How Leadership Styles Affect Work Environment and Culture

How Leadership Styles Affect Work Environment and Culture

How to Avoid Being a Bad Boss : Chance to Be a Better Leader Reading How Leadership Styles Affect Work Environment and Culture 6 minutes

Leadership is invaluable in every organization, because a leader needs to prioritize empowerment, vision, and strive to create a positive workplace culture where collaboration and creativity are formed. There are many leadership styles with various advantages, and each of them focuses on directing a team toward a goal. It's all about inspiring growth and fostering innovation for the team. This time SMEBrother will provide important information about various types of leadership and how much leadership influences the work environment and work culture.

How does leadership styles affects the working environment?

Leadership has a significant role in shaping the work environment, by modeling good behavior and work results to team members, maintaining overall team productivity and encouraging every team member to stay communicate and collaborate. Leaders who always engage with each team member will gain respect from their team, and each individual will be inspired to do the same. This will motivate and inspire employees to achieve team goals and influence workplace culture in a long term.

How does leadership affect workplace culture?

Leadership has a crucial role in shaping company culture, because every employee will be inspired by their leader. Leaders who advocate, coach, inspire, mentor, appreciate, and connect employees will have high value among each individual, and become a reference for behaving in the work environment. Effective leaders can create a positive work environment and shape work culture by transparency, open dialogue, and building trust.

Impact of positive leadership style

Positive leadership can be achieved when a leader can focus on motivating and empowering team members. Leaders who prioritize a positive style will contribute many benefits to the organization such as increased motivation in each team individual, improved employee performance by keeping high-performance levels and encouraging creativity. Leaders who always notice each team members' work will appreciate their efforts, and each individual will feel valued. This will bring a positive work environment in the long run.

Impact of negative leadership style

On the other hand, negative leadership can have detrimental effects on organizations and individuals. Leadership that puts pressure on team members will create a fear-based environment and leads to low morale, lack of commitment and demotivation. Plus, if leaders do constant criticism without building, employees' productivity will continue to decline and reduce employees' intention to take the initiative or come up with new ideas.

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If some of these things continue to happen repeatedly, employees are more likely to seek other opportunities and a loss of talent. Toxic company culture will reduce collaboration, a lot of distrust, and permanent negative company culture.

Top leadership styles that affect work environment

Every business owner does not want their organization to have bad performance and value. You can explain to some candidate leaders that you will choose, to learn some leadership styles that can bring many positive things for individuals and for the team. Let's see some leadership styles that impact organizational success.

  • Participative leadership

Leaders need to invite each individual to the decision-making process or come up with new ideas for the progress of the company. This style can increase employee's motivation and they have a sense of belonging because they are involved in thinking about various steps for the progress of the company as a whole. Each team member is encouraged to always participate in every discussion or how to handle a problem. Although this method can slow down some working processes, leaders can adopt a collaborative management style to cover weaknesses in the team.

  • Visionary leadership

Leaders who always set goals and coach their team towards the execution of every vision can lead each individual to align with the same will. Not only providing vision to the team, but also leaders participate in the working process from start to finish, analyzing performance and evaluating what needs to be fixed. Leaders need to continue to engage employees with motivation and constructive criticism. If there are employees who have difficulty managing the tempo of the team's work, the leader's job is to mobilize their work, what needs to be fulfilled so that the individual can keep up with the team's pace, and discuss with the team to fill in the gaps from each other.

  • Democratic leadership

A democratic leader is someone who has the final say, but still takes everyone's perspective before the decision becomes final. This leader style requires a lot of consultation with their employees to get their opinions and thoughts about tasks, policies, conditions with coworkers, and anything that happens in the organization. Plus, this style adopts a coaching management style to help individuals grow professionally.

  • Transformational leadership

This style is similar to democratic leadership, the difference is that the leader will promote employees' growth by pushing them out of their comfort zone and continuously motivating them to raise the bar. Although continuing to push and motivate team members, this leader must still have realistic and clear expectations to avoid employees' burnout or feeling pressured by the progress. If done correctly, this leader has the potential to improve each individual's skills and keep employee engagement at a good level.

  • Transactional leadership

This leader style communicates about goals that can be achieved by employees, such as exchange for a transaction. Every employee's effort and compliance will be rewarded according to each agreement. Leaders need to explain that every transaction has a balanced position between rewards and sanctions. This is not to scare but to encourage each individual to continue to have boundaries to show their best performance.

Every leadership style affects the work environment and work culture. If you can show a positive side as a leader, then every individual will also show their positive side, according to what you influence. Hopefully SMEBrother can give you enough information about what style you can use to become a good leader. Remember, a leader who shows many positive things will be a magnet for various good things in the future. Visit our website to get other tips such as how to level up your business, how to solve small business problems, company financial management, and much more.