Leadership in Groups and Teams

According to the Essential Guide to Group Communication, there are four different main styles of leadership. Authoritarian, consultative, participative, and laissez-faire.  Each style has many different advantages and disadvantages associated with them.

Authoritarian leadership is defined as the exercise of control by the leader without input from other group members.  This style of leadership allows for faster decisions but only take in one persons point of view, the leaders.  It can cause problems that could be corrected by asking for peoples opinions.  This type of leadership is displayed in communist countries where the citizens have to follow orders of their leader.

Consultative leadership bases decisions upon the opinions or ideas of group members.  Unlike authoritarian leadership, this type of leadership takes in their counterparts opinions and ideas to allow the leader to come up with a decision based off his opinions and his fellow peers.

Participative leadership involves a leader working with his fellow workers or group members to achieve a goal.  This type of leader enjoys to work with his workers and use their opinions and ideas along with theirs to accomplish a task or goal. Yes it may take longer to accomplish, but it will be more in depth.  Personally, this would be my go to leadership style.
The last type of leadership style in Ch 3 is laissez-faire leadership which involves little or no direct leadership.    This type of leadership is uninvolved unless the group members go out of their way to make sure they are involved.