Leadership Style and its effect on Group Dynamics

This essay discusses the various leadership styles and their effects on group dynamics in an organization. It explores how leaders can improve group performance and motivate team members. The importance of trust and effective communication in team management is also highlighted.

Running Head: Leadership in Business
Leadership in Business
Essay
System04104
2/12/2019

Leadership in Business
1
Leadership Style and its effect on Group Dynamics
Every person has their own unique style of leadership that determines how that person
communicates, motivates, and guides their colleagues and followers towards the
organisational, team, or group objective. A leader can be defined as a person who delegates,
motivates, inspire, and influence people to carry out the organisational objectives. A good
leader always likes to contribute to finding solutions to a particular problem that affect group
performance in an organisation. A good leader always finds out the perfect ways that how
he/she can improve the group performance by contributing much and more in the group effort
(Duhigg, 2016). If a leader better knows his style of leadership and becoming more self-
aware, then he/she should also able to improve their leadership style and skills according to
the situation. In any organisation, every employee has their own culture and thinking style,
even they do not act or speak like each other. It means every employee in the organisation is
different, but they all have something in common and the capability and potential to perform
at their peak with the right guidance.
Leadership styles play an important part in team dynamics and in team effectiveness
in the organisation. It is important for every organisation that how their leaders are using their
leadership styles for improving the group performance and motivate every person in the
organisation towards the organisation and team goal (Robert, Dunne, & Iun, 2016). As a
leader of a group, it is the responsibility of the leader to deal with the different person with
different personalities, abilities, and motivations, and it is all known that one style is cannot
fit on all members of the group. Google is one of the great examples of effective team
management and handle the team problems because they give freedom to their team members
and their leaders too. Google is known as one of the big organisations that care their
employees and their interest that what are their needs and desire from the organisation
(Obholzer & Miller, 2018). Google provides a high level of psychological safety to their team
members, and that is why the teammates feel safe to take a risk around their team members
(De Jong, Dirks, & Gillespie, 2016). In Google, team members are feeling confident and no
one in the team will embarrass or punish any team members for any mistakes or for asking a
question, or presenting any idea. This freedom of employees creates an innovative work
environment in the organisation. In other words, it can be said that a great team thrive on
trust.

Leadership in Business
2
Another thing which is very important in a team that how different people
communicate with each other and what are their communication styles that people prefer to
interact with other people within the team. In other words, every member of a group has a
different communication style (Zhang, Li, Ullrich, & van Dick, 2015). In addition to this, the
leadership style plays a vital role in identifying and fit the needs of your members so that a
leader can encourage them to perform at their best. Leadership styles determine the success
or failure of a leader. Every leader must be master and well versed in multiple
communication and leadership styles and also a good leader adjusted their leadership style in
such a way that effectively engage with their employees or team members (Boies, Fiset, &
Gill, 2015).
Democratic leadership and Group Dynamics
In the democratic style of leadership the leader, take the advice and opinions of every
member of the group and then making the decision. A democratic leader always gives
preference to their team members and allows their team members to express their opinions.
This helps in boosting the employee's moral and they feel that they are the part of the
management and thus their involvement helping the group members. Google is doing this
practice in the organisation when they offer their employees to express their ideas freely and
openly to their top leaders and executives in direct interaction (Larwin, & Kakoyiannis,
2016).
Autocratic leadership and Group Dynamics
An autocratic leader always makes the decision and tells or influences the group. The
autocratic leadership style falls between "telling" and "consulting" that is called "testing." An
autocratic leadership style is a time efficient leadership style where team members follow the
decision of leader without any delay and that save time in work. The major disadvantage of
this type of leadership styles is that it is not supporting the individual thoughts and opinions
and that leads to poor group commitment (Forsyth, 2018).
Unicratic leadership and Group dynamics
In this type of leadership style, the thought of a leader is evaluated that facilitates
other group members to involve in the decision-making. This style of leadership is so crucial
when the process is more important than the result. This leadership style demands the
cooperation of other team members. The main drawback of this style of leadership is time is
lost in encouraging the participation of group members.

Leadership in Business
3
Abdicratic Leadership style
In this type of leadership styles, a leader identifies the individual capability and
potential in the group and then allows every member of the group to perform the specific task
that is appropriate for them (Lyubovnikova, Legood, Turner, & Mamakouka, 2017). It allows
freedom to make one’s own decisions. One of the drawbacks of this leadership style that it is
not a decisive method for solving conflicts and the role of leaders are very limited that leads
to struggling role of a leader for power.
Transactional Leadership and Group Dynamics
Transactional leadership based on reward and penalties system. That is why it is also
called “carrot and stick” leadership style. This style of leadership strictly focuses in follow
the rules and regulations and leader exercise too much power on their followers (Lehmann-
Willenbrock, Meinecke, Rowold, & Kauffeld, 2015). On the other hand, the group members
have very little power and they do not have a choice to deny from anything if the
transactional leader orders them about a task. If people perform well then they will be
rewarded, but if they fail then they will be punished by the leader. It is a strict type of
leadership style.
Transformational Leadership and Group Dynamics
The transformational leadership style focuses on inspiration and motivation to all
employees and group members in the organisation. The transformational leadership
encourage the group members and their followers towards innovative and creative work
environment. The transformational leader encourages their group members for new ideas and
never criticizes them in public. The transformational leader serves as a role model for their
followers and team members.
What mattered most: Trust: Google always focus on building trust in its workers
and employees. Trust is the most important factor, which contributes to team effectiveness. It
was a psychological safety. It can be said that trust is a psychological safety in the mind of
group members and organisational people. In Google, leaders provide psychological safety to
their employees that further provide an individual’s perception of taking a risk without any
fear. Google provides this psychological safety to their leaders and to the employees as well
that enables them to take risks around the team members and feel safe and free to take any
initiative or creative actions in order to improve the team performance and achieve the
desired goals (Lee, Lee, & Seo, 2015).

Leadership in Business
4
What skills needed when a leader dealing with a Group/Team
A leader is a person who motivates and inspiring other people of the group member.
Although, a leader needs the following skills to motivate and encourage group people in any
organisation.
Listen First: To build trust, it is essential for a leader to know what other group
member thinks and feel about a particular problem of thing. That is why it is important to
listen first. A good leader always focuses on the problems of their followers and skilfully
listen them, and then stay in touch with their reality, get to know their world, and give
emphasis and value to their experience. Carefully listen other helps a leader easily identify
each individual team members and their strength and weakness, and their way of interacting
with other people or it helps in identify the style of their communication (Schmidt, 2017).
Empathy and Authentic: Google is one of the great examples of effective team
management and leadership. Beyond listening, it is the responsibility of a leader to
understand the perspectives of team members and their feelings and expectation from the
leader and management. This is called cognitive empathy. Authenticity creates trust and it
refers to honesty about the leader himself that how a leader sharing his real thoughts to other
team member and showing their imperfections as well because everyone else has some
imperfection (Tabassi, Roufechaei, Bakar, & Yusof, 2017). Therefore being authentic with
other group members is compulsory for a good leader.
Humble and Transparency: Being humble here means recognizing the need for
information, which a leader can get when he/she recognizing that he/she does not know
anything and willing to learn from others. Being humble does not mean that a leader should
never stand up for own opinions and principles rather a leader should politely understand the
situation and act accordingly and interestingly (Weiner, 2017). For being a good leader, it is
also essential to open with everyone and keeping other people in a loop when leader makes
any decision. Keeping anything secret is always dangerous in a group or team efforts.
A true leader is more than telling and dictating people what they need to do; rather a
true leader is a person who always inspires, motivates, and guides people to give their best in
the group effort and teamwork. It is not possible for every people to adopt the style of others
rather one of the easiest and modest ways to demonstrate leadership is to adapt to the
organisation people and their style of thinking and work (Yang, 2015). Proper training of

Leadership in Business
5
leadership and continuous practices and exercises helps a leader that how and when to be a
supporter, a coach, a supporter, a director, or a delegator.

Leadership in Business
6
References
Boies, K., Fiset, J., & Gill, H. (2015). Communication and trust are key: Unlocking the
relationship between leadership and team performance and creativity. The Leadership
Quarterly, 26(6), 1080-1094.
De Jong, B. A., Dirks, K. T., & Gillespie, N. (2016). Trust and team performance: A meta-
analysis of main effects, moderators, and covariates. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 101(8), 1134.
Duhigg, C. (2016). What Google learned from its quest to build the perfect team. The New
York Times Magazine, 26, 2016.
Forsyth, R. D. (2018) Group Dynamics [online]. Retrieve from :
https://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~dforsyth/pubs/forsyth2008.pdf
Larwin, K & Kakoyiannis, A. (2016) The psychology behind how Google builds the perfect
team [online]. Retrieve from: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-build-perfect-
team-building-charles-duhigg-2016-7?IR=T
Lee, D. S., Lee, K. C., & Seo, Y. W. (2015). An analysis of shared leadership, diversity, and
team creativity in an e-learning environment. Computers in Human Behavior, 42, 47-
56.
Lehmann-Willenbrock, N., Meinecke, A. L., Rowold, J., & Kauffeld, S. (2015). How
transformational leadership works during team interactions: A behavioral process
analysis. The Leadership Quarterly, 26(6), 1017-1033.
Lyubovnikova, J., Legood, A., Turner, N., & Mamakouka, A. (2017). How authentic
leadership influences team performance: The mediating role of team
reflexivity. Journal of Business Ethics, 141(1), 59-70.
Obholzer, A., & Miller, S. (2018). Leadership, followership, and facilitating the creative
workplace. In Working Below the Surface (pp. 33-48). Routledge.
Robert, C., Dunne, T. C., & Iun, J. (2016). The impact of leader humor on subordinate job
satisfaction: The crucial role of leader-subordinate relationship quality. Group &
Organization Management, 41(3), 375-406.

Leadership in Business
7
Schmidt, J. (2017) How Do You Build the Perfect Team? Just Ask Google [online]. Retrieve
from: https://thinkshiftinc.com/leadership-culture/build-a-perfect-team/
Tabassi, A. A., Roufechaei, K. M., Bakar, A. H. A., & Yusof, N. A. (2017). Linking team
condition and team performance: A transformational leadership approach. Project
Management Journal, 48(2), 22-38.
Weiner, S. G. (2017). Leadership of academic libraries: A literature review. Education
Libraries, 26(2), 5-19.
Yang, I. (2015). Positive effects of laissez-faire leadership: conceptual exploration. Journal
of Management Development, 34(10), 1246-1261.
Zhang, X. A., Li, N., Ullrich, J., & van Dick, R. (2015). Getting everyone on board: The
effect of differentiated transformational leadership by CEOs on top management team
effectiveness and leader-rated firm performance. Journal of Management, 41(7),
1898-1933.