Pacesetting Leadership Style

3.5 Pacesetting style

Pacesetting style of leadership assumes that a leader will not only set high standards of performance but also keep those standards by himself. Pacesetting leader concentrates on doing work more and more effective and demands the same from subordinates. If some of the leader’s subordinates fail to perform according to set standards, this leader asking even more from such employee. If failing employee won’t raise performance up, then pacesetter replaces this employee with one who is able to meet high standards. Such approach destroys the climate. Employees overwhelmed by pacesetting leader’s demands, which results in lowering team morale. The only leader knows those guidelines for working that leader set and pacesetter

Coaching leaders encourage subordinates to set long-term development objectives and help subordinates create a plan for reaching those objectives. Such leaders provide excessive feedback and give plentiful instruction. Also, they delegate some challenging assignments to the employees even when they know that it will take much more time to complete this assignment by that employee, coaching leaders accept short-time failure in case if subordinate will provide long-term learning. This style improves the climate in the team and its performance. Constant dialogue between leader and follower improves every driver of climate, for instance, flexibility increases since employee know exactly what leader need from him or her and watches every step of the employee. Also, subordinates know how their work fits into the big picture of organization’s vision, so responsibility and clarity of employee are increasing. The commitment of an employee also increases since the employee knows that leader believes, investing in him. Coaching style works best when subordinates are ready to receive feedback and improve their performance. Or when employees understand how exactly developing new skills and abilities can help them in future

Also, when the leader is less experienced then employee, coaching style would not help due to the fact that such leader won’t be able to teach the employee something new. Managers are unfamiliar with such style especially when they need to provide regular feedback to the employee to motivate subordinate. Coaching style not quite popular in companies, though some organizations already have understood its viability to the success and try to stimulate managers to improve talents of their subordinates [2].

4 QUALITATIVE DESCRIPTION OF LEADERSHIPS

Let’s see how observed leadership styles affecting the team. Full Range Leadership model discussed in [6], and 6 Types of Leadership in [2]. In [6] research was concentrated on software projects while [2] introduces more general approach and considers teams from different domains.

4.1 Full Range