Types of Leadership Styles

Autocratic Leadership

Autocracy seems to be the default setting for human beings when they achieve leadership positions. Decide and tell always appears to be the easiest and quickest way to lead.

Monarchs and dictators have existed since the beginning of time. Historically autocratic leaders have shown little interest in discussing decisions. With such powerful role models it would be only natural that those below would adopt similar leadership styles.

Autocratic leadership often upsets the people who are the victims of such arrogant behaviour. They can feel that their freedom to express themselves is suppressed. This feeling can be exacerbated when they are given unreasonable completion times for the tasks they are set.

In the business environment autocratic leaders tend to take all the decisions, shoulder all the responsibility, dislike disagreement and require constant reassurance that their instructions are being carried out. Other characteristics are: a tendency to micro-manage projects, favourites, impatience with subordinates and a conviction that, “the only good ideas are mine, even if I stole them from you.”

There are often three strengths that are part of the make-up of autocratic leaders. They tend to be decisive, prepared to take responsibility for their decisions and they can be courageous. These are qualities that all leaders require, but which can become submerged when leaders try to be discursive.

Participative Leadership

Participative leaders like to get involved in nearly everything that is going on in their organisation. The principle of this leadership style is excellent because it makes people feel involved and cared for. However, it can cause leaders to have time problems and to their becoming confused by the great variety of different ideas and solutions presented to them.

Participative leadership works well in situations which are not too time-sensitive.

It is an essential ingredient of the Transformational Leadership style, but, in my opinion, it lacks the disciplines that are an essential part of transformational leaders’ vision and motivation.

Transformational Leadership

This is the most complete style of leadership. It starts with a clear and charismatic vision of what the leader wants to achieve. This is often developed in discussion with others who will be involved.

A key point about transformational leadership is that it does not require charismatic leaders, just charismatic visions. The strengths of this leadership style are that the project can go on without the leader and the leader does not have to worry about trying to be charismatic.

The next essential difference between the transformational leadership style and the two previously mentioned is the emphasis it places on “composition.” By taking great care over all aspects of the composition of each communication the ultimate effectiveness of those communications is far greater than say a quickly dashed-off email or a brief phone call.

Transmission is the next stage of the communication cycle used by all transformational leaders. Do you notice a logical sequence of events here? The leader is taking care of all aspects of the leadership role in a natural, caring and highly effective manner.

Feedback is the element of leadership that autocratic leaders tend to avoid like the plague. They don’t want to know what people think, they just want them to do. Conversely transformational leaders both want and need to know how their communications have been received, because it is the information they get from feedback that allows them to analyse and learn so that they can continually improve all aspects of their own leadership and the steps necessary to complete any project satisfactorily.

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