Leadership Style

Hi everyone!

Indri here from the THINK-Research team.

If you live in Indonesia, it's time to go back to your hometown, or people call it mudik. Since next week will be the Eid Al-Fitr holiday. However, there is a restriction from the government for this activity from 5 - 24 May. So, wherever you are now, be safe!

I plan to continue writing about carbon capture storage. But today, I remember one of my courses in Master Degree. It's BQO (Building Quality Organisation). I got a good mark in this course. I remember spending the whole semester choosing and analysing one company, and I chose Indofood, an Indonesian company working in the food industry. I don't want to write about this company now, but I want to write about one of the topics in this course: Leadership Style.

I have many experiences in joining organisation and community. I was a coordinator, president, or team leader of some organisations and groups. If you know about MBTI (The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator) or 16 personalities, I am ENTJ, a commander. So, being a leader is a natural talent for me. However, there are so many styles of leadership. We cannot say one style is better than others. It depends on the condition. We do not know which one is better. There are some advantages and disadvantages of those styles.

Illustrated by Inc Magazine

I posted a caption on my social media yesterday. It's about how to be a leader. More than 270 people liked it. Then I think, do people like this narrative?

So, let me copy it here:

Why do you want to be a leader?

Being a leader is difficult.

You can't please everyone.

You need to make more efforts.

If there's someone who does more. It's you since you're a leader.

You need to convince everyone to follow you.

But the most difficult thing is you can't control what people think, say, and do.

You can make a rule or system.

But of course, it isn't easy to make everything works.

A leader must be tough enough to fight, tender enough to cry, human enough to make mistakes, humble enough to admit mistakes, strong enough to absorb the pain, and resilient enough to overcome challenges and changes, and persistent enough to keep moving.

Give your full heart and do your best 💛

When people may be busy arguing or competing to become leaders, believe it. Good leaders will not find this position easy, but they do their best to be responsible. Especially being a role model.

But being a leader doesn't have to be for other people. Each of us is a leader for ourselves.😊

Leadership skill, behaviour, attitude, and principles have a significant role in deciding the organisation's plans, options, and actions. Leadership is a growing part of managerial work because of the rising rate of change. The shift like "managerial" work is important because leadership and management are so different. The confusion over leadership and management confounds the problem in enterprises today. People are asked to lead, yet they manage more intensely, becoming frustrated when superiors or customers do not reward their actions. Managers and leaders have not put into teams-one solution to the problem-because the categories are not clear.

In that course, there are some theories of leadership. I will share one of them: Transactional and Transformational Leadership. What are the differences between transactional and transformational leadership? I think this graph will explain well:

Fiedler’s model, situational and path-goal theory describe transactional leaders who guide their followers towards established goals by clarifying role and task requirements. Transactional leaders are generally split into four dimensions: contingent reward, management-by-exception: active, and management-by-exception: passive, and the laissez-faire dimension indicates a lack of leadership and a completely hands-off approach with employees. A stream of research has focused on differentiating transactional from transformational leaders who inspire followers to transcend their self-interests for the organisation's goal. Transformational leaders can have an extraordinary effect on their followers (individualized consideration, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and idealized influence. Maybe you will say that transformational leaders are better than transactional leaders. However, some people believe that transactional and transformational leadership can complement each other since they aren’t opposing leadership effectiveness.

So, how do you think?