Critical Reflection: Applying Democratic Leadership in Practice

This essay presents a critical reflection on the democratic leadership style, emphasizing its effectiveness in enhancing team morale, productivity, and collaborative decision-making. The author favors this style for its potential to foster employee investment, encourage open communication, and capitalize on individual strengths within a clinical practice context. The reflection highlights the importance of motivation, engagement, and mutual respect in achieving career goals and maintaining positive relationships with team members. The author's knowledge of democratic leadership is demonstrated through discussing its characteristics such as valuing collaboration, encouraging creative solutions, and supporting employee growth. Real-world scenarios are touched upon to demonstrate the practical application of this leadership style, reinforcing its significance in achieving both personal and professional development.

Critical Reflection
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The democratic leadership style is defined as to be the most effective types of style that mainly
leads to higher productivity, enhance the morale of the group and also help the leader to provide
better contributions from the other group members present in the workplace (Iqbal, Anwar, &
Haider, 2015). From all the leadership style I have preferred the democratic leadership for my
clinical practice contexts. I have chosen this leadership style because this leadership style will
help me a lot in future to develop my future career goals and also for my clinical practice
contents. The paper mainly provide a critical analysis of the democratic leadership style in
concerning my knowledge. Democratic leadership style is also known as shared or participative
leadership and this style is helpful for decision-making procedure as it takes a participative role
in this approach (Amanchukwu, Stanley & Ololube, 2015). From various studies, I have learned
that this type of leadership style is used for the free exchange of thoughts and ideas that usually
encourage others. Besides this, it is also considered to be a type of management style in which
the group members play an important role in the decision-making process.
Democratic style is usually focused on group equality where ideas are shared freely and hence it
offers control as well as guidance over the group. A democratic leader is one who mainly has the
problem-solving ability and provides the correct decision that should be needed for that situation
(Nanjundeswaraswamy & Swamy, 2014). Hence I can say that the democratic style of leadership
values affirmation and collaboration of followers. I have learned that the democratic leadership
style encourages team engagement, involvement and participation of each member in every
matter and this will enhances honored for each member present in the particular team. In
addition, democratic leaders are the one who generally motivates and encourages their team
members to provide creative solutions that should be best useful at that condition (Yusuf, 2016).
The reason for which democratic style is also known as the participative style of leadership
because it mainly depends on employee participation. In addition, my knowledge regarding this
leadership style will also explained in this context. The main aim of a democratic leader is to
foster workers or employees' investment in the company and this will only occur if the leader
motivates the employees in their respective role (Kaiser, 2016).
The group members helped and showed great sense of responsibility in managing the work
processes by collaborating and cooperating with each other. There was a sense of disagreement
between few members of the group regarding the interference and inappropriate cooperation
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from these members but following the democratic leadership style, I effectively managed the
entire situation. Moreover, these type of leader always motivate and encourage their employees
with their small set of work and help them to set their goals as well as recognize their
achievements too. In some conditions, the leaders develop plans with their workers that help
them to evaluate their performance and also push the workers to do their best on the work and
support them in their advancements as well as promotions (Amanchukwu, Stanley & Ololube,
2015). Hence according to me, this democratic leadership style helps me to be an ideal leader
that always encourage as well as motivate my team members and also help me to work with
them without any sort of difficulty (Abraham & Scaria, 2017). In addition, this type of leadership
style helps the leaders to maintain a good relationship with their employees and thereby they
help the workers for any type of difficulty they faced in their workplace (Ekstrand et al., 2018).
This leadership style has attracted me because it helps a leader to develop its own sense of
personal growth which thereby lead to job satisfaction. In other words, this type of leader always
think of their employees and always encourage others which thereby help the leader to build a
strong team.
Democratic leadership style works well for that leader who values adaptation as well as
flexibility. As per my knowledge, this leadership style is only effective when the leader is
working with experienced or highly skilled employees in the workplace. By this democratic
style, the leader easily capitalized individual employee’s strengths and talents and enhances their
working ability according to their capability. A democratic leader always keeps their lines of
interaction or communication open towards others (Kiboss & Jemiryott, 2014). On the other
hand, this type of leader always respect everyone’s thoughts and ideas and thereby this quality
helps me to know each and every members thought in my team. Thus I have selected this
leadership style because it will help me in my clinical practice contents and also for achieving
my career goals in the coming days. Furthermore, the reason for choosing this leadership style
will also be discussed in this paper that suggested that the democratic leadership style helps me
to encourage and motivate others in my surroundings for their small piece of work. In other
words, it helps me to maintain a good communication with others and thereby it also help me in
my clinical practice contents.
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References
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