Leadership - Leadership styles - adverse behaviour
Leadership styles - adverse behaviour
Key characteristics
Autocrat
The autocratic leader likes control. He knows the business inside out and likes to be involved in all of the detail.
They may be extrovert or colourful characters who find media attention very easy.
They become a symbol for their organisation.
The entrepreneur often meets with doubters along the way to success. They can give the impression that they know it all.
This approach may work well when the organisation is small and using more simplistic systems. Once the business starts to take off and the organisation expands it becomes more complex to run and the autocrat begins to struggle.
A good leader will think about succession. In the case of the autocrat no one is really good enough to be trusted with the job.
Because of this no one is ever trusted to gain the necessary experience to eventually take over.
Bureaucrat or technocrat
These leaders are comfortable with complexity and the mechanism of management by rationality.
They are not comfortable where change is required but are happy to manage established businesses maintaining the status quo.
They tend to fear risk and change but lean towards fairness and efficiency.
Aristocrat
These people are mostly interested in position and title. Their aim in life is to reach a pinnacle of establishment recognition by title.
Ideally, they want the position but not a lot of actual responsibility or accountability.
Many governmental committee chairman are in this category.
On many occasions the person isn’t really bothered that he has little practical experience of the area provided the status is maintained.
This can be the final path in many careers.
Democrat or meritocrat
This leader tends to exhibit the good bits from the bureaucrat and the autocrat. Ideally, the democrat would like to resolve everything in a fair and even manner, like the bureaucrat, but sometimes decisions need to be made rapidly and the autocrat tends to surface.
These leaders tend to stick to the business that they know best.