Leadership Styles in the 21st Century

Every people in the world have different personality which makes everyone is unique. Similarly, every leader of a company uses his own way to manage followers, own method to solve problems and own thinking to make decisions, etc. All of these are we call leadership styles. For instance, the coercive style, the authoritative style, the affiliative style, the democratic style, the pacesetting style, the coaching style these six are the most common leadership style in most of the organisations. Furthermore, some scholars find that affiliative style and authoritative style are more likely to drive up effectiveness than other styles. These two typical types of leaders always produce successful outcome for their organisations. However, business conditions and situations often change rapidly in the 21st century. Transformational leadership becomes more and more popular nowadays because it is flexible to respond for many difficult or emergency cases. This article, first introduces the advantages and disadvantages of the three types of leadership styles. Then explains how best can implement them to deal with the challenges.

First of all, the affiliative leadership style aims to promote harmony among followers and helps to solve any conflict. This type of leader will also build teams that make sure that their followers feel connected to each other. He considers people's emotions and feelings more important than missions and goals.

The good point about affiliative leaders is first and foremost that they are relationship-builders. Once they have built strong relationships with staff, they often use those relationships to motivate staff to dedicate their best to company (Heyman 2006). In addition, Zervas and Lassiter (2007) contend that leaders may not give clear directions or set specific goals which may repress their employees creativity. Also, he may avoid hard discussions in order to drive up flexibility and shows that peers put more trust in each other than in job performance and measurement of outcomes. Moreover, Money-Zine (2006) states that affiliative leaders also provide their followers with plenty of positive feedback. They are quick to recognize the efforts of others, and provide rewards for a job well done. They are good at building a sense of belonging among team members, which has special effectiveness in the workplace because other leaders have no feedback or apart from giving negative feedback to their employees generally. On the other hand, it is not recommended to implement when people need clear directives to navigate facing a complex challenge because the affiliative style lets employees feel rudderless.

Secondly, Daniel Goleman (2000) demonstrates that "the authoritative leadership style is most effective as it motivates people by making clear to them how their work fits into larger vision for the organization. It also gives employees plenty of leeway to devise, innovate, experiment and take calculated risks."

So when should we use authoritative style? It particularly works when in a problem situation, such as downturn in the company or when business is adrift. In this case, authoritative leader can drive up the company's atmosphere and motivating staffs by regulate goals and strategy. In order to let every employee understand what they should do and why, leaders