Leadership and democracy

In last 2 weeks I have been visiting university lectures. I have heard 3 lectures about Middle-East history. Being around educated people and hearing eye opening stories from a lecturer, who is so into the subject, that she sometimes gets lost in story telling, has been wonderful.

And there is one specific thing that I liked about the lecturer, which I have seen only in one of my history teachers before. She is not describing the wars and the happenings, but the leadership styles, leadership strategies and mistakes of the rulers.
I found it funny and engaging how she stresses that some rulers were “strategical geniuses”. She described us Umar ( 2nd Kalif in Arab world, who ruled after Mohamed in 6st century), who so obviously was her favorite leader and was called strategically genius many times.
The brightest thing that Umar did: He set up the administration system to a democratic society, copying it from monarh ruled societies. Which at the end meant that it was not democratic any more. But people loved him and the leadership was working and in fact he was the last Kalif, who was not killed by people. And what made him genius? He ruled like a monarch, but never positioned himself like one. He never tried to show others that he has all the power nor he never showed off the better life he lived. Which left the impression that people have the power! The system worked. People were happy.
But after he died, the new Kalif Uthman was all about showing that he has the power(Lecturer words:biggest strategically mistake of his leadership), like many Monarchs did. And soon he was killed by the people.

In Youth leadership conference I attended also few weeks ago the similar topic was discussed. How much democracy should the leader allow?
Looking at the history it made me wonder. Is the best leader still the one that gives a lot of freedom or the one who just makes people feel like they have a lot of freedom?

In my few years of leadership I have learned one thing. As a leader you need to have very clear vision and opinion about how things need to be done (think like a monarch). But, the best tool that the leader has, to achieve this goal, is to make your team happy. Make them satisfied with them self, give them self confidence and they will bring you the highest results (act like democracy).

So is there really such a thing as democracy in leadership or is it just the mather of how well the leader can make people feel like they have democracy?