A CONTRAST OF DIFFERENT LEADERSHIP STYLES 2

The overall purpose of this research paper is to both identify and contrast different leadership styles, ultimately, for ascertaining the most optimal leadership style(s). There exist many venues in which a leader may be evaluated. For example, organizational leadership styles have a clear impact on organizational culture, including employee behavior, organizational “rigidity” and stagnation”, and corporate image. Graham (1995) suggested that specific leadership styles motivate employees differently and encourages specific sets of responses. For example, autocratic or coercive styles yield employee responses distinct from those resulting from transactional or task-oriented styles (Argyris, 1995) as well as those resulting from transformational (Burns, 1978) or servant (Greenleaf, 1977) leadership styles. Some leadership styles or certain aspects of them add significant cost to an organization’s bottom line through decreased productivity, lower employee moral, broken deadlines, and miscommunication. Leadership styles are defined as “a pattern of emphases indexed by the frequency or intensity of specific leadership behaviors or...