6 Rules of Authoritative Leaders

6 Rules of Authoritative Leaders Authoritative Leaders are really good at setting the vision and painting an appealing picture of where we are going. The authoritative leader will not tell you how to get there, but will be inspiring you to follow. So he or she will say ‘Come with me’, ‘Look at where we are going’. When we catch someone we don’t tell them what to do, but we help people to find their own answers. A coaching style is really good to help the individual to unlock their potential. Some of the questions that we may ask in a coaching style is ‘What are you trying to achieve?’, ‘How can you get there?’. Democratic means that we share the problem space and in that sense a democratic leader will almost take a step back and denounce their leadership roles. They will ask people what they feel is the right thing to do. It has been proven that decision making by consensus is not most effective way of finding a good decision. Affiliative style is all about the harmony. It’s a very heart based style. People come first. If you are working with a team that feels a bit unsettled. Maybe, because two organizations have merged or something has happened. In that case people may not be ready to focus on the job because they are too much in the emotional part of the brain. In that case affiliative style can be really effective. As a pace setter I set a standard. ‘I will show how the job is to be done’. so I am not afraid of getting in there and really working with my team to show them how it must be done. In a long run that can be quite an exhausting style because I am here as a leader. I do it and I expect you to follow it. This is the old fashioned. Command and control management style where ‘It is my way’ or ‘No way’ or ‘You do as I tell you’. Coercive style, as you can probably imagine is not very effective in the long run because it doesn’t leave a lot of room for an individual to perform well and its not very empowering. But there is a time and place where it is appropriate. For example: In a crisis situation when a building is burning, I give you the direction to get out but we shouldn’t abuse this style because we think there is always crisis going on.