Different times and circumstances call for different leaders and leadership styles. Most leaders are unable to "do it all" -- "build", "maintain", or "change/transform". Consequently, the top organizational leadership must be acutely aware of what type of leadership skillset is required for any particular set of circumstances. Also, there must be checks and balances within the organization that provide feedback on ineffectiveness of a particular leader in a particular circumstance.

For example, if a leader with significant experience in "building" institutions or programs is brought in to "maintain", he or she may not be the best fit for that particular organization or situation. One must keep a healthy balance between "transformational" versus "transactional" leadership, being able to promptly detect and adapt to the level of interaction for each specific leadership circumstance.

Organizational change requires a leader with superb emotional and social intelligence, fair amount of charisma, and lots of patience. Thus, a combination of "builder" and "maintainer" skillsets is needed in this particular circumstance.

Leaders who "maintain" may become "decisionally paralyzed" when faced with transformational challenges, while leaders who "build" may opt to hastily disband existing structures and re-build, often at a cost to the institution that is prohibitive (e.g, organizational chaos).

Regards,

SPS.

Once the purpose of a particular leader is to maximize company's wealth in terms of financial gains and assets, no style would work for long as it has to squeeze people of their pocket. Success or failure is ultimately weighed on the scales of profit and loss in terms of $$.

If the leadership demands people's happiness, or everyone's happiness, then there has to be style that is ever changing to look after everyone (all stakeholders). Nevertheless, a particular leadership style will succeed only when the owners/governors are is tune with the philosophical underpinnings of the leader and the governor. If they do not match, it is destined to fail.

It is then the system that takes over, and the leadership style goes out of the window.

As 99% of leaders of today are after maximizing their/company's wealth, there is no way that they can succeed for ever, mismatch occurs between the consumers and the leaders and leaders and the governors.

To cut things short, profit is always liked to unhealthy practices of one sort, or the other. Incentives (financial) are built in to make leaders zombies and would use any which way to get more and more. This will disturb harmony at all levels, hence failure eventually.

If Gandhi was present today and had wanted to make people self-reliant, he would likely have failed due to present day circumstances for success of leaderships.

For a day to day worker and general public we do not need leaders unless there is a danger seen by the general masses/societies to their life and living, their physiological needs. If the public is healthy and educated, and have no reason to worry about their physiological and personal needs, then only a leader who aspires to lead to improve global life, would be successful so long the leadership is of co-operation, co-creativity, goodwill and harmony. 

'One for all and all for one,' the three musketeers' slogan need be there in everyone's life and psyche.

The movement like TZM are striving to achieve that, and I hope and wish them success.

Wish you a happy year 2016 and beyond.

Suresh

May I have some comments but answer to your question.

I am researching on a very different approach to leadership by which, there are perhaps thousands leadership styles, but only some leadership types specified by the roles played by the leader, do exist. As leadership is the very personal practice of management, it is not answerable which styles of leadership among thousands of styles that can best be suit with different changes faced by different sizes and ages of organizations of various kinds.

So, it may be better to see business and any other orgs as kinds of assets that can be developed in value, sold or even disbanded to adapt to a change that may be irreversible and comes from the outside. It is not the style which is unspecifiable but actual and emerging behaviors and actions of a leader that may affect the life of the organization.

It might be better then to deeply understand and predict the behavior, not the style which may not be clear, of a leader to acknowledge a change made by him or her; or how he or she will respond to a change of a certain kind, and the result.

I totally agree with Dr. Suresh that no style would work for long, knowing that there are different conceptions of " leadership styles" either. Then so it is too difficult to measure such a relationship.

Nguyen Le Vinh

Dear Vinh and Suresh Sir

I am also of the opinion that the there is no set style of leadership in actual practice. The style changes with circumstances. I agree with you Suresh Sir about Gandhi jee.

I am trying to find out if participative style is more conducive to change management as compared to autocratic styles. Autocratic style may be successful in the short term but backfires in the long term.  

Dear Vibha Sharma 

Greetings,

I think  the leadership sty;es [lay a vital role on organisational changes , because the characteristics of leadership , skills and knowledge may be effect and also the strategy of firms,

Best Regards 

One of the things I've wondered is whether people who studied business/ administration or public management are more likely to reorganize their organizations than people who studied public administration.

Eleanor Glor

I agree with much of the comment made by others. If you want specific examples, you could see the article by PS Owen and myself (Demb), in the Journal of Higher Education, 2004 (Vo. 75, No 6, Nov/December).  If I am unable to attach it here, you can find it among my publications on my home page.  We outline the relationship of leadership to the implementation of a major technology change in a college.  Also, check out work by Edgar S. Schein ... one of the finest org theorist, who considers leadership and leadership style central to organization culture ... and therefore change.

In the answer by Stanislaw Stawicki, I am very highly impressed by his comment that organizational change requires a leader with superb emotional and social intelligence. But emotional intelligence gets overshadowed by political interference sometimes and then the leader might find himself in the middle of nowhere.  

Hello Vihba,

The launching of an organizational change program is like the eruption of a volcano. People are not prepared to deal with real changes and, as soon as they have recovered from the initial shock, they will oppose it to protect their individual comfort zones.

This means two things: (a) for the employees change management is a undesirable disturbance provoked by those who will be in charge of implementing it and, as consequence, (b) those who will implement it must first win early adopters and be capable of overcoming resistance to change.

I envision an organization change as happening in three distinct stages.

In the first one, its leader must be able to win peers and subordinates who will stick together with him during this critical initial stage. Alone he/she will not be able to warrant the success of this risky organizational move. He/she will need loyal evangelizers around him/her who will spread the creed for change and, in this process, start recruiting more adopters. Until such a point when the majority of employees will clearly perceive the benefits which the planned change will bring to them, deciding to join the process that will follow.

As such initially this leader must be an excellent salesman/woman, be a fantastic empathizer, must strongly believe in his/her plan to implement the intended change program. Thus he/she must also be an outstanding planner

Assuming that such executive exists (not easy to find), and that top management has already bought his strategic plan of the projected change, thus will champion it, this leader will first move on to motivate the overall organization to "buy-in" his program and goals.

The second stage is operational, that is, implementing the plan. This may or may not require changing the leader. Now the program needs a great organizer, a team builder/coach and somebody who can deal, emotionally and physically, with the frustrations and long hours of work such program demands. It will require also an excellent problem-solver, a person who is capable of dealing with the daily difficulties and noise generated during this stage.

Finally, the third stage is cooling down the emotional mess that this process will produce necessarily. The existing employees will have to be retrained and adapted to the company's new realities and modus operandi. Again, this may or may not require changing the skipper. He/she will have to be a psychiatrist/comforter

Thus, IMO, possibly a change management program cannot be carried through by one single leader or leadership style.

Regards

Tom

Of course Vibha and thanx for bringing that out

Participatory styles and researches provide more realistic atmosphere is any group, or organisation. I have first hand experience with it. Participatory action research is a subset of that in that it is real collaborative, co-operative research and the results are tremendous except that it is not carried out throughout life of the organisation. styles change but participatory action never needs change as it is the same as involves the systems thinking and that has got, or will get what things are needed for co-inhabitance and co-creativity, respect of each other and serves the wider success of leadership and research without much hidden agendas. It lives on harmony, education and needs of the stakeholders.

Regards and appreciate the answers by many of us, and there is no right or wrong understanding, or suggestion.

Suresh

Dear Vibha,

I think that your question is very interesting and should be discovered. However, when you speak about an appropriate leadership style during organizational change it can be thought that current leader's inappropriate style can be changed. I suppose that it is very difficult to change an individual's leadership style or almost impossible. So, the easiest way is to fire the leader. Moreover, during changes it is more important to understand into what direction our organization goes and what leadership style will fit the organization after the changes are over. According to the contingecy theory, each leadership style fits particular conditions. In Burton and Obel's book "Organizational Design: a step-by-step approach" the authors suggest a model to achive the fit between leadership style and other contingecy variables.

In order to understand my idea, let's look at Burton and Obel's model. The authors suggest to mesure leadership styles in two dimesional way: uncertainty avoidance and preference for delegation. For Reactor (Miles and Snow typology) strategy fits the special leadership style called Maestro (uncertainity avoidance=low, preference for delegation=low). However, for Analyzer strategy fits the leadership style called Producer (uncertainity avoidance=high, preference for delegation=high). So, if during changes organizations try to change strategy type from Reactor to Analyzer it is also crucial to change leadership style in organization from Maestro to Producer. It can be explained that Analyzer strategy provides more exploration (research, new product, innovation) and innovative and research actions suffer without low delegation (decentralization). Also Analyzer strategy provides more exploitation (efficiency, production) and it is diffucult to exploit well with low uncertainity avoidance. 

Also, I can't agree with Mr.Tom Venetianer that organizarional changes are a volcano for people. It depends on organizational climate (internal environment). Burton and Obel also suggest to measure climate with the level of tension and readiness to change. In some cases, climate in oraganization can come along with high readiness for change and low tension. It is called developmental climate. For example, this climate fits the Prospector strategy, where there is high level of exploration. People in this organization always try to change something and are always ready for something new. For Prospector the leadership style called Leader (uncertainity avoidance=low, preference for delegation=high) fits . He always delegates and likes decentralization and is not scared of uncertainty. 

I think transformational leadership the most appropriate to manage organizational change.

To some degree I think that there are important in all above - and especially in Dr. Zouaoui's comment on transformational (or rather 'transforming' as Burns original conceived with a strong valuational/ethical dimension), but context is also very important.  The context of a modern industrialised Western state (and they vary significantly by jurisdictional criteria as well as culture), is very different from transitional states in Eastern Europe, and developing states in the Middle East and Africa.  The more travelling I do, and the more time I spend working in highly different countries has been impressing upon me the critical importance of context - for values, social norms, conceptions of professional roles, work, research, knowledge, etc.

I fully agree with Stanislav Stawicki and Eugenie Samier since leadership means an integration of personal characteristics, leadership styles, and the context. The organizational context is immersed in a certain culture with specific values and social norms which condition and model any leadership style. I guess that a successful leadership style in American corporations would be less successful in Chinese or Arab companies. 

Essential for those who would like to become change agents is vision and the capacity to influence people around them for an extra effort to implement a change. Unlike managers, leaders should use their emotional and knowledge and intelligence in influencing and motivating people. Also, transformational leaders should be able to identify organizational resistances and to overcome them. Since any organization due to its size, history, traditions, and culture has a certain capacity of absorbing change, leaders should be able to find the best speed and acceleration of change. 

Thus, the simple answer for your question would be "transformational leadership" but we have to consider that how much transformation can be done in a given organization and how fast this transformation can be performed depend on the cultural, social, political, technological, economical, and legislative context.

I think Constantin has summarised the overall view quite well.  I do think that also one has to consider that transforming or transformational leadership in one country/culture is not the same as in the other.  There is a tendency to take the 'ideal' as in analytical type and treat it as an empirical type. Even from historical studies (incl. biographical material) transformational-type leaders in one country can vary considerably from others.  A strong component of this is personality and character as well as societal sector.

Organisational change is a very crucial issue which needs to be taken very seriously. In this context leadership styles plays a great role in successful implementation of change in the organisation.  though transformational leaders can bring change through their inspirational and role model characteristics but in certain situations leaders have to opt for strict measures also to bring change. Accordingly situation based decisions have to be taken for the change.

I have seen leaders/executive officers/heads trying to bring organisational changes by trying to 'control' functionaries within the organisations. this leads to sometimes irreparable  damage to the functionaries and the organisation. 

I agree with the opinions expressed here regarding transformational leadership wherein the leader are able to motivate the followers to bring planned organisational changes.  

Transformational leaders have a direct positive relationship with psychological climate for organizational change readiness and organizational creativity.

Higgs and Rowland (2000, 2001) have researched upon the link between several styles of leadership and organizational change. In accordance with their results we present five broad competency areas of leadership related to successful implementation of organizational change:

1. Creating the case for change – building awareness among employees regarding the imminence of change and its necessity;

2. Creating structural change – insistently working on people understanding the

essence of the specific change phenomena and providing its support through consistent tools and processes;

3. Engaging other – getting people involved and committed to run along the change process;

4. Implementing and sustaining changes – elaboration strategies and development of effective action plans and supervising the progress towards the desired change;

5. Facilitating and developing capability – sustain people to find their own motivation for achieving change.

https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:326289/FULLTEXT01.pdf

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/nml.21078/abstract

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/LODJ-11-2012-0155

http://www.seap.usv.ro/annals/ojs/index.php/annals/article/viewFile/579/590

I would have agreed with many of the US leadership theorists much more when I was still living in Canada, however, after teaching and working in a number of countries with very different cultures, I think that many of the elements that show up in the cross-cultural literature, for example, Mead, Trompenaars, etc. point to very different logics in societies where traditional structures of social institution operate.  For example, the relationship between an individual leader and the followers may not be the most important in a society where collectivist values are predominant.  Even if there is a dysfunctional leader, the followers will respond to values that are strongly contextual more than characteristics or traits of an individual.  As many Western societies are becoming much more multicultural, other values that shape social action are likely to have a stronger influence.

There is a lot of argument for & against each of the leadership styles(authoritative, democratic and lassiez-faire) versus its approach towards organizational change. While I think that style of leadership (X) may suit a specific type of change (Y) but a rule cannot be set on which type of leadership is perfect for a given change situation because other factors will come to play. Some scholars may recommend authoritative style & democratic style but there is a possibility that the authoritative leader may try to dominate & dictate the transformation process and there is a likelihood that a democratic leader will be receiving endless opinions resulting in difficulty of making a proper decision.

If the organization is a university, I think that lassiez-faire leader may be the best choice. This is a leader who engages in minimal influence and responsibilities are shared by all. Under him/her, employees have more control over their working lives. This is a hands-off style of leadership over capable scholars who can innovate & develop without the custody of boss(es).The atmosphere of real freedom is highly motivational for positive changes.

Dear Brenda, I am very much concerned about what you stated. Before 2020, all the senior lecturers, in my department, (including me) will be retired. So at that time, the young lecturers will need another type of leadership if the seniors leave the place completely (i.e. no part-time).

Dear Brenda and Nizar, why do you think there would be a shift of leadership style due to loosing senior professors through retirement or whatsoever reasons? If the Professors are going to retire, there has to be a system in  place to generate successors- not only younger ones but also mid-careers which can substitute seniors with out diffciulties.  I have observed in many university, a handful of Professors appeared to be the only figures in a department staying for a long time without sharing mandates for the majority. If this is the reality in you case, you may be right.

In my view, there is no 'one style fits all' kind of leadership for change management. The people leading change in any organization need to be well versed with all the leadership styles and depending on the nature, purpose and magnitude of the intended change and the circumstances surrounding the change process, one would be expected to make a mix of the different ingredients from the relevant leadership styles to cause a change. Additionally, I strongly believe that change in organizations is caused and managed by and through people so it is a product of team work. these same people/teams have the potential to work in favor of the change or against it because of the fear for unknown. Therefore a good mix of democratic and transformation leadership styles would make a good recipe for for effective change management in organizations.