Autocratic Leadership Style Essay

A leader is anyone who uses interpersonal skill to influence others to achieve goals of the organization. According to Sullivan and Decker (2010),” the functions of a leader are to achieve a consensus decision making within the group about its goal, maintain a structure that facilitates accomplishing the goal, supply necessary information that will help to provide direction and clarification, and maintain group satisfaction, cohesion, and performance”. Leadership is the process of guiding, motivating, directing, influencing, and teaching the activities of others towards achieving the goals of the organization. As businesses today strive to improve their performance in the context of a world that is changing around them, leadership and organizational

This type of leadership style can be useful when quick decisions are required without consulting a large group of people. It also allows the members of the group to focus on a specific task without worrying about making decisions and it also helps the member to expertise, in particular task which will help them in future. However, autocratic leadership can be useful at times but in some situations, it can be problematic. Many researchers believe that autocratic leadership often leads to lack of a creative solution to the problems as all the decisions are made by the leader without consulting any member of the group. This style can be used efficiently if the leader has the access to the required information that other members of the group don’t have. Democratic leadership plays an important role in enhancing job performance and creating job satisfaction. In this type of leadership, employees participate in the process of decision making which will lead to creative solutions to address problems and to improve organizations performance. Team members are supportive under this type of leadership as everyone’s opinion is considered so there are no conflicts between the members. However, this type of leadership is time-consuming. For instance, if an organization has to complete a project, leaders cannot work without consulting each and everyone from the group to collect their opinions. This consumes a lot of time and leaders find it difficult to achieve his goals on time. Lassiez-Faire or Free-rein leadership or it is also known as the delegative leadership style. This style is effective in situations where all members of the group are highly motivated and capable of working on their own without any support. This style doesn’t work in situations where members of the group don’t have the required knowledge to complete the task or to make decisions. In such situations project cannot be completed if the team