Leadership Styles

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Leadership styles  

Vignette 1: Fire alarm in Bucharest  

An engineer from the Bucharest office of a global company describes a recently experienced situation.  

We were sitting at an extraordinary staff meeting in a windowless office in our company's building in Bucharest. Almost all of the Romanian office people were invited to listen to a big boss from Munich. One could clearly see that our local managers were trying to do everything possible to leave a positive impression with the guest from headquarters. Our local top brass people were smiling and nodding all the time when the visitor spoke, and the Romanian general manager was even taking notes on his tablet computer, something that he never does. The visitor from Munich was talking about the responsibility each of us had for cutting costs. Suddenly the meeting room went completely dark and a fire alarm sounded. Everyone stayed sitting at their places, waiting for instructions. The visitor from Munich went silent, but our local bosses for some reason were silent too. Finally, someone from the audience lost patience and shouted: "For how much longer are we going to sit here? Do you want to burn here? It's time to get out." People jumped from their seats and started making their way to the exit. They were stepping on each other's feet and bumping against the furniture. When we were finally out of the building it became clear that a fire had started in one of office's electric rooms, and firefighters were already handling it. Luckily, nobody was injured.  

When the situation cleared, the engineer found himself thinking about the behavior of the managers in this situation:  

Since this incident, I have often thought about why our managers remained silent when the fire alarm went off. Usually they have no problem giving orders or telling us how to do things. This time, however, they were quiet and indecisive. Could it be that the presence of the higher-ranking boss from Munich had an impact on their behavior?  

Questions

1. Which leadership style did the Engineer expect from his leader?

The Engineer expected the manager(s) to lead as usual, with an authoritarian or commanding leadership style. The focus of power here is with the manager(s), and all the interactions within the group move towards the manager. This type of leadership fosters little creativity in decision making; the group is expected to complete the tasks under very close supervision, while unlimited authority is granted to the leader. One of the biggest disadvantages of the authoritarian or commanding leadership style is that without proper instruction and understanding from subordinates, confusion may arise.

2. Why do you think they failed to use it?  

I think they were afraid to use it because they wanted to give a different impression to the visitor from Munich. They perhaps were afraid to show their true authoritarian selves.  It is clearly mentioned in the vignette that the Romanian managers wanted to give a positive impression to the visitor from headquarters, they were nodding and smiling every time he spoke. The Romanian general manager was even taking notes, something he never does.

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Vignette 2: "Michael is an excellent analyst. It's time for him to become a manager"