Assignment: Compare and Contrast Two Leadership Styles or Theories

Assignment: Compare and Contrast Two Leadership Styles or Theories

A Sample Answer For the Assignment: Assignment: Compare and Contrast Two Leadership Styles or Theories

Title: Assignment: Compare and Contrast Two Leadership Styles or Theories

Assignment Compare and Contrast Two Leadership Styles or Theories

 

Leadership refers to the art of inspiring a group of people to act towards the realization of a common objective. As such, a leader can be defined as a person with have a combination of personality and leadership skills to influence others to follow his or her direction. To be an effective leader, one has to be motivating, visionary, and responsible to successfully run an organization (Zaccaro, Dubrow & Kolze, 2018). Consequently, this paper seeks to compare the democratic and autocratic leadership styles in nursing.

The democratic leadership connotes a style where participation in decision making is encouraged. A democratic nurse leader accommodates perspectives of subordinates and promotes open communication (McKeown & Carey, 2015). Although the ultimate decision is made by the manager, the stakeholders and subordinates are asked to provide their feedback and are also given feedback. Conversely, autocratic leadership connotes a style where the manager is the boss who makes all decisions and gives particular orders and directions to the subjects, but discourages dissent.

The rationale for selecting the democratic and autocratic leadership styles is to create a clear understanding of the styles to nurse managers who possess either of them.  The above is based on the fact that the two leadership styles carry an impact on the willingness of the workforce to perform their duties and responsibilities with dedication. Consequently, the significance of the democratic style of leadership in nursing is that it improves the participation of subordinates in the decision making process of the organization (McKeown & Carey, 2015). It also enhances joint goal setting where every employee is free to give suggestions on various aspects of management. It increases employees’ sense of belonging and value because they feel appreciated and engaged in the organization. On the other hand, the significance of autocratic leadership style is in its improvement of productivity. Since autocratic leaders have the ability to move information in the entire organization faster, few delays are often witnessed in the productivity chain. Employees are less likely to stop their engagements or deter them since they get timely communication and decision from their leadership (Cope & Murray, 2017).

Similarities and Differences between Democratic and Autocratic Leadership Styles

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Essentially, democratic and autocratic leadership styles have little in common to share because they appear to be the exact opposites

of one another. However, a similarity can be identified in the sense that ideas need to be stored in both cases prior to making a business decision. In democratic leadership, employees are involved first before the decision making process. The same applies in autocratic organization where the leader must first consider the decision before rolling out to employees.

According to Cope and Murray (2017), there are several differences in the two leadership styles. In democratic leadership, employees are involved in decision making while an autocratic leader tends to make independent decisions. Besides, while autocratic leadership is mostly oriented towards realization of organizational goals, democratic leadership emphasizes on developing relationship with employees. Regarding their difference in degree of control, autocratic leadership demonstrates more control over employees, while democratic leadership shows low degree of control over employees.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Democratic Leadership

Democratic leadership is associated with many advantages. First, it focuses on team involvement, participation, and engagement. The contribution of every employee is welcomed and their performance also acknowledged and rewarded where necessary. In turn, the level of employees’ morale is elevated. Besides, the level of productivity is high and employees often create innovative and creative ideas because of high cooperation of employees. This leadership style also encourages communication which is critical in enhancing motivation and ensuring greater adaptability and flexibility.

On the other hand, disadvantages include time wastage when trying to come to consensus during decision making, which may cause serious damages in situations that require immediate actions. Besides, the style is not suitable where decision making should be made instantly. Further, there is a possibility of making wrong decisions where unskilled employees are involved in decision making.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Autocratic Leadership

Autocratic leadership is associated with several merits such as having a clear line of control because every decision emanates from the leaders. It is also easy to learn due to its intuitive nature, which does not need expert training or knowledge of leadership theory. Besides, it also fosters faster decision making, and improves productivity. Adversely, the demerits include increased work burden to the leaders because a leader is fully responsible for every operation. There is also a danger of depending entirely on a leader and employees are not empowered to work in the absence of a leader. Moreover, it is unsuitable for highly trained and motivated employees who do not need to be told what to do. This leadership style lowers their morale and reduces creativity and productivity.

The Environment/Conditions Where Both Styles Would Work Best

Autocratic leadership style can best work in straightforward or simple tasks. It is also critical in emergency situations where a strong voice to give direction is necessary. On the other hand, democratic leadership can work best where there is need to develop relationship with staff members, which is anchored on trust and accountability.

 Summary

Both leadership styles have merits and demerits and so, their suitability depends on the needs of the organization and what is to be achieved. It is important to identify the leadership style to employ in an organization because every style tends to impact the willingness of the workforce to perform their duties and responsibilities with dedication and also great influence on the job satisfaction and determination of nurses. Essentially, nursing practice is centered on professional nurses. Therefore, leadership is significant for nurses at all levels to ensure safety of care and positive outcomes. The effectiveness of leadership style employed by nurse leaders is crucial determinant of job commitment and satisfaction among nurses.

Integrate nursing leadership concepts and theories into the various roles of the professional registered nurse to promote safe and high quality nursing care.
In this assignment you will select two different leadership styles or theories, and write a 2-3 page paper comparing/contrasting the two. Focus on how the two are similar to each other (comparison), and then describe how they differ (contrast). When you are writing this paper, reflect on analyzing the differences, how and under what conditions would they be utilized, and what is important about them. State how these would or would not be significant to the nursing profession.

Sample Answer for Assignment: Compare and Contrast Two Leadership Styles or Theories Included

Outline:

Introduction

– Identify the two different leadership theories or styles

– State the rationale as to why these two theories or styles were chosen

– What is the significance of these styles or theories, why are they important

Discussion

– Explain the similarities and differences between the two theories or styles, give examples

– Discuss the advantages and disadvantages

– State the conditions/environment that both of the theories or styles would work best.

Summary

– Summarize the findings from the discussion

– States significance to the nursing profession.

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For assignments that need to be submitted to Lopes Write, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.

Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.

Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?

Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.

Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.

Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.

If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.

I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.

As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.

Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:

Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.

Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.

Important information for writing discussion questions and participation

Welcome to class

Hello class and welcome to the class and I will be your instructor for this course. This is a -week course and requires a lot of time commitment, organization, and a high level of dedication. Please use the class syllabus to guide you through all the assignments required for the course. I have also attached the classroom policies to this announcement to know your expectations for this course. Please review this document carefully and ask me any questions if you do. You could email me at any time or send me a message via the “message” icon in halo if you need to contact me. I check my email regularly, so you should get a response within 24 hours. If you have not heard from me within 24 hours and need to contact me urgently, please send a follow up text to

I strongly encourage that you do not wait until the very last minute to complete your assignments. Your assignments in weeks 4 and 5 require early planning as you would need to present a teaching plan and interview a community health provider. I advise you look at the requirements for these assignments at the beginning of the course and plan accordingly. I have posted the YouTube link that explains all the class assignments in detail. It is required that you watch this 32-minute video as the assignments from week 3 through 5 require that you follow the instructions to the letter to succeed. Failure to complete these assignments according to instructions might lead to a zero. After watching the video, please schedule a one-on-one with me to discuss your topic for your project by the second week of class. Use this link to schedule a 15-minute session. Please, call me at the time of your appointment on my number. Please note that I will NOT call you.

Please, be advised I do NOT accept any assignments by email. If you are having technical issues with uploading an assignment, contact the technical department and inform me of the issue. If you have any issues that would prevent you from getting your assignments to me by the deadline, please inform me to request a possible extension. Note that working fulltime or overtime is no excuse for late assignments. There is a 5%-point deduction for every day your assignment is late. This only applies to approved extensions. Late assignments will not be accepted.

If you think you would be needing accommodations due to any reasons, please contact the appropriate department to request accommodations.

Plagiarism is highly prohibited. Please ensure you are citing your sources correctly using APA 7th edition. All assignments including discussion posts should be formatted in APA with the appropriate spacing, font, margin, and indents. Any papers not well formatted would be returned back to you, hence, I advise you review APA formatting style. I have attached a sample paper in APA format and will also post sample discussion responses in subsequent announcements.

Your initial discussion post should be a minimum of 200 words and response posts should be a minimum of 150 words. Be advised that I grade based on quality and not necessarily the number of words you post. A minimum of TWO references should be used for your initial post. For your response post, you do not need references as personal experiences would count as response posts. If you however cite anything from the literature for your response post, it is required that you cite your reference. You should include a minimum of THREE references for papers in this course. Please note that references should be no more than 5 years old except recommended as a resource for the class. Furthermore, for each discussion board question, you need ONE initial substantive response and TWO substantive responses to either your classmates or your instructor for a total of THREE responses. There are TWO discussion questions each week, hence, you need a total minimum of SIX discussion posts for each week. I usually post a discussion question each week. You could also respond to these as it would count towards your required SIX discussion posts for the week.

I understand this is a lot of information to cover in 5 weeks, however, the Bible says in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us. Even in times like this, we are encouraged by God’s word that we have that ability in us to succeed with His strength. I pray that each and every one of you receives strength for this course and life generally as we navigate through this pandemic that is shaking our world today. Relax and enjoy the course!

Hi Class,

Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts.

Contact me if you have any questions.

Important information on Writing a Discussion Question

• Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references)
• There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article.
• Include in-text citations in your response
• Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information
• Follow APA-7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed

Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor

• A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week.
• Each response needs at least ONE reference with citations—best if it is a peer reviewed journal article
• Each response needs to be at least 75 words in length (does not include your list of references)
• Responses need to be substantive by bringing information to the discussion or further enhance the discussion. Responses of “I agree” or “great post” does not count for the word count.
• Follow APA 7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed
• Remember to use and follow APA-7th edition for all weekly assignments, discussion questions, and participation points.
• Here are some helpful links
• Student paper example
• Citing Sources
• The Writing Center is a great resource