The Impact of Leadership Styles in Employee Engagement

The leaders of an organization are responsible for having a group of engaged or disengaged employees. The leaders are accountable for growing or failing an organization. Employees or Human resources are the main component leaders should try their best to retain highly engaged to meet the goals of the organization. Batista-Taran et al. (2013) say that leaders’ efficiency and effectiveness can be seen through their employees. The organizational leadership team should work on a give and take the relationship to improve the engagement level of the employees.

Slack (2019) talks about four behaviors of a leader, which inspire and motivate employees to be highly engaged.

Employees trust leaders who both lead and follow
Leaders who are thinking every employee including themselves as Human beings have the capability to motivate their subordinates. If a leader is willing to get into the work along with others and guide them by being an example, the followers, love to help the leaders to achieve organizational goals together by giving the best to the organization.

Passion and positivity increase employee performance
The ability of the leaders to see every challenge and failure as an opportunity have the power to influence employees to do their best. These help employees to be motivated and to motivate each other too. 

Effective leadership prioritizes organizational health
If the leaders are capable of letting the employees grow and if they can act as good listeners, organizations can have highly engaged employees to improve the organization. if the leaders can think out of the box and make plans considering a better future for the organization, the leaders can create a healthy environment for the organization.

“Take care of your people, and they’ll take care of the mission”
Organizations should always think about their employee’s well-being. A happy employee will do everything for the betterment of the organization. If employees feel that they are not alone, they will never leave the organization alone.

Apart from these behaviors, there are so many leadership styles, which help leaders to become successful in the business world. Studies show that leadership styles positively influence the employees’ mentality to be highly engaged or disengaged (Li, Castaño, and Li, 2018). IMD (2021), shows five commonly used leadership styles which show to be effective in engaging employees:

1.Authoritarian Leadership

This leadership style normally shows how the output should be the leaders are known to be knowledgeable but when it comes to the employees, their ideas will not be considered by these leaders because leaders alone make the decision.

2.Participative Leadership

This leadership style too will take the decisions by themselves but they allow employees to give feedback and comments on the final decision after they decide on what is going to happen. Employee’s comments will be considered but it takes a long time to implement.

3.Delegative Leadership

If the employees are confident in what they do and are willing to take responsibility, this leadership style is the best to be incorporated because these leaders let the team members decide what to do. However, conflicts within team members’ decisions can lead the organization to fail as a whole.

4.Transactional Leadership

This leader works on a give and takes basis. The leaders create clear goals and the employees should work on achieving them so the organization will reward them for their commitment.

5.Transformational Leadership

This leadership style transforms the employees. They give a clear vision to the employees and help them to achieve their goals by motivating them, encouraging them, and working with them hand in hand.

In the 21^st century, employees look for organizations that allow them to be free to think creatively in achieving organizational goals. Moreover, they expect proper rewards for their commitments. Not only in terms of money but also in terms of recognition, praise, and many more. To have this capability, most of the studies call out the fact that the Transformational leadership style is the one that brings more advantages that are competitive for the organization in terms of employee engagement (Batista-Taran et al., 2013; Shah et al., 2016; Li, Castaño and Li, 2018). The attributes of a transformational leader, which are the Four I’s of this leadership style, help the leaders to transform the employees to be highly engaged effectively (Datche and Mukulu, 2015; BMC Blogs. 2020). The attributes of transformational leadership that boost employee engagement are shown in Figure 01 below.

Figure 01: The 4I’s of Transformational Leadership (BMC Blogs, 2020)

1.      Idealized influence attribute which is the ability of a leader to act as a role model.

2.      Individualized consideration, which is about the leaders being active listeners.

3.      Intellectual stimulation, which gives the employees to be innovative within the organization

4.      Inspirational motivation talks about the leaders being a motivator to take employees beyond what they see.

If the organizations can incorporate a transformational leadership style, the leaders will gain the ability to get into the level of the employees, understand what they want, motivate them to do what is best, inspire them, reward the best talents, and grow together to be successful in the challenging business world.

It is the leader’s responsibility to identify the best leadership style to be incorporated within the organization to have a competitive advantage. Most of the time one leadership style alone will not help the organizations to grow and meet the expected goals. The leaders should think strategically to come up with an idea to have a strategic leadership style to get the best out of the employees.

References: 

Batista-Taran, L.C., Shuck, M.B., Gutierrez, C.C. and Baralt, S., 2013. The role of leadership style in employee engagement.

BMC Blogs. (2020). Transformational Leadership in the Enterprise. [online] Available at: https://www.bmc.com/blogs/transformational-leadership/ [Accessed: 20 April 2022].

IMD (2021). The 5 Leadership Styles you can use & How to implement each. [online] IMD business school. Available at: https://www.imd.org/imd-reflections/reflection-page/leadership-styles/ [Accessed: 20 April 2022].

Li, Y., Castaño, G. and Li, Y., 2018. Linking leadership styles to work engagement: The role of psychological capital among Chinese knowledge workers. Chinese Management Studies. 

Shah, S.M.M., Hamid, K.B.A., Malaysia, U.U., Shaikh, U.A., Malaysia, P.S.U.U., Qureshi, M.A. and Pahi, M.H., 2016. The Relationship between Leadership Styles and Job Performance: The Role of Work Engagement as a Mediator. International Journal of Social Studies, 2(10), pp.242-253. 

Slack (2019). 4 ways effective leadership inspires employee engagement. [online] Slack. Available at: https://slack.com/blog/collaboration/effective-leadership-inspires-employee-engagement [Accessed: 20 April 2022].