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Published on September 10, 2007

A long-term survey conducted by Hay Group shows that the right leadership styles applying to particular situations create a healthy team climate and help business organisations achieve higher performance.

Hay Group, a global consulting agency specialising in organisation development and human resource management, has classified leadership behaviours into six major styles - Coercive (Directive), Coaching, Authoritative (Missionary), Democrative (Participative), Affiliative and Pace Setting.

However, not that many local managers can reshape their leadership behaviour to match evolving situations.

A lot of business leaders here have limited themselves to a few leadership styles, such as Coercive or Directive and Affiliative. "Many leaders in Thailand try to be a good leader themselves, but they don't know how to be," Alan Williams, country manager of the Hay Group Learning Institute, said last week.

"Business leaders can apply the Coercive or Directive style in times of emergency. But using this kind of behaviour every time will kill creativity," he said.

"Thai managers should apply other kinds of leadership approaches, such as Missionary and Participative, to promote creativity in their organisation and allow lower-level staff to share their valuable ideas," he said.

In some companies and some countries, it seems that every manager has one style and makes one leadership approach to managing all situations.

This one-style approach has been seen regularly in many Asian countries, including Thailand, while in many other countries, such as in the United States, Europe and Australia, managers will look at each situation and apply the leadership approach that fits with the situation. "Different people have different leadership styles. However, managers who can use all of the styles regularly are those who can build a good motivated team and real results in terms of business performance," he said.

About 70 per cent of the organisational climate could be accounted for by the differences in the leadership team and leadership styles demonstrated by management. Leaders can improve productivity by up to 30 per cent by creating the right workplace climate for their team.

It is very true right now that many Thai companies engaged in business overseas such as exporting have started to realise the need to be professional, otherwise their customers would be snatched away by competitors from China and Vietnam.

"To be competitive against rivals in a border-less market environment, we [Thai companies] need to get more serious about higher efficiency and better-quality performance of our business organisations," he said.

Hay Group Thailand will conduct a two-day "Building Leadership Excellence" workshop for local business leaders from September 20-21 in Bangkok, aimed at helping companies achieve higher performance and compete regionally.

Building Leadership Excellence is a series of leadership workshops based on Hay Group's global research linking leadership behaviour and organisation performance.

Anotai Adulbhan, general manager of Hay Group Thailand, said higher performance could be achieved by leaders by addressing issues such as clarifying of mission and expectations, clearly communicated standards, the amount of autonomy they delegate, and their approach to reward and how they foster new ideas within the senior management team.

"Our research clearly shows that excellent leaders can quickly shift leadership style depending on the challenge," Anotai said.

"They know when to assert their authority, when to avoid conflict, when to make concessions, how to use team involvement, how and when to delegate and to empower, and how to lead by example," he said.

Successful leaders could identify which of the team needs coaching and make arrangements for them to be trained in the relevant technical skills.

Hay Group provides consulting services to about 100 corporate clients in Thailand in diverse industries, including telecommunications, retailing, fast-moving consumer goods and energy.

nKwanchai Rungfapaisarn

 The Nation