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Comparison of Bureaucratic and Democratic Leadership Styles

Leadership refers to the ability of a person to successfully control a group of people within a given setting. Effective leaders are visionary, responsible and motivating with a goal to successfully run organizational operations (Lin, 2018). Two key leadership styles that are widely used in the current corporate world are bureaucratic and democratic leadership. This paper seeks to compare and contrast these two key leadership styles (bureaucratic and democratic), and analyze how they are applicable in an educational setting.

Both democratic and bureaucratic leadership styles enable executives and the staff to adopt the appropriate characteristics to ensure that the best decisions are made to lead an organization. They uphold disciple, respect, and as a team work, diligently and collaboratively towards achieving objectives. Democratic leadership is an open and collegial system of running a team. Better decisions and managerial ideas freely move among the group because all issues are discussed openly and every staff member involved (Shapiro & Stefkovich, 2016). Whereas democratic leadership advocates for inclusive participation during decision making and healthy conversations cultivated, bureaucratic leadership is exclusively fixed upon official duties under a hierarchy of authority (Lin, 2018). It applies a system of rules during decision making and management. Only the top management are allowed to make informed rules for the rest. It does not cultivate a culture of openness.

These two leadership styles can be applied to my educational setting in a variety of ways. Democratic leadership can be employed when sharing better teaching strategies in order to synthesize the available information and make informed and best possible decisions. The leadership can be used to bring the best results out of the professional team because it capitalizes on skills and talents by letting every person share their workflow ideas. On the other hand, bureaucratic leadership can be applied in setting where the staff requires control over their routines (Lin, 2018). The top positions set rules and regulations to monitor the rest on how to operate and produce best results.

Effective leadership is essential in every setting. Good leaders produce the best results. Democratic and bureaucratic leadership styles operate with a common objective of increasing work efficiency. However, the two styles still exhibit major differences as discussed. They are highly applicable in our education system as they drive how daily operations are handled.