Role of Leadership Styles in Enhancing Employee Productivity

Abstract

Leadership is one of the most influential factors in shaping how employees think, feel and perform at work. The manner in which a leader makes decisions, communicates, motivates and develops subordinates, commonly called leadership style, determines the climate of a work group and the level of effort that employees are willing to contribute. This paper examines the role of leadership styles in enhancing employee productivity on the basis of secondary data collected from classical leadership studies, journal articles, meta-analytic reviews and standard textbooks. The paper explains the concepts of leadership and productivity, reviews the autocratic, democratic, laissez-faire, transactional, transformational, servant and relationship-based approaches, and synthesises the findings of earlier studies. The review shows that transformational and relationship-oriented styles are generally associated with higher satisfaction, motivation and performance, that transactional leadership is effective when contingent rewards are used, and that laissez-faire leadership is mostly associated with negative outcomes. The paper concludes that no single style is best in every situation and that effective leaders adapt their style to the task, the maturity of followers and the organizational context.