leadership styles

Here are the six leadership styles Daniel Goleman uncovered among the managers he studied, as well as a brief explanation and tips to become that particular leader

Leadership Styles and When You Should Use Them

Great leaders choose their styles like a hiker in the UK would choose the most appropriate outfit to wear with a clear understanding of where they want to be and what would be best for the task in hand. They would also carry reserves as a just in case (Be Prepared!) like any good leader would.

To build a high performing self-directed team of staff and managers it’s important to understand the difference between management and leadership. If you are my manager I have to do what you tell me to do, otherwise I could lose my job, but I don’t necessarily follow you. Leadership is a decision you make, it’s not a seat you sit in, you can’t be promoted to leadership you have to make the personal decision to be one. It’s the ability to choose which of the leadership styles best fits which situation with which team member – because they are all different.

Managers live in the present and leaders live in the future. A leader creates the vision of where they want the business or team to be and the manager creates the steps to get them there.

We cover the leadership styles in detail during our:

Action Focused Leadership Program

Leadership Styles

Here are the six leadership styles Daniel Goleman uncovered among the managers he studied, as well as a brief explanation and tips to become that particular leader:

Visionary — mobilises people toward a vision

Coaching — develops their people for the future

Affiliative — creates emotional bonds and harmony

Democratic — builds consensus through participation

Pacesetting — expects excellence and self-direction

Commanding — demands immediate compliance

Visionary Leadership Style

The visionary leader moves people towards a shared vision. It’s not about how to get there, it’s about getting your team to understand where you want to go. This style works best in moments where a new direction is needed.

What’s great about this style is that it promotes autonomy and allows people to innovate and experiment to get towards a goal. Failure is accepted, and employees can feel comfortable trying new things that will help move that mission forward.

Many organisations out there don’t have a clear mission, which can often lead to employees feeling demotivated. That’s why it’s so important to have a vision or a “why” behind what you’re doing. The “what” is the mission steps which we discussed earlier

Tips to Become A Visionary Leader

Be bold. Don’t be afraid to try new things and experiment. Be okay with the prospect of failure.

Create one ambitious goal that the whole team can focus on – the statement of intent from the previous activity

When you’re about to start a new task, ask yourself if it will help you reach your goals. (Will it make the boat go faster)?

You don’t have to come up with every answer alone. Asking for help from your team won’t only encourage a greater diversity of ideas, but it’ll empower your group for the next steps necessary in bringing those ideas to life. It will also enable them to become visionaries themselves.

Coaching leadership Style

This leadership style, like its name suggests, is all about coaching employees to get better at what they do. Things like one-to-ones are where managers with a coaching leadership style thrive.

However, there is a difference between micromanaging and coaching. As a manager, your goal is to help them evolve in their role, to challenge them so they can surpass themselves while giving them the tools, advice, and support they need to succeed.

Coaching leadership is not dictating what a person should do every step of the way, but rather guiding them towards an improved version of themselves so they can best contribute to the team, while also meeting their own personal objectives.

One of the biggest mistakes that leaders make with this style is focusing on improving the weaknesses of their employees. As a leader, if you want to get the best results from your team you need to focus on their strengths.

Tips to Become A Coaching Leader

Check-in frequently with each member of your team and take the time to mentor them. No matter how busy you are, if you’re a coaching leader, then you need to empower each of your employees to be the best they can be.

Try to schedule monthly one to ones where you’ll be able to ask them about their challenges and improve their strengths.

Affiliative leadership Style

Managers with this leadership style act as an affiliate, making connections throughout their organisation

Their focus is to create a more harmonious workplace where everyone knows and works well with each other. Often, employees will have disagreements among themselves and may not like all of their co-workers, but this leadership style aims to fix all of that.

If trust is ever broken in an organisation, an affiliate leader is the perfect person to mend those cracks.

Tips to Become an Affiliative Leader

Build a culture of recognition on your team. Over time, this will bring everyone in the group closer together, and help to develop those relationships

Otherwise, regular team building activities are a great way to bring the team closer together

Encourage difficult conversations within your team. It won’t always be perfect, and it’s perfectly normal to have challenges and disagreements between the employees. The key is to encourage vulnerability and real conversations

Democratic Leadership Style

A democratic leadership style is all about creating group alignment towards a result. This leadership style is best used when you, as a leader, aren’t 100% sure of which direction to take and you want to source the wisdom of the crowd to help you make the call.

This approach can be extremely powerful when you need to make big decisions, are planning for future strategies or even when making strategic choices that may impact the future of the business.

The knowledge of collective intelligence is always greater than the knowledge of one person alone.

Tips to Become a Democratic Leader

Learn to trust your employees and work on your communication skills so that you can discuss ideas with everyone on the team. A democratic leader gives everyone on the team an equal say in the decision making

Suggest a few ideas to spark the conversation and a game plan as to how you want to collect the opinions of everyone involved. Maybe suggest a brainstorm session or a survey with qualitative questions

Consider all the ideas presented and share your thoughts with the team. It’s important for them to know that you spent time considering each idea submitted. Whether you move ahead with them or not, it’s important to acknowledge that they took the time to think about the possibilities and challenges.

Pacesetting leader Style

A pacesetting leader sets goals for their team that they expect will be reached no matter what. They demand a lot from their people and exemplify what is expected of the team. This leadership style has the potential of being detrimental to your team, so you need to be extremely careful when using this approach, and that it works best in short bursts.

Sometimes you may need to expect a lot from your team, whether it’s due to the company going through challenges that force you to be more demanding to meet objectives – or for any other number of reasons.

The trick is to balance this style with recognition. You need to make your team realise that while you’re asking a lot from your team and it may be tough, it’s also only temporary.

Tips to Become a Pacesetting Leader

Recognise their efforts both individually and collectively, it can be a great motivator, especially when asking a lot!

Make sure to tell your team that the expectations are temporary and that as a group, it’s the perfect time to pull together. In the end, it’ll only create stronger bonds between employees

Share the results of their efforts on the bigger picture. To be able to see the impact of their effort across the organisation can be a very powerful thing.

Authoritative Leader Style or Commanding leadership Style

The commanding leader leads with fear.

These leaders typically come across as cold and emotionless. Most of the time, this style has extremely negative effects on company culture and is highly ineffective.

This style should be only used when in situations of crisis. But even then, it’s likely not the best approach to take. It’s generally recommended to avoid using this style altogether. Unless you’re in the military!

How to Avoid Being a Commanding Leader

Do not order your team, instead, inspire participation and clearly explain the full portrait of the situation. They will understand what needs to be done

Make sure to communicate that it’s only a temporary situation, your team will need to hold on for the storm to pass

Key Takeaways

There isn’t one perfect leadership style. You’ll need to interchange between them according to the situation

You don’t have to do everything alone. It’s not because you’re the manager that it all falls on you. Ask the team for help

Enable your employees to also become leaders themselves. A leader doesn’t always mean a manager

It’s important for a leader to also develop their Emotional intelligence – which we cover after the last break

The most important aspect of this breakdown is that since each style fits a different situation, a good leader needs to be able to switch them when the context requires that. A leadership style is, therefore, a tool, not personality trait. Leaders who have mastered four or more —especially the authoritative, democratic, affiliative, and coaching styles—have the very best climate and business performance

Note also that the four suggested ones exclude both commanding and pacesetting, exactly for their negative effect on the company climate.

Thanks for visiting our leadership styles page here is a link to our homepage here is also a link to Daniel Goleman's book

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