MN3040QA Leadership Report: Analyzing Leadership Styles and Traits

This report delves into the multifaceted concept of leadership, examining its core meaning and significance in guiding and motivating groups towards common goals. The report explores the essential characteristics of a good leader, emphasizing effective communication, an attractive personality, self-awareness, the ability to influence others, and sound decision-making. It further analyzes three distinct leadership styles: autocratic, participative, and free-rein, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of each. The report concludes by advocating for a participative leadership style, which fosters collaboration between leaders and team members, while acknowledging the situational applicability of different leadership approaches. References to academic sources such as Ford and et.al., Covin and et. al., Salman and et. al., Al-Tit, Omri and Euchi, and Rendtorff, are included to support the analysis.

Development for
Success in Business

Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Main body.............................................................................................................................................2
Meaning of leadership.......................................................................................................................2
Characteristics of a good leader.........................................................................................................2
Leadership styles...............................................................................................................................2
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................3
References.............................................................................................................................................4

Introduction
Leadership is the art which help to motivate and inspire a group of people to perform
a task which further help to receive a common goal. Leaders are the people who lead a group
to show them the correct direction to complete the task (Ford and et.al., 2020). The people
who follow their leaders are called influencers. Leaders work with their teammates to
encourage them for their performance and to make them believe that they are working under
an appropriate leader. This is one of the main characteristics of leadership that their leaders
work with their teammates to motivate them and to enhance their skills and performance to
perform a task. The following report covers the meaning of leadership, characteristics of a
good leader and leadership styles.
Main body
Meaning of leadership
Leadership is the skill of inspiring and motivating a group of individuals to achieve a
common goal. It helps in directing the manpower of a company to perform a task. Leadership
help in guiding a group that how the work is to be done on a correct time with efficient skills.
Characteristics of a good leader
Effective communication- It is compulsory for a leader to have effective
communication skills to communicate with their teammates (Covin and et. al., 2020). Lack of
communication skill impact negatively upon leaders to become effective leader.
Communication help the leader to know more about their group members that what they need
and what not.
Attractive personality- An attractive personality always attracts many people to get
influenced by the ideas and values of their leaders. Hence, a perfect personality of leaders
helps to get more influencers.
Self-awareness- It is very important for a leader to get self-aware about the situations,
opportunities and threats which impact on their leadership skills. A leader is requiring finding
out reason by themselves about the needs and wants of their workers.
Ability to influence people- To become a good leader it is essential to have the ability
to influence people to achieve a common interested goal (Salman and et. al.,2019).
A good listener and a good decision maker- It is another very important
characteristic of a good leader. A good leader always listens more and speak less this means
that a good leader always listen to the requirements and complaints of their team and then he
make a good decision to eliminate the obstacle. Making good decisions which help the group
to achieve their set goals is also an essential skill of a good leader.
Leadership styles
There are three types of leadership styles-

Autocratic style- This is a type of leadership where all decisions are made the leader
only. He did not take the suggestions from the teammates before taking any decision. This
leadership style is beneficial for those organisations where quick decision is required. On the
other hand, this leadership style become the reason for conflicts between leaders and their
influencers because without taking suggestions from group members create a negative mind
image or leader in the teammates minds that their leader did not value their influencers and
sometimes it also impacts upon change of leader (Al-Tit, Omri and Euchi, 2019).
Participative style- This type of leadership style is best leadership style according to
me because in this leadership style leaders and their teammates work together and make
decisions together. While taking any decision related to organisation or related to workers
benefit, leaders always take suggestions from their teammates and their group members
suggest good ideas. This leadership type helps to make good relationship between the leaders
and their influencers.
Free rein/Laissez-Faire style- This refers to that leadership style which consists of
giving power to teammates by their leader to take decisions according to them. In this
leadership style there is least involvement of leaders in taking any decisions. This leadership
style help to gain many influencers as they are allotted with many rights in decision making
process. But on the other hand, this leadership type is disadvantageous because when a leader
gives full power to their group members to take decisions according to them then the group
members take those decisions only which is beneficial for them only not for the company
(Rendtorff, 2019). Hence, providing full power in workers hand for decision making will lead
to encourages achieving personal goals of workers and ignores to achieve organisational goal.
Conclusion
From the above information it has been concluded that leadership is a skill and an art
to influence and motivate people to achieve their common interested goals. Leader is a person
who have leadership skills and who apply their leadership skills to influence their groups.
The subordinates of leaders are called influencers of leader. Leaders work with their team to
motivate them and to encourage them that they are working under a powerful personality who
will always protect them from any situation. There are many characteristics of a leader which
make them a good leader to influence a group like having good communication skills, good
listener, quick and good decision maker, attractive personality and many others. It is also
concluded from the above information that participative leadership style is best suited
leadership style in today’s scenario because it consists of participation of both a leader and
teammates in decision making process. On the other hand, autocratic leadership style and
free-rein leadership style have many disadvantages like autocratic creates conflicts between
leader and their teammates and free rein leadership style results in delay to make any decision
and also lead to ignore organisational goal to achieve first. Leadership style must be adopted
according to situation.

References
Books and Journals
Al-Tit, A., Omri, A. and Euchi, J., 2019. Critical success factors of small and medium-sized
enterprises in Saudi Arabia: Insights from sustainability perspective. Administrative
Sciences. 9(2). p.32.
Covin, J.G. and et. al., 2020. Individual and team entrepreneurial orientation: Scale
development and configurations for success. Journal of Business Research. 112.
pp.1-12.
Ford, T.G and et.al., 2020. Understanding district support for leader development and success
in the accountability era: A review of the literature using social-cognitive theories of
motivation. Review of Educational Research. 90(2). pp.264-307.
Rendtorff, J.D., 2019. Sustainable development goals and progressive business models for
economic transformation. Local Economy. 34(6). pp.510-524.
Salman, A and et. al.,2019. An Empirical Investigation of the Impact of the Communication
and Employee Motivation on the Project Success Using Agile Framework and Its
Effect on the Software Development Business. Business Perspectives and
Research. 9(1). pp.46-61.