Managers and Leadership Style

“Managers Should Adapt Their Leadership Style To Particular Situation And People. ” To What Extend Do You Agree With This Statement? Along with the development of business, management becomes more and more important in modern commerce. Although there is not an exactly defining of management, the managers are still regarded as a responsibility of getting things done though other people (Hall, 1993). According to Hall, it is clear that manager’s job is involving dealing with other people. Also, Henri Fayol(Fayol,1993,P412)suggest that:

Management is about planning, organizing, coordinating, commenting and controlling. Therefore, there is no doubt that in normal cases, manager should face and deal with different situations. From what has been mentioned above, it can be drawn conclusion that management is not only a linkage to people but also to particular situations. Leadership is a part of management. Dave Needham (Needham, 1999, P236) makes an important defining: Leadership is the process of motivating other people to act in particular ways to meet organization’s objective. It is simple to that leadership combines to both people and situation.

Managers always examine four styles of leadership, which are autocratic, democratic, paternalistic and laissez-faire, in order to identify leadership to suit different situation and people. Thus some people wonder that whether the manager should adapt their leadership style to particular situation and people. To my mind, I largely agree that a good manager should adapt their leadership style to different situation and people. As society develops, the best style of management begins to depend on several external factors, such as personalities of staff (Marcouse, 1999).

Nowadays, business needs different type of employees, which have different work personality so that run companies more efficient. The difference of their backgrounds leads that different subordinates respond different leadership style. In my opinion it is a good reason, because it makes both manager and staff more effective. Imaging there is a manager who is generally democratic. If subordinates are good training, the manager would always discuss with them or even ask for their ideas as decision making.

This manager would like to keep democratic style, otherwise, he will lost several valuable idea from those self-motivated staff. If the subordinates are lazy, the manager would just tell the staff what to do in order to improve the efficiency of business. It is see that the manager must change leadership styles from democratic to autocratic in case of staff don’t work hard enough. Change will take place if employees work without confidence as well. To suit this particular employee, the manager would like to treat them as family members and tries to guide them.

The manager changes the leadership style into Paternalistic to try to contribute the confidence for subordinates. If the subordinates are hard-working, the manager will prefer to give them more freedom to do decision making. The manager must change democratic to laissez-faire, because hard-working employees will word more effective with enough freedom. With these discussions above, I agree that managers should adapt their leadership style in particular people in order to manage their business more successful.

In addition, contrasting with each of leadership styles, several similarities are exist among them, such as both autocratic and democratic are manager tell staff how and what to do next. However, different subordinates respond differently. Some respond the boss style who will be efficient in autocratic. Some would like to democratic because they like family style. I believe this is another good reason to support that a good manager should adapt their leadership style to satisfy particular people.

Situation is also an important factor to change manager’s leadership style. Along with the rapid development of society, globalizations have taken place all over the world. The business begins to meet so many different customers that face to different problems in recent years. Compared with a few decades ago, the situation become remarkably changes. In modern society, the situation of enterprise changes all the time. Assuming a business has a manger who is democratic, and almost every subordinate respond his leadership style.

If in a period of time, the sale of products sharply decline, the manager have to set up specific objective in order to pull up the sale of products, in this special situation, the manager must adapt has leadership style form democratic to autocratic in order to business can be completed effective(Whitcomb, 1986). If, however, the sales of products increase in a period, the manager would release more rights to employees. As a result, manager should changes his leadership style into laissez-faire, which means subordinates make almost all the decision.

Different product would lead to the change of leadership style as well. For instance, a company, which produces medicine, should be autocratic. The major reason is that the products are exactly the same so that there is totally no need for manager to discussion with staff. However, if the company tent to produce toy, the manager should turn their leadership style into democratic due to predict the variety market. Therefore, it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that the leadership style should be changed to suit the variety situation in modern society.

On the other hand, despite the many evidences which confirm that the leadership style should be adapted to satisfied particular situation and people, there are still some reasons that the manager shouldn’t change the leadership styles. F. Fieler(Fieler,1999,P447)argued that. “It is easier to change someone’s role or power, or to modify the job he has to do, than to change his leadership style. ” Accord Fieler’s argument, it’s simple to conclude that some manager shouldn’t change the leadership style because it may cause the low productivity for the manager.

As different leadership styles are effective with the suitable situation, when leaders unable to change the leadership style in case of causing low productivity, the only way to achieve the effectiveness is adapt work to management (Dave Hall, 1993). Another important reason that manager shouldn’t change the leadership style is the number of staff. Image a manager of a public limited company, as there are too many staff then every subordinate respond different leadership style, therefore, it’s impossible for manager to change leadership style to satisfy everyone.

The manager in this situation should choose the most productivity leadership style which most subordinates can respond. To sum up, although adapt the leadership styles has its advantages, it also has its negative effects. However, with the development of global economic, managers should adapt their leadership styles to suit situations and people, because of situation and subordinates become totally different from last decades. This change of the opinion of management will lead a variety and specific leadership style, which make subordinates work more effective, become a new current in the later decades.