Advantages And Disadvantages Of Democratic Leadership

The theory of leaders can be autocratic, a person who doesn’t consider the person undertaking the task only getting the results. A democratic leader takes opinions of the staff and understands how they believe the best results can be achieved, whereas Laissez-faire style leaves the experienced staff to implement the work processes.

Autocratic leadership, also known as authoritarian leadership is a leadership style characterized by individual control over all decisions and little input from group members. Autocratic leaders typically make choices based on their own ideas and judgments and rarely accept advice from followers. Autocratic leadership involves absolute, authoritarian control over a group. It can also be derived

In this assignment I aim to outline the advantages, disadvantages and overall effectiveness of the different styles of leadership.

Grojean, Resick & Diskson (2004) suggest that leaders are responsible for facilitating their follower’s to become capable and guide them to improving their capabilities and strengths. Differentiating between different leadership styles can be done in a number of ways. It was determined that the traditional styles of leaders include authoritian (autocratic), democratic, permissive (laissez-faire) and bureaucratic (Viinamäki, 2009).

Leadership is a skill some are born with the other can learn. There are many styles of leadership. This paper will focus on three main styles of leadership including autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire. Transformational leadership is a type a leadership that is very difficult to teach and we will explore the great effects of this type of leadership. Wells and Wells (2010) explain several aspects of leadership that leaders should portray, no matter what style they use. These including :articulating a vision, explaining what is expected of himself or herself as leader as well as what is expected of staff members, providing guidance and mentoring, developing staff members by coaching them one on one, understanding the importance of teamwork,

Leadership styles have significant effects on organizations. For instance, it influences organizational culture and determines how leaders address conflict. Ultimately, it impacts organizational performance. Consequently, leaders must adapt their approach to achieve the desired outcome. Therefore, it is imperative leaders understand and can implement a variety of leadership styles. This essay will describe how an autocratic and participative leader’s style impacts organizational culture, summarize the strengths and weaknesses of each style, and explain how each leader would successfully resolve conflict.

Throughout history, there have been many systems of government that have been created, and have revolutionised todays modern forms of government. Democracy, Monarchy, Dictatorship, Theocracy, and Anarchy all use various, unique techniques on how to run a civilization. Each of them require different leadership traits in order for it to work properly.

Furthermore, there are different theories which give insights about why some leaders lead the way they do. One of these theories is the behavioral theory, it emphasized on what leaders do and their leadership styles. The behavioral theory explains three different types of leadership styles namely: autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire. An autocratic leader makes plans, gives direction on how to execute them, and makes decisions for the group. These type of leaders are highly power control. They give little or no freedom to the members. Whatever they say is final. On the other hand, democratic leaders allow members to participate in the decision making. They seek opinions of the members. On the other hand, laissez-faire leaders allow members to do whatever they like. This type of leaders does very little planning or decision making thus fail to encourage others to do it (Weiss and Tappen, 2015 p.

Six styles of leadership are going to be examined in this paper; transactional, transformational, servant, charismatic, contingency, and strategic.

Out of these three Lewin found that the best style of leadership is Democratic, Autocratic leads to an upheaval where the Liaises-Faire approach creates unmotivated individuals who lack effort. (Lewin, LIippit and White, 1939).

2. Background. The Authoritarian Leadership Theory can be defined simply as the establishment of strict, close control over followers by keeping close regulation of policy’s and procedures given to followers (Howell, 4). Authoritarian leaders set clear expectations as to what should be accomplished and how it will be accomplished. As such, the authoritarian leader fills the void as both the leader and the commander, which makes for a clear divide between the leader and follower. If executed poorly, this kind of leadership tends to lead to negative attributions towards subordinates and makes it ineffective and disruptive to the designated group (Hughes, 158).

Leadership can be defined as the ability to lead a group of people successfully in an organization. Hall, et al (2008) have mentioned that an effective leader has to be visionary, motivating and responsible in order to successfully run a business organization. In business the two key leadership styles, which are widely used in today’s corporate world are autocratic leadership and democratic leadership (Johnson, n.d.). Autocratic leadership may be explained as “a leadership style where the manager sets objectives, allocates tasks and insists on obedience” (Hall, et al 2008 p.g 401). Conversely, democratic leadership encourages “participation in decision making” (Hall, et al 2008 p.g 402). Whilst many people would consider autocratic

Autocratic leadership is a classical leadership style with the following characteristics: manager seeks to make as many decisions as possible, manager seeks to have the most authority and control in decision making, manager seeks to retain responsibility rather than utilise complete delegation , consultation with other colleagues in minimal and decision making becomes a solitary process managers are less concerned with investing their own leadership development, and prefer to simply work on the task at hand. Whereas Democratic Leadership is the leadership style that promotes the sharing of responsibility, the exercise of delegation and continual consultation. The style has the following characteristics: manager seeks consultation on all

In the past people believed that leaders are born not made. Now the definition of leadership has been changed because now we believe that leaders can be made through education. Leadership plays important part in every field and organization to achieve higher goal. According to Kelly, “leadership is a process of influence in which the leader influences others toward goal achievement” (Kelly & Crawford, 2013, p. 168). Nowadays there are many leadership theories and have different perspective and suggestion. I have chosen two theories to discuss in this paper that is Autocratic leadership theory the Transformational leadership theory. Both theories are total contradictory with each other because both have a different perspective.

Murphy (2005) maintains that leaders are accountable for helping their follower’s to become efficient and support them to develop their strengths and abilities. Distinguishing and categorising between different leadership styles can be done in several ways, (Gopee and Galloway, 2009). In this essay traditional classification of authoritian (autocratic), democratic, permissive (laissez-faire) and bureaucratic styles of leaders will be discussed.