The 6 Most Common Leadership Styles and How to Use Them
By LinkedIn Learning Blog
More than ever, today’s employees long for purpose, a sense of belonging, and opportunities to grow. This means workers are ready to roll up their sleeves and make things happen. And yet according to the American Psychological Association’s recent survey, employee happiness is down while burnout remains high. In fact, the survey found that 77% of U.S. workers said they experienced work-related stress, while more than half said the negative impact of stress was driving them close to burnout.
The main culprit? A workplace culture that doesn’t support the passion and drive of today’s employees. To help address this issue, companies may want to turn to one particular type of employee: managers.
Managers play an outsized role in shaping a company’s culture. Leadership in a management position is a balancing act between leveraging your personal strengths and adjusting to deliver what your team needs to remain positive, motivated, and productive.
Understanding how your style of leadership impacts others can help you create the workplace culture that your team needs to thrive. Let’s dive in.
What is a leadership style?
A leadership style is the behaviors a leader demonstrates when guiding, managing, motivating, and organizing groups of people. These behaviors are expressed through both words and actions and have a big impact on the overall success and well-being of a team, as well as the broader organization.
It’s important to deliver effective and appropriate leadership to your team. And to take things one step further, experts also suggest developing kinetic or situational leadership to be even more successful.
What is kinetic leadership? What is situational leadership?
Daniel Goleman, one of the most influential minds in the field of leadership style research, contends that your leadership style does not have to be a static or an innate attribute. Transformational leadership is a skill that can be learned and changed depending on circumstances. In fact, Goleman believes that the best leaders are those who can adapt their management style to the situation at hand — he calls this “situational leadership.”
In her course, Overcoming Obstacles and Building Team Resilience, Robyn Benincasa has a slightly different but similar term to Goleman’s — something that she calls “kinetic leadership.”
“Kinetic leadership is the hallmark of a resilient team,” she says, “meaning leadership that constantly flows and changes.” This means changing leadership styles to suit the moment, while also offering other team members the opportunity to lead from time to time.
What’s your leadership style?
Anyone who has worked a corporate job has probably taken at least one or two (or maybe a dozen?) personality assessments to better understand their personal working and learning style. They can be helpful to not only understand your own leadership traits, but also the working and learning styles of your team members — all of which can help you can be a more effective leader.
But it’s equally as important to reflect on how your own habits and behaviors are received by your team members.
Once you’ve identified your natural leadership style, identify another two or three styles that would be beneficial in your specific work environment to add to your overall leadership strategy. This can help you improve decision-making, while also becoming a better situational or kinetic leader.
What are the types of leadership?
Here are the six types of leadership, as covered by Benincasa in her course:
1. Coercive Leadership Style
If you deliver directives in a commanding way, eliciting quick and effective action from your team, you may be a coercive leader.
When to deploy a coercive leadership style:
A big client calls asking where their shipment is, saying their own six-figure deal is on the line if they don’t receive the product pronto.
An employee is creating a toxic situation in the workplace that needs to be dealt with swiftly.
There is an event in two days and your keynote speaker just canceled.
All of these situations call for immediate and decisive action or, in other words, a coercive leadership moment.
How today’s workforce responds: While it is a vital skill to have in urgent situations, this leadership style should not be your default setting. Prolonged exposure to a coercive management style drains employees of motivation and can have even your best team member questioning their performance.
2. Authoritative Leadership Style
Authoritative leaders (sometimes also called autocratic leaders) often share these traits: You are a visionary and you love looking to the horizon, seeing the potential ahead and motivating your team to push on toward your shared goals.
When to deploy an authoritative or autocratic leadership style: The cycle of goal setting, performing, and reporting — only to find yourself back at goal setting again — can go one of two ways: It can be a soul-crushing grind, or it can be an exciting challenge. Authoritative leadership is key for keeping teams excited about planning what’s next for their growth, as well as the growth of your organization.
How today’s workforce responds: With the more purpose-centered mindset of today’s workforce, having a leader who knows how to motivate is key. However, there can be too much of a good thing, and an authoritative or autocratic leader who is always looking to the horizon may miss what’s happening in the moment.
3. Affiliative Leadership Style
If you’re a people person, brimming with empathy, you may have an affiliative leadership style. Leaders of this type are often natural listeners — they’re at their best when they can offer support, give praise, and celebrate milestones.
When to deploy an affiliative leadership style: This can be effective when, say, one of your most productive workers suddenly hits a wall. After meeting one-on-one, you find out that they are worried about a problem at home. You offer them a few days to take care of their issue and make sure their tasks are reassigned for those days, so they don’t come back to a backlog of work.
How today’s workforce responds: With the crumbling of walls separating work and home life, affiliative leadership is vital for keeping your workforce feeling seen and appreciated. Best as a one-on-one tactic, this style is more about leading the person than the work.
4. Democratic Leadership Style
Democratic leaders take their team’s ideas and feedback into consideration, often allowing the opportunity for healthy debate before agreeing on how to proceed with a project or action item.
When to deploy a democratic leadership style: It’s time to launch a new brand awareness campaign and you need feedback and ideas to help with decision-making. You look to your team to offer a diversity of voices and insights that broaden perspectives and inspire fresh ideas.
How today’s workforce responds: While today’s workforce wants to be heard, they also don’t want to be stuck in endless meetings where the decision-making process gets bogged down. It’s best to reserve democratic leadership for decisions where collaboration creates real opportunities.
5. Pacesetting Leadership Style
If you’re a natural guide, this could be your leadership style. You have a clear view of the full path to success and understand what it takes for your team to be successful day-to-day.
When to deploy a pacesetting leadership style: Your team is launching a new project with a whole new slate of daily tasks. Managing with a pacesetting leadership style will help your team stay on track and avoid mistakes.
How today’s workforce responds: Today’s workforce is eager to learn and grow, so allowing them to take on new challenges while under the guidance of a trusted manager can be empowering and important to their well-being. Remember: The pace car doesn’t stay on the track for the whole race. Eventually, you need to take a leadership approach that’s more delegative. In other words, step back and let your team go full-throttle on their own — or you’ll just be holding them back.
6. Coaching Leadership Style
Does this sound familiar? You love helping others develop new skills and reach their full potential — plus you’re a natural at giving appropriate and effective feedback. If so, you may have a coaching leadership style.
When to deploy a coaching leadership style:
A new member has joined your team and is adjusting to the new workflow.
Your department is implementing a new solution that will make everyone’s jobs easier — once they learn how to use it.
Your team has been through an organizational restructuring and needs to understand what their new roles and responsibilities are.
Employing a coaching leadership style with your team through these changes can help them be more successful.
How today’s workforce responds: Today’s workers want to learn new skills. Coach them through adopting these new skills, but make sure you let them shine on their own when they’re ready.
Be the leader your team needs
“We always achieve our greatest height when we put our teammates on our shoulders,” says Benicasa in her course, Overcoming Obstacles and Building Team Resilience.
Successful leadership is often about helping your team members achieve their goals and become their best selves at work. Benincasa sums it up beautifully: “We don’t inspire people around us by showing them how amazing we are. We inspire our team members by showing them how talented, useful, and smart they are.”
Ready to be a transformational leader? Take some time to identify which of the six different leadership styles listed above feels most natural to you, then be sure to get situational or kinetic by employing the other leadership styles as circumstances change and your team evolves.