Autocratic Leadership Style. Introduction. Each Individual

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

Leadership is, and always has been, a vital aspect of social and economic constructs. It is essential to the survival of societies, industries, organizations, and virtually any group of individuals that come together for a common purpose. However, leadership is difficult to define in a single, definitive sense. As such, theories of leadership, what constitutes a great leader, and how leaders are made have evolved constantly throughout history, and still continue to change today in hopes of improving upon our understanding of leadership, its importance, and how it can be most effective in modern organizational cultures.

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).

Our societies, countries and the world at large are not enjoying the best of leaders and leadership today because bad leadership style such as authoritarian leadership style. In this type of leadership styles, citizen especially in the under developed and developing countries such as in leader and a where the leader believes that all power resides in him, an donly him has the power to make decision and exercise control, reward and publish instead of a democratic management style. Such organisations or countries is always a failure.

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.

Autocratic Approach: Autocratic leadership gives a positive belief about the updates about any policies. However this kind of approach is not highly regarded by many of the working environments. This is due to the amendments being brought into use prematurely for the uses to access them. This approach of leadership and management may be viewed as being too authoritative.

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.

Autocratic leadership also has advantages and disadvantages. In an autocratic environment, the leadership role is usually thrust upon a person. The decisions are solely made by the leader. The actions done by the subordinates, heavily put the responsibility of the action on the leader (Myers, D., 2012). Another pro is that the leader is more experienced than the subordinates therefore they have more insight and knowledge. There is a clear hierarchy. This allows everyone to know whom to report to. There is also no need to waste time with votes like in a democratic leadership (Myers, D., 2012).

Authoritarian leaders are the leaders who like to do all the group decisions on their own and tell other group members what to do and how to do it. This type of leadership is very beneficial when you are in need of a quick decision or faced with some type of crisis. This type of decision making can easily be abused and can often be viewed as being bossy and over controlling. Leaders who use this style may provoke dependence, criticism, dissatisfaction, and aggression from their group members (Forsyth, 1990). According to Gladding 2012, authoritarian leaders do not ask for consideration or suggestions from group members; instead, they structure and direct their groups according to their own wishes, purposes, and the information available to them. A task group could benefit more from an Authoritarian leader. Tasks groups focus on accomplishing specific goals. According to Gladding 1994, “with task groups, an

As harsh as it indeed sounds, there is a place in management for this leadership style. According to Nwlink.com, it works best when there are deadlines to be met, and time is short. The other instance that the authoritarian, or autocratic, style is appropriate is when an employee, or group of workers, is new, and training must take place.

There are many different examples of leadership qualities in the Lord of The Flies, shown by Ralph and Jack. Ralph was one we could call “for the people”, however Jack was the opposite, only looking out for himself. Ralph is made a strong democratic leader in the book, who listens, and cares about all the boys, while Jack is a strong autocratic leader, who doesn’t care and will not listen to the other boys. Not asking or taking any input from group members, making sole decisions, not letting group members participate in important tasks, and the leaders dictating the work, all these are examples of characteristics of autocratic leadership style. This leadership style can be beneficial in the sense of making quick decisions, because autocratic

My father once told me that, “everything we do— be it in academia, at work, social or family life—we are guided by principles, beliefs and values that collectively form our ideology of life.” I believe that every leader, to a certain extent, is shaped through her individual personal experience. Although in some cases, we may not realize to what extent our personal assumptions and beliefs shape our ability to lead or be led.

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

Many leaders who start pursuing leadership development are often trying to improve upon their organisations autocratic leadership style.

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.