There are a number of identified leadership styles. Leaders can be everyone on a team who are having given talents, can think creatively out of the box and those who have ideas and experiences in given aspects of the whatever field or project that is being tackled and they are of use to the team. When one is dealing with couple challenges and variations in business or work, they are normally in uncharted territories that do not permit them to find out what is coming next. Additionally, no one is capable of having answers every other time particularly those in management. Considering these aspects, this paper is going to look at the Autocratic and Laissez-fair Leadership styles, with the main focuses given to the field of nursing and how they apply to the field or not.
The first leadership style, in this case, is the Autocratic Leadership otherwise referred to as the Authoritarian Leadership. This leadership style is portrayed when the leader comes up with every decision and pays a little consideration or attention to the staff and any input from the staff when making the decisions. In Autocratic leadership, there is the use of negative reinforcement as well as punishment so as to enforce rules. The shortcomings of this leadership style include the withholding of vital information among the team. Here, mistakes are not pardoned or tolerated in anyway and in most cases, individuals are held liable for mistakes and not faults in the processes. The style does not encourage the building of trust among the staff; enhance communication; or even teamwork particularly when employed for day to day operations.
Moving on to the positive side of Autocratic Leadership style, it is the best-suited style for handling emergencies or any other situation that can be deemed chaotic and that is having minimal time duration for discussions. The other positivity is that this style comes in handy when there is a need to enforce policies and procedures, particularly when t entails protecting the resident health and safety.
The second leadership style to be looked into is the Laissez-faire Leadership style. Loosely translating from the French origin of the word, laissez-faire would mean leave it alone. In practicing this leadership style, the leaders normally surrender responsibilities to the subordinates so as to carry out tasks in whatever ways they might deem appropriate, and they are not given any strict policies and procedures to work within. Here, the leader hardly gives directions and supervision as the leader normally employs the hands-off approach as a strategy. In Laissez-faire Leadership style, there are no decisions that are made. Changes are rarely made, and there is the reactive quality of improvement other than being proactive. Laissez-faire leadership style is mostly common with leaders who are new and mainly inexperienced or the old leaders who are at the ends of their careers and as thus are choosing not to address issues believing that their replacement will correct the issues.
The self-rule approach employed in Laissez-faire leadership provides individuals with empowerment, and they can come up with decisions addressing particular issues. Despite this, the hands-off leadership is risky as it entails universal delegation of the decision-making responsibilities to the subordinates and as thus it is not easy to come up with far-reaching strategic plans. The teams do not possess the power to decide the future of the firm or organization (Cunningham, Salomone & Wielgus, 2015).
Comparing the two leadership styles, autocratic leadership is best suited for areas where standardized processes and management controls are critical. These are mainly businesses that are having a streamlined structure that requires strict protocols and rigid quality assurance procedures. On the other hand, Laissez-faire provides an opposite to the Autocratic Leadership as here no single leader makes decisions for organizations as the staff determines the appropriate workplace solutions.
Nurse leaders are examples to others, either positively or negatively. It is vital for one to consider traits collected from a variety of leadership styles considering the situations that are to be addressed at the particular moments. Irrespective of the activities of leadership that are required, it is critical to have actions that are based on integrity, goals that are realistic, clear communications. The actions are also supposed to be containing encouragements to other members of the team and being vigilant of the successes that the members of the team achieve along with having inspirations to be giving the best of care. Ultimately, the actions that the burse leader makes are going to be reflected by the staff that they lead in the care that they accord to their residents every other day irrespective of the style of leadership that the leader chooses to employ. It is prudent to acknowledge that individual nursing departments serve varied roles as require meeting needs of residents (Sellgren, Ekvall & Tomson, 2006; Cummings et al. 2010). It is possible that the nursing staff can be fragmented and that they can be headed by a couple leaders in different ways or better still they can be given defined focuses to be working together towards joint goals.
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References;
- Cummings, G. G., MacGregor, T., Davey, M., Wong, C. A., Lo, E., Muise, M., & Stafford, E. (2010). Leadership styles and outcome patterns for the nursing workforce and work environment: a systematic review. International journal of nursing studies, 47(3), 363-385.
- Cunningham, J., Salomone, J., & Wielgus, N. (2015). Project Management Leadership Style: A Team Member Perspective. International Journal of Global Business, 8(2), 27.
- Sellgren, S., Ekvall, G., & Tomson, G. (2006). Leadership styles in nursing management: preferred and perceived. Journal of Nursing Management,14(5), 348-355.