IssueLeadership 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 Harold’s 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 group’s 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).

BenefitsDemocratic leadership within the company could increase employee job satisfaction and also help to develop people’s 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.