iron fist or sugar plums

Leaders are the driving force for every organizations ranging from a company to a country. A leader has the innate ability to make or break an organization. Different leaders exude different styles of leadership. Some rule with fear while others rule with compassion and diplomacy. Which leader will have the best chances of success then, one may ask.

A leader that rules with an iron fist always hammer their subordinates into submission. He will always ensure that those following him will not question his authority in any way. His favorite saying “My way or the highway” will always be ringing in his subordinates’ ears. This kind of leadership might sound harsh but it is certainly not without its merits. In certain situations, dissent sometimes can cause havoc. For instance in the military, the chain of command must be adhered to at all cost no matter what. Any conflict or effort to be diplomatic can bring about severe repercussions to the extent of loss of lives. On the other hand, the iron fist way might not be beneficial in different conditions. For instance in office environment especially in projects, dissents can sometimes breed creativity. If this is curtailed, there will not be any added value ideas within the projects. For this kind of situation, the leader that rules with sugar plums can perform a better job then.

It is therefore quite a headache to engage a suitable leader in certain conditions as the analysis done above clearly shows that in different scenarios warrant a different kind of leadership. It is therefore not right to say that certain kind of leadership is better than the others as well. All kinds of leadership do have its merits and sometimes weaknesses. The next question is why do some projects or certain situations considered as total failures then? Could it be that the wrong kind of leadership is in place there? That would be difficult to determine but one thing is for certain, a leader that fails has nothing to do with his leadership style but just the plain fact that he is incompetent as a leader.

It has been shown that all leadership styles can work. Thus the only explanation is failures could be due to the leader’s own incompetent ways. A leader can adopt a leadership style but to execute it perfectly is a different story altogether. In hindsight, there could be no such excuses of contrast leadership styles that cause failures but the incompetency nature of the leader himself that is the cause of failures. How true can this be, one may wonder?