A concrete leadership style is essential to helping your organization and its employees succeed. Company leaders and those interested in pursuing leadership must identify their primary leadership style to understand how they want to guide their company.
An authoritative leader has unique strengths and characteristics that allow them to foster company growth. Knowing the characteristics and benefits of authoritative leadership is essential to determine if this style is best for you. This article will describe everything about authoritative leadership before implementing a leadership style.
Our four-point guide to authoritative leadership:
1. What is authoritative leadership?
Authoritative leadership, not to be confused with authoritarian leadership is a leadership style that takes a hands-on approach to guide an organization and its employees. Authoritative leaders act as mentors for their employees and work to inspire their teams. Often referred to as visionary, authoritative leaders take the lead and encourage their employees to follow, guiding their teams them toward collective success.
Authoritative leadership is hands-on, the leader charts a course and encourages their employees to follow and grow along with them.
Authoritative leaders motivate their teams to do their best and ensure that employees have a clear direction in work, along with offering guidance for those uncertain of their performance. Authoritative leaders offer feedback that is motivating rather than overly-harsh criticism.
Authoritative leadership relies on communicating and getting along with team members. Open communication, understanding, and familiarity with one another are essential to a successful authoritative leadership strategy. Authoritative leaders help their teams succeed and encourage them to keep trying when they make mistakes.
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2. How authoritative leadership can change you and your career
Authoritative leadership can help you grow your career and strengthen employee relationships. If your career requires quick turnarounds for projects, experiences emergencies, or wants to boost productivity, authoritative leadership can help you guide your team to handle whatever comes your way.
Authoritative leadership can help create a more efficient work environment and encourage high-quality, error-free work. As an authoritative leader, you learn to make quick decisions and always think ahead, which is incredibly valuable to any business. An authoritative leadership style can help you act fast while paying attention to detail and guiding your employees to follow your lead.
Additionally, authoritative leadership can boost your career by encouraging stronger bonds between you and your employees. By positioning yourself as an authoritative figure, you ask your employees to trust you to guide them. A deeper bond is formed between everyone in your workplace by putting their trust in you.
Authoritative leadership encourages you to take an empathetic approach and requires that you understand and validate employee emotions while guiding them down the right path. Authoritative leadership strengthens your work ethic and helps you envision your organization’s future.
3. The benefits of using an authoritative leadership style
You and your organization can grow exponentially with a successful approach to authoritative leadership. An authoritative leadership strategy can lead to consistently high-quality, accurate, and timely work. Below are the primary benefits of authoritative leadership to consider if you are interested in adopting this leadership style.
Authoritative leadership provides clarity
One of the primary benefits of authoritative leadership is its ability to provide clarity within an organization. Authoritative leaders give their teams a clear and actionable vision of the company’s goals and growth potential. Authoritative leaders understand the company and can strategize and think ahead to prepare for the organization’s future.
Authoritative leadership is also beneficial because it encourages open communication when something isn’t clear. Employees can follow the guidance of an authoritative leader when they are confused or conflicted over their tasks. The authoritative leader oversees everything to guarantee everyone is on the same wavelength and moving toward the same goal.
Authoritative leadership encourages trust and empathy
Authoritative leadership is beneficial to encouraging trust between you and your employees while remaining empathetic to their struggles. Authoritative leadership requires that you inspire your employees and form a bond with them to ensure that they trust your vision for the company. Authoritative leaders can encourage employees to follow them willingly through positive reinforcement and a visionary approach. With solid trust between the leader and employees, authoritative leadership can be successful.
Authoritative leadership is the perfect fit for organizations where employees require a clear direction and knowledge of their work. This style encourages high-quality work and helps employees perform their best. Employees will follow an authoritative leader when they trust the leader to guide them toward success.
Authoritative leadership promotes consistent results in less time
Authoritative leadership sets clear standards and guidelines for an organization’s employees. When implemented successfully, authoritative leadership will promote consistent, high-quality results in less time than before. With your guidance, employees can confidently take on any task and develop new strategies to achieve their work goals.
By confidently leading your team toward a unified vision, you can ensure success and achieve your organizational goals. Additionally, authoritative leaders know how to take quick action and make decisions to promote high-quality results that take less time to complete. A comprehensive authoritative leadership plan will guarantee that your work is on time, every time.
4. How can you become an authoritative leader?
To begin your journey towards authoritative leadership, you must identify the strengths and weaknesses in your organization. Authoritative leaders should focus on addressing the weaknesses in their current organization, such as late work, unmotivated staff or unclear expectations. Identifying what needs to change will help you define a plan to tackle these issues.
Becoming an authoritative leader also requires interacting and communicating with your employees as often as possible. Authoritative leaders cannot take on the detached style of delegative leadership–overseeing everything and getting involved with your team is essential. Knowing your team members and their strengths can help you address their unique contributions to your organization and determine a path forward.
When developing an authoritative leadership plan, ensure you know why you’re taking specific actions. This style might be new to many of your employees, and they will likely ask questions. As you guide them through the process and toward success, be prepared to explain issues you’ve noticed and detail how your solution will benefit them and the organization.