Leadership is more than just a position, it is a way of thinking and behaving. If you are in a leadership role too, you surely ask yourself from time to time how to do your job better. Have you ever tried exploring your leadership style?
Your leadership skills affect the success of your team or business. However, just like other management skills, you can keep improving and developing your leadership skills.
Table of contents
How to lead people?
Try to remember the best boss you have ever had. What was so great about working with them? Perhaps they were often in a good mood, listened to other people’s opinions and, when problems came up, focused on finding solutions instead of shouting. As a result, you felt motivated, you enjoyed your work, it did not stress you out and the whole team did well.
Now try to recall the worst boss you have ever had. They were probably often in a bad mood, had unrealistic demands and never explained anything to you properly. You worked hard under them, but you did not feel sufficiently appreciated. The team’s results were only short-term, employees came to work stressed, soon burnt out and turned over very frequently.
The contrast between these two examples of leaders is clear and confirms that a leader’s mood can cause a chain reaction that affects not only morale but also the team’s productivity and final results. A successful leader should therefore be able to manage their own emotions and read the emotions of other people. This means developing their emotional intelligence (EQ).
Using emotional intelligence when leading people
High emotional intelligence is one of the most important pillars of successful leadership. So if you want to lead well, you need to understand your own emotions as well as the emotions of the people you lead. For your team to trust you, understand you and be willing to follow you, there should be a certain basic relationship and emotional understanding between you.
Example:
Learning to sense the situation and the emotional state of the team is key. If a leader is, for example, constantly optimistic regardless of what is happening in the team, they can do more harm than it may seem at first glance. If, for instance, they announced job cuts with the words: “What a beautiful day! Let’s look at the list of people we have to let go to cut costs! It simply has to be done. Don’t let it spoil your mood!”, team members would feel resentment and disappointment after this interaction and would have less respect for this leader.
This example clearly shows what can happen when a leader lacks sufficient social awareness and emotional intelligence to understand the current atmosphere in the team, tune in to it and manage their own emotions.
💡 Tip: Also read why emotional intelligence is essential for success?
6 leadership styles
Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee described six emotional leadership styles in their 2002 book “Primal Leadership”. Each leadership style has a different effect on people’s emotions, and each has its strengths and weaknesses. Which style is closest to you and how can you develop the others?
1. Visionary leadership style
“Come with me.”
Visionary leaders are very empathetic and inspiring. They focus on the organisation’s long-term plans and promote the vision so that team members feel inspired and understand how they will benefit from the end result. Visionary leaders are open to interesting suggestions and experiments, they tell the team where to head but do not dictate how to get there. They bring team members together and encourage them to use their own initiative and ideas to achieve the goal.
👉 When to use it:
Visionary leadership is most effective when a company needs a new vision and a change of direction. However, it only works well when the team is not more experienced than its leader. In those cases, democratic leadership is a better fit. Although visionary leadership can achieve the best results of all 6 leadership styles, it should still not be overdone. Using only the visionary style can lead to inattention to shorter-term activities and operational matters. An overly visionary leader may also come across as arrogant to their team.
👉 How to develop it:
If you want to adopt the visionary leadership style, focus on increasing your expertise, work on improving your communication and presentation skills and develop your emotional intelligence.
2. Coaching leadership style
“Try this.”
Leadership in a coaching style connects team members’ personal goals with the organisation’s goals. This leadership style is positive, empathetic and encouraging, and it focuses mainly on developing team members so that they become better individuals and professionals. A leader who acts as a coach is characterised by building relationships, creating trust and boosting motivation. With this style, you can encourage engagement and strong loyalty in your team and lay great groundwork for future plans.
👉 When to use it:
The coaching leadership style is suitable when you have team members who need to develop their skills and self-confidence. However, the person being coached must be well motivated and open to feedback. Forcing coaching on someone who thinks they have nothing to learn from you can have a negative effect. Also remember that coaching is time-consuming and requires a lot of skill from the leader.
👉 How to develop it:
If you want to develop the coaching style, learn mentoring skills. It is also important to get to know the people in your team well and stay in touch with them, so that you can tune in to their needs and sense when they need guidance or advice.
3. Affiliative (friendly) leadership style
“People come first.”
Affiliative leadership focuses on relationships and people. It promotes harmony in the team, creates bonds and supports conflict resolution. Affiliative leaders focus on trust and emotions. They give team members plenty of feedback, recognition and rewards, which helps build team spirit and cohesion. Using the affiliative style creates a family atmosphere in the team, with people getting to know and respect one another.
👉 When to use it:
The affiliative leadership style is suitable for resolving tension or conflicts in the team, when trust has been damaged or when the team is stressed. However, overusing affiliative leadership also has its downsides. If you become best friends with your subordinates, it can lead to a fear of conflict and lower productivity, because friendship will become your main priority. Moreover, if you are not genuine and authentic when using this style, you may come across as fake and people in your team will not trust you.
👉 How to develop it:
Affiliative leadership requires a great deal of empathy and emotional intelligence. If you want to use this style, you need to be able to appreciate other people’s work and be strongly aware of their emotional needs. Also learn how to resolve conflicts and how to be optimistic.
4. Democratic leadership style
“What do you think?”
The democratic leadership style focuses on collaboration. It builds trust and involves all team members in decision-making, while the leader has the final say. Democratic leaders put an emphasis on listening and are able to bring together a wide range of ideas and opinions from employees and all stakeholders in order to achieve the set goal. This style leads to high commitment, determination and engagement in the team and motivates people to do what you want, but in the way they want to do it.
👉 When to use it:
The democratic leadership style is suitable when you need to stimulate creativity and generate ideas. It is also a way to find out your team’s opinion when you are unsure. The drawback of the democratic style is that it can seem too lenient and slow when you want to make quick decisions. This leadership style is also not suitable in cases where team members lack the knowledge needed to make a quality contribution to the decision-making process.
👉 How to develop it:
If you want to use the democratic leadership style, involve team members in problem-solving and decision-making and teach them the skills they need for it. Also try to improve your active listening and facilitation skills.
5. Pacesetting leadership style
“Do as I do, now!”
This leadership style emphasises performance and achieving goals. The leader sets the pace of work while leading by example. They strive for excellence and expect others to work hard and be as productive as they are. Pacesetting leadership motivates others to meet challenges and goals and gives a sense of achievement and competence. This approach suits highly competent and motivated teams working to tight deadlines.
👉 When to use it:
Use the pacesetting leadership style when you need to achieve high-quality results quickly and make progress at work. It works well, for example, when developing a new product or service. However, using this style too often can lead to burnout, exhaustion and high staff turnover. Team members may feel that the performance demands go beyond what is possible. So this is not a style you can sustain in the long term.
👉 How to develop it:
As this style focuses on high performance, learn how to improve the quality of your team’s work with specific techniques, such as the Kaizen technique. Also work on your skills in coaching and motivating employees.
6. Commanding leadership style
“Do what I tell you.”
Commanding leaders take a directive approach. Their leadership is based on clear rules, defined roles, orders and strict control. In a commanding style, the leader makes all the decisions and gives orders to the team without explanation. Commanding leaders can respond well during a crisis or kick-start change. For many people in leadership positions, this style is their image of what a proper boss should be. Which is, of course, a big mistake.
👉 When to use it:
The commanding style is suitable when a quick decision is needed and you have the most knowledge of the situation. In critical situations, it can reduce panic thanks to very clear rules. You can also use the commanding style when dealing with inexperienced and new team members or when confronting problem employees. Outside these situations, however, too much commanding creates discord, and team members feel disrespected, persecuted and overwhelmed. Remember that the commanding leadership style is easy to abuse and should only be used when absolutely necessary.
👉 How to develop it:
To use the commanding leadership style effectively, learn how to work under pressure, how to handle a crisis and how to earn respect.
How to use leadership styles
From the leadership styles above, you have surely found the one you identify with most, use often and which matches your personality. For managing people effectively, however, it is important to master all the leadership methods and use them according to the situation.
As a rule, the pacesetting and commanding styles should be used sparingly, while the visionary, democratic, affiliative and coaching leadership methods are worth using regularly and to a greater extent, as they support motivation and increase productivity.
Choosing a leadership style strategically means selecting it according to the situation, the team’s mood, the people involved, the current topic and so on. If you focus on using just one style in all circumstances, you will most likely fail. You can find inspiration and more interesting information in a book on leadership, such as the popular book by Daniel Goleman How to Become a Real Leader.
Your personality and experience shape your leadership style. By getting to know all six leadership styles, you can recognise areas where you can improve or expand your own style. Some leadership methods can also help you better understand how to work with people and more easily achieve your current goals.
💡 Tip: Also read the article: Is your boss a psychopath? or The most interesting personal development courses.
