What Is Autocratic Leadership Style?

Great leaders come from all walks of life. Effective leaders can communicate, motivate, handle and delegate responsibility to their team. To be a great leader you must practise and build leadership skills. Employers also seek these skills in the candidates they hire for leadership roles. A great leader builds leaders.

Whether one is a team leader, business executive or supervisor all professionals occupying professional roles are required to possess strong leadership skills. The autocratic leadership style is a well-known leadership style among other leadership styles such as democratic, transformational, charismatic and many more.

A leadership style that will prevail the most this year

The most prevailing leadership style this year would be the Autocratic Leadership Style. The autocratic leadership style is a well-known leadership style among other leadership styles such as democratic, transformational, charismatic and many more. In addition to it, the well-known president of the roman empire like Augustus to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, several leaders follow the autocratic leadership style. It is one of the well-known leadership styles that is used during the covid pandemic crisis.

Check it out – 10 Ways to Become a Good Autocratic Leader in VUCA World

What is Autocratic Leadership Style?

Autocratic Leadership is a leadership style where an individual takes control of decision-making and manages the subordinates with little or no input. Thus, Autocratic Leaders takes decisions based on their own beliefs, ethics and values. Generally, They do not seek advice from others and work according to their knowledge and experience. The autocratic leadership style is use by the autocratic leaders in the modern world to take control and push the team forward and not for misuse.

Characteristics of an Autocratic Leader

Most of the autocratic leaders who follow the autocratic leadership style are dominating and bossy in most situations. Let us take a look at the characteristics of an Autocratic leader:

Leader’s Tip
Strike a balance between authority and empathy by valuing teamwork and taking into account the viewpoints of others.

1. Confident

Leaders need to be confident and believe in themselves, the world will follow a confident leader’s ideas and actions. Also sometimes an autocratic leader tends to get overconfident and with no room for discussions and ideas which will have a negative impact on the team members. This might affect the productivity of the individual which could lead to the downfall of an organisation.

2. Structured

Autocratic leaders are mainly organize in their approach to the tasks. The working environment is highly disciplined to the point of rigidity and this leadership style helps in completing tasks quickly. The work environment can be overly strict in this style.

3. Decisive

This is one of the main characteristics of this leadership as the decision-making is really quick since the leader himself takes the final call. Quick decision making is of great importance, especially during this pandemic or crisis. Hence, Taking the right decision considering calculated risk makes the work environment a better place.

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A person always doing his or her best becomes a natural leader, just by example. 

Joe Dimaggio

Advantages

Three major advantages of having an autocratic leadership style in an organisation are:

1. Quick decision-making

In an autocratic leadership style, there are fewer levels of hierarchy, due to which there are fewer stakeholders that must be kept informed of each decision. In addition, there is less feedback from different levels of management that must be analysed. Since there is a one-person in charge, the decision-making process is fast and helps to achieve the goals quickly.

2. Helps in crisis management

Autocratic eldership is the best leadership style for dealing with crises because, the leader is in complete charge of the situation and focused on solving problems, facing all the challenges and navigating hierarchy.

3. Structured and disciplined approach

In this leadership style, everything is properly structured and defined. The processes of discipline in work and involved work standards are clearly defined ensuring the team and organisation move together.

 Disadvantages

Three major disadvantages of an autocratic leadership style are:

1. Lack of creativity

A team can come up with several ideas as compared with a single person. This gives more room for feedback, discussion, and improvement in processes with an opportunity for everyone to be creative. Creativity and innovation will help businesses to grow faster in the long run.

2. Less room for employment growth

There is no room for idea discussion and also, there is less hold on decision-making. The feedback consideration is also less for any project. Since the leader has full control, team members might not get a chance to improve their skills, essential for an individual.

Leader’s Tip
Encourage team members to share their thoughts, lay out clear goals, and include them in decision-making when it makes sense to do so as ways to foster open communication.

3. Discourage ideas and inputs

And at last, In this leadership you will see fewer discussions and meetings on work implementations, which gives little room to discuss new inputs and ideas. Since autocratic leaders make the final call, they might reject ideas based on their personal preferences, which may discourage team members from giving new ideas.

FAQs

Key Takeaways

• Autocratic leadership is characterised by a top-down organisational system in which leaders make choices with little or no input from subordinates.
• Autocratic leadership has its place, but it should be tempered with empathy and team dynamics should be taken into account.
• Create a more cooperative and enthusiastic workplace by c) encouraging open communication and involving team members as necessary.