Autocratic Leadership

Leadership research started in the 1930’s Lewin Lippitt and White wrote an article in 1939 in the Journal of Social Psychology. That many researchers still cite as the big first study that kicked off this area of research Lewin and his co-authors asked the question in their study, “Is not the Democratic group life more pleasant but authoritarianism more efficient?”

People then and now have a lot of opinions about the different styles of leadership. Lewin and his co-authors set out to get some research driven answers to these questions. I will look at more of their research in a moment to help visualize it, there are some well-known autocratic leaders in movies like “Darth Vader” from “Star Wars”, “Captain Sobel” in “The band of brothers”, and “Miranda Priestly” in “The Devil Wears Prada” played by Meryl Streep. These are obviously exaggerations, but they all have autocratic tendencies in common. A basic description of the autocratic style goes like this. It is an authoritarian boss centered approach to leadership and management.

The term autocratic is perhaps more commonly used than the term authoritarianism, but essentially, they mean the same thing. These leaders assume full control of the group, the goals, and the decisions. These leaders centralized decision-making and power some researchers describe this approach as an absolute control approach for the leader over the entire operation. When it comes to communication, it's no surprise that they have a top-down approach, and they dictate instructions, policies and activities to the group. They expect followers to comply. It is a control compliance relationship.

These leaders take little or no input from group members. They are not asking followers for their feedback. They make decisions based upon their own perspective of a situation when it comes to decision making. I picture the autocratic leader coming into a room and just telling people what to do in terms of how they relate to followers’ autocratic leaders establish a high-power distance between themselves and everybody else. There are clear unequal power dynamics going on between the leader and the followers. And that is because these leaders rely heavily on their positions of authority French, and Raven call this legitimate authority. When you are an official manager, you have a job description that explains your official authority and responsibilities that come with that position. The autocratic leaders’ power in other words comes from their job title. In contrast autocratic leaders do not rely on their strong relationships and influence on lead. You do not usually see autocratic leaders socializing and connecting with their followers in warm ways. They do not eat meals together with subordinates for example they do not get to know them personally very much. They distance themselves relationally from others in ways that show that inequality.

So, let us talk more about the research by Lewin and his co-authors. These authors did experiments leading groups of 10-year-olds in fact. And to me it is interesting that this research started with a teacher-student dynamic. If you think of the various teachers that you have had over your life, it is possible that some of them had an autocratic style. The children were put into several small groups and they were asked to perform various tasks like making theatrical masks painting murals carving soap and making model airplanes.

The adults then acted as the teachers and used a variety of leadership styles with those groups, autocratic democratic and lazy fare styles. The researchers then watched how the children responded to the different leadership styles. They also interviewed the children and to get their perspective on how their experience was under each leader. So, what exactly did they find? Well, this early research had mixed results, but it laid the foundation for how we still to this day think about autocratic leaders. Under autocratic leaders followers were more aggressive toward each other. And some versions of the experiments, the children were 30 to 40 times more aggressive than they were under a Democratic leader. This was at times a general aggression among all the group members, but was sometimes focused on one particular group member, where say four members of the group ganged up on a person, a scapegoat, to the point where that participant quit the group. Participants tended to be more productive when the autocratic leader was watching them, and directly supervising them. But there was usually a sharp rise in aggression when the autocratic leader left the room.

And other experiments participants were much more resigned and apathetic, and they did get aggressive under an autocratic leader. They basically shut down. So, in terms of strengths and weaknesses let us start with these strengths. This style can be useful when a quick decision, a decisive decision is necessary. For example, when there is a crisis, there's not enough time to gather everybody together and get lots of feedback. Sometimes a delayed decision will be much worse than the leader just deciding on their own. It is also useful when you have low-skilled workers who essentially need to be told what to do. And this aligns with part of what Hersey and Blanchard model of situational leadership says.

When a follower has low skill and low motivation their model says you must focus almost entirely on tasks and using directive communication. Also, when there is a leadership void and people lack direction then it's better to have an autocratic leader. Also, if there is already lots of conflict an autocratic leader can basically suppress the conflict among participants in the short run. This does not solve the underlying problem that is causing the conflict, but this can be used to contain conflict in the short run. So, autocratic leadership may not be your favourite style, but it is still a style that works under certain circumstances, at least in the short run. However, in the long run, many people believe that the drawbacks clearly outweigh the advantages.

This is a very demanding and stressful style for both leader and follower. It requires constant hands-on attention, because followers will wait to be told what to do. That's the norm this style establishes. The leader gives orders and subordinates comply with those orders. Most followers won't take initiative under an autocratic leader, and participants make more persistent demands for attention from autocratic leaders. So since followers are not taking action on their own, leading this way requires constant pressure for the leader and the followers.

Also, followers will work hard when the boss is watching that is true which is a positive aspect of this, but they act out when the leader leaves the room, when the leader literally steps out of the room. Another problem is turnover which is very expensive. Followers are more likely to exit a group or an organization when they are working under an autocratic leader. This has been shown in a 2004 article by van gut Jepsen and Hart in the Journal of experimental social psychology.

Footnote :: This is a video transcript article, Original source - Alex Lyon's | Autocratic Leadership Style