Leadership Style for Effective Leadership

My Leadership Style
Effective Leadership has become inevitable to excel and achieve personal and professional
success. Charry (2012) elaborated on the growing interest of academicians in understanding
leadership during the early part of the twentieth century. In the current era, the corporate
environment is undergoing major transformations as the need for better leaders is growing
pace to meet the global challenges. It goes well with the transformational leadership theory
which states that leaders are capable of creating progressive changes in the individuals to
achieve excellent results for the betterment of fellow people as well as a group (Warrilow,
2012). However, I felt democratic style of leadership would be best suited for my company.
Democratic style of leadership seeks the contribution of other team members to make crucial
decisions (Bhatt et al, 2012). Over the last one year of my tenure as the project lead of ABC
organization, I have come across various challenges to meet my professional goals to carve a
long term career. I had 8 employees under me including some of my closest colleagues in the
company. I thought it would be easy to manage the colleagues but I was up for a learning
lesson in my career. I consider myself to be an effective team player as my values and beliefs
have guided me well. Being a problem solver in my professional life helped me diffuse most
of the issues. However, I witnessed some hard wired issues with some employees. Be it with
the team members or my manager, I used my strong interpersonal skills to seam through most
of the arguments. Salacuse (2008) stated that successful leaders are inadvertently good
negotiators. But I felt I hat I failed to grasp the gravity of the issues between members. For
instance, there was a conflict in my team to replace a team member given his temperament
issues with other members. The guy had specialized skills in handing the coding, and was
highly recommended by the manager. I had in-person discussion with all the members to
address their issues. In fact, I conducted many group activities to help them bond during the
spare time. However, the simmering tension lingered on almost throughout the remaining

course of the project. It even impacted the pace of the project at one point. The management
expected me to achieve the target whilst my individual focus was on resolving the issues
within to fulfil the organizational expectations. So I kind of felt trapped in a vicious cycle.
Still I maintained my calm and made consistent efforts to hold the team members together to
achieve the target.
Perception of another individual on my leadership
As a project lead, I had gone through my performance report in the last quarter to understand
my expectations of my organization, and determine the skill gap. I had the desired knowledge
and skills as required for the project. I was pretty confident of excelling in this new role as
well though leading a team was something new for me. I discussed it with my manager and
he had high expectations from me as a leader. However, after the project was over, I had a
discussion with a fellow project lead to seek his neutral feedback. She reflected on the need
to be more tactful in my approach to deal with the team members. Since she was more
experienced in the company, she suggested me to seek help from my manager to get timely
intervention if things continue to worsen. She acknowledged my concerns, but encouraged
me to focus on the target lest it could dent my image in the company. Organizational culture
demonstrates the shared values and beliefs that keep all the employees together to work
towards achieving corporate goals (Tsai, 2011). I felt her assessment was more so in line with
the corporate culture.. Whilst it is a practical solution, I found it unconvincing since I was
focused to be a leader to my team wherein my aim should be to empower the employees as
well as achieve the organizational goals.

Impact of my leadership style on my work relation with others
Many studies have asserted that individual characteristics such as knowledge, skills,
demographics, competencies, and personality traits help in defining the nature of leadership
(Mumford, Campion, & Morgeson, 2007). This is basically the premise of one of the
primitive theories of leadership. Based on my values and personal beliefs, I found
participative or democratic style of leadership as the most suitable approach to achieve the
business goals. Being a self-conscious person, I have kept a close check on my behaviour
with the team and the management as well. I believe its necessary to act as an interface
between the management and the team members to achieve mutual benefits and engage the
employees towards organizational goals. Democratic leadership strives to establish equality
and freedom in the decision making process within group members. That’s why I insisted on
making bond with every team member and amongst themselves to develop a cohesive unit.
However, I felt that I failed to decipher the extent of the discomfort amongst the team
members due to one problematic person. And this created difference between me and some of
the team members. Though my approach was objective, the friction with other team members
broke the momentum towards the second half of the project cycle. It impacted my reputation
with the manager as the progress report was unsatisfactory. He guided me through to
complete the project albeit downplaying the employee issues. Leadership could be defined as
a process wherein one person has the tendency to influence the opinion of others in a group to
attain common goals (Northouse, 2010). My efforts diffused the tension in the group, but
certainly the subordinates were not pleased with the way things were handled.
Strengths/ Weaknesses/Opportunities/threat of my leadership style