The influence of leadership styles on motivation in work teams

Leadership is a topic that has been discussed in the scientific community and in organizations, so that they need leaders to achieve their goals. Therefore, they value leaders who have the ability to develop the potential of their leaders. Therefore, the objective of this study was to verify the influence of leadership styles on the motivation of work teams, as well as to identify the predominant leadership style of leaders and managers. To this end, a study was conducted with a quantitative approach, which used descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis and modeling of structural equations, with the help of SPSS and AMOS software. The research instrument was a questionnaire, which was applied to 250 respondents, and the sample was formed by undergraduate students from a University of Southern Brazil. Two models of structural equations were found through the modeling applied to the data. The main results obtained were that leadership has a strong influence on the motivation of individuals in work teams, and the style of situational leadership was the one that presented the greatest influence, suggesting leaders who provide greater freedom of work for their subordinates, based on their skills. The research indicates that the participants have good empowerment practices, being oriented to the relationship with their subordinates. For future studies, it is suggested the replication of this study for a probabilistic sample, allowing the inference of the results.