Leadership

The essentials

Leadership is the process of influencing the behaviour of people so that they willingly work to achieve common goals. A leader influences followers, keeps good relations with them and helps them achieve goals. Leadership shows the ability of a person to make others follow without force.

Key points

• Importance: influences people's behaviour positively, maintains personal relations and helps followers fulfil their needs, plays a key role in introducing changes, handles conflicts effectively, and provides training to subordinates by building successors.
• Autocratic or authoritative leader: gives orders and expects them to be obeyed; decisions are made by the leader alone; communication is one-way. Useful when quick decisions are needed or when subordinates are inexperienced.
• Democratic or participative leader: develops action plans after consulting subordinates and encourages their participation; communication is two-way. Useful when employees are skilled and committed.
• Laissez-faire or free-rein leader: gives a high degree of independence to subordinates to set their own goals and methods; the leader supports them and provides information. Useful when subordinates are highly competent and self-motivated.
• Good qualities of a leader include physical features, knowledge, integrity, initiative, communication skills, motivation skills, self-confidence, decisiveness and social skills.

Exam tips

• Look at who makes the decision in the case. Leader alone means autocratic; leader with the group means democratic; group itself means laissez-faire.
• No single style is best in all situations.

Common mistakes

• Thinking the laissez-faire leader does nothing. He supports and provides resources while letting the group decide.
• Thinking democratic leaders let the group make every final decision without the leader. They consult and then decide.