Leadership Styles
Summarize each of the motivational theories that you have selected. For each theory, identify the theorists, provide a context, and provide an overall synopsis.
The first theory that I have selected is Lewin’s leadership styles. Kurt Lewin did leadership experiments in 1939 and noticed that there were three different learning styles, autocratic ,democratic and laissez-faire. In autocratic style, the leader makes decisions without the help from anyone. When Lewin’s conducted this experiment he came to the conclusion that this made the people most dissatisfied out of the three styles. Autocratic style reminds me of a dictator. In the democratic style, the leader makes sure that that the people are included in decision making ,even though the leader may have the final say . To me democratic style is the way we do things in the united states. We as people vote on issues that are put on a ballot on election day. The final style is called Laissez-Faire. In the laissez-faire style the leader has very little involvement and allows the people to make decisions on their own. Even though, the leader may be held responsible for the decision that the people came up with. Overall in Lewin’s experiment he realized that Democratic style worked the best. The Autocratic style led to a drastic mind change and in Laissez-Faire the people really didn’t put their all in decision making. The second theory that I decided to research is called Fiedler’s Least Preferred Co Worker.” “Fiedler identified the a Least Preferred Co-Worker scoring for leaders by asking them first to think of a person with which they worked that they would like least to work with again, and then to score the person on a range of scales between positive factors (friendly, helpful, cheerful, etc.) and negative factors (unfriendly, unhelpful, gloomy, etc.)”(ChangingMinds). A high LPC scores the other person as positive and a negative score is for a leader with a low LPC score. The characteristics of a high
The first theory that I have selected is Lewin’s leadership styles. Kurt Lewin did leadership experiments in 1939 and noticed that there were three different learning styles, autocratic ,democratic and laissez-faire. In autocratic style, the leader makes decisions without the help from anyone. When Lewin’s conducted this experiment he came to the conclusion that this made the people most dissatisfied out of the three styles. Autocratic style reminds me of a dictator. In the democratic style, the leader makes sure that that the people are included in decision making ,even though the leader may have the final say . To me democratic style is the way we do things in the united states. We as people vote on issues that are put on a ballot on election day. The final style is called Laissez-Faire. In the laissez-faire style the leader has very little involvement and allows the people to make decisions on their own. Even though, the leader may be held responsible for the decision that the people came up with. Overall in Lewin’s experiment he realized that Democratic style worked the best. The Autocratic style led to a drastic mind change and in Laissez-Faire the people really didn’t put their all in decision making. The second theory that I decided to research is called Fiedler’s Least Preferred Co Worker.” “Fiedler identified the a Least Preferred Co-Worker scoring for leaders by asking them first to think of a person with which they worked that they would like least to work with again, and then to score the person on a range of scales between positive factors (friendly, helpful, cheerful, etc.) and negative factors (unfriendly, unhelpful, gloomy, etc.)”(ChangingMinds). A high LPC scores the other person as positive and a negative score is for a leader with a low LPC score. The characteristics of a high
References: Changing Minds.(2002-2012),Lewin’s leadership styles. http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/styles/lewin_style.htm Changing Minds.(2002-2012),Fiedler’s least Preferred Co-worker. http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/theories/fiedler_lpc.htm Changing Minds.(2002-2012), Bass ' Transformational Leadership Theory. http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/theories/bass_transformational.htm