David Gergen once wrote “Command-and-control leadership has given way to a new approach, often called an influence model of leadership … The new leader persuades, empowers, collaborates, and partners” (Eagly and Carli, 2007). The new leader is, in essence, a salesperson, something I did for over a …show more content…
Style of leadership matters as well. Eagly and Carli present three different styles of leadership: transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire (Eagly and Carli, 2007).
Laissez-faire, when translated from French, means “let do”. It is basically the absence of leadership, where no responsibility is taken or leadership is shown, rather things are left to unfold as they will without direction. This type of leader is typically uninvolved or not present much at all.
Transactional leadership is based largely on rewarding subordinates for performance, and satisfaction with this type of leader is contingent on the rewards the subordinates received. Rather than collaborating with the group, this leader appeals to their self-interests and rewards them based on performance. There are two major aspects to this leadership style, active management by exception, which is drawing attention to the flaws of lower level employees and punishing or otherwise attending to their errors to meet standards, and passive management by exception, waiting for problems to increase in severity before intervening (Eagly and Carli, 2007). Active management by exception slightly improves the effectiveness of this style, while passive management by exception is as ineffective as laissez-faire