Examine the leadership styles of lewin (1951)white lippit(1960)and Essay

Examine the leadership styles of lewin (1951)white lippit(1960)and consider how it applies to your current or past work place.us - Essay Example According to them, leaders acted in three main ways, laissez – faire, democratic and autocratic leadership style. Autocratic leaders dictated terms and people had to obey them blindly. Democratic leaders discussed all probabilities and also made followers to take their own decisions. Laissez – faire is the extreme opposite to autocratic leadership style. They completely parted with all responsibilities to the followers. The experiments conducted by Lewin on planned change and styles of leadership spurred the launch of group dynamics research and change programs implementation (Burnes 2004). Relevance of Lewin, White and Lippit’s leadership styles in today’s healthcare organizations Nursing is basically a people oriented profession and hence there is considerably focus on humanity and this is one of the basic factors influencing nursing leadership. In order to deal with daily work routines and situations, nursing managers need to make the most use of situat ional leadership. For this, the manager must be aware of the leadership styles employed, task and the processes and systems followed in the healthcare organization. Nursing managers who can successfully combine the above mentioned attributes attain maximum success in handling challenging situations (Sellgren, Ekvall & Tomson 2006). However, the traditional leadership styles experimented on a group of children by Lewin, Lippitt and White may not be the most popular leadership style adapted by nurse managers. In fact, on the basis of these behavioural forced leadership styles, the transformational leadership was subsequently developed and is still considered one of the most popular leadership style adapted by nurse managers. Transformational leadership styles take on all the aspects of democratic, autocratic and laissez – faire styles and apply it depending on the situation warranted. Hence, in today’s changing healthcare organizations, nurse managers have to utilize all the three leadership styles proposed by White, Lippitt and Lewin depending on the situation (Molero et al. 2007). Changes made in the organizational structure also affect the leadership style to be adapted by nurse managers. Also the diverse phases of development which an organization goes through, warrants diverse management efforts and the leadership style should be in compliance with the particular stage through which the organization runs through. The current changes in the environment affecting the culture in the organization also spurs nurse managers to create a specific leadership style of their own in order to handle tasks efficiently (Lindholm, Sivberg & Uden 2000). Hence, most nurse managers employ all three styles of democratic, laissez – faire and authoritative depending on the situation. The leadership style adapted by nursing managers depends on the climate of the group. The manager needs to find out whether the needs of the group are meted out and whether the group is so formed in order to handle group goals. In this case, the nurse leader needs to first make a retrospect of his or her behavioural traits. Accordingly, the current situation in the organizati