What are characteristics and applications of Autocratic Leadership?

Characteristics

1. Power and Authority

• The leader has all the power and authority to make decisions on any topics.
• The leader assigns all the task and delegates responsibilities to their group member without consulting them.
• In this style of leadership, leaders believe more in giving rewards and punishment rather focusing on motivating employees.
• The leader takes all responsibilities and credit of the accomplished task.
• The leader has no confidence in their employee’s ability and closely supervises and controls them.

2. Morale values and Creativity

• Since all powers and authority lies in the hands of the leader, subordinates becoming heavily dependent on the leader.
• There is no creativity and innovation.
• In this style of leadership empowerment of employees are not taken into consideration.
• This type of leadership create stress and fear in the employees.

3. Communication and Interaction

• Leaders rarely take any inputs from their subordinates hence communication in this type of leadership is of one-way communication.
• Since everything is very straightforward hence there is no communication gap.
• Since there is no communication gap hence tasks are done quickly.
• The leader doesn’t ask for any kind of feedback.

4. Repressive Leadership type

• This style of leadership is of dictator or bossy type leadership.
• The leader has no faith and confidence in their employee. This creates a lack of trust among employees and the leader.
• Employees have no right to give suggestion and just have to follow their leader.

Application

1. Where to use:
   • This style of leadership is used in an organization where strong centralized control is required. For example in a Military organization.
   • Organization in which there are fixed set of rules and structure.
   • An extremely large number of employees is to be handled.
   • Organizations in which employees are new, inexperienced, lack of qualification and lack of skills.
2. When it is used:
   • When quick decisions are required.
   • It is used during emergencies and dangerous situation.
   • It is used when poor performance of employees need to be corrected.

For more information click below:

• Different types of leadership
• Democratic leadership