Lewin's Leadership Styles
Kurt Lewin
and colleagues did leadership decision experiments in 1939 and identified three
different styles of leadership, in particular around decision-making.
Autocratic Leadership
In the autocratic style, the
leader takes decisions without consulting with others. The decision is made
without any form of consultation. In Lewin's experiments, he found that this
caused the most level of discontent.
An autocratic style works when
there is no need for input on the decision, where the decision would not change
as a result of input, and where the motivation of people to carry out subsequent
actions would not be affected whether they were or were not involved in the
decision-making.
Democratic Leadership
In the democratic style, the
leader involves the people in the decision-making, although the process for the
final decision may vary from the leader having the final say to them
facilitating consensus in the group.
Democratic decision-making is
usually appreciated by the people, especially if they have been used to
autocratic decisions with which they disagreed. It can be problematic when there
are a wide range of opinions and there is no clear way of reaching an equitable
final decision.
Laissez-Faire
The laissez-faire style is to
minimize the leader's involvement in decision-making, and hence allowing people
to make their own decisions, although they may still be responsible for the
outcome.
Laissez-faire works best when
people are capable and motivated in making their own decisions, and where there
is no requirement for a central coordination, for example in sharing resources
across a range of different people and groups.
Discussion about Lewin's
Leadership Styles
In
Lewin et
al's experiments, he discovered that the most effective style was Democratic.
Excessive autocratic styles led to revolution, whilst under a Laissez-faire
approach, people were not coherent in their work and did not put in the energy
that they did when being actively led.
These experiments were actually
done with groups of children, but were early in the modern era and were
consequently highly influential.
References
http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/styles/lewin_style.htm |
