In 1939, a psychologist named Kurt Lewin with a team of researchers determined almost 3 types of leadership in the organization. It is necessary to declare these three types are essential for better leadership. In any Leadership, traits are necessary but not too exhaustive.
Leadership is an essential function of management to maximize efficiency and to achieve any organizational goal. This article is all about leadership with its 3 basic types, and it will help you in many ways. First, we must know what leadership in any organization is and how its types enable us to distinguish them.
What are 3 Types of Leadership in the Organization?
Before moving towards the 3 types of leadership in the organization, let us learn about leadership in detail so you can better understand its types, their example, and characteristics and execute them better in your company.
What is Leadership?
Leadership is an inter-personal process by which an executive can direct, guide, and help influence the attitude and work of other people towards accomplishing your specific goals in any situation. The manager can induce all subordinates to work with passion and confidence.
Leadership is also known as the capacity to influence a group towards the realization of the goal. Leaders have to motivate all organization members and develop and achieve future visions. It is the potential to influence the behavior of other people or organization members.
If you are interested in leadership studies, there are 3 types of leadership in the organization named as Autocratic, Democratic, and the third one is Laissez-Faire. It is clearly said that leadership plays a significant role in the success or failure of any organization.
Researchers have identified 3 archetypical types of leadership or leadership styles in organization and management, which help you describe most of the leaders in most situations.
These types help you to recognize how you prefer to lead an essential aspect of command. To the end, let’s discuss here these three types of leadership briefly.
1. Autocratic Leadership
Autocratic leadership is also named authoritarian leadership, characterized by individual control over all decisions and little input from group members.
These leaders do not take an interest in listening to any opinion or suggestion of their underlings and are not interested in opening the decision-making process to the whole group. Aside from all things, they choose to bear the leadership tag completely alone.
These are the leaders who expect those who fall in their authority to either follow their orders or make a separate room for someone else who can do that. They use their ideas, and generally, they are unwilling to accept advice from their underlings.
Example
Queen Elizabeth and Napoleon Bonaparte fall into Autocratic leadership. In this type, leaders do exercise altogether and authoritarian control over a group or organization.
Characteristics of Autocratic Leadership
Autocratic leaders can improve their efficiency and rate of productivity by streamlining the work process. There are some significant advantages of an autocratic leadership style that are following here.
- Autocratic leaders create firm deadlines and generally have a clear set of expectations from their subordinates.
- They can quickly decide in any crisis or emergency and implement responses without gaining the support of the rest of the team.
- Because of their unwillingness to delegate, these leaders can cut down all kinds of misunderstandings that arise when information & directives are passed through many layers of management.
- Due to their better training and supervising skills, subordinates become more productive and better trained.
Autocratic leadership contains leaders who make their own decisions based on their ideas and judgments. They rarely take advice from other group members. An autocratic leader has complete control of the team, leaving low autonomy within the group.
2. Democratic Leadership
Democratic leadership can also be named participative leadership or shared leadership. In this type of leadership, all group or organization members take a participative role in the decision-making process. This kind of leadership can be applied in any organization.
In democratic leadership, everyone has the best opportunity to participate, share and exchange freely, and always encourage discussion. But in the democratic process, the leader should focus on group equality and free flow of ideas.
Researchers have found that democratic leadership is the most effective type, leading to a higher productivity rate, better contribution from all group members, and increased morale. Democratic leaders depend on the group’s participation and put a great deal of value in all expertise.
Example
General Dwight Eisenhower and Nelson Mandela are great and successful leaders who fall under the democratic leadership category. In this type, the leader retains all final responsibilities for the group or organization’s decisions.
Characteristics of Democratic Leadership
Some of the main characteristics of democratic leadership are following
- Group members are fully encouraged to share or exchange their ideas and opinions, even though the leader retains the final decision.
- All group members feel more engaged in the whole process.
- In a democratic leadership style, creativity is warmly encouraged and rewarded too.
According to the researchers, democratic leaders possess specific traits including honesty, intelligence, creativity, courage, competence, ad fairness. These leaders are sincere enough while making decisions that are based on their morals and values.
3. Laissez-Faire Leadership
Laissez-Faire leadership is a hands-off behavior that allows its followers to set their own rules and make decisions. Laissez-Faire leadership is the most effective type of leadership when you are supervising a team of highly skilled people.
In most cases, team members of a group or organization will have higher skills than you or even be skilled in a specific area you are completely unfamiliar with.
Laissez-Faire leadership means that subordinates and team members have real lead as their leaders give guidance and have the ability to take responsibility where needed. Leaders of this type of leadership have a better attitude of trust and resilience on employees.
Example
All economic policies held by capital countries and retail buying are businesses that thrive with Laissez-Faire leadership. The entertainment industry also contains Laissez-Faire leaders.
Characteristics of Laissez-Faire Leadership
Laissez-Faire leadership is also famous as delegative leadership. There are some significant characteristics of Laissez-Faire leadership including.
- In Laissez-Faire leadership, employees can make decisions
- It contains full access to many resources and tools.
- Leaders take charge when it is needed
- It is an effective type of leadership as in Laissez-Faire leadership; leaders take responsibility for overall actions or decisions.
- There is a need for little guidance from leaders
Moreover, these kinds of characteristics may be found in other leadership styles as many elements of leadership are usually fluid and work across management styles.
Final Words
Leadership is a group process where two or more two people interact with each other. There are 3 types of leadership in an organization that helps to denote some qualities present in a person, including intelligence, personality, and maturity.
This article will surely help you study or understand all 3 types of leadership in the organization. Any leadership talks about the leaders who must find an organization where they feel comfortable environment.