This worksheet is designed to help you understand how to apply the best leadership style for a specific situation.
Leadership Effectiveness: What evidence is there of effective or ineffective leadership? Donna’s employees had concerns about the new duties added to their work, and she couldn’t figure it out a better way to help them with it. So, instead of trying to solve this issue harder, she simply asked them to take the assignments and do their best. Keeping employees unsatisfied and with all their precious concerns.
Leadership Style: According to Path-goal theory, what leadership style is now used by Donna. Name it and provide evidence to support your choice. Donna is using the Achievement-oriented Leadership style; she assigned specific and challenging tasks to each staff and clarified their new work duties, expecting them to reach their peak performance.
According to the case study, Donna announced the situation to her staff; she explained how she had dived the job and which additional work would be added to officer’s duties, seeking improvements on their performance. Her staff complained about the new duties added to their work, but due to Donna’s high degree of confidence that her employees would assume the responsibility and achieve the challenging goals, she asked them to take the given assignments and do their best.
Leadership Style: According to Path-goal theory, what leadership style should Donna use? Discuss the appropriate employee and environmental contingencies to support your answer. Donna should have used a Participative leadership style, because it would encourage and facilitate her employees to be more engaged with the decisions beyond their normal work duties.
Based on the case study, Donna’s employees showed traits of an internal locus of control, which lead them to prefer a participative leadership style. So, Donna would let her employees know about the situation and ask their suggestions on how she should proceed. Then, she would take into consideration her employees’ ideas, and make the best decision based on that.
Implementing a Change in Leadership Style: Describe one action that could be taken by Donna that would demonstrate her new leadership style. One action that should be taken by Donna and that would demonstrate her new leadership style, is approaching a shared vision with her employees, and creating a stronger communication channel between her and them. With the aim to listen her employees ideas on how to achieve their goal, and strive for the same vision.
