Autocratic Leadership vs Transformational Leadership





Introduction

While there are a range of leadership styles employed by leaders when managing subordinates, two commonly used styles include the transformational leadership style and autocratic leadership style.  A problem in the context of HRM is when leaders go to the extreme of adapting each of these styles respectively, which results in less effective organisational decision making and lowered efficiency in team productivity (Murphy, 2019).

Autocratic leadership 

Autocratic leadership typically involves making choices on the basis of the leader’s own judgements and ideas, while rarely accepting advice from subordinates.  This leadership style involves absolute authoritarian control over the team of subordinates (Meyer, 2017).  Autocratic leadership is believed to be a good option in times of crisis when clarity, control and quick decision making is crucial.  Nevertheless, this style has largely attracted critique for leading to lower employee engagement and a toxic working environment, and remains largely unpopular among employees (Murphy, 2019).  

Transformational leadership

In contrast to autocratic leadership which is more of an authoritarian style, transformational leadership involves a leader working with the team for identifying changes required, creating a vision that guides change by inspiring team members, and executing change with support from committed members of the team (Alvinius, 2017).  While this leadership style focuses on ‘’transforming’’ others towards supporting each other and the organisation as a whole, such leaders motivate, inspire and encourage employees to engage in innovating and creating change that supports growth and shapes future success of the company.  

Notably transformational leaders inspire followers, but leave the decision making to subordinates to themselves.  However, transformational leadership is critiqued for the time-consuming process of decision-making requiring agreement of subordinates, which is less effective in crisis situations and where rapid decision making is necessary (Meyer, 2017); moreover it requires continual communication, and also needs followers to agree with the transformational leader.        

Enhancing organisational effectiveness through both autocratic and transformational leadership styles

While adapting each of these leadership styles individually is known to decrease organisational effectiveness, if leaders could adapt both these styles respectively when appropriate, it supports in obtaining more effective outcomes (Alvinius, 2017).  For instance, when rapid decision making is required leaders could adopt the autocratic style and get subordinates to follow; when group consensus is required and leaders need to inspire followers to take responsibility and make their decisions, transformational leadership is more appropriate.   

Conclusion 

Autocratic leadership is identified to assertively make decisions without involvement of followers, while transformational leadership inspires followers and leaves decision-making to them.  Notably if leaders could adapt both these styles respectively when appropriate, it supports in obtaining more effective outcomes.

References  

Alvinius, A. (2017). Contemporary Leadership Challenges. Boca Raton: CRC Press. 

Meyer, R. (2017). Leadership Agility: Developing Your Repertoire of Leadership. New York: Routledge. 

Murphy, M. (2019). Leadership Styles: How to Discover and Leverage Yours. Oxon: Routledge. 


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