PSCI19 - Leadership: concept, functions, leadership styles, leadership andmanagement effectiveness

Leadership is a process by which an executive can direct, guide and influence the behavior and work of others towards accomplishment of specific goals in a given situation. Leadership is the ability of a manager to induce the subordinates to work with confidence and zeal.

Leadership is the potential to influence behaviour of others. It is also defined as the capacity to influence a group towards the realization of a goal. Leaders are required to develop future visions, and to motivate the organizational members to want to achieve the visions.

1. Setting goals - A leader's most important function is to set goals for team members to encourage them to work confidently and enthusiastically. They also then make strategies to achieve those goals. Their motive is to create a roadmap for their team members to how to direct them on the right path and help them achieve the set goals.

2. Organising - A leader's other important function is to organise the group of people into a task which they can perform effectively. They should know how to assign the roles to the individuals as per their ability to bring out the best from them. Thus, this function is vital to increase the team's and individual's productivity.

3. Take initiatives - One of the important functions of leaders is to take initiatives in the team's interest or the organisation. Leaders should be confident to share their new ideas and also encourage others to do the same. They should also ensure that each individual in the group feels comfortable sharing their innovative ideas with them.

4. Cooperation among employees - Leaders have to work to align the interests of the individuals with the organisation. A leader's approach plays a vital role in doing the same. They have to ensure the individuals of the group voluntarily cooperate to work towards the common objectives.

5. Motivation and direction - Motivating and showing the right direction to the team or the individual is the primary function of the leader. They need to motivate the team members to work towards achieving their goals and guide them when they face difficulties during working in that direction. They also constantly encourage them by appraising their work and supporting them when required.

6. Liaison between workers and management - A leader plays a very important role in acting as a link between workers and the management. They explain the policies and rules created by management to their team members and help them understand how these policies will be beneficial for them. Also, a good leader represents the expectations and interests of its subordinate in front of the management.

7. Policy making - Policy making is a very important function of a leader for the smooth functioning of the work. The policies leaders make include the rules to follow for effective delivery of operations of the work. By creating policies, leaders also devise the mechanism to be followed by all team members to work towards the organisation's goals.

The job of the leader is to get things done by leading others to success. It is important to develop leadership styles that suit different situations. The style used depends on the needs of the team. Great leaders choose leadership styles based on the circumstances and the end goal.

These are the five leadership styles:

The Structural Leader

The Participative Leader

The Servant-Leader

The Freedom-Thinking Leader

The Transformational Leader


The Structural Leader - Everyone knows exactly what needs to be done, why it needs to be done, and to what standard. You accept complete responsibility for your staff. You choose them, you assign them, and you manage them with the expectation of excellence. This style allows you to make quick decisions without the input or challenge of others.  The structural leadership style can allow for more transactional activities to occur. For example, rewarding or punishing team members based on their performance of your goals. Use this style when your team is already motivated and are experts who need little direction. However, using this style does not leave much room for flexibility. Using it too much or on a team that isn’t already motivated can lead to them to feeling overwhelmed or stifle innovation.



The Participative Leader - You make your team feel that you really care about them by putting them first. You practice the “Friendship Factor” with them, which is made up of three components: time, care, and respect. You treat them with the same respect, patience, and understanding.  The same way you would treat a family member or friend. You express care and concern for them and their problems. This fosters a feeling of bonding, belonging, and ownership to the organization. This style boosts your team’s morale by allowing them to take part in reaching a consensus on decisions and goals. Their opinions and voices feel heard, which will help them buy into changes easier. It also works best when you need fresh ideas or new perspectives. Use this style during stressful times or when trust needs to be built. Excessive reliance on praise can cause mediocre performance and a lack of clear, strong direction for the company.


The Servant-Leader - This makes the Participative style more one-sided, where you see your job as a means to serve your team just as they are there to serve you and the company. You practice the Golden Rule — you manage other people the way you would like to be managed. You ensure everyone understands their job fully and has all the tools they need. If they don’t, you offer plenty of learning, training, and improvement opportunities. This style elicits peak performance because your employees are learning vital skills that will both improve their performance and character. Their participation, ideas, and feedback truly feel like they matter. Use this style with a diverse team, where personalization in management is required for each member. Servant leadership is a great style to start off with to gain a great deal of respect, trust, and loyalty. The style also builds a strong culture since it tailors to the team’s needs. But if you don’t balance this style very well, this could lead to your team fully running the show.  It could create a lack of authority and limit direction and vision.


The Freedom-Thinking Leader -  You give your people the freedom to perform. Once you assign a task, you try to stay out of the way only to comment and help when needed. You take on more of an authoritative role by pointing the team towards a vision or goal. However, similar to the Servant style, you leave the means up to each member. This style inspires an entrepreneurial spirit with a clear goal in your team members. Especially if they need a new vision due to changes within the company. Use this style when you have tremendous expertise and have a team of highly experienced employees who don’t require a lot of supervision. The freedom style won’t work best when your team members are better experts than you or need more supervision. This can lead to poor production, lack of regular feedback, and lack of control.


The Transformational Leader - Transformational leaders affect people’s emotions by painting a big, exciting picture of the future. You transform people by tapping into their hopes, dreams, and ideals. You motivate employees by motivating yourself. You enhance productivity through high transparency and communication. This style uses vision and the future to get your team excited and committed to a project. It doesn’t only require the ownership of your team to accomplish goals, it also requires your involvement as a leader. You lead by example by being excited and committing yourself to everything you say and do. Use this style to focus on building lasting personal strengths. These strengths make your teammates more successful and confident in you, themselves, and the company. Unless you lack proficiency or your team is defiant and unwilling to change or learn, this style will inspire work, alleviate fears, and help you overcome obstacles together.

• Two of the most common leadership styles are
• - task-oriented and
• - people-oriented (relationship-oriented).

Fiedler’s Contingency Theory, also known as Fiedler’s Contingency Model or Fiedler’s Theory of Leadership, states that there is not one best style of leadership. Rather, the most effective leadership style for any given situation is one that aligns with the situation at hand.

A task-oriented leader is someone who focuses on overall success through the completion of tasks. This type of leader doesn’t care as much about relationship building as he/she cares about workers meeting particular goals within a preset time frame. A task-oriented leader sees a goal, creates a step-by-step plan to reach that goal, creates a work schedule and then expects workers to follow that schedule and finish the task by a specific deadline.

Pros - Task-oriented leaders have several characteristics that help make sure that things get done in a manner that is both proficient and on time every time. These managers usually create clear, easy-to-follow work schedules with specific requirements and deadlines. The pros of this leadership style are that it maintains high standards with optimal efficiency. Employees who need structure and who struggle with managing their time work best under this kind of task-oriented leadership, because it’s more organized and is deadline driven. Cons - The negatives of task-oriented leadership are that it can lead to a lack of employee autonomy and creativity, which can result in low morale in the office. When an employee has to work under very strict deadlines and excessive task orientation, it can bring the company culture down.  Employees who are self-motivated tend to rebel in this type of environment. The lack of creativity under excessively task-oriented management can have a negative effect on a company’s products as well, since it tends to deaden innovation. When a manager is too task-oriented, the cons can sometimes outweigh the positives.

A people-oriented leader focuses on creating overall success by building lasting relationships with employees. This type of leader does care about tasks and schedules, but he/she believes that work culture is more important. A people-oriented leader uses relationship building techniques, such as employee recognition and team-building exercises, to create an environment where employees feel appreciated and motivated enough to invest personally in the success of the business and work at their highest possible levels. 

Pros - A people-oriented management style tends to energize employees because it makes them feel appreciated for the work they do. One of the biggest benefits of people-oriented management is that the focus on employee relationships makes employees feel that they make a difference in the company. And better, more effective efforts come from people who feel that they’re a part of a company’s success.

Cons - Sometimes employees may feel that the responsibilities they’ve been given are overwhelming, and they may need more direction. Ineffective decisions may result if the focus is consistently put on the manager and employee relationships, rather than the important business decisions that need to be made.

The key is to take the best parts of each management style, and combine them to create your own approach, one that gets the tasks done while also cultivating positive working relationships. Different approaches work better in specific situations, but if you can keep our pros and cons in mind, you’ll be well on your way to developing a leadership style uniquely your own.

Management is a role, Leadership is a relationship. Leaders are not leaders without followers. People don’t follow because someone has a title. They follow because a leader has created a connection to something in which they want to participate.

What distinguishes a great leader from a good leader is that person’s ability to foster deep-rooted and trusting connections with the people they work. It takes effort and intention to find the right team and to build good and trusting relationships. When leadership is based on relationships with people, those people will dare to take risks, make progress, and effect change.

• Ways to foster relationships in leadership
• Culture of Trust: When leaders share their passion and vision openly and clearly throughout the organization and encourage their employees to work towards that vision, a sense of purpose is created that can help power the expected business goals and results.

Effective listening: Listen with compassion to understand others’ underlying sentiments, concerns, and interests. This way, you can build a safe environment where everyone on your team can make their voices heard. One of the most successful ways to listen is to create a safe space where you can ask questions and receive candid answers. You can do just this by using a tool like Bluepulse – a people engagement network – to foster an ongoing two-way connection with your employees.

Empathy: Last, and arguably the most important, is empathy. When a leader can put themselves into the perspective of their employees, a trusting relationship is developed. A little more vulnerability is helpful because others can see the leader as another human being just like themselves.

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Decisiveness - Effective leaders are those who can make decisions quickly with the information they have. Effective decision-making comes with time and experience. As you become more familiar with your specific industry, you’ll be able to make decisions faster, even when you don’t have all of the necessary information. Decisiveness is seen as a valuable leadership skill because it can help move projects along faster and improve efficiency. Effective decisiveness requires research, evaluation, problem-solving and goal-setting, often with a quick turnaround. Decision-makers should be able to pull from their own experience with similar tasks, evaluate what might work best, make the decision and be confident in taking the responsibility for the result. 

Integrity - Integrity is often seen as just truthfulness or honesty but in many cases, it also means having and standing by a set of strong values. Integrity in the workplace often means being able to make ethical choices and helping the company maintain a positive image. All businesses seek to hire workers who have a strong sense of integrity. Having integrity as a leader, not only encourages the most truthful and fair practice and outcome, but also, sends a strong and positive example to your team.

Relationship building (or team building) - Leadership requires the ability to build and maintain a strong and collaborative team of individuals working toward the same goal. Team building requires other leadership strengths, like effective communication skills and conflict resolution. Relationship building is potentially one of the most important skills to a leadership role as it makes communication of tasks, responsibilities and goals more effective. Once you understand each other, you will benefit by being able to assess strengths, delegate tasks and complete your goals more seamlessly.


Problem-solving - Good leaders are skilled at problem-solving issues that arise on the job. Effective problem solving often requires staying calm and identifying a step-by-step solution. Problem-solving skillscan help leaders make quick decisions, resolve obstacles with their team and external teams alike, and ensure projects are completed on time, according to the specifications.

Dependability - Being a dependable leader means that people can trust and rely on you. A dependable person follows through on plans and keeps promises. The strong relationships built by a dependable leader create a resilient team that can work through difficulties that may arise. Being a dependable professional means meeting deadlines, being straightforward, coming through on obligations and when you can’t meet a promise or a goal, communicating this early on and having a backup plan.

Ability to teach and mentor - One skill that differentiates leadership from many other competencies is the ability to teach and mentor. Effectively teaching colleagues or direct reports to grow in their careers helps organizations scale. Often, this skill requires that leaders think less about themselves and more about how to make their team as a whole successful.

The Trust Equation uses four objective variables to measure trustworthiness. These four variables are best described as: Credibility, Reliability, Intimacy, and Self-Orientation. We combine these variables into the following equation:

• Credibility - has to do with the words we speak. In a sentence we might say, “I can trust what she says about intellectual property; she’s very credible on the subject.”
• Reliability - has to do with actions. We might say, “If he says he’ll deliver the product tomorrow, I trust him, because he’s dependable.”
• Intimacy - refers to the safety or security that we feel when entrusting someone with something. We might say, “I can trust her with that information; she’s never violated my confidentiality before, and she would never embarrass me.”
• Self-Orientation - refers to the person’s focus. In particular, whether the person’s focus is primarily on him or herself, or on the other person. We might say, “I can’t trust him on this deal — I don’t think he cares enough about me, he’s focused on what he gets out of it.” Or more commonly, “I don’t trust him — I think he’s too concerned about how he’s appearing, so he’s not really paying attention.”
• The Trust Equation uses four objective variables to measure trustworthiness. These four variables are best described as: Credibility, Reliability, Intimacy and Self-Orientation. We combine these variables into the following equation:

• Credibility - has to do with the words we speak. In a sentence we might say, “I can trust what she says about intellectual property; she’s very credible on the subject.”
• Reliability - has to do with actions. We might say, “If he says he’ll deliver the product tomorrow, I trust him, because he’s dependable.”
• Intimacy - refers to the safety or security that we feel when entrusting someone with something. We might say, “I can trust her with that information; she’s never violated my confidentiality before, and she would never embarrass me.”
• Self-Orientation - refers to the person’s focus. In particular, whether the person’s focus is primarily on him or herself, or on the other person. We might say, “I can’t trust him on this deal — I don’t think he cares enough about me, he’s focused on what he gets out of it.” Or more commonly, “I don’t trust him — I think he’s too concerned about how he’s appearing, so he’s not really paying attention.”

Capacity-building is defined as the process of developing and strengthening the skills, instincts, abilities, processes and resources that organizations and communities need to survive, adapt, and thrive in a fast-changing world. An essential ingredient in capacity-building is transformation that is generated and sustained over time from within; transformation of this kind goes beyond performing tasks to changing mindsets and attitudes.

According to the definition of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP): “In the global context, capacity refers to the ability of individuals and institutions to make and implement decisions and perform functions in an effective, efficient and sustainable manner. At the individual level, capacity building refers to the process of changing attitudes and behaviours-imparting knowledge and developing skills while maximizing the benefits of participation, knowledge exchange and ownership. At the institutional level it focuses on the overall organizational performance and functioning capabilities, as well as the ability of an organization to adapt to change. At the systemic level it emphasizes the overall policy framework in which individuals and organizations operate and interact with the external environment.”

• Specific and targeted capacity building initiatives needs to be undertaken at each single level. Potential capacity building initiatives for each cluster are:
• Individual : training programmes, business development activities, workshops for in-depth discussion of specific topics; conferences
• Institutionnal - development of internal policies, organizational and procedural restructuring; and
• Systemic - advocacy initiatives, consultations, open dialogue, reforms.

• Capacity development includes -
• Technical assistance to government and development agencies
• Institutional development and strengthening
• Mentoring and Training of Trainer (ToT) activities
• Workshop facilitation
• Learning exchanges
• Strategic planning support
• Knowledge management
• Education and awareness raising campaigns

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