Examining Leadership Styles and Their Impact on Teamwork Effectiveness

This literature review examines the impact of various leadership styles on teamwork and team performance. It discusses different leadership styles, including authoritative, transitional, servant, democratic, and empathetic leadership, and their effects on team dynamics, decision-making, productivity, and morale. The review also highlights the importance of adapting leadership styles to specific situations and the need for leaders to possess qualities such as effective communication, flexibility, and competence. The literature suggests that leadership has a direct impact on team performance, and understanding different leadership styles is crucial for managing teamwork effectively in today's dynamic business environment. Desklib provides access to this and other solved assignments.

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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
In today's rapidly changing world of intense competition and dynamic environment,
leadership has a great importance in contributing and determining the failure or success of a
company. The leadership plays the most important role in motivating the team by working along
with the team members which helps to improve decision making, productivity, morale and
metrics of the employees. The fundamental reason for which the leaders are considered as
important in the company is because they impact the team performance and achieve
organisational goals. In the following report the literature review will be conducted for overview
of the previous recharge on leadership styles and their impact on teamwork. It will present the
critical literature review of various authors to identify the gap in their studies for further
improvement. It will consist of the literature review of various styles, roles and other aspects of
leadership on the performance of teams and teamwork.
LITERATURE REVIEW
According to Riedel (2019), leadership styles can be considered as the acts of an individual
to make decisions and take responsibilities for their teams. The leaders have to perform many
activities for the teams like recognising the potential of every individual in the team, assigning
them the task accordingly and motivating them to achieve team objectives and aims (Chemin,
2021). Author explains that every leader faces many problems with their teams because they
need to assign the group task as per the capabilities of the team members and encourage them to
achieve team goals. Riedel also explains various factors for successful leadership which includes
the leader's role, members’ role and contribution of the team. It is integral for leaders to
understand various methods, practices, strategies and styles of leadership to manage teams
effectively. Author states that, the leaders must recognise their strengths and weaknesses and
improve them to be effective leaders. The second aspect is the employee awareness by the leader
so that employee roles and responsibilities can be effectively assigned to them. Leaders must also
consider and evaluate the team dynamics for optimising the performance of the team for
achieving organisational goals. Author explains that the leaders must be capable of actively
taking part in the activities of the team. Also, the team dynamics must be constantly evaluated,
problems, conflicts and disruptions must be interviewed by the team leaders. Therefore, it can be
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considered that leadership is highly responsible for affecting the activities of team and team
members within an organisation.
Xers and Boommer (2019), explain leadership as the result of personality, strengths,
experiences and values that creates such characteristics within an individual to make an effective
team leader. The author argues that the leadership abilities may not be suitable for every team
and it may fail if used inappropriately. The author identifies various leadership styles that can be
used in various situations. Xers and Boommer explain that authoritative leaders taste the
responsibility of the team and provide directions to the team to achieve common goals. In the
views of the author, transitional leadership can be helpful for teams to encourage innovation,
rewarding culture and high team performance to increase productivity and achieve early goals.
Servant leadership is explained as the ability of leaders to constantly transform their team
members into more productive, highly efficient, strong and happier beings (Adnan and
Valliappan, 2019). According to the author, servant leadership is useful to encourage team
performance by resolving conflict and uniting the efforts of team members. Another leadership
style explained by the author is democratic leadership that can be used to create participation of
team members and encourage their collaboration to achieve common goals. Empathetic
leadership is also recognised by the author to improve team performance by providing emotional,
moral and ethical support to the team members. The last leadership style is considered as the
most inappropriate style by the author to manage team activities. The narcissist leadership trait
does not focus on the teams or results and are self-oriented. Author explains that using a single
leadership style may not be suitable for all team situations therefore different leadership styles
must be adopted.
In the views of Duggan and Mack (2021), decisions, productivity, morale, and other metrics
of teams are affected by different leadership styles. Author explains the impacts of various
leadership styles on these metrics of the team members therefore a suitable leadership style is
needed for effective performance of teams. Duggan explains that autocratic leadership may
reduce the morale of employees in normal situations but motivate them during the time of crisis
or disasters. It is also explained that productivity and decision making can be improved by
participating and democratic leadership styles by recognising the needs of teams and team
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members. Moreover, the author examines that leaders are important to encourage team format to
achieve long term growth and productivity in the organisation. Mack explains that there are
certain qualities and traits exhibited by bad leaders such as poor communication, inflexibility,
unbalanced, incompetence and poor role model. According to the views of the author these
qualities and traits must be improved to achieve trust of the team and team members which help
to achieve organisational goals. HR insights Magazine (2019), argues that the leaders in a
business have a great impact on the team performance but this may make it difficult for them to
achieve high quality team performance. It has been discussed that dynamic situations in the
market environment can lead to inefficiency of leaders to manage teams effectively. Therefore,
leaders must adopt different leadership styles for different situations. For this purpose the
magazine explains three most important leadership styles that can be helpful in different
situations. It consists of democratic leadership where the leaders consist of the intelligence of
various members of the team to actively part in decision making duties (Alblooshi,
Shamsuzzaman and Haridy, 2020). Autocratic leadership is explained as the form of leadership
which centralises the decision making power in the hand of the leader so that quick decisions can
be made for the teams to achieve desired objectives on time. Finally, it discusses participative
leadership that encourages the decisions of the team members which could enhance trust among
the team members. Therefore, evaluation of these leadership styles for specific situations is
necessary so that better team performance can be achieved.
Ackerman Anderson (2016), leaders have a very complex and demanding role to ensure the
performance of the organisation by encouraging and creating a positive environment for the
teams and team members. In the views of authors the incapability of leaders may lower the
production of profits by the organisation and the performance of team members. It is important
to encourage positive, socially conscious and environmentally suitable leadership styles and
practices within an organisation to improve team performance and achieve organisational goals
in a sustainable manner. Author brings in the notice that there is a need to encourage such
leadership qualities which creates innovation, psychological satisfaction and improved decisions
for overall growth of the teams. Ackerman Anderson said that transformational leadership can
improve innovation, talent improvement and social obligations to improve team performance for
achieving organisational goals. A leader must demonstrate awareness of human/cultural aspects,
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improve communication and wellbeing of society and environment to enhance positive team
performance. It can be explained that these considerations by the leaders can improve the
performance of teams to achieve goals effectively and efficiently. Kokemuller (2022), explains
that the leadership styles must be adopted as per the situation to work effectively in dynamic
conditions for encouraging team performance. Author explains that an autocratic or commanding
style that focuses on individual decision making can be used to make quick decisions.
Participating or democratic management can be very helpful to improve the culture of team
oriented work. Kokemuller underlines the affiliative style that can be used for developing strong
work forces to work in teams. The author explains that this style of leadership can improve the
qualities of team members and teams to develop better performance for achieving common
objectives.
Michal and Germano (2010), explain that the leadership has the direct cause and effect relation
with the performance of teams and team members. Author explains various leadership styles that
impact on the performance of teams within the organisation. Explain that there are various
organisations where different types of leadership practices are required to manage team
performance. The leadership theories can be helpful to develop such leadership styles that can be
suitable for a given organisation (Darawong, 2020). In the views of the author there are various
leadership styles like situational, transformational, transactional, charismatic, and democratic that
can be used for managing teams in different scenarios. Author explains that different leadership
styles affect the team performance differently. Author explains that autocratic leaders force the
team members to execute or follow such strategies that are very narrowed to achieve desired
goals. Bureaucratic leadership is explained by the leader as the policy driven leaders are
inflexible to adopt changes. According to the author democratic and Charismatic leadership are
among the good leadership styles that can be chosen for improving team performance by
indulging them in the decision making activities. Author finally provides descriptions of
situational, transactional and transformational leadership styles that can be helpful for promoting
higher team performance by creating readiness to tackle changes effectively. These leadership
styles are integral to be known by the leaders which affect the activities of teamwork.
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CONCLUSION
It can be concluded from the above literature review that there are various leadership styles
that have been adopted by the leaders in various situations. It has been understood that the
knowledge of a single leadership style within the rapidly changing market environment may lead
to failure of leaders to manage teamwork effectively. It has been demonstrated with the literature
review that a leader must have understanding of various leadership styles like transformational
leadership, situational, transactional, democratic, authoritative etc. for managing teamwork
effectively in a highly competitive and constantly changing world.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Adnan, S.N.S.M. and Valliappan, R., 2019. Communicating shared vision and leadership styles
towards enhancing performance. International Journal of Productivity and Performance
Management.
Alblooshi, M., Shamsuzzaman, M. and Haridy, S., 2020. The relationship between leadership
styles and organisational innovation: A systematic literature review and narrative
synthesis. European Journal of Innovation Management.
Chemin, M., 2021. Does appointing team leaders and shaping leadership styles increase effort?
Evidence from a field experiment. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 186,
pp.12-32.
Darawong, C., 2020. The influence of leadership styles on new product development
performance: the moderating effect of product innovativeness. Asia Pacific Journal of
Marketing and Logistics.
Online
Gen Xers and Baby boomers, 2019. Which leadership style is best for your team? [Online]
Available Through, https://online.wharton.upenn.edu/blog/which-leadership-style-is-best-
for-your-team/
HR Insights Magazine, 2019. How leadership affects employee performance in team. [Online]
Available Through, https://blog.advancedresources.com/how-leadership-affects-
employee-performance
Linda Ackerman Anderson, 2016. How leadership styles and behaviours affects team members
and beyond. [Online] Available Through, https://blog.beingfirst.com/how-leadership-
behavior-affects-team-members-and-beyond
Michael A. Germano, J.D., 2010. Leadership styles and organisational Impacts. [Online]
Available Through, https://ala-apa.org/newsletter/2010/06/08/spotlight/
Neil Kokemuller, 2022. How do different leadership styles affect teamwork. [Online] Available
Through, https://smallbusiness.chron.com/different-leadership-styles-impact-teamwork-
80490.html
Sabine Riedel, 2019. How Leadership Styles Impact Team Success. [Online] Available Through,
https://otrs.com/otrsmag/how-leadership-styles-impact-team-success/
Tara Duggan and Stan Mack, 2021. Leadership styles affecting teams. [Online] Available
Through, https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/effects-leadership-styles-organization-
5247.html
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