Leadership Styles & When to Use Them

Leveraging how you lead to overcome leadership challenges

The Monday Morning Manager Series #49

There is no one-fits-all leadership style, as different situations require varied approaches.

Look at the leaders you know. They all have their own way of doing things and favor different leadership styles.

So where did these leadership styles come from? Their experience combined with the leadership theory they’ve encountered throughout their career.

“As a leader, you must deal with crises, make decisions, train your team, and achieve KPIs.

This translates into it being your responsibility to change your behavior to make it all happen.

That’s where leadership styles come in. You are changing your actions to suit the situation and get the desired results.”

My first leadership role was as a Management Trainee for a large retail chain in the early 1980s. I received a significant amount of excellent training, but the leadership training was abysmal.

For example, we junior leaders were told that if a customer wanted something from the stock room — we really did have things ‘out the back’, in those days — we weren’t to get it ourselves but instead ask one of the sales assistants to fetch it.

This approach, aka acting like jumped up, superior idiots, did not enamor us to the team. And no wonder.

Most of the senior leaders I worked with in the eighties were hyper-conservative, authoritative, and hierarchical to the extreme. It’s no wonder that many leaders in their fifties are still modeling this behavior because it what was we experienced early on in our careers.

I slowly learned that mindlessly following leadership edicts that did not respect my team didn’t work. That comes with experience and making mistakes along the way.

But that’s not enough.

As well as knowing how to be a competent, effective leader that people want to follow, leaders need to be able to employ various leadership styles to suit the situation.

What is a leadership style?

A leadership style is what a leader does.

What they say, what they do, and how they do it.

“A leadership style refers to a leader’s methods and behaviors when directing, motivating, and managing others. A person’s leadership style also determines how they strategize and implement plans while accounting for the expectations of stakeholders and the well-being of their team.” — Leadership Styles: The Most Common & How to Find Your Style, Braden Becker, blog.hubspot.com

Depending on the situation, a leader has a selection of leadership styles.

It’s up to each leader to ensure their style is appropriate to the task and to swap between styles as required.

The Leadership Styles

If you Google’ leadership styles’, you’ll see many different lists.

For example, after studying 3000 executives, Daniel Goleman came up with six leadership styles.

For this article, we’re going with those.

Daniel Goleman’s Leadership Styles:

• Authoritative
• Pace Setting
• Affiliative
• Democratic
• Coaching
• Coersive

These are not exhaustive but are a good starting point.

Leadership models, styles, and theory is only as good as the results they get you.

Here are the situations you will encounter as a leader and which leadership styles to adopt.

In a Crisis Situation

Use the Coercive method. It’s a command-and-control approach, not suitable for every day but will get the job done in a crisis.

Coercive leadership is the style to adopt when nothing else will work.

What you do: Take control, make quick decisions, and demand compliance. It’s time to put on your big girl/boy pants and dish out orders. You can pick up the pieces later.

You’ll need to be very precise about what needs to be done by when and correct any mistakes immediately.

Drawbacks: It’s not an approach that will leverage team creativity and can have a poor impact on employee engagement & morale. The team may feel steamrollered and unable to contribute.

Mitigate the drawbacks by: Having a de-brief after the crisis and getting input from the team about how to prevent the problem next time. Brainstorm what to do to contain a similar situation should it occur again. Explain why you took the coercive stance and what would have happened if you hadn’t.

When Managing Change

If you are managing change in the team or there is a lot of change within your organization, it’s down to you to inspire your team.

In this case, use the Authoritative Style. You’ll be a visionary, inspiring and aligning the team to your vision and innovations.

What you do: Take the lead, set a clear direction, foster innovation, and get the team on board. You’ll have to create the strategic direction and convince the team by demonstrating complete confidence in your vision.

You’ll have to motivate and inspire your team and get them excited about the future. Despite being the creator of the vision, be open to ideas from your team that can enhance your strategies.

Drawbacks: You might seem overbearing, plus it’s all about you.

Mitigate by: Listening to feedback, explaining the why behind your vision, ask the team to trust you and have a go. Give the team autonomy on how they achieve the vision.

For Team Building & Raising Morale

If team morale is low or a positive work environment is a priority, Affiliative Leadership Style is your go-to. This leadership style is all about growing solid relationships, trust, and an atmosphere of belonging within the team.

What you do: Prioritize relationship building, and encourage open communication, trust, and respect.

You’ll need optimal listening skills to pick up on the nuances of the interactions within the team, and you’ll make the team a safe place to challenge, innovate and make mistakes.

Team-building activities, training events, and celebrating achievements and milestones will further enhance the feeling of camaderie.

Drawbacks: Building a great team and all the activities and initiatives mentioned above take time. This type of leadership style cannot be used alone as it does not suit a crisis.

The emphasis on team-building & camaderie may cloud what goals & targets are and smooth over conflict to an unproductive degree.

Mitigate drawbacks by: Finding a balance between team-building initiatives and getting the outcomes required of your team. Ensure you deal with conflict within the team promptly. Always have the team’s KPIs top of mind and make sure the team does too.

When You Need Diverse Input & Creativity

If you need creativity and diverse input, the Democratic leadership style is the one to go for. This style leverages the team’s varied perspectives and is useful for innovation.

What you do: Actively seek the opinions and input of the team and involve them in decision-making. You’ll need to run workshops and meetings to facilitate the sharing of ideas and make your team a safe place to share.

Foster a team culture of empowerment and trust so that your team is ready to contribute when you need input.

Drawbacks: Setting up meetings, getting the team’s input, and hashing out all the lovely ideas takes time, so if you need quick decisions, there are better leadership styles to adopt.

How to mitigate drawbacks: Have a decision-making process to decide which ideas will go ahead and only use this leadership style for non-time-sensitive initiatives.

When Your Team Needs Upskilling

Coaching Leadership Style is helpful if you have a team or team members that need upskilling.

This style is all about building your team’s skills, providing guidance, and developing your team.

What you do: Coach, train & develop your team. A team training matrix will help you determine who needs what.

You’ll spend a lot of time providing feedback and helping your team achieve their full potential. This type of coaching is best done individually, so you’ll need to work out development plans for your team members who need them.

A no-blame culture where your team can spread their wings and make mistakes is necessary if you want to adopt this leadership style.

Drawbacks: This leadership style is time hungry and won’t work if you need to get things done quickly. Also, it may alienate the more competent workers if you employ it across the board.

How to mitigate the drawbacks: Use this style when you have the time to develop your team. If you haven’t got the capacity to take time with the team immediately, let them know you’ll make time to coach them later.

You’ll need to become an expert at balancing the needs of your role with developing your team.

Refrain from using this style with the more competent team members. Rather get their help training the ones that need it.

For High-Performing Teams

The Pacesetting Leadership Style is ideal when you have a high-performing team and need strong results.

This leadership style is driven by achieving goals & KPIs and is extremely results oriented. It’s helpful in a competitive environment where results are valued.

What you do: You’ll lead the team by showcasing your own high standards and expecting high standards from the team. You’ll develop a culture of excellence within the team.

Pacesetting leaders are hands-on and practically demonstrate how to achieve. You’ll set a fast pace and give immediate feedback for improvement while acknowledging the superior achievements of your team.

Drawbacks: This leadership style can lead to burnout as the competitive nature of the team members makes them susceptible to becoming so focused on goals and achievements that they ignore the signs of burnout.

Unless managed carefully, the Pacesetting environment can lead to decreased engagement and poor morale. If burnout occurs, long-term sickness or resignations can follow.

How to mitigate drawbacks: Raise awareness of the signs of burnout within the team and create a culture where there is no shame in taking breaks despite being high performers.

Regularly check in with the team and look for signs of burnout or decreased engagement.

Summary

As a leader, you must deal with crises, make decisions, train your team, and achieve KPIs.

This translates into it being your responsibility to change your behavior to make it all happen.

That’s where leadership styles come in. You are changing your actions to suit the situation and get the desired results.

Daniel Goleman’s Leadership Styles are one way of doing this.

There are other models, such as Situational Leadership and Servant Leadership, that you may wish to research.

The point, though, is to have different strategies at your disposal to help you flourish as a leader.

Thanks for reading and have a great day.

I write about leadership & training, and I’ve designed The New Leader’s Starter Kit to help leaders communicate with their teams. Get your free copy here — The New Leader’s Starter Kit takes you through how to run One-to-Ones and Constructive Feedback sessions & develop professional listening skills — a printable one-to-one form, feedback form and listening skills checklist included.