Goleman's Six Leadership Styles

Transcript

Narrator: The best leaders are flexible and adaptable. They use different leadership styles to suit different situations.

Here, we lift the lid on Daniel Goleman's Six Leadership Styles, and how they can work for you.

1. Authoritative Leadership

Authoritative leadership is about vision and empowerment. Authoritative leaders decide on goals, leaving their followers free to choose how to achieve them. This style works best when a department or organization lacks direction.

However, being authoritative shouldn't be confused with laying down the law. It's important to allow flexibility, and to listen to others' feedback, too.

2. Affiliative Leadership

The key to affiliative leadership is building relationships. Affiliative leaders love to create harmony, focusing on praise and sharing ideas. This style works best when you need to repair team relationships or bring people together.

However, this can mean poor performance can go undetected. Team members may also feel they haven't been given enough direction. So it's not a style to use in isolation.

3. Democratic Leadership

Democratic leaders build employee commitment and trust through collaboration and consultation, encouraging everyone to participate. This style empowers others, generates ideas, and shares responsibility.

But being too democratic may mean too much talk and not enough action. It's important for effective democratic leaders to decide when to take a stand.

4. Pace-Setting Leadership

Pace-setting leaders are high achievers who set the standards and expect others to follow. This style is best for leading a highly motivated team and is good for driving short-term improvements or quick wins.

However, continual pressure to achieve may leave employees feeling overwhelmed, and morale can plummet. So, use this style sparingly to avoid burnout.

5. Coaching Leadership

The coaching style is big on self-awareness, empathy, and developing others. This approach helps people improve their performance, and understand how their work fits into the bigger picture.

However, the coaching style requires time and expertise from the leader. Not good for delivering quick results.

6. Coercive Leadership

Compliance and control are the hallmarks of the coercive leadership style. This style should be reserved for crisis situations, or for addressing toxic employee behavior.

In other situations, it can kill initiative and motivation will drop.

While every leader has a style they naturally prefer, the best leaders use a style, or combination of styles, depending on the situation. Get the balance of leadership styles right with these simple tips:

1. Use active listening. And take your cue from people's reactions and body language.

2. Think about the leaders who inspire you most. What styles do they use and when? What can you learn?

3. Finally, don't be afraid to try out new approaches. Using different leadership styles will help you win respect, and deliver results, too.