Pros and Cons of Autocratic Leadership

Directive leadership, while appropriate in many instances, is not an appropriate leadership style for American companies. Directive, or autocratic, leadership is defined as “a style of management that typically involves making important business decisions without the input of others” (Rao, pg 1, 2010). In retrospect, this style represents a strong style of leadership revolving around a single person making all of the important decisions within an organization with little or no help from other members. To fully understand why a directive leader is not useful, certain aspects of the leadership style need to be examined.

The autocratic leadership style reflects many qualities that aren’t effective for an American company. For example, a characteristic of a directive leader is that they attempt to limit time for elaborate discussions and arguments by forcefully making all decisions (Rao, pg 1, 2010). While this has the advantage of saving time of making decisions, it does not give the due diligence needed for important decisions that leaders of American companies have to face on a daily basis. This leads into another trait of autocratic leaders, which is they are the only ones that makes decisions (Rao, pg2, 2010). This puts immense amounts of responsibility on the person in charge, but also leads to decisions that may not be suited for large American companies. Basing decisions of emotion and the mind of one person does not utilize all of the resources, including colleagues, that a leader has available to him or her. Another characteristic of a directive leadership style is they do not develop their subordinates (Rao, pg 2, 2010). This means that people working underneath a directive leader do not get the proper training in order to grow within a firm and have sufficient responsibility placed upon them. As previously mentioned, directive leaders make all the decisions without consulting anyone else. People working under this leader do not have the opportunity to...