Preferred Leadership Styles and Influence Tactics

Abstract

Two hundred nine MBA (Masters in Business Administration) students of a management institute rated their leadership styles and influence tactics as a part of their classroom exercise. The findings indicated that they preferred to adopt nurturant-task (NT) and participative styles more frequently than transformational style. Authoritarian style of leadership was least likely to be adopted by them. The first three styles were positively correlated suggesting the possibility that they have in their repertoire the potential to evoke, in varying degrees, all the styles of leadership. Rational persuasion and empowering were most likely to be used as influence tactics, followed by personal appeal and consultation, reward for performance, use of authority, and so on. Although leadership styles were meaningfully related to influence tactics, there were enough overlaps to suggest that leaders may flexibly use different styles and influence tactics depending possibly on the contingencies of different situations.