Utkarsh Sinha

PGPX-A
Roll No:6617102

Leadership and Delegation (Coach Knight v/s Coach K)

After going through the case study and the relevant discussion in the class the key issue is the
choice of Aggressive Leadership v/s Participative Leadership . In Participative leadership, you
believe people are fundamentally good theyre trying to do their best, theyre self-motivated,
they want to perform. As leader, you job should focus on empowering them, getting obstacles out
of their way, and setting high goals while maintaining standards. In aggressive Leadership, you
believe people are fundamentally bad people are inherently Lazy and wont do anything unless
theyre watched. An Aggressive Leader leads with a very transactional management style (carrot
and stick Approach/Rewards &punishments). It also involves tight supervision and eventually
leads in a great deal of social distance between the Leader and his/her team.

How do we know which style to follow ?Well the style of Leadership that you follow depends on
the Maturity of the team in terms of doing the task. We can use Hersey-Blanchards situational
Leadership to identify which approach a leader should take. For Eg Telling Need Aggressive
Leadership(involves micro management and provides complete details of the task,how/why and
where the task needs to be done ) and Delegating Participative Leadership form (Process and
responsibility has been passed to the group or individual)

I could relate the learnings with my past experience. I have been part of teams that have been led
by both the types of Leaders(Aggressive/Participative). When I started my Professional career,
the managers that I worked with would pass on minute details of the tasks that I had to perform.
They would often schedule regular review meetings to ensure that my work meets all the Quality
requirements. I could feel that the trust factor was missing and would not mingle much with my
manager. This alienation from my manager had a negative impact ,as at times I would not let the
manager know the actual issues that I faced during the work( impact on my productivity) .I could
not open up to my manager as there was a constant fear of being punished ( in terms of poor
appraisal rating ).I also had experiences of working under a participative Leader. There was a
high degree of trust between me and my manager. He would often seek my inputs ,ideas and
observations and kept me involved in decision making process. The commitment and motivation
levels were very high. A major benefit that I observed was that the quality of my wok was way
better than the quality of work I did under an Autocratic/aggressive leader.

To be an effective leader in future ,I need to be adaptive. The Leadership style that I use has to be
on an individual to individual basis. Assessing/Reassessing the maturity levels of the team
members at fixed time intervals is a must. This exercise will help me effectively decide which
behavior should I adopt. (for e.g. telling, Selling, Participating or Delegating). Delegation is an
important role that a leader needs to perform. People usually do not delegate things as they fear
losing control. Excess Delegation is bad , and I should refrain my self from dumping my work on
others. Delegating stuff to other people without empowering them is useless. Trusting your team
members is very important as a lack of trust would not allow delegation of work.