Leadership can best be described as a set of services to a group, not as a personality. Democratic leadership consists of a number of skills that can be learned and continuously improved. It is not a personality trait which some people are born with or which only a it chosen few can acquire. When a leadership is democratically distributed among its members, a group operates more efficiently and effectively than when one person is expected to do all the thinking required for maximum group productivity. A major responsibility of leadership is to see that there is a continuous communication between the members of the group, in a climate of freedom and mutual respect, so that the group is constantly aware of its feelings, needs and expectations.
Good leaders hip shows flexibility and change from one activity or situation to another.
The kind of behavior or action which is good leadership in the one situation or in one group is not good leadership in another situation or in a different group. Different types of leadership get varying results in different situations. Each of the types, autocratic, free rein and democratic, has its advantages. Each has a different source of authority and a different communications set-up Under the right conditions the democratic method gets the best results, but most groups would benefit at sometime from a combination of the three or even by the exclusive use of one or the other types. This does not imply dictatorship or wilful self-satisfaction of the leader at the expense of the followers, but merely a method whereby the leader retains full responsibility for the group's work.