By E. Brown
One of the first leadership books a friend recommended I read was by Myron Rush. He was kind enough to let me read his copy. After I returned the book I searched for a personal copy. I finally found a used one on an obscure Web site that an acquaintance directed me to.
While thumbing through it the other day I was reminded of differing approaches to management. Here is an excerpt and list that I am sure you can relate to.
Leadership Styles
Definitions and descriptions of leaderships styles range from the very simple to the very complex. Leadership styles can be identified by how authority is used, how a leader relates to others, employees minds and muscles are used, and how a leader communicates.
Dictatorial Style
The leader or manager using this style operates like a dictator. He or she makes all the decisions about what, where, when, why, how things are done, and who will do them. Employees failing to following directions are usually severly disciplined or given cause for “early retirement” (as recently happened to a friend of mine).
The dictatorial leader traits are: all decision-making power is theirs, unrealistic in demands, uses excessive discipline and punishment, does not allow others to question decisions or authority
A more passive style of this is: all decision-making power is theirs, unrealistic demands clouded in humor, subtle forms of discipline and punishment, allows questions about decisions (on the surface) but ignores them, pretends to be your friend only to get their way
Authoritative Style
Because of the volatile nature of the dictatorial style, more leaders and managers opt for the authoritative style.
The authoritative leader traits are: seldom lets others make decisions, feels he/she is the most qualified and experienced, considers his/her views to be most valid, lacks confidence in others abilities, critical of differing opinions, rarely gives recognition, is easily offended, uses others for his/her benefit, action oriented, highly comtetitive
The biggest weakness of this style is the failure to recognize the skills and abilities within other people. They are often denied opportunities to use or exhibit their skills in decision-making venues.
Yet, the greatest strength of this style is to produce action when it is needed.
Consultative Style
This style focuses on using the skills, experiences, and ideas of others. However, the leader or manager using this style still retains the final decision-making power. To his or her credit, they will not make major decisions without first getting the input from those that will be affected.
The consultative leader traits are: often involve others in problem solving, team building, retains right for final decisions, focuses his/her time on more important activities, provides proper recognition, delegates but keeps “veto power”, weighs all alternatives before final decision is made
Participative Style
A unique managerial style that many feel uncomfortable with is the participative style. Most of the authority, not all, is given to the team. The manager remains the team leader.
The participative leader traits are: team member ideas or equal with the leader, everyone’s input is considered, leader is team facilitator, leader is coach/player, frequently accepts teams ideas over own, focus is on stimulating creativity, creates culture of innovation
Is there a “right” leadership style? Most manager tend to promote one over another. The fact is there is no “One style”, that one silver bullet. A good leader learns to recognize when and how to use any or all of the above the styles. We will discuss when to use each of the different styles in a following article. Until then, let me know your thoughts.
Learn more about your leadership style and the BEST four-phase framework in Creatives Lead
Related Links
– Leadership Styles: When To Use Them
– How Leadership Styles Affect Productivity
– Personality Types: Lion, Otter, Golden Retriever, and Beaver
– You Might Be A Micromanager If…
Share This With Others
WeirdGuy Creative 
Hey, I am also interested in management.
How do you know what type of Leadership a manager should use in this or that situation?
the way the leader conducts him or her self
Roman, good question. I’ll be posting the answer to that tomorrow. Keep reading and thank you for your comments. -eb
I find myself agreeing with your statement that a good – I’ll take that as consistently effective – leader is one that:
– Can use any of the styles of leadership with at least competence
– Knows when to use each style
jonolan,
As always, good comment. It is easy to gravitate toward one or two styles (in line with one’s personality) and forget to have a balanced approach. It is hard work and often, bosses do not want to do the hard work. They feel they already have and that they earned the right to be jerks or apathetic paper-pushers. No one ever said being a boss/manager was easy.
-eb
jonolan,
As always, good comment. It is easy to gravitate toward one or two styles (in line with one’s personality) and forget to have a balanced approach. It is hard work and often, bosses do not want to do the hard work. They feel they already have and that they earned the right to be jerks or apathetic paper-pushers. No one ever said being a boss/manager was easy.
-eb
eb,
I think many “bosses” never actually learned how to lead. They never had the opportunity or never chose to study the various philosophies involved in leading people. LOL! It’s bloody hard work all right.
-jonolan
jonolan,
Well said. I know of many occasions when a person has been promoted into management because they were good workers. They were never assessed for leadership skills. The promotee never thought about it either — they were glad to get the added salary. Yet, after time the truth came out.
I know of one rare occasion, when a new manager asked to be demoted because he realized he was in over his head. Kudos to him for recognizing he was working outside of his skill set. Not many like that around.
-eb
While leadership is often thought of a vague subject, it’s really a lifelong journey of self-improvement in the area of leading teams to achieving your goals. we can all improve our leadership through the study of the principles and some self-awareness and the willingness to apply these ideas in our teams.
@Chris – Well said. It is a journey and you hit on one of the more profound truths in good leaders, they are self-aware. To many leaders run about “doing things” without being very effective. That is why I am a big advocate of accountability. We always do better when someone we trust is watching. They are looking out for our best interests and not trying to play “one ups-manship.”
Thanks for the comment! -eb
I LIKE YOUR MASSEGE. AND WILL LIKE TO NO MORE
guuuuurrrrd stuff 4 business c’work!!
gud work guys. keep it up man
self involvement is the way to skills in every thing.pliz
@gavin, thanks for the feedback. If you know others that would benefit let them know about weirdblog.
Have fun!
-eb
B nd T u guys r doing a gud job
Hi this has been very healpfull thank you :D
Hi, Was just wondering if it was possible for you to include some examples of these types of leaders?
Thanks
-Kirstie
i think they should as it will help students to get examples as there are only really examples of dictatorial and i really need a consultative leader example.
Am very excited and highly motivated by your approach to these realities. I would appreciate if you give examples to these leadership realities!
You are doing good.
Thanks,
Nathan.
Hi,
in my opinion an authortative leader can produce resluts for time being, say in a specific project but the real challange to develop team and to guide them to prosper in every field is perhaps un-known to such leaders. i observe such leaders have killing instinct and they will sideline people who differ their ideas. ultimately people will stop sharing ideas and their best inputs and will wait for the time when top man will realize who is playing the fate of his company and employees, alas! till that time a compnay may have lose some very useful and productive employees. again it is just my observation such people do not have in-depth knowledge of product or dont know the planning, team building etc but they will only use their authority and will try to work fast with out sharing objective to move being taken. it is like a car running in full speed in which a person who is driving dont know how to reduce speed in case of brakes failure. instead of lowering speed and putting car in down gears that driver will keep on trying to press brakes paddle. it is too risky to give driving seat to such person.
Fascinating…undoubtedly food for thought. I hope you don’t mind if I pass this over to a couple of other folks I know.
Yes, feel free to share! I hope you find this helpful.
-eb
hi, man it needs authoritative style in family ruling
I was just searching for this info for some time. After six hours of continuous Googleing, at last I got it in your site. I wonder what is the lack of Google strategy that don’t rank this kind of informative web sites in top of the list. Generally the top websites are full of garbage.
hero
Hey every one, i am lookin for the definations of authoritative style
This may be helpful: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/authoritarian-leadership.html
-eb
authoritative style is aform of rule which involves the use deplomance in aleader feels experienced
If just help me wth my assignmt
U just help me wth my assignmt
What are the other styles of leadership apart from dictatorian leadership?
Hey Japheth, not sure I understand your question. Did you read the post and see the other styles?
How will these type of leadership affect my leadership career? I mean dictatorial leadership.
It is likely you will have some success in the short-term but not in the long-term. Dictatorial leaders tend to have high-turn over in staff. If it’s a reputable company an employee may stick around for a while to have the name on their resumé. If the company does not carry a high reputation you can expect churn. Ask your direct reports what their preferred leadership style is.
I really like what you guys are usually up too. This
type of clever work and coverage! Keep up the good works guys I’ve incorporated you guys to my personal blogroll.
With havin so much written content do you ever run into any problems of plagorism or copyright infringement?
My site has a lot of exclusive content I’ve either authored myself or outsourced but it appears a lot of it is popping it up all over the web without my agreement. Do you know any methods to help stop content from being stolen? I’d really appreciate
it.
I think the admin of this web page is in fact working
hard for his web page, because here every information is quality based data.
Hello! This is my first comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and say I really enjoy reading through your articles.
Can you recommend any other blogs/websites/forums
that go over the same topics? Thank you!
We beyond a doubt enjoy your blogs and find the majority of your point of view’s to be precisely what I’m searching for.
Does one supply guest writers to compose content available for you?
I wouldn’t mind publishing a post or elaborating on a number of the issues you write
about here. Once again, superb web site!
Thanks for the nice comment. We do have guest contributors but by invitation only. Feel free to comment and subscribe.
what do you think is more important for a leader: to achieve reform or leading people towards achieving a vision?
Good question Zarah. It’s been my experience that leading toward a vision is primary and a by-product is often achieving reform. If the vision is aspiring (and lawful) then people will rally to it. If they do not believe in the vision they will either opt out and leave or (in some cases) be terminated after a time as their negative attitude and poor performance prevail.
-eb
Am more of a consultative leader.
Researchers of a new study have investigated the association of transformational leadership and spiritual intelligence. The study finds that spiritual intelligence in its dimensions has significant correlation with Transformational Leadership. You can find the complete study here http://www.ibimapublishing.com/journals/JSAR/2013/319474/319474.html
Another aspect of Transformational leadership is servant leadership Studies and research into servant leadership is ongoing. To truly lead a group or organization one has to fit and wear many hats of the organization and apply many leadership abilities in many situations
Do you mean to say “authoritarian” style rather than “authoritative”? I’m pretty sure. Authoritarians lord over people, with power of their position. “Authoritative” means the person is an authority on a subject, has expertise on something.
Maybe not. I guess “authoritarian” leadership would be indistinguishable from “dictorial.” And “authoritative,” while less punitive, can also cause resentment… if you think your own authority is necessarily superior to others all the time. Like you’re their parent, or something. I get it….
I will right away grasp your rss as I can’t find your email subscription hyperlink or e-newsletter service. Do you’ve any? Please let me recognize in order that I could subscribe. Thanks.
Just so you know… Authoritative style is actually a great style of management. You described the Authoritarian style.
I think your definition of Authoritative is rather interesting. It’s reads more like Authoritarian; which is what a dictator is too. An Authoritative person is defined by being knowledgeable, trusted, and respected. Authoritative parents teach their children, so they can be successful independent of their parents influence, and they allow for failure as they under stand mistakes provide opportunities for improvement; rather than Authoritarian parents who dictate to their children what they will do, set high standards for them, and rely primarily on punitive measure to keep them obedient.
Look it up. You don’t appear to have an authoritative leadership style present on your list, but Consultative comes close. Perhaps authoritative might be a mixture of Consultative and Participative, depending on the circumstances.
Dictatorial is merely overtly Authoritarian: where, in general, Authoritarian leaders in the workplace utilize rather covert and underhanded manipulative techniques to control their subordinates, Dictators aren’t afraid to clearly state that what is what.
For example: one might asked to be consulted before action is taken, but otherwise not complain if things were done right, and the other would say, outright, I make the decisions around here! But both would be Authoritarian if the result of wrongful action was a harsh scolding or punishment. The later of the two is just more extreme.
On the other hand, an Authoritative leader would encourage their subordinates to make decisions on their own, but also encourage those subordinates to consult with them if they were unsure, or if the consequences of failure would be severe. Likewise an Authoritative parent may have a rule for their kids regarding the distance they can play from home, but they wouldn’t punish them severely for breaking them, they’d just impress on them the reason the rule exists: the further away you go, the less likely I can find you and help you in a timely manner if you become injured.
Across the board, Authoritative people are dramatically more democratic and nurturing and reasonable than Authoritarians… it doesn’t make any sense for them to be listed here as something else.
I think that you hit the nail on the head when it comes to explaining the different types of leadership styles. I think that good leadership is key when it comes to being successful. I have been following the career of Mark Hurd for the last few years now, since he has taken over at Oracle. I have also been impressed with his leadership and ability to turn a company around. I have closely following his statements at OpenWorld 2016 and I am excited for what he has in store and I am looking forward to the direction that Oracle is heading in the next few years.
There’s definately a great deal to learn about this topic.
I really like all of the points you made.