Tough Coercive, Controlling, and Caring Leadership Styles

  • Reviewed By: Hamza Ali (Fire Safety Officer, CFPS)

Leadership is about more than just giving orders and ensuring things run smoothly—there are various ways to lead, each with advantages and disadvantages. Tough coercive, authoritarian controlling and tough caring are three distinct approaches that can guide organizations in the right direction. These styles involve a combination of hard-nosed discipline, role-modeling behavior based on respect and trust initiatives, and an active approach to problem-solving.

While no single style can guarantee success in any situation, understanding how these different forms of leadership interact with one another might help you determine which approach works best for your team or organization. This post will discuss the core elements of each style’s uncomfortable truth about how it does (and does not) lead toward achieving more significant results from teams and businesses.

Tough Coercive, Controlling & Caring Leadership Styles

We can associate three fundamental safety leadership styles with the effectiveness of a safety culture: tough-coercive, tough-controlling, and tough-caring. Let’s take a look at each of these leadership styles.

1. Tough-Coercive Leadership

In this leadership approach, managers are tough on safety to protect themselves: to avoid penalties. The manager’s approach to controlling performance may primarily rely on the threat of punishment. The objective is to achieve compliance to fulfill legal or fiscal imperatives. The culture is fear-driven and toxic. Management resorts to an accountability system that emphasizes negative consequences. By what managers do and say, they may communicate negative messages to employees that establish or reinforce negative relationships.

As you might guess, fear-driven cultures, by definition, cannot be effective in achieving world-class safety because employees work (and don’t work) to avoid negative consequences. Employees and managers all work to avoid punishment. Consequently, fear-driven thoughts, beliefs, and decisions may drive their behaviors. Bottom line: a fear-driven safety culture will not work. It cannot be effective for employees and managers at any level of the organization. It may be successful in achieving compliance, but that’s it.

Coercive Leadership

2. Tough-Controlling Leadership

Managers primarily using this approach are tough on safety to control losses. They have high standards for behavior and performance and control all work aspects to ensure compliance. Managers displaying this leadership style may not have high trust in their employees. Hence, they must control them.

This leadership approach is most frequently exhibited in the “traditional” management model. As employers gain greater understanding, their attitudes and strategies change to better fulfill their legal and financial obligations. They have become more effective in designing safety systems that reduce injuries and illnesses, cutting production costs.

In a tough controlling environment, tight control is necessary to achieve numerical goals. Communication is typically top-down, and information is used to control. A safety “director” is usually appointed to take on the role of a cop rather than a consultant. A safety cop is responsible for enforcement and control, while the safety consultant is responsible for education, analysis, and arriving at solutions.

Tough-controlling leaders move beyond the threat of punishment as the primary strategy to influence behavior. However, they will rely, to a somewhat lesser extent, on negative reinforcement and punishment to influence behavior. Positive reinforcement may also be used as a controlling strategy. Tough-controlling leadership styles may or may not result in a fear-based culture.

3. Tough-Caring Leadership

Managers are tough on safety because they have high expectations, insist their followers follow the rules, and care about their employees’ success first. This is a selfless leadership approach. The tough-caring leadership model represents a significant shift in leadership and management thinking away from the more selfish tough-controlling model.

  • Managers understand that complying with the law, controlling losses, and improving production can best be assured if employees are motivated, safe, and able.
  • Management understands that they can best fulfill their commitment to external customers by fulfilling their obligations to internal customers: their employees.
  • Communication is typically all-way: information is used to share so that everyone succeeds.

A quantum leap in adequate safety (and all other functions) occurs when employers adopt a tough-caring approach to leadership. Rather than being the safety cop, the safety manager is considered an internal consultant responsible for helping all line managers and supervisors demonstrate leadership by “doing” safety. Line managers must be the cops, not the safety department. This results in dramatic positive changes in corporate culture, which is success-driven.

Conclusion

Each leadership style – tough-coercive, tough-controlling, and tough-caring – provides a unique approach to creating a safety culture within an organization. The tough-coercive style is predominantly fear-driven, focusing on the threat of punishment to achieve compliance. It can maintain order but falls short of fostering a positive work environment conducive to continuous improvement.

Tough-controlling leadership steps up from mere compliance to reducing losses and increasing efficiency. While it may still harbor elements of a fear-driven culture, this style demonstrates more trust in the workforce and uses both positive and negative reinforcement to guide behavior.

Finally, the tough-caring leadership style represents a shift toward empathy, mutual respect, and shared success. Leaders under this style are invested in their team’s well-being and progress, fostering a collaborative environment where everyone is motivated and accountable. This approach enables the most significant organizational culture transformation, leading to a success-driven atmosphere.

However, it is essential to note that no single style fits all situations, and effective leaders often exhibit traits from all three styles, adjusting their approach based on the team’s needs and circumstances. While the tough-caring style offers the most advantages, balancing this with the appropriate level of control and discipline to maintain a safe and productive work environment is important.

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Author

Malik Imran

Imran is a proficient safety engineer with a solid six-year tenure at ADNOC Company in the United Arab Emirates. His career is marked by an in-depth cultivation of skills and knowledge pivotal for the protection of individuals and the environment within the workplace. His expertise is a vital asset in the continuous pursuit of safety excellence in the engineering domain.