Compare Democratic and Autocratic Leadership

Leadership, a crucial element in business, can be defined as “a process of influencing the activities of an organized group toward goal achievement” (Yukl, 2013, p.76). There are four main types of leadership styles: the autocratic, democratic, paternalistic and laissez-faire leadership styles. Daft (2008, p.44) suggests that “the extent to which leaders should be boss-centered or subordinate-centered partly depends on organizational circumstances.” After taking into account the organizational circumstances, companies should be able to select suitable types of leadership styles. Therefore, it is worth arguing that the democratic style of leadership should be applied more frequently than the autocratic style of leadership, for example, in companies adopting flat organizational structure. Power division, followers’ motivation and decision quality in both styles are compared in the following essay. Before proceeding to the comparison and contrast, it is necessary to firstly explain the autocratic and the democratic leadership styles. In autocratic leadership style, leaders have full authority over others in making decisions. (Salem, 2013) Not only do leaders monitor the efforts of the followers, but often they track followers’ schedules closely as well. (Leadership-toolbox, 2008) On the other hand, democratic leaders share authority with followers and pay attention to participation in order to complete the allocated tasks. (Salem, 2013) Participation can be persuasive and consultative, which implies “facilitating the conversation, encouraging followers to share ideas, and then synthesizing all the available information into the best possible decision.” (Leadership-toolbox, 2008) Companies in flat organizational structure which has relatively few layers of management can obviously work better if applying the democratic leadership style. Turning to the section of power, the level of power division in the two leadership styles differs. Regarding to the autocratic

References: Daft, R. L., (2008) “Autocratic versus Democratic Leadership”, The Leadership Experience, 4th edition, Mason: Thomson Evans, M House, R. J., (1971) “The Path-goal Theory of Leadership”, Contingency Approaches to Leadership, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press Johnson, D