Issue

Leadership style: Harold claimed that he is a democratic leader but his actions looks more
like an autocratic leader, because he always make decision without consulting with his
employees. He just allow for only a minimal employee participation in the decision making
process and sometimes even ignore the opinions of the employees. He also showed arbitrary
control toward others and appeared to be intensive to employees concerns. Moreover, he
seldom engaged in open, two-way communications. All these shows that he is an autocratic
leader.

Impact
Harolds autocratic leadership style could damage an organization irreparably as he force his
employees to execute strategies and services in a very narrow way based upon a subjective
idea of what success looks like. There is also no shared vision and little motivation beyond
coercion. Employees commitment, creativity and innovation are typically eliminated by
autocratic leadership (Ojokuku, et al., 2012). Moreover, it also will causes the employees to
feel disconnect with this kind of leadership style and it might also decrease employee job
satisfaction in the company because most of the people will not feel happy while working at
this company.

Recommendation
In order to solve this issue, Harold should adopt democratic leadership style. To be a
democratic leader, Harold should invite his employees to contribute in the decision making
process before he make the final decision (Maitlo et al., 2012). Harold should seek advice
from his subordinates and try to reach consensus within their teams (Rotemberg and Saloner,
1993) Moreover, Harold should distribute responsibility among the membership, empower
his employees, and aid the groups decision making process (Gastil, 1994). He should also
facilitate the conversation, encourage employees to share their ideas, and then synthesize all
the available information into the best possible decision. In order to be a democratic leader,
he must also be able to communicate that decision back to the group of employees to bring
unity the plan is chosen (Ray & Ray, 2012). Therefore, Harold should be motivating,
encouraging, knowledgeable, influential, stimulating, a winner of cooperation, a provider of
logical consequences, encouraging, permitting of self-determination, guiding, a good listener
and respecting, and situation centred in order to become a democratic leader (Choi, 2007).

Benefits
Democratic leadership within the company could increase employee job satisfaction and also
help to develop peoples skill in the organisation (Maitlo et al., 2012). Moreover, this kind of
leadership style is one of the most effective style and it leads to higher productivity, better
contributions from the employees and also increase employees morale. Because the
employees are encouraged to share their thoughts, democratic leadership can lead to better

ideas and more creative solutions to problems. Moreover, the employees also feel more
involved and committed to projects, making them more likely to care about the end results
(Ray & Ray, 2012). Moreover, it will also increase employee job satisfaction because the
employees feel happy to work in company and it might also causes the employee turnover to
decrease because the employees are satisfy with their job so they would not think about
leaving the company.