Introduction Leadership is one of the fundamental components of any society as it ensures its evolution. It has always been popular, and there have always been multiple attempts to understand the nature of this phenomenon, its core components, and features that differentiate true leaders from other people. Today, the given concept is an integral part of multiple disciplines, for example, management, as its improved understanding contributes to the generation of the ability to guide people, guarantee their high-performance levels, and accomplish topical goals. Due to the attention to this idea, there is also a solid theoretical background that offers definitions of various leadership styles and peculiarities of their application to many situations. The paper is devoted to the comparison of two approaches, which are democratic and autocratic models, that are often taken as opposite to each other. Definitions A reason for the selection of these two approaches to managing people is that they can be considered one of the oldest styles that were used by people in ancient times and remain topical today. Thus, democratic leadership is a model that presupposes a decision-making model based on the contribution of every team member (Northouse, 2018). It means that individuals have the right to outline their position regarding a discussed issue, offer their perspectives and possible solutions. All persons have an equal say and can engage in debates regarding the final decision and its character. However, the leader remains responsible for the selection of the best possible strategy among the offered ones, and he/she has to accept responsibility for outcomes that will be stipulated by it. For this reason, he/she is interested in the in-depth discussion of the situation and all possible factors that might affect it to formulate the most suitable approach. As for autocratic leadership, it remains in direct opposition to the democratic one. The main idea of this approach is that a leader is the only person who makes decisions (Chestnut, 2017). Other people who might be affected by these solutions and outcomes are not taken into account as their level of authority is too low to influence a leader. The given model also presupposes that there can be specialists, members of the community, or other persons who report and provide information about a specific concern, or a problem that should be resolved (Harmon, n.d.). However, this information is used only by an autocratic leader to make the final conclusion and offer the course of action that seems acceptable to him/her. The given form of leadership is one of the oldest ones, as there are multiple examples for the history when power was concentrated in the hands of one person who ruled countries, or giant empires, in autocratic style and using his/her own decisions as to the basis for the future development. Strengths The evaluation of these leadership styles can be performed via the comparison of strengths and weaknesses to understand the basic features of these approaches and situations when they can be useful or fail to work in the desired ways. Thus, one of the main advantages of the democratic model is that all individuals who are affected by a certain situation have an opportunity to outline their views and participate in decision-m