Leaders are confronted with a number of different management situations throughout their careers, and how they choose to handle these varying circumstances depends on their management style.

Conflict resolution, for example, can be approached in many ways. A manager might make a decision that he believes will quell the conflict without including the employees in conflict. Or, in another scenario, a manager could act as mediator, bringing the two employees together to help them come to a resolution on their own. Each approach is wholly dependent on who you are as a manager, what your management style is and the employees you are working with.

There's no one-size-fits-all approach to managementit's all situational. But understanding the difference between the many different types of management styles, and how certain employees respond to them, will make you a more effective leader.

The root of all types of management styles: autocratic and permissive

A management style is the method of leadership used by a manager. At the root of management styles are two distinct approaches: autocratic and permissive. An autocratic management style is one in which the leader makes decisions unilaterally without including employees in decision-making. A permissive management style, on the other hand, is one in which the manager allows employees to participate in decision-making. Permissive managers generally allow a considerable degree of autonomy to employees completing day-to-day work tasks. These two contrasting management styles serve as the foundation for how all other management styles are approached.

Recently, the permissive management style has won-out. In fact, according to a report from Wharton School of Business, the digital age has made the permissive approach more alluring to managers because employees are more apt to want to feel a part of the decision-making process and will return that feeling with engagement and creativity.

But depending on scenario, some managers find the autocratic management style more effective. The management style you take may depend on the specific situation, type of work you are managing or personality of your employees.

Once you understand that you will approach a management situation either autocratically or permissively, you have some leeway to expand on your approach. Take stock of the situation and experimentyou'll know which approach is right based on feedback from your employees and the business outcome.

Here are a few types of management styles to try:

Democratic management style

As its name suggests, a democratic management style invites employees to get involved in making decisions. Democratic management involves extensive communication from both managers and employees. This management style can be particularly useful when various specialized skills are needed to finish project. Because everyone is given the chance to participate and exchange ideas, people can showcase their specialties and add to the outcome of the project from ideation through to completion. Democratic management can only be successful when decision-making processes are streamlined and managed properly.

Persuasive management style

Persuasive management styles share characteristics with autocratic management. Persuasive managers control all decision-making, but they spend more time with employees than a purely autocratic leader. Instead of working behind a closed office door, for example, a persuasive manager is in the meetings and on the sales floor doing the work alongside his employees (even if he is calling the shots). This on-the-level approach allows managers to lead by example, and helps employees understand the benefits of their manager's decisions. Persuasive managers are not necessarily more inclusive of their employees when it comes to decision-making, but they tend to be more aware of the work they are doing.

Laissez-faire management style

A laissez-faire manager is seen as more of a mentor than a manager. With laissez-faire management, employees are empowered to take charge and managers take a backseat role so that employees can flourish creatively.

Management styles may need to be adjusted based on the amount of guidance and support required, and a good manager is one that is able to adjust her management style to suit the needs of her employees. Managers should be willing to delegate tasks when needed, aid when help is requested and tell employees what needs to be done when appropriate. The best managers are able to harness many management styles and deploy the appropriate approach as different types of situations arise. Leaders are confronted with a number of different management situations throughout their careers, and how they choose to handle these varying circumstances depends on their management style.

In Mintzberg's seminal study of managers and their jobs, he found the majority of them clustered around three core management roles.

Interpersonal roles

Managers are required to interact with a substantial number of people in the course of a workweek. They host receptions; take clients and customers to dinner; meet with business prospects and partners; conduct hiring and performance interviews; and form alliances, friendships, and personal relationships with many others. Numerous studies have shown that such relationships are the richest source of information for managers because of their immediate and personal nature.

Three of a manager's roles arise directly from formal authority and involve basic interpersonal relationships. First is the figurehead role. As the head of an organizational unit, every manager must perform some ceremonial duties. In Mintzberg's study, chief executives spent 12% of their contact time on ceremonial duties; 17% of their incoming mail dealt with acknowledgments and requests related to their status. One example is a company president who requested free merchandise for a handicapped schoolchild.

Managers are also responsible for the work of the people in their unit, and their actions in this regard are directly related to their role as a leader. The influence of managers is most clearly seen, according to Mintzberg, in the leader role. Formal authority vests them with great potential power. Leadership determines, in large part, how much power they will realize.

Does the leader's role matter? Ask the employees of Chrysler Corporation (now DaimlerChrysler). When Lee Iacocca took over the company in the 1980s, the once-great auto manufacturer was in bankruptcy, teetering on the verge of extinction. He formed new relationships with the United Auto Workers, reorganized the senior management of the company, andperhaps most importantlyconvinced the U.S. federal government to guarantee a series of bank loans that would make the company solvent again. The loan guarantees, the union response, and the reaction of the marketplace were due in large measure to Iacocca's leadership style and personal charisma. More recent examples include the return of Starbucks founder Howard Schultz to re-energize and steer his company, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his ability to innovate during a downturn in the economy.

Popular management literature has had little to say about the liaison role until recently. This role, in which managers establish and maintain contacts outside the vertical chain of command, becomes especially important in view of the finding of virtually every study of managerial work that managers spend as much time with peers and other people outside of their units as they do with their own subordinates. Surprisingly, they spend little time with their own superiors. In Rosemary Stewart's study, 160 British middle and top managers spent 47% of their time with peers, 41% of their time with people inside their unit, and only 12% of their time with superiors. Guest's (1956) study of U.S. manufacturing supervisors revealed similar findings.

Informational roles

Managers are required to gather, collate, analyze, store, and disseminate many kinds of information. In doing so, they become information resource centers, often storing huge amounts of information in their own heads, moving quickly from the role of gatherer to the role of disseminator in minutes. Although many business organizations install large, expensive management information systems to perform many of those functions, nothing can match the speed and intuitive power of a well-trained manager's brain for information processing. Not surprisingly, most managers prefer it that way.

As monitors, managers are constantly scanning the environment for information, talking with liaison contacts and subordinates, and receiving unsolicited information, much of it as a result of their network of personal contacts. A good portion of this information arrives in verbal form, often as gossip, hearsay, and speculation.

Disseminator role

Managers pass privileged information directly to subordinates, who might otherwise have no access to it. Managers must not only decide who should receive such information, but how much of it, how often, and in what form. Increasingly, managers are being asked to decide whether subordinates, peers, customers, business partners, and others should have direct access to information 24 hours a day without having to contact the manager directly.

Spokesperson role

Managers send information to people outside of their organizations: an executive makes a speech to lobby for an organizational cause, or a supervisor suggests a product modification to a supplier. Increasingly, managers are also being asked to deal with representatives of the news media, providing both factual and opinion-based responses that will be printed or broadcast to vast unseen audiences, often directly or with little editing. The risks in such circumstances are enormous, but so too are the potential rewards in terms of brand recognition, public image, and organizational visibility.

Decisional roles

Ultimately, managers are charged with the responsibility of making decisions on behalf of both the organization and the stakeholders with an interest in it. Such decisions are often made under circumstances of high ambiguity and with inadequate information. Often, the other two managerial rolesinterpersonal and informationalwill assist a manager in making difficult decisions in which outcomes are not clear and interests are often conflicting.

Entrepreneur

managers seek to improve their businesses, adapt to changing market conditions, and react to opportunities as they present themselves. Managers who take a longer-term view of their responsibilities are among the first to realize that they will need to reinvent themselves, their product and service lines, their marketing strategies, and their ways of doing business as older methods become obsolete and competitors gain advantage.

While the entrepreneur role describes managers who initiate change, the disturbance or crisis handler role depicts managers who must involuntarily react to conditions. Crises can arise because bad managers let circumstances deteriorate or spin out of control, but just as often good managers find themselves in the midst of a crisis that they could not have anticipated but must react to just the same.

Allocator

Managers making decisions about who gets what, how much, when, and why. Resources, including funding, equipment, human labor, office or production space, and even the boss's time are all limited, and demand inevitably outstrips supply. Managers must make sensible decisions about such matters while still retaining, motivating, and developing the best of their employees.

Negotiator

Managers spend considerable amounts of time in negotiations: over budget allocations, labor and collective bargaining agreements, and other formal dispute resolutions. In the course of a week, managers will often make dozens of decisions that are the result of brief but important negotiations between and among employees, customers and clients, suppliers, and others with whom managers must deal.

Here are three job titles. Rank which job would devote the most of its time to conceptual, human, and technical skills.

1. Vice president of finance at a Fortune 100 company
2. Coding for a video game producer
3. General manager at a local McDonald's franchise

Explain why you ranked these jobs in the order you decided.