In discussing leadership, we must first define leadership. Business Basics: Organisational Behaviour (2000, pp 248) defines leadership as, "Direction or leadership is the process of influencing others to work willingly towards an organisation's goals, and to the best of their ability. So the objective for the leader is to help the organisation to achieve it's goals, but how do leaders become leaders? This will be discussed in reference to the question throughout this essay.
It would be advantageous for us to firstly look at what does make a good leader a good leader. Leaders must have certain characteristics to be a successful manager, but most important of all is adaptation. This is mainly due to the fact that every organisation is different. If we look at what type of a leader there is, we can then look into more detail about what characteristics are needed. There four types of leader according to the studies of The Research Unit of Ashridge Management College (1966). These are; Autocratic Style, or tells style, where the manager/leader tells his or her subordinates what to do (one-way communication); Persuasive Style, or sells style, where the leader still tells the subordinates what to do, but does it in a manner in which the subordinates justifies the decisions and motivates them to work; Consults Style, where the manager or leader discusses decisions with his subordinates while still retaining the right to make the decision him or herself; Democratic Style, or joins style, where the manager or leader joins the work force and a decision is made by agreement, so the workers with greater knowledge of the problem get to contribute more to the decision to rectify the problem.
In my personal experience the autocratic leader is the one that is mostly regarded as the worst type of manager as the motivation of the work force is primarily fear of losing a job, perhaps. This characteristic is sometimes needed in the work place as democratic leaders can sometimes be too democratic and not achieve the organisation's goals.