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Pros And Cons Of Democratic Leadership

1308 Words6 Pages

Alma Monge
Prof. Joan Ready
BSC407_08_MM: The Effective Organization
6 August 2015

According to Cherry (n.d.), the democratic leadership style is also know as participative leadership specifically because individuals forming part of the group are able to have a more participative function in the group’s decision-making processes. All members of the group are able to participate as they please given the free exchange of opinions and ideas, and the continuous encouragement of discussion about group issues and projects. Democratic leadership is characterized by the promoting of team members’ sharing of ideas and opinions but with the leader(s) preserving the final word about the team’s decision-making.
The democratic leadership style’s …show more content…

Even though this style of leadership may be considered archaic, it still offers many benefits to current teams and their goal-achieving processes. The major pros of the autocratic leadership style, as stated by Joseph (n.d.) are:
- Quick decision-making processes. Since the leader is the only one who makes decisions through this style of leadership, there is no waste of time. The leader is the sole responsible for the decision made and therefore it can be made quickly in order to keep up with the competition or prevent problems.
- There is close oversight of subordinates. Because of the former, it is harder for team members to get derailed and waste time and other resources since the leader is attentive to most activities taking place within the …show more content…

In both leadership styles, the leader is the one to ultimately have the last word in the decision-making process. In both, group members are delegated activities and, although they are more scrutinized under an autocratic leadership style, they cannot be monitored 24/7, therefore leaders eventually have to give their subordinates some space to fulfill their activities. Both type of leaders have to offer guidance for their subordinates since they will not always clearly understand the activities delegated to them. Therefore, both type of leaders have to be clear and objective when assigning tasks and activities to their subordinates. Also, both leadership styles are similar in that they cannot be implemented in all scenarios. For instance, democratic leadership style would not work in a military scenario and an autocratic leadership style would not work in a charitable association

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