Leadership Styles and Theories of Leadership
Leadership style is the way a manager behaves towards, communicates with and involves the people they manage when making decisions. The main styles studied are autocratic (the leader makes decisions alone and tells employees what to do, with little or no consultation), democratic (the leader consults employees and involves them in decision-making, which can be further split into persuasive, where the leader still decides but explains the reasoning, and consultative, where employees' views genuinely shape the decision), laissez-faire (the leader sets broad direction but leaves employees largely free to decide how to do their own work), and paternalistic (the leader makes decisions in what they believe are employees' best interests, explaining reasoning like a parent, and consulting to some degree, but ultimately deciding). Robert Tannenbaum and Warren Schmidt modelled these as points on a continuum from 'boss-centred' (autocratic) to 'subordinate-centred' (laissez-faire) leadership. No single style is correct for every situation; the appropriate style depends on factors such as the urgency of the decision, the skill and experience of the workforce, and the culture of the organisation.
Before you start
Make sure you're comfortable with these topics first:
Method
- Identify the situational factors given in the question: how urgent is the decision, how skilled/experienced are the employees, is safety involved, does the task require creativity.
- Match the factors to a style: urgent or safety-critical decisions with inexperienced staff usually suit autocratic leadership; skilled, experienced or creative staff usually respond better to democratic or laissez-faire leadership.
- State the style clearly by name before explaining it, since command words like 'identify' or 'recommend' expect a named style, not just a description of behaviour.
- Explain the mechanism by which the chosen style helps in this specific situation, e.g. autocratic leadership allows a single fast decision with no delay for consultation, which matters when time is short.
- Where relevant, link the leadership style to its likely effect on motivation, using named motivation theory (e.g. a laissez-faire style can support Herzberg's motivator of responsibility, since staff are trusted to decide how to complete their own work).
- For an evaluate question, weigh the risk of the chosen style too, e.g. autocratic leadership can be efficient but risks low morale or resentment if overused, so the judgement should be balanced, not one-sided.
Worked example
A hospital's Accident and Emergency department needs decisions made in seconds during a medical emergency, while a design agency's creative team produces its best work when given freedom to experiment with new ideas. Identify and justify an appropriate leadership style for each situation.
- For the A&E department: identify autocratic leadership as appropriate.
- Justify: in a medical emergency there is no time to consult the team or debate options, and lives may depend on a single, fast, unambiguous instruction from the most senior clinician present, which autocratic leadership provides.
- For the design agency's creative team: identify laissez-faire (or democratic) leadership as appropriate.
- Justify: creative work benefits from employees having ownership over how they approach a problem, since being told exactly what to do can stifle original ideas; a laissez-faire style, where the leader sets the brief but leaves the method to the team, is more likely to produce innovative outcomes and, per Herzberg, gives staff the motivator of responsibility that autocratic control would remove.
Practice questions
Try each question, then tap to reveal the answer.
Q1Name the four main leadership styles studied at A Level.Show answer
Answer: Autocratic, democratic, laissez-faire, and paternalistic.
Q2Which academics modelled leadership as a continuum from boss-centred to subordinate-centred leadership?Show answer
Answer: Robert Tannenbaum and Warren Schmidt.
Q3State one situation in which an autocratic leadership style is likely to be most effective.Show answer
Answer: An urgent or safety-critical situation where a fast, single decision is needed, such as an emergency.
Q4Explain the difference between persuasive and consultative democratic leadership.Show answer
Answer: In persuasive democratic leadership the leader still makes the final decision but explains their reasoning to employees; in consultative democratic leadership employees' input genuinely helps shape the decision before the leader decides.
Q5Give one likely disadvantage of a laissez-faire leadership style.Show answer
Answer: Employees may lack direction or feel unsupported, which can lead to inconsistent quality of work or missed deadlines if the team is inexperienced.
Q6State one factor that influences which leadership style is most appropriate in a given situation.Show answer
Answer: The skill and experience of the workforce (or the urgency of the decision, or the culture of the organisation).
Exam-style questions
Written in the style of a A Level Business exam paper, with a full mark scheme.
Analyse why a business might choose a paternalistic leadership style when managing its employees.
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RiverStone Logistics operates two teams. Its warehouse dispatch team must load and route delivery vans within minutes each morning, working from clear, repetitive procedures, and staff turnover is low. Its new customer-experience team has been asked to design an entirely new loyalty app from scratch, and its members are experienced professionals who have said in a survey that they feel micromanaged by their current supervisor, with 60% saying they are considering leaving. Evaluate which leadership style would most improve outcomes for each of RiverStone's two teams.
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