The Effectiveness of Autocratic and Democratic Leadership Styles

In this reflective essay I will analyse my own leadership style, which turned out to be completely different from what I thought it would be. Before beginning the group presentation task, I completed the Mindtools test, which after answering a series of questions lets you know the kind of leader you are. I answered according to the way I thought I would act upon facing difficulties. I thought I would be fair-minded, team-oriented, egalitarian… resulting in acting as a democratic leader. After working with the team for 4 weeks, I completed the test again, this time answering according to the way I had actually acted. This time the result was autocratic leader, due to having made most of the decisions on my own, having little trust in my teammates. In order to analyse how and what I’ve learnt about my leadership skills I will make use of Kolb’s experiential learning cycle. Kolb maintains that “learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience” (1984, p 26). Therefore, the cycle helps learn from experience; it consists of 4 different stages to the learning process: 1st concrete experience which describes the situation, 2nd reflective observation, 3rd abstract conceptualisation meaning relating theory and practice and 4th active experimentation, taking what has been learnt and applying it in future situations.

The first incident that helped develop my leadership skills occurred due to the lack of motivation of my team members. When forming the groups in class, rather than getting up and talking to everyone, we all stayed where we were and only talked and formed groups with those around us, this really limited our possibilities of finding people we would really like to work with with whom we would have had better communication with. After this, we had to distribute the tasks and start working on them, the problem presented itself when I discovered the apathetic attitude of my teammates and how they were not putting any effort into the group project. This was very frustrating as it seemed like nobody cared about the presentation and led me to be the one who delegated the tasks and told each member what to do. To reflect on this experience, I asked myself some questions: Why were my teammates not participating? Could I have done something else? Looking at it from my partners’ perspective, it is easy to comprehend that the reason for not collaborating was the lack of motivation they had. Knowing this, I realise that I should have taken another approach when dealing with the problem; as the one I took, although did work as we got the presentation done, did not improve their motivation or ambition to work.

Going through the third stage in Kolb’s cycle, I am able to understand that the approach I took when dealing with this difficulty was that of an autocratic leader, which Lewin (1930s) considers to be someone who doesn’t accept input from others for decision making, makes all the group decisions, and shows a lack of trust in the ideas of others. This kind of leadership does not motivate team members, does not encourage them to participate and therefore was not the best approach when dealing with the problem. Looking back, whilst at the same time thinking about how to deal with this problem in the future, it would have been better to act as democratic leader; Someone who according to Gastil (1994) distributes responsibility, empowers group members and aids the group’s decision-making process. This kind of leadership helps motivate members of the group and encourages them to participate which would have solved the problem we were facing.

Another incident that we faced due to the lack of communication and time occurred a few days before we had to present in front of the whole class. We had no template and all the information was still in word format rather than summarized and plastered on slides. There was no time for the group to meet and discuss how each of us wanted the presentation to look like, or any ideas that we might have had for the presentation. Therefore, in order to solve this, I decided to tell each group member which part of the presentation they had to work on; thus, acting as an autocratic leader, who doesn’t take the team members into account when making decisions, once again. This proved to be very effective as in the end we got the presentation done and it worked out well. Although I would have liked to ask my colleagues for help and listen to their input as a democratic leader would have done, we were running out of time and it was imperative we finished the slides on time for the presentation.

This proves what schaeffer (2002) maintains, when a business needs to change fast, it is more important to decide and get people moving rather than attempt to influence others to come around your way of thinking. Therefore, for the future, I will always involve my colleagues in the decision-making process, thus acting like a democratic leader, as long as there is enough time and allows the group to meet its targets. Maner (2016) said “Being maximally effective as a leader means being able to diagnose the situation and adopt the leadership approach that works best.” This is the kind of leader I aspire to be in the future. Although most of the time I would like to act as democratic leader, applying what I have learnt from this project and Kolb’s experiential learning cycle; changing the way I react to situations to include teammates and not do everything on my own. As proved by the second situation previously explained, it is necessary to act as an autocratic leader in certain situations even if it is not the most popular or well received approach.