Sports Psychology - Leadership

There are three types of leadership styles, one is autocratic. Autocratic Leaders are task orientated and they tend to make all decisions with little or no input from the group, Autocratic leaders are motivated to get task completed quickly and as effectively as possible, this leads to high group performance but low group satisfaction. Autocratic leaders prefer either the most favourable situation or the least a favourable situation is when the Leader’s position is strong as the task is simple with clear structure, the group are warm and leader relations are good, because autocratic leaders work best when the situation has a large group, when quick decisions are required and the situation has dangerous decisions within it this is a very effective type of leadership for group performance. Another type of leadership is democratic this type of leader is Person/Social-orientated and they tend to share the decision making process with the group this is because of the belief that the ownership of the task will encourage the individual and the group to work harder, democratic leaders believe in consultation and developing inter-personal relationships however this may cause low group performance but high group satisfaction. Democratic leaders work best with less time constraints, co active sports and there is personal support required. Democratic person-orientated leaders are more effective in moderately favourable situations but they don't cope well with less favourable situations which are when the leader’s position is weak because the task is complex with vague structure and there is hostile group and leader relations however democratic leadership can have good group satisfaction although the group performance may suffer. The third and final type of leader is Laissez-faire this style of leadership involves the leader standing aside and allowing the group to make its own independent decisions. Laissez-faire can be self-implementing which happens if the leader lacks confidence or motivation which results in a loss of group direction.  This style of leadership is ineffective because members of the group have a tendency to be aggressive towards each other when mistakes occur and there is also a tendency to give up easily which can result in an unsuccessful group.