Leadership Styles that Create Excellence

Last Updated January 25, 2022

In the fast-paced world of business, a great leader must be able to draw from a variety of resources to build a comprehensive leadership style that is dynamic, responsive and resilient. Managers and executives are unable to drive sustainable results on their own; they must rely on their teams and subordinates to deliver results. Those with the pragmatic leadership skills benefit from high performing teams.

Today’s workforce is becoming increasingly diverse. Accordingly, a great leader should be able to apply the most relevant approach from a strong repertoire of leadership styles that can be modified to fit different situations involving individuals and teams. This is essential because, while situations and team dynamics will shift over time, leaders are expected to effectively drive success on a consistent and long-term basis.

In his book “Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence,” psychologist Daniel Goleman describes six different styles of leadership—coaching, pacesetting, commanding, visionary, affiliative and democratic. These six leadership styles are among the most effective and can be combined to produce a versatile set of leadership skills applicable across a wide range of industry settings.

The Coach

The coaching leader is an expert at preparing team members for future leadership roles, as this leader can coach teams and individuals beyond the expectations set for them. These leaders are open to innovation and build teams that have the creative freedom to work from their individual strengths. This leadership style works best when:

• The team has a well-developed sense of proficiency and self-discipline.
• The team is open to new ideas and invested in thinking outside the box with a little top-down direction.

For the coach, team performance and success come first. In turn, this leadership style, alone or in combination with others, can help team members feel highly invested in the success of the organization.

The Pace-Setter

The pace-setter leader emulates self-direction but exercises control over precise goals and assignments needed to complete tasks in tight timeframes. Creative autonomy is not a staple of this type of leadership style. Factors to keep in mind when building this style include:

• The style is effective when multiple tasks need to be allocated and turned around quickly.
• Most effective with an experienced team.

If this leadership style is not tempered with others, a team may start to feel overwhelmed and may begin to pull back personal engagement, especially for team members who need to feel an innovative spirit in their personal team contributions.

The Commander

The authoritative commanding leader drives teams toward centralized goals through “military” style leadership. This leadership style is effective when there has been a significant change in an organization or in situations where a new team has just been built with members from many diverse settings and needs to perform at a high level very quickly. In employing this style of leadership, keep in mind that:

• It is most effective in crisis management or when a swift reaction or turnaround is needed.
• Overuse can lead to lower employee engagement, job satisfaction and, ultimately, job performance, as teams can’t effectively function in “crisis” mode continually.

As this style of leadership tends to more critical, with praise offered only in the highest of achievements, it is important to balance commanding leadership with aspects of the visionary leadership style for more inclusive and motivating team communication, especially when working with a team of experts in different fields. Since everyone on the team is needed to bring company goals to fruition, this teamwork angle can help alleviate possible antipathy of other experts on the team.

The Visionary

When a team or organization needs to rethink its approach, undergo an organizational or directional shift and set a new course for its future, the visionary leader is the one to cast that vision.

Visionary leaders can see the current circumstances or the challenges of a situation in a different light, set a unifying goal and empower individuals, teams and the entire organization to mobilize behind the common vision. This style of leadership can be inspiring, charismatic and energizing, but also needs to provide focused vision that:

• Allows individuals and teams freedom to innovate, experiment and take risks as they strive towards the vision.
• Unites everyone behind the vision by stating clear goals, outlining a strategic plan for achieving goals, prioritizing efforts and empowering action.

The visionary leadership style is best tempered by integrating other styles, such as coaching (to help build the team towards the future), democratic (to ensure the vision doesn’t become greater than the people working to achieve it) or the pace-setter (to drill down on precise actions towards the goal).

The Affiliative Leader

In times of trouble, when a team has experienced a physical loss of a teammate or a shift in company priorities has meant team downsizing, the affiliative leader understands a team’s emotional needs and builds up individuals by setting goals that build synergy. Some aspects of this style to keep in mind include:

• While it is effective to build a team up, excessive praise can prevent aggressive engagement and momentum toward top performance goals.
• This is a transitional leadership style best combined with other styles.

When employing this leadership style, it is also important to remember to build a goal-based strategy to move past the troubling event and forward toward increased productivity and team excellence.

The Democratic Leader

The democratic leader is an expert at inspiring every team member’s unique contributions toward a common goal. In addition, this leadership style is focused on sustained engaged team participation. Other factors to consider include:

• This leadership style works best when a project timeline has room for group meetings and consensus building discussions.
• Using this leadership style effectively means that participants will feel a deep sense of ownership in the outcome of the project.

This leadership style is effective for group problem-solving, consensus-building and when a leader has taken a position where the team members are the experts on the subject matter. In projects with a tight turnaround, a democratic leadership style will likely need to be modified, perhaps with a dash of commanding leadership style, to ensure the team meets it deadlines.

Becoming the Dynamic and Responsive Leader

Building a dynamic and responsive leadership style can be facilitated by seeking professional situations where career mentoring is possible in order to see many different leadership styles used effectively. In addition to learning from seasoned team leaders, it is also important to remain engaged in ongoing professional education.