Leadership styles
There are several styles of leadership that you may use at different times in your roles as a youth leader. As a leader, you will develop your own leadership style. However, you'll be faced with many different situations and scenarios over time and will find that the same leadership style isn't always appropriate to use. Even if things are working well, there will be times when you might needa different approach.
We need to understand some theories of leadership and learn to apply the most appropriate style to any given situation within our work with young people.
Control and support leadership
Leadership styles can vary in the amount of control the leader has over their group and the amount of support the leader provides to the group.
Control is giving a group direction and structure. It involves setting limits and enforcing rules.
Support is valuing and caring for group members.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Diana Baumrind identified three different parenting styles: authoritarian, authoritative and permissive. The features of these three styles also relate to youth leadership.
This diagram shows the levels of control and support in each leadership style.
Authoritarian leadership
Authoritarian leadersare very strict and often use harsh methods of discipline. They are very hard on those they lead and don't often show they care for them. It is very important to an authoritarian leader for their followers to obey their rules without question. This type of leadership can sometimes be seen in boot camp type programmes in youth work.
The advantage of being an authoritarian leader is that your followers obey and listen to you. This is important if you are in a dangerous setting where you need your followers to do what you say and not question you, for example, in the military in a war zone. The disadvantage is that your young people will miss out on opportunities for critical thinking and authoritarian leaders often find that when they are not around, their group do not stay on task and may rebel against orders.
Permissive leadership
Permissive leadersare the opposite of authoritarians. They are very supportive and show a lot of care and concern for their group, but have few or no boundaries. They may use this style because their group doesn't need them to impose any boundaries or because they want to be friends with the young people, rather than a leader.
The permissive style can be used successfully with very motivated older young people, especially on creative projects. However, it can also create an unsafe environment and can sometimes lead to youth leaders losing the respect of the group and being treated like an ATM or a taxi-driver.
Authoritative leadership
Authoritative leaderscombine a high level of control with high levels of support. Authoritative leaders have high expectations of their group, but also care about the group members and show group members that their opinions are valued and listened to. By showing support and respect for their group members, an authoritative leader earns their respect and loyalty. Unlike authoritarian leaders, authoritative leaders can often leave their group for short periods and find they are still on task when they get back. This style of leadership works well in a variety of youth work settings including in educational and recreational programmes.
Situational leadership
A situational leadervaries the amount of support and control they use depending on the situation,the needs of their group and the group's individual members.
This model of leadership was developed in the late 1960s by Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey. Rather than using the term 'control', they used the word 'direction' to mean the amount of instruction you give to the group or person you are working with. They came up with four styles a leader can use to meet the different needs of their group.
Situational leaders have to work out what their group needs and then adjust the amount of support and direction they give them.
Talk to your employer about these two scenarios. Theyshow why it is important to think about what the young person needs from you in terms of support and direction. Think about how each young person would feel in each scenario.
- A shy, new and inexperienced person, Shane, joins your adventure-based youth group. You tell Shane he will be abseiling today, point to a bunch of tangled up safety equipment and leave him to sort it out by himself while you go and make yourself a coffee.
- You're explaining the same task to Hana, who has been abseiling regularly since she was 10 and is now 18. In fact, Hana taught you to abseil 2 years ago. You've listed all the names of the pieces of equipment, explained what they are for, plus given her a handy pronunciation guide. You insist on putting Hana's safety gear on for her and make her role play all of the steps first. You give her a 5 minute 'pep talk' at the top of the abseiling platform and make sure she is psychologically and emotionally ready for the abseil. You shout out encouraging comments and instructions as she descends and give her a high five when she reaches the bottom safely.
In the first scenario, Shane feels helpless and demotivated. He is put in a potentially dangerous situation and you will most likely lose a group member as he is unlikely to come back.
In the second scenario, Hana gets to the bottom safely, but doesn't like you as she feels like you've treated her like an idiot and not respected her skills.
However, if you'd swapped over how you treated these young people, you'd have got a much better match of leadership style to need. Situational leadership is very useful when working with young people from a wide variety of backgrounds and abilities. One disadvantage of being a situational leader is that because they treat people differently, young people may feel the leader is showing favouritism.
Leadership and decision making
Leadership styles can also relate to how decisions are made.
Democratic, consensus and empowering styles of leadership are all different ways of making decisions. They are different ways of having input from young people into the decision-making process.
Democratic leadership
While democratic leadership normally means the leader is elected by the group, in youth work it more often means that decisions are made democratically. That is, they are what the majority of the group wants. For example, if a youth group was deciding where they would go on a trip, a leader might arrange for a vote. The option with the most votes would then be chosen.
One of the benefits of a democratic style is that it can be used with very big groups. We elect our government democratically; every adult New Zealander can vote on who they want in government and the party (or group of parties) with the majority of the votes gets to govern the country.
A disadvantage of democracy is that you might still have a big number of people not happy with the outcome. For example, if you had a vote on whether to go to the pools or to the movies for the trip and eleven people voted for the pools and nine people voted for the movies because they really didn't want to go to the pools, you might have an outcome that nearly half your group are unhappy with.
Consensus leadership
Consensus leadership works in a different way. A consensus leader works towards finding a solution or outcome that everyone agrees with. This normally involves a lot of talking and listening, along with good facilitation and negotiation skills on the part of the leader. The group will talk through the problem and come up with ideas, debate them and try to come to an agreement about what to do.
One of the benefits of consensus leadership is that it includes everyone's views and can come up with a solution that everyone agrees with. In this way, consensus leadership helps the team to work together moving forward. It also can develop the group's communication and teamwork skills.
On the negative side, it can take a long time to reach an agreement and sometimes an agreement can't be reached. It also doesn't work with very big groups: we couldn't hope to elect a government through consensus. Because it requires quite a lot from team members in terms of communication skills, patience and equal respect for all group members, consensus may also not be suitable for all groups.
Empowering leadership
Empowering leadership shifts the power of decision making from the leader to the group. A leader is more of a resource person. They are there to provide the group with guidance, information and other resources as they need or request them. Empowering leadership develops leadership skills within the group. The group not only makes decisions, but they also work out what they want and need to make decisions about.
Youth-led projects, such as youth councils, are a good example of empowering leadership. The young people decide on the issues they want to tackle and develop a plan of action. The youth worker may offer guidance and help with tasks like securing funding or connecting the group to people and organisations in the community that can help with their project.
This diagram shows the relationship between levels of participation and different leadership styles.
16856Leadership styles handout1