individuals who are capable of handling multiple responsibilities.

Benefits of coaching leadership

• Creates a powerful organizational culture
• Automates professional development
• Leads to greater knowledge of what’s happening in the workplace
• Creates loyalty between management and staff
• Reduces turnover and helps with recruitment

Disadvantages of coaching leadership

• Requires time to train leaders to be coaches
• Demands managers to focus time and energy on coaching moments
• Depends on a collaborative relationship with employees, which may not exist
• Discover great leaders may not be great coaches (and vice versa) 

Compromise: People generally love working for coaching leaders because they know their own skills will be improved. However, employees must be motivated and hold up their end of the bargain to be effective.  

 

7. The Servant

Servant leadership is all the rage in 2019 because today’s flatter organizations are flipping the traditional “top-down” hierarchy upside down and it’s exactly how the servant leader wants it. The servant leader puts the needs of employees and the organization before their own. He or she moves beyond the transactional aspects of management (do work, get a check), and instead actively seek to develop and align an employee’s sense of purpose with the company mission.

Benefits of servant leadership

• Creates potentially the strongest organizational culture from bottom to top    
• Encourages and provides resources for professional development
• Leaders gain empathy for workers when making decisions, but can still say “no” if the organization does not benefit  
• It serves the customer better when employees serve the organization over their own needs
• Reduces turnover and helps with recruitment

Disadvantages of servant leadership

• Many traditional managers have trouble adapting to this style
• The role of the leader is lessened
• In emergencies, servant leaders must act quickly and often without discussion or consensus with employees, which can lead to problems with the staff
• It’s not science but practice and without constant practice, it will fail

Compromise: Employees generally give their all when working for servant leadership because this style tends to unlock creativity, potential and a deep sense of purpose. However, leaders must communicate constantly and remain consistent in action or can potentially lose the support of their workers.

Every leader has a dominant style, but the most effective are skilled in all seven leadership styles. Take advantage of development opportunities to strengthen your leadership skills and create a more productive workforce.