As per Simon Western, the four discourses of leadership that were prevalent during the past (20th) century were, Messiah, Controller, Therapist and Eco-leader. It was given by Western in 2013.
I will explain the topics in detail and also explain where I have encountered these four leadership styles. I will also try to help you identify these types of leaders in your real life.
Table of Contents
Controller (Early 1900s – 40s)
The Controller discourse of leadership emerged during the early 20th century when mass production was new.
Business leaders made all the decisions and followers (workers) did repetitive manual job. Standardization was the main goal and discipline was highly valued in this discourse of leadership.
Example of Controller Leadership:
- Narayana Murthy
Therapist (1950s-60s)
The Therapist discourse of leadership emerged after the second world war when individualism became a trend. The focus of this style of leadership was to encourage individuals and attend to their personal needs.
The principle of this style of leadership was that happy workers are more productive.
Example of Therapist leadership:
- Anand Mahindra
- Narendra Modi
Messiah (1970s-1900s)
The Messiah discourse emerged during the 1970s and 80s when charismatic leaders started a trend of passionate leadership by creating larger than life figures who led organizations with a magical touch. The leader was often considered as a solution to all problems faced by the organization.
This style of leadership was adopted by several businesses, schools, colleges and non-governmental organizations.
Examples of Messiah Leaders are:
- Ratan Tata
- Elon Musk
- Bill Gates
- Mark Zuckerberg
Eco-Leader (21st Century)
The eco-leadership discourse became prevalent in the 21st century where leaders let experts handle their jobs by themselves. It is the latest among all the four discourses of leadership by Simon Western.
In this style of leadership the focus is on the leader becoming an enabler and a bit away from day to day decision making. Power is distributed among the lower levels of the organization and bottom-up decision making is encouraged.
Example of eco-leadership:
- Unilever
Identify Your Leader
Each leader can have multiple attributed of leadership and can also follow multiple discourses. However, there is typically a dominant discourse as per my experience in seeing the corporate world.
To identify a controller leader, gauge the amount of orders that are sent directly by him or her. The more direct orders, the more the controller discourse is followed.
The therapist leader can be identified with whether they approach directly when workers face any issue.
To identify messiah leadership styles, simple ask your colleagues whether the leader is approachable or not. If no, he is a messiah leader.
To identify an eco-leader, see if they arrange for stuff whenever necessary or ask you to adjust with the existing resources.
