What is Autocratic Leadership?
How command and control is giving away to thought leadership
Autocratic leadership is common throughout the animal kingdom but it is fast becoming dysfunctional and needs to be replaced by thought leadership.
An autocratic leader tells people what to do, issues orders and expects them to be obeyed. It is said to be acceptable to use an autocratic leadership style in certain situations: in an emergency and when only the leader can make the decision. For example, only the leader can decide who to hire, fire and promote. If the alternative to being autocratic is participative leadership, then it is clear that employees in most organizations don’t have a say in how much they get paid or which of them gets promoted.
Primitive Leadership
At one time all leadership was autocratic. When we were ruled by kings and emperors, they saw themselves as having a “divine right” to tell everyone what to do, on pain of death. Even more primitive than this, all higher animals form themselves into hierarchies with one dominant individual (usually male) at the top. No lower level individuals could challenge the supreme leader unless they were prepared to put their life on the line in a struggle for power.
Paternalistic Leadership
Even in modern organizations, our concept of the effective leader is very close to our image of a good father. We look up to leaders who have strong personalities, who know what they are doing and who look after us – all qualities we associate with parental figures. Research has shown that people get anxious in groups where no one person is the clear leader or where the person in charge is not as strong and confident as we would like. So, we haven’t really left our primitive animal nature very far behind.
Modern Leadership
Today, leadership still has some primitive and paternalistic elements. We now expect people in charge of us to respect our opinions and to involve us in making important decisions. But we still generally prefer only one person to be in overall charge and we want that person to live up to certain paternalistic ideals. This form of leadership, however, is breaking down because there is a conflict between the desire for leaders who know what they are doing and the realities of modern complexity and rapid change. The common way to fudge this predicament is to say that leadership no longer means calling the shots, to say instead that it means being a good facilitator and coach.
Thought Leadership
An emerging trend is to base leadership not on position but on the ability to develop and promote new ideas for better products. This leadership is no longer about being the top dog; it is more like creativity, an episodic act. On this view, the person in charge is primarily a manager not a leader. We can still look up to parental figures; we just need to stop calling them leaders.
