Managerial View of a Leadership Style - Essay Example

Based on these responses, their leadership styles are studied and propositions are drawn. The main purpose of this exercise is to understand different leadership styles and their impact on the followers.

An interview with the senior nurse manager revealed that she gave orders to her subordinates and peers, as well. She kept most authority to herself and did not involve her reporting managers in any of the work-related decisions. All her reporting staff were habituated to taking orders. The senior nurse manager was extremely quick in taking decisions, without spending much time. The things that annoyed her manager were delays and interruptions in accomplishing the tasks. She would get impatient with people that tried to question or understand the underlying reasons for her decisions.

Response from the team nurse manager was quite contrasting. She believed in working with others, and team members’ involvement and participation defined her style of leadership. She would always take her team members’ opinions before taking specific decisions. She enjoyed working with people and not in isolation. The manager gets annoyed by unscrupulous behaviour and isolation.

The senior manager possesses autocratic leadership and the team nurse manager is a democratic leader.  Both autocratic and democratic styles have a significant impact on followers in terms of task accomplishment and motivation. While autocratic leadership uses authority, coercive power and reliance on others for the achievement of desired outcomes, the contrasting style, i.e., democratic style uses trust, encouragement, participation and delegation of responsibilities to achieve desired outcomes.  Democratic leaders levy complete trust in the abilities of their followers whereas autocratic leaders do not act based on trust but believe in action and abilities.

As seen in the case of the senior nurse manager, all tasks are almost always completed on time and under utmost discipline, unlike the team manager who gets tasks completed with lenience and sometimes in a chaotic manner. The subordinates of autocratic leader are usually frustrated and develop bitterness towards their leader because their input is not sought on any aspect of business or operations, whereas the subordinates of democratic leader are often enthusiastic because they are empowered and their inputs or feedback are sought on most of the operational aspects; their importance is acknowledged by their leader.

The senior nurse manager has experienced many situations when she could not take an effective decision or the outcome of the decision was ineffective with consequences such as repeated work and delayed work. This is because autocratic leaders tend to limit the decision-making process to themselves thus blocking the potential for better solutions or decisions that would have come from other team members (Daft, 2007). Quite contrasting to such situations is when democratic leaders arrive at more effective decisions for similar situations. This is because they explore more opportunities for better options by involving their team members, especially, in crises. Although arriving at specific effective decisions takes longer time for democratic leaders, their decisions are much more effective and encouraging because their team members would have contributed their best in the decision-making process or finding solutions to their issues.

Interestingly, the team nurse manager could not specify the roles and goals assigned to her team members like the way the senior nurse manager was able to specify. Usually, autocratic leaders follow a top-down method of communication and hence avoid any ambiguity unlike democratic leaders that encourage communication and participation across all levels, which creates confusion about roles and goals because of too much involvement and ownership.

The team nurse manager reported more incidences of conflicts within the team than the senior nurse manager. Usually, democratic leaders tend to share controlling power with their team members to encourage and improve their commitment; however, this could lead to conflicts within the team.