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Leadership styles: Definition, types, and examples

Leadership styles are the behavior patterns leaders adopt (what leaders do) .

A leadership style comes to life when a unique combination of complementary behaviors co-occur .

Many styles are tied together via underlying commonalities, forming four core types of leadership styles : decision-making leadership styles; everyday leadership styles; beyond everyday-work leadership styles; and values-based leadership styles.

Read on to learn more about leadership styles, the existing types, and the definitions, examples of typical behaviors, and overall effectiveness of the most important styles.

Table of contents

A leadership style is a set of behaviors, not a single behavior, a leadership style can be adopted automatically or via a monitoring effort, leadership styles can include not only behaviors but also personality traits, there is a difference between a theoretical leadership style and the leadership style of a person, different leadership styles can share common behaviors, leadership styles are at the forefront of influence, decision-making leadership styles, everyday leadership styles, beyond everyday-work leadership styles, values-based leadership styles.

• Participative leadership style
• Autocratic leadership style
• Laissez-faire leadership style

Consideration style of leadership

Initiating structure style of leadership.

• Transactional leadership style

Visionary leadership

Transformational leadership, empowering leadership, ethical leadership, authentic leadership, servant leadership, references and further reading, definition of leadership styles.

A leadership style is the behavior pattern displayed by a leader . In other words, a leadership style reflects the recurrent way in which a leader acts towards followers.

This definition highlights six important aspects of leadership styles .

First, leadership styles are viewed as complementary behaviors that tend to co-occur frequently.

It is the combined set of related behaviors that form a leadership style, not a behavior in isolation . No behavior alone is able to capture the complexity and requirements of most leadership styles.

For example, authentic leaders are expected to not only stay true to their moral standards, but also to express their ideas clearly, and to seek information from others to better understand situations and themselves [1a] [2a] .

This does not mean that, in order to adopt a leadership style, a leader must engage in all specific behaviors of such leadership style at the same time. In contrast, a leader adopting a style engages in specific behaviors over time, as necessary .

Each leadership style we display can be the result of an automatic or a monitored effort.

The first is largely unconscious and guides us towards our most habitual leadership style(s). Across situations, we lead in the way that comes to mind and in line with our dominant (go-to) leadership style(s). These automatic leadership styles tend to be adopted when:

• We do not have time to carefully analyze a situation at work, relying instead on a leadership style that is usual to us;
• A leadership style fits our personality and we find it easy to use;
• A leadership style served us well in the past and, as such, we learned to keep using it;
• We are not aware that the situation requires the adoption of a different leadership style.

In contrast, monitored efforts guide us to carefully analyze the situation we are facing as leaders. Based on this assessment, we can choose the leadership style that best fits the situation and regulate our behavior accordingly [3] [4] [5] .

Personality traits are an important root of behavior patterns. The stronger a person’s propensity towards a personality trait, the more likely that person engages in a set of behaviors , over time and across situations [6] .

This tells us that not every person has the same likelihood of adopting a given leadership style . Certain leadership styles tend to be more frequently adopted by people with certain personality traits.

For example, the transformational leadership style tends to be adopted more often by extroverts than by introverts [7] . Because extroverts tend to be optimistic, talkative, and assertive, they are likely to display transformational leadership behaviors such as enthusing and inspiring followers.

In some leadership styles, however, personality traits and behaviors are so intricate and fuzzy that it is difficult to draw a line separating the two .

For example, in the ethical leadership style [8a] [9a] , personality traits and behaviors are so interconnected that it is usually accepted that ethical leadership reflects both

• Traits (such as integrity, morality, fairness, and disposition to reflect upon the consequences of one’s actions);
• And behaviors (such as setting an example at work of how to behave ethically, discussing ethics and values with followers, and addressing violations of ethical standards in the workplace).

In theory, a leadership style is a set of complementary behaviors that tend to co-occur frequently. After identifying a new behavioral set in leadership, researchers and practitioners attribute a descriptive name to it. Transformational leadership, ethical leadership, and servant leadership are examples.

In practice, many leaders end up adopting styles that are combinations of theoretical leadership styles [10] . It is very rare to see leaders adopting a leadership style that perfectly matches the theoretical model.

This may happen because a specific behavior is not relevant for a particular job, or because a leader finds out that the most effective way to lead in a given context is to mix and match behaviors from different styles and theoretical models.

For example:

• Most effective transformational leaders are also transactional [11] [12] [13] ;
• Leadership effectiveness is boosted when leaders focus both on structuring followers’ work and on showing consideration towards followers [14a] .
• Followers performance is enhanced when leaders pair a visionary leadership style with an empowering style [15a] .

Nevertheless, theoretical models are particularly useful to identify meaningful sets of behaviors, to map out the available sets of behaviors for leaders, and to identify the consequences of specific leadership styles.

Some leadership styles are narrow and focused on a limited set of behaviors. Others are broader, encompassing multiple sets of behavior.

As a consequence, many broader leadership styles end up encompassing behaviors from narrowly defined leadership styles . In such cases, the narrow leadership style is a necessary aspect of the broader leadership style, but not a sufficient condition to claim that the broader leadership style is being adopted.

For example, while participative leadership is a style in itself, the broader style of empowering leadership also includes followers’ participation in decision making, among other aspects [16a] .

Likewise, many broad leadership styles share common sets of behavior .

For example, being honest and acting with integrity is expected from authentic, ethical, and servant leaders. The other behaviors displayed by the leader will define the actual leadership style taking place.

Since leadership styles reflect the overt and observable actions of a leader, they are at the forefront of influence in organizations.

In fact, large scale studies indicate that leadership styles have stronger effects on effectiveness than leaders’ traits and skills [17a] .

Followers derive what leaders value, what to do at work, and how to achieve goals largely based on what they see leaders doing. When leaders adopt a leadership style they serve as role model to many followers , who end up emulating leader’s attitudes, values, and behaviors [18a] [19a] [20] .

Further, followers obtain clues about their leaders’ underlying traits and skills based on the leadership style displayed. Because traits and skills tend to be less observable than behaviors, personality traits and skills are largely inferred or communicated. Followers infer and attribute leadership traits and skills partially based on the styles their leaders adopt.

Types of leadership styles

The list of leadership styles is extensive. However, many styles are tied together via shared commonalities in their core approach, goals, and focus [17b] [21a] .

In the table below, we list the most established and scientifically studied leadership styles, organized into four broad types of leadership according to their main approach, goal, and/or focus .

Table 1. Typology of leadership styles along with examples.

In using this typology of leadership styles, keep in mind that most leadership styles also have important roles outside their main type .

For example, while the central aspect of decision-making leadership styles is how leaders make decisions, these styles also have important ramifications form everyday work and for the values that leaders signal to others.

Decision-making styles look at when, and to what extent, leaders involve followers in generating and choosing alternatives to solve problems at work [22a] [23] .

The focus here is not on the decision that is made, but rather on how leaders reach the decision : autocratically, with the participation of followers, or being hands off (laissez-faire).

In addition to make decisions, leaders also have to ensure that everyday work runs smoothly and that followers are performing as expected .

After listing virtually all the behaviors leaders have to engage in on a daily basis, researchers found that almost all behaviors fall into either the consideration style (focus on showing concern and respect for employees) or the initiating structure style (focus on goal attainment) [14b] [24] .

Later, researchers identified transactional leadership as a specific form of structuring leadership, focused on rewarding and disciplining followers depending on their effectiveness [17c] .

Everyday leadership styles tend to deliver expected outcomes, but usually fail to sustain extraordinary performance and innovative change [18b] .

Hence the emergence of leadership styles focused, at their core, on influencing effectiveness beyond what is expected in everyday work and on creating meaningful work environments . Among the most well-established and promising styles are transformational leadership, visionary leadership, and empowering leadership .

Due to their properties, these beyond everyday-work leadership styles are also called inspirational [21b] and change-oriented [17d] leadership styles.

The values-based leadership styles represent behaviors rooted on morality, community values, and continuous improvement [21c] .

It represents a shift in the focus of leadership behavior – specifically, from influencing the achievement of results to influencing how results are achieved .

Values-based, moral, and ethical behaviors are encapsulated in ethical leadership, servant leadership, and authentic leadership.

Examples of decision-making leadership styles

Below are the definitions, behavioral acts, and overall effectiveness of decision-making leadership styles.

Participative leadership

Participative leaders engage in decision procedures that allow followers to have an active role in making and implementing decisions at work [25] .

In doing so, participative leaders share some or all of their influence to draw on followers’ ability, information, and competence to make decisions and solve problems [26] .

Participative leaders tend to engage in one or more of the following decision procedures [27] :

• Leaders decide alone but ask followers to express their ideas and take their suggestions into consideration while deciding;
• Leaders encourage followers to express their ideas on a daily basis so that other positions can be considered when leaders make their own decisions;
• Leaders gather information from followers during informal and casual gatherings to enrich their own decision-making.
• Leaders and followers voice their positions, discuss possibilities and, together and with the same level of influence, make the final decision;
• Leaders encourage followers to continuously acquire new competences so that everyone can participate equally, and in an informed way, in the decision-making process;
• Leaders adopt a facilitator role so that a majority/consensual decision is reached.
• Leaders defer the responsibility of making a decision to followers, by defining upfront an acceptable range for the decision;
• Leaders give followers the authority to decide but the implementation needs leaders’ approval;
• Leaders give followers the authority to decide and to implement the decision.

When a leader trusts and has confidence in followers to let them participate in decision-making and in problem solving, followers tend to reciprocate with increased engagement [28] , commitment [29] , performance [30] , creativity [31] , and willingness to go the extra mile at work [32] .

Autocratic leadership

Autocratic leaders behave in a way that asserts their authority, power, and control, and they expect followers’ obedience and compliance [33] .

Typically, autocratic leaders:

• Make decisions on their own, without involving followers;
• Enforce strict deadlines for goal achievement, and request intense work efforts to achieve goals on time;
• Are critical of the ideas and suggestions presented by followers;
• Tell followers how to perform tasks and the procedures to adopt without explanations;
• Ensure that their regulations are being followed by monitoring followers’ work.

It is important to note that autocratic leaders focus on control and obedience, not on being abusive towards followers [34] . As such, autocratic leadership is not considered a destructive form of leadership and tends to be effective in some circumstances . 

For example, in harsh economic environments, autocratic leaders outperform transformational leaders in boosting firm revenue [35] . Likewise, autocratic leadership enhances the performance of followers who respect and believe in the value of hierarchies [36] . Adopting an autocratic style also tends to boost effectiveness when leaders have control over the resources required to achieve something and have a clear understanding of what needs to be done [37a] .

On the negative side, autocratic leadership can leave some followers unsatisfied with their job [38] , less prone to voice ethical concerns [39] , and experiencing work stress [40] .

Laissez-faire leadership

Leaders who adopt a laissez-faire style avoid making decisions, taking action, and taking the responsibilities associated with the leadership position [22b] [41] . Although they occupy a leadership role,  laissez-faire leaders refuse, avoid, and neglect performing their duties.

The delegating form of participative leadership and the laissez-faire leadership may seem similar on the surface, but they are quite different:

• Laissez-faire leadership is a passive and avoidant style of leadership focused on ignoring responsibilities in situations where the leader intervention would be necessary;
• Delegating is an active style of leadership focused on approaching decisions and solving problems at work by giving great depths of authority to followers.

Typically, laissez-faire leaders engage in one or more of the following sets of behavior [42] [43] :

• Avoid making decisions and getting involved in important issues;
• Turn a blind eye to situations at work that would most likely require attention and intervention;
• Avoid paying attention to and tackling problems that emerge at work, even when those problems become acute or chronic.
• Are absent when followers need them and fail to provide the information followers need to work effectively;
• Are indifferent about followers’ requests for support and about their needs at work;
• Are unavailable to help followers solve problems, conflicts, or disputes among them.
• Do not praise followers when they perform very well at work;
• Do not acknowledge followers’ extra efforts at work;
• Do nothing when followers achieve important work milestones.
• Do not give feedback nor constructive criticism when followers perform poorly;
• Do not intervene when followers are slaking off and getting behind on tasks;
• Do nothing when followers fail at work or miss important deadlines.

Laissez-faire leadership tends to be severely detrimental to the effectiveness, satisfaction, and well-being of followers [44] [45] [46a] . These negative consequences of laissez-faire leadership may happen because followers see themselves [47] :

• Loosing clarity over what is expected from them;
• Becoming ambivalent and in conflict regarding the depth of their role at work;
• Clashing with one another as responsibilities and acceptable behavior at work become blurred.

While teaching leadership and training leaders, we have seen that the most common regret of leaders is turning a blind eye to issues and avoiding problems (that is, engaging in laissez-faire leadership). It can be useful to postpone solving a problem, but it is rarely beneficial to avoid looking at a problem or to pretend that it does not exist.

In the video below, Dr. Alex Lyon (from State University of New York) adopts a complementary communication perspective to go through participative, autocratic, and laissez-faire leadership styles:

Examples of everyday leadership styles

Read on for the definitions, typical behaviors, and overall effectiveness of everyday leadership styles.

Leaders who engage in the consideration style display people-oriented behaviors and tend to be focused on the welfare of followers [37b] [48] .

Typically, leaders who are considerate:

• Show concern for followers’ problems and take their needs into account;
• Find ways to solve personality clashes and other disagreements between followers;
• Treat followers in a respectful manner;
• Show appreciation for followers’ efforts;
• Touch base with followers before taking actions that may impact them;
• Are approachable and followers feel at ease around them.

This leadership style tends to boost effectiveness through personal support, camaraderie, warmth, and trust. However, we tend to see stronger boosts on followers’ job satisfaction than on job performance [14c] [49a] .

The consideration style of leadership also acts as a protective factor of followers’ mental health and as a facilitator of their well-being , as people appreciate to be treated well and meaningfully [50a] .

Leaders who initiate structure display task-oriented behaviors and have a prevailing focus on goal attainment [37c] . Leaders who rarely initiate structure tend to be seen as hesitant with regards to taking initiative, and are hands off with regards to how work should be done.

Typically, leaders who initiate structure:

• Organize work, assign followers to tasks, define roles, and schedule work activities;
• Stress that meeting deadlines is crucial;
• Define performance goals and strategies to achieve them;
• Define communication channels and how the information should flow in the team/organization;
• Monitor performance, review results, and give instructions to improve task achievement.

The leadership style of initiating structure tends to enhance effectiveness at work [50b] [51] by:

• Clarifying expectations;
• Reducing ambivalence regarding priorities;
• Providing resources to followers (for example, an effective system of information flow and a clear understanding of what each part of the task entails).

However, the initiating structure style tends to be more relevant to boost followers’ task performance than to enhance other indicators of effectiveness , such as job satisfaction [14d] [49b] .

Transactional leadership

The transactional leadership style stems from the formal hierarchical structure of most organizations and emphasizes conditional rewards and disciplinary actions as sources of motivation [18c] .

Transactional leaders exchange resources with followers based on self-interest – leaders give followers something they want when followers do what leaders want.

Transactional leaders tend to engage in one or more of the following sets of behavior:

• Complimenting followers when they perform well;
• Assigning what needs to be done and promising a reward for carrying out the assignment;
• Negotiating with followers what needs to be done as well as the rewards for a work well done.
• Monitoring followers to anticipate problems;
• Watching closely whether followers violate important rules so that corrective actions (negative reinforcement, criticism) can be implemented before or when it happens;
• Actively looking for mistakes from followers so that followers can receive negative feedback and mistakes be corrected in a timely mater.
• Intervening only after standards are not met (with a negative performance evaluation, for example);
• Talking with followers about sub-optimal approaches to work only after serious problems emerge;
• Correcting followers’ behaviors only after serious difficulties have emerged as a consequence of those behaviors.

In terms of effectiveness [17e] [46b] [52] :

• Contingent rewards tend to enhance performance at work;
• The active form of management by exception tends to improve, but only slightly and inconsistently, followers’ performance ;
• The passive form of management by exception tends to have detrimental effects on followers’ performance .

Examples of beyond everyday-work leadership styles

Here are the definitions, descriptive behaviors, and overall effectiveness of beyond everyday-wok leadership styles.

Visionary leaders communicate an image of the team/organization’s future with the intent of persuading and motivating followers to work on its implementation [53] .

Typically, visionary leaders:

• Talk with followers about the future;
• Show a clear understanding of the direction to take and of the opportunities ahead;
• Clearly state their plans for the future and where the team/organization is going;
• Clearly communicate expected accomplishments;
• Show a clear understanding of the critical goals of the team/organization and how followers can work together to achieve them.

This leadership style tends to enhance performance at work by clarifying goals and instilling a shared sense of purpose in followers [15b] [54] . Visionary leadership also tends to boost innovation and change , since articulating a vision is usually the starting point for a leader targeting change [55] .

Here is a video, from speaker coach Noah Zandan, with three tips on how leaders can communicate their vision more effectively:

Transformational leaders inspire followers to transcend self-interest, to believe they can achieve great things, to identify with the leaders’ vision, and to commit to the collective mission [18d] .

Transformational leaders tend to display four sets of behavior [56] [57] :

• Setting an example in terms of ethics and morality;
• Showing that collective good prevails over self-interests;
• Showing confidence, persistence, and determination in the face of obstacles;
• Self-sacrificing to benefit the team/organization.
• Talking positively and optimistically about the future;
• Presenting a meaningful vision for the future and explaining how to attain it;
• Setting high expectations on what is to be achieved;
• Emphasizing values to be endorsed with emotional appeals and symbolic actions.
• Challenging followers to rethink problems with fresh and new perspectives;
• Questioning sub-optimal approaches and assumptions;
• Reframing problems to find creative solutions;
• Encouraging the implementation of new procedures and ways of doing things at work.
• Providing quality support to followers at work;
• Listening to followers’ concerns and doubts;
• Identifying the improvement opportunities of each follower and supporting their improvement;
• Mentoring the growth of followers and nurturing their potential.

The transformational leadership style tends to enhance effectiveness at work by boosting followers’ positive affect, confidence, motivation, engagement, and perceptions of a fair and trustworthy workplace [58] .

By inspiring followers, transformational leaders also end up developing high quality relationships with them. In such relationships the norm of reciprocity prevails – followers reciprocate the relationship growth with increased effectiveness and morale at work [59] .

Transformational leadership is a style particularly suitable for leading change and innovation [60] . It tends to make followers more committed, open, ready, and supportive of change and innovation, while reducing their natural resistance and doubts [61] .

Empowering leaders share power with followers and support followers’ development, autonomy, and self-reliance [16b] [62] .

Typically, empowering leaders:

• Encourage followers to solve problems as they pop up, without leaders’ supervision, input, or approval;
• Provide the discretion and leeway for followers to do their work as they see fit;
• Decide, together with followers, performance goals and related rewards;
• Highlight and explain the relevance of followers’ work to the organization;
• Make decisions with followers and, when participation in decision making is not possible, take time to explain the rationale behind their decisions;
• Express confidence in followers’ ability to carry out their work successfully;
• Encourage followers to seek out learning opportunities and to enrich their skills repertoire;
• Share how they structure their days and plan their work, and tip followers on improvement opportunities.

This leadership style tends to enhance performance at work and followers’ willingness to go the extra mile by [63] [64] :

• Promoting a vibrant environment where learning and adaptation are paramount;
• Boosting followers’ motivation through psychological empowerment;
• Increasing followers’ willingness to reciprocate the trust and confidence leaders’ deposit on them.

Empowering leadership is particularly effective in promoting innovation and creativity at work [65] [66] . The autonomy, self-belief, and intrinsic motivation that followers experience around empowering leaders leave them in a privileged position to explore new ideas and to find ways to implement them in the workplace.

Examples of values-based leadership styles

Read on for the definitions, characteristic behaviors, and overall effectiveness of values-based leadership styles.

Ethical leaders display ethical behavior at work by being fair, honest, and moral; and promote followers’ ethical behavior through rewards, punishments, and effective communication skills [8b] [67] .

Ethical leadership is grounded on leaders’ prosocial values and moral emotions [68] . Ethical leaders signal their prosocial values by engaging in behaviors that benefit and cause no harm to others. Moral emotions propel ethical leaders to:

• Get back on track when they derail ethically (with shame and guilt);
• Condemn followers when they violate important norms (with anger, irritation, and disgust);
• Understand the suffering of others (with compassion and sympathy);
• Praise the ethical elevation of followers’ actions (with awe, admiration, and gratitude).

Typically, ethical leaders:

• Are fair, trustworthy, honest, and act with integrity;
• Do what is right and ethical even when facing temptations and difficulties;
• Are supportive and caring when followers face difficulties at work;
• Reward followers’ ethical behaviors and punish their unethical behaviors;
• Clearly communicate ethical standards to be followed at work;
• Include ethical behavior in the assessment of followers’ effectiveness – they look both at the results and at the way they were achieved;
• Hold everyone accountable (leader and followers) for mistakes and accomplishments, and for unethical and ethical practices;
• Make sacrifices to benefit everyone that, directly or indirectly, are affected by their practices (followers, organization, clients, investors).

This leadership style tends to be particularly useful to enhance ethical behavior at work, and to prevent unethical behavior and turnover [9b] [69] .

Nevertheless ethical leadership can also enhance followers’ performance and willingness to go the extra mile [70] [71] through:

• The development of high quality, dependable, and trusting relationships;
• The development of an ethical culture that sustains the additional efforts that are often required to achieve great things in an ethical way;
• The identification with the virtuous values that leaders display and encourage.

Authentic leadership has personal, relational, and developmental aspects to it [1b] [2b] [72] .

Personally, authentic leaders understand and act in keeping with who they are, their purpose, and their values . The relational aspect manifests in the development of transparent, genuine, open, and honest relationships with followers . Also, authentic leaders emphasize development and continuous improvement (in themselves and in followers).

Authentic leaders display four sets of behavior:

• Tell the truth and admit their own mistakes;
• Express emotions that are both genuine and appropriate to the situation at hand;
• Clearly articulate their thoughts and what they mean.
• Seek feedback from others to better understand their strengths and weaknesses;
• Have a learning, non-defensive, orientation towards feedback and mistakes;
• Understand the impact they have on others, as leaders;
• Seek opposing views and thoroughly analyze all the available information before making a decision;
• Look up for information that may challenge their beliefs and positions;
• Encourage followers to voice all their views (both supporting and opposing) on an issue.
• Stay true to their moral standards through consistent behavior;
• Act consistently in line with their beliefs and values;
• Do not bend to pressures that go against their moral standards neither fall prey to moral disengagement .

Authentic leaders tend to thrive in ethical environments as it tends to be safer and easier to admit mistakes in such workplaces [73a] . In unethical environments , authentic leaders can become vulnerable to unethical tactics and a target of questionable political moves.

Authentic leadership tends to be particularly effective to enhance collective performance, followers’ willingness to go the extra mile, and followers’ ethical behavior in the face of temptation [74] [75] . These results are rooted on the high quality and trusting relationships that authentic leaders develop with their followers due to their consistency and openness [9c] [73b] .

Servant leaders [19b] :

• Are oriented towards serving others;
• Focus on followers’ needs, interests, and holistic growth;
• Show concern for the wider community and for multiple stakeholders.

These three features of servant leadership tend to manifest through seven sets of behavior [76] [77] [78] :

• Caring about followers’ well-being and personal struggles;
• Taking time to help followers to cope with their personal problems.
• Being involved with and helping the community that is affected, directly or indirectly, by the organization;
• Encouraging followers to have an active role in the community surrounding the organization.
• Having a deep and clear understanding of how the organization works, of its priorities, and of its goals;
• Showing competency by anticipating and solving work problems with complex decision making and creativity.
• Encouraging followers to make decisions autonomously;
• Giving followers freedom to decide how to deal with problems and how to tackle tasks at work.
• Understanding and supporting followers’ careers and goals;
• Sharing insights and opportunities that can help followers to achieve their full potential.
• Prioritizing followers needs and interests over their own needs and interests;
• Making an effort to simplify and enrich followers’ work.
• Being honest and showing integrity in everyday actions;
• Consistently following ethical standards, even in the face of temptations.

Servant leaders tend to drive effectiveness because they:

• Increase followers’ job satisfaction and satisfy followers’ basic psychological needs of competence, autonomy, and relatedness [79] [80] ;
• Develop high quality relationships with followers based on trust and fairness [81] [82] ;
• Create a serving culture that direct followers’ attention to serving the community and all the stakeholders involved [83] .

Servant leadership is one of the most promising leadership styles in the sense that it tends to boost effectiveness over and above other well-established leadership styles , such as transformational leadership and ethical leadership [9d] .  Also, due to their community and stakeholder focus, servant leaders are at the forefront of sustainable and socially responsible organizational practices [84] .

In the video below, Dr. James Lemoine (The State University of New York), Dr. Chad Hartnell (Georgia State University), and Dr. Hannes Leroy (Erasmus University) discuss how ethical, authentic, and servant leadership overlap, along with what distinguishes these leadership styles.

Behaviors are the building blocks of leadership styles. When a pattern of complementary behaviors occur, we witness a leadership style coming to life.

Understanding which types of leadership styles leaders can rely on, and knowing the defining behaviors of the most important styles can leave us better prepared to face the challenges ahead.

As always, we thank you for trusting your time with ManagingLifeAtWork.com . Until next time, keep leading effectively and keep an informed eye on leadership styles.

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Self-Assessment • 20 min read

What's Your Leadership Style?

Learn About the Strengths and Weaknesses of the Way You Like to Lead

By the Mind Tools Content Team

When we lead for the first time, we might adopt a style of leadership that we've experienced from someone else, or that we've heard or read about. If it seems to work, we'll likely stick with it – in effect, it becomes "our" style.

But there are many approaches available to us, and a good leader is able to adapt their style according to the situation and the people involved.

This quiz will help you to identify the style that you naturally lean toward, and introduce you to alternative approaches that you might find it helpful to develop, and the occasions when they may be appropriate.

We've based our questions on psychologist Kurt Lewin's Leadership Styles Framework – a model developed in the 1930s that is still popular and useful today.

Instructions

For each question, complete the statement by choosing one of the three options: A, B or C. Please answer according to how you would behave in reality , rather than how you think you should behave . When you're finished, please click the "Calculate My Total" button at the bottom of the test, and go on to read the guidance that follows.

Do you believe that you can adapt your style? Harvard University professor Ron Heifetz and leadership experts David Rooke and William Torbert say that you can. So let's look in more depth at Lewin's leadership styles, their strengths and risks, and how you might become more skillful in using them.

Authoritarian, Autocratic Leadership

This approach is helpful when your team needs to follow a process "to the letter," to manage a significant risk. It's also effective when you need to be hands-on with people who miss deadlines, in departments where conflict is an issue, or in teams that rely on quick decisions being made.

But you need to be aware that relying on control and punishment to maintain standards will likely drive people away. Similarly, if you always demand that your team works at top speed, you can end up exhausting everyone.

Instead, you can show respect for team members by providing the rationale for your decisions. And they will more likely comply with your expectations if you take the trouble to explain Why the Rules Are There .

You can improve your ability to "lead from the front" by Planning for a Crisis , Thinking on Your Feet , and making good decisions under pressure. But be sure to balance these skills with an awareness of their potential negative impact on creativity, ideas gathering, motivation, and trust within the team.

Being too autocratic can also mean that you'll find it hard to stand back from the detail and take a wider, more strategic view.

Did you achieve your leadership role thanks to your technical expertise? If so, you'll likely be used to getting things right, adding value, and having people's respect. But your soft skills might be lacking, so don't be afraid to listen and collaborate more.

Democratic, Participative Leadership

With this approach, you set goals, guide team discussions, and make the final decision. But you also acknowledge that your people can have valuable insight into a problem or process, so you actively consult them . As a result, you'll likely gain creative input and fresh ideas that you wouldn't have come up with if you were working alone.

You might wonder how to manage differing opinions in the team, once you've invited participation in this way. Your goal is to build a culture in which people can have healthy debates with one another. So:

• Set an example by being open and flexible yourself.
• Make mutual respect a priority, to ensure everyone's participation.
• Learn some Conflict Resolution skills.
• Read our article on Managing Emotion in Your Team .

Be aware that processes could become dangerously slow if you involve your team members in every decision. You'll need to judge carefully whether you need to adopt a more autocratic approach, even if it's only briefly.

The Delegating, "Laissez Faire" Leader

"Laissez faire" is a French phrase adopted into English that means, "Let (people) do (as they choose)." It describes a policy of leaving situations to run their own course, without interfering.

By adopting this style of leadership, you empower your team to make decisions and to organize its own processes, with little or no guidance. The danger of this approach is that situations can collapse into chaos if your people have low motivation or poor skills. It can work, however, if they are experienced, knowledgeable, confident, creative, and driven, or if deadlines are flexible and processes are simple.

Be in no doubt, though, that as the leader you will still be held accountable for the outcome! So you might want to organize team decision making processes to support your people while you take a "hands off" approach. Just be sure to delegate the right task to the right person, as a mismatch could mean that the whole team fails.

Avoid becoming too remote, even with a high-performing, highly autonomous team. Change can occur at any time in business, so your organization's requirements for your team might shift after your initial brief. If this happens, stay in touch with your people, and communicate clearly and promptly. Remember, you can offer your support without becoming a micromanager !

Consistently excellent and long-lasting teams tend to have transformational leaders . These leaders have high expectations for, and set a fine example to, their people. And they inspire them to reach for the seemingly impossible.

Further Reading:

We have numerous resources on leadership styles and approaches in our Leadership Skills toolkit. You might find the following articles helpful:

Eric Flamholtz and Yvonne Randle's Leadership Style Matrix .

The Blake-Mouton Managerial Grid .

Robert House's Path-Goal Theory .

Goleman et al's Six Emotional Leadership Styles .

Tannenbaum and Schmidt's Leadership Continuum .

Rath and Conchie's Strengths-Based Leadership .

Greenleaf's Servant Leadership .

Collins' Level 5 Leadership .

We all tend toward one leadership style more than another, due to our personal preferences, abilities, role models, and more.

But one approach doesn't fit all scenarios: some situations and people call for a fast, firm, top-down approach, while others flourish with shared responsibilities and the freedom to plan, decide and act.

You and your team will likely perform better if you develop a wide set of styles to apply as appropriate.

Kurt Lewin's model expresses this range of styles in relatively simple terms, from Authoritarian or Autocratic, through Democratic or Participative, to Delegating or "Laissez Faire."Transformational leadership is the best approach for most situations.

This assessment has not been validated and is intended for illustrative purposes only. It is just one of many that help you evaluate your abilities in a wide range of important career skills.

If you want to reproduce this quiz, you can purchase downloadable copies in our Store .

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Denise Beckles

Great materials and well researched. Video reinforcement on topic is well explained. It would help to use models which imbed diversity.

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• Section 3. Styles of Leadership

Chapter 13 Sections

• Section 1. Developing a Plan for Building Leadership
• Section 2. Servant Leadership: Accepting and Maintaining the Call of Service
• Section 4. Building Teams: Broadening the Base for Leadership
• Section 5. Developing a Community Leadership Corps: A Model for Service-Learning
• Section 6. Recognizing the Challenges of Leadership
• Section 7. Encouraging Leadership Development Across the Life Span
• Section 8. Ethical Leadership
• Section 11. Collaborative Leadership
• Main Section

What is leadership style?

Why pay attention to leadership style, what are some conceptions and methods of leadership, what are some ways of looking at leadership style and what are their effects on an organization, how do you determine what is an appropriate style, how do you choose and develop a leadership style.

Leadership styles are the ways in which a leader views leaderships and performs it in order to accomplish their goals. This chapter provides a guide for understanding what different styles look like, which ones are more and less effective, and how you can develop or change your style to come closer to the ideal you aspire to.

According to John Gardner, in On Leadership , "Leadership is the process of persuasion or example by which an individual (or leadership team) induces a group to pursue objectives held by the leader or shared by the leader and his or her followers." If we accept that definition, then leadership style is the way in which that process is carried out.

Leaders' styles encompass how they relate to others within and outside the organization, how they view themselves and their position, and - to a very large extent - whether or not they are successful as leaders. If a task needs to be accomplished, how does a particular leader set out to get it done? If an emergency arises, how does a leader handle it? If the organization needs the support of the community, how does a leader go about mobilizing it? All of these depend on leadership style.

Much of the material in this section looks at individual leaders, but leadership can be invested in a team, or in several teams, or in different people at different times. Many - perhaps most - organizations have several levels of leadership, and thus many leaders. Regardless of the actual form of leadership, however, leadership style is an issue. Whether you're the leader of a large organization or a member of a small group that practices collective leadership, the way that leadership plays out will have a great deal to do with the effectiveness and influence of your work.

The style of an organization's leadership is reflected in both the nature of that organization and its relationships with the community. If a leader is suspicious and jealous of power, others in the organization are likely to behave similarly, in dealing with both colleagues and the community. If a leader is collaborative and open, this behavior is likely to encourage the same attitudes among staff members, and to work collaboratively with other organizations.

In many ways, the style of its leader defines an organization. If the organization is to be faithful to its philosophy and mission, its leader's style must be consistent with them. An autocratic leader in a democratic organization can create chaos. A leader concerned only with the bottom line in an organization built on the importance of human values may undermine the purpose of its work. For that reason, being conscious of both your own style as a leader and those of others you hire as leaders can be crucial in keeping your organization on the right track.

We've all known and seen different types of leaders. (We'll look more closely at some specific styles later in this section.) One of the enduring images of the 20th century is that of hundreds of thousands of Germans wildly cheering their Fuhrer in Leni Riefenstahl's brilliant and terrifying 1930's Nazi propaganda film "Triumph of the Will." Franklin Roosevelt comforted a nation paralyzed by economic depression by explaining that "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." John Kennedy electrified a generation with his exhortation to "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

All of these are representations - for various purposes - of great motivational leaders working their magic through their speeches. Our concept of leadership tends to linger on such examples, but there are other kinds of leaders as well. Gandhi sitting and spinning in a dusty Indian courtyard; John Lewis and other Freedom Riders being brutally beaten in Mississippi; Vaclav Havel refusing to take revenge on the former Communist bureaucrats of Czechoslovakia; Nelson Mandela sitting in prison on Robben Island - these also are pictures of leadership.

Conceptions of leadership

The leadership style of an organization may be concerned with less dramatic issues than these examples, but it nonetheless has profound effects on the people within that organization, and on everything the organization does. Styles have to do with a leader's - and organization's - ideas of what leadership is and does. Possible conceptions include:

• Exercising power . Leadership is a matter of pursuing one's own ends. Asserting power over others is an end in itself, and symbolizes one's position as a leader.
• Gaining and exercising the privileges of high status . Leadership is about getting to the top, and being recognized as having the highest status.
• Being the boss . Leadership is overseeing the work of the organization by telling everyone what to do when, and rewarding or punishing as appropriate.
• Task orientation . Leadership is getting the job done - that's all that matters.
• Taking care of people . Leadership is looking out for those you lead, and making sure they get what they need.
• Empowerment . Leadership is helping those you lead gain power and become leaders.

Taking these last two together, we might add a conception whereby one aspect of leadership is the fostering of personal (and professional) growth in others.

• Providing moral leadership . The leader, by force of character and her own high standards, creates expectations and pulls others up to her level.
• Providing and working toward a vision . Leadership is the ability to envision a goal, and to motivate others to work with you toward that goal.

Methods of leadership

In many, or perhaps most, organizations, more than one of these conceptions may define leadership. Each implies particular ways of leading, and leaders may use a number of different methods.

• Pure exercise of power . "My way or the highway." If you don't do what the leader demands, no matter how unreasonable, you're gone. The leader's decisions are not open to question or discussion, and no one else gets to make decisions.
• Political scheming . The leader plays people off against one another, creates factions within the organization, cultivates "allies" and isolates "enemies," and builds up (through favors or overlooking poor performance) personal debt which can be cashed in when needed, in order to manipulate people and events as he wishes.

A school superintendent bragged to voters about how little was spent on the school system, and then explained to teachers how they couldn't have raises because the community was too cheap to invest in education. He set principals at odds with one another and with teachers, played favorites among system administrators, postured in public, did his best to charm particular school committee members, and generally kept everyone off balance. He did it so well that, for most of his long term of employment, almost no one noticed that he exercised no educational leadership whatsoever, and that the schools deteriorated both physically and educationally under his administration.

• Using relationships . The leader develops strong positive relationships with all or most of the people in the organization, and uses these relationships to steer people in particular directions. People do what they're asked because of their relationships with the leader, rather than for reasons connected to the tasks themselves.
• Setting an example . The leader may or may not demand or request particular behavior or actions, but she will demonstrate them, and expect or imply that others will follow.

In Sicily, a young archeologist was the dig supervisor, given the task of negotiating with and organizing local workmen for a dig. The workmen, most of them nearly twice the supervisor's age, saw the job as an opportunity to make some money without doing much work (and had been given to understand as much by the local mafioso who recruited them). The supervisor surprised them by speaking their dialect, and by treating them with respect. But the biggest surprise was that, after explaining carefully what needed to be done and how, he didn't stand over them or tell each person what to do. Instead, he simply turned away and went to work. The older men, impressed and embarrassed, started to work as well. They were surprised once more when they realized that the young archeologist was willing to do any job, no matter how hard or dirty, and that - although they were farmers, accustomed to labor - they couldn't outwork him no matter how they tried. Contrary to their original expectations, they worked hard for the time they were employed...without the supervisor ever giving orders.

• Persuasion . The leader convinces people through argument, reasoning, selling techniques, or other persuasive methods that what the leader wants is, in fact, the best course, or in line with what they want to do.
• Sharing power . Some leaders choose to exercise at least some leadership through the other stakeholders in the organization. In this situation they may give up some personal power in return for what they see as more ownership of decisions, goals, and the organization itself by those involved in the decision-making process.
• Charisma . Some leaders are charismatic enough to simply pull others along by the power of their personalities alone. They may, in fact, advocate and accomplish wonderful things, but they do it through people's loyalty to and awe of them.

Alexander the Great was only 18 when he succeeded his murdered father as King of Macedonia, and only 32 when he died, but he was able in the short time in between to conquer much of the known world. His personal magnetism was such that his soldiers - who knew him well, and fought beside him - thought him immortal, and followed him for years through battle after battle, and through one unknown country after another. As he lay dying, his whole army - 50,000 men - filed past to say goodbye personally to the leader they loved and revered. That's charisma.

• Involving followers in the goal . The leader gets others to buy into her vision for the organization, and to make it their own. She may accomplish this through charisma, through the force of her own belief in the power and rightness of the vision, or through the nature of the vision itself.

Various combinations of these and other methods.

The combination of the leader's and organization's conception of leadership and the leader's way of leading does much to define leadership style. In addition, the characteristics of the leadership are almost always reflected in the relationships within and among the staff, participants, Board, and others related to the organization, as well as in its policies, procedures, and program. We'll return to this idea in more detail when we examine specific styles later in this section.

There are also other factors that come into play in defining leadership style. In some organizations, for instance, leaders are expected to shake things up, and to foster and support change. In others, they are expected to sustain the status quo. In some, they are expected to be proactive, and assertive; in others, more passive. All of these elements - concepts of leadership, methods of leading, attitude toward change, assertiveness - combine with personalities and individual experience in different ways to create different styles of leaders.

There are a number of theories about leadership style, many involving a continuum - two opposite styles with a number of intermediate stops between them. We'll try here to present four styles that summarize many of the existing theories, and to show how they interact with another, all-embracing way of looking at leadership style.

Some ways of looking at leadership style, and their effects on an organization

Four leadership styles:.

Keep in mind that each of the styles below is a stereotype that actually fits very few real people. Each is meant to outline the characteristics of a style in very simple and one-sided terms. Hardly anyone actually sees or exercises leadership as inflexibly as laid out here. Most leaders combine some of the characteristics of two or more of these styles, and have other characteristics that don't match any of those below. You can find many descriptions of other leadership styles as well. What this list really provides is some useful ways to think about your own and others ' leadership. It's also important to remember that people can be either effective or ineffective in any of these categories. An autocratic leader might simply, through his behavior, serve to strengthen the very forces that he's trying to squash. A managerial leader may be an excellent or a terrible manager. Adopting a certain style doesn't necessarily imply carrying it off well. There are also some styles that are by their nature less effective than others. One which appears in the literature, for instance, is laissez-faire, which means letting things happen as they might, and providing neither vision nor direction nor structure. This may work for a short time in an organization that has already devised successful ways of working, but it won't suit even the best organization over a long period of time, and will be disastrous in an organization that needs direction and structure.

1. Autocratic . Autocratic leaders insist on doing it all themselves. They have all the power, make all the decisions, and don't often tell anyone else about what they're doing. If you work for an autocratic leader, your job is usually to do what you're told.

An autocratic leader often maintains his authority by force, intimidation, threats, reward and punishment, or position. Although he may or may not have a clear vision, and may or may not be steering the organization in the right direction, he's not concerned with whether anyone else agrees with what he's doing or not.

Autocratic leadership allows quick decision-making, and eliminates arguments over how and why things get done. At the same time, however, it may reduce the likelihood of getting a range of different ideas from different people, and can treat people badly, or as if they don't matter. If, as is often true, the leader is concerned with his own power and status, he'll be looking over his shoulder, and moving to squelch any opposition to him or his ideas and decisions. Innovation or the use of others' ideas is only permissible if it's part of the leader's plan.

Effects on the organization . Autocratic leaders often leave fear and mistrust in their wake. Others in the organization tend to copy their protection of their position, and their distrust of others' ideas and motives. Often, autocratically -led organizations are not particularly supportive of personal relationships, but much more keyed to chain-of-command. Everyone has her own sphere, and protects it at all costs. Communication tends to go in only one direction - up - as a result of which rumor can become the standard way of spreading news in the organization.

At its best (and there are decent autocratic leaders - see the box directly below ), autocratic leadership provides a stable and secure work environment and decisive, effective leadership. All too often, however, it can sacrifice initiative, new ideas, and the individual and group development of staff members for the predictability of a highly structured, hierarchical environment where everyone knows exactly what he's supposed to do, and follows orders without question.

Although the above paints a pretty bleak picture, many autocratic leaders are not hated and feared, but rather esteemed, and even loved. It depends on their own personalities - like anyone else, they can be nice people, or highly charismatic, or even willing to listen to and act on others' ideas - on the organization itself (in the military, most soldiers want someone firmly in charge), on the quality of their decisions, and on the needs of the people they lead. If they're generally decent and not abusive, make good decisions for the organization, and fulfill the parent-figure or authority -figure image that most people in the organization are looking for, they can be both effective and well-respected.

2. Managerial . The leader who sees herself as a manager is concerned primarily with the running of the organization. Where it's going is not at issue, as long as it gets there in good shape. She may pay attention to relationships with and among staff members, but only in the service of keeping things running smoothly. Depending upon the nature and stability of the organization, her main focus may be on funding, on strengthening the organization's systems and infrastructure (policies, positions, equipment, etc.), or on making sure day-to-day operations go well (including making sure that everyone is doing what he's supposed to).

If she's efficient, a managerial leader will generally be on top of what's happening in the organization. Depending on the size of the organization and her management level, she'll have control of the budget, know the policies and procedures manual inside out, be aware of who's doing his job efficiently and who's not, and deal with issues quickly and firmly as they come up. What she won't do is steer the organization. Vision isn't her business; maintaining the organization is.

Effects on the organization . In general, a well-managed organization, regardless of its leadership style, is a reasonably pleasant place to work. Staff members don 't have to worry about ambiguity, or about whether they'll get paid. As long as oversight is relatively civil - no screaming at people, no setting staff members against one another - things go along on an even keel. Good managers even try to foster friendly relationships with and among staff, because they make the organization work better.

On the other hand, good management without a clear vision creates an organization with no sense of purpose. The organization may simply act to support the status quo, doing what it has always done in order to keep things running smoothly. That attitude neither fosters passion in staff members, nor takes account of the changing needs (and they do change) of the target population or the community. The organization may do what it does efficiently and well...but what it does may not be what it should be doing, and it won't be examining that possibility any time soon.

Obviously, the leader of any organization - as well as any other administrator - has to be a manager at least some of the time. Many are in fact excellent managers, and keep the organization running smoothly on a number of levels. The issue here is the style that person adopts as a leader. If she sees management as her primary purpose, she's a managerial leader, and will have a very different slant on leadership than if her style is essentially democratic, for instance.

3 Democratic . A democratic leader understands that there is no organization without its people. He looks at his and others' positions in terms of responsibilities rather than status, and often consults in decision-making. While he solicits, values, and takes into account others' opinions, however, he sees the ultimate responsibility for decision-making as his own. He accepts that authority also means the buck stops with him. Although he sees the organization as a cooperative venture, he knows that he ultimately has to face the consequences of his decisions alone.

Democratic leadership invites the participation of staff members and others, not only in decision-making, but in shaping the organization's vision. It allows everyone to express opinions about how things should be done, and where the organization should go. By bringing in everyone's ideas, it enriches the organization's possibilities. But it still leaves the final decisions about what to do with those ideas in the hands of a single person.

Some models of democratic leadership might put the responsibility in the hands of a small group - a management team or executive committee - rather than an individual.

Effects on the organization . Democratic leadership, with its emphasis on equal status, can encourage friendships and good relationships throughout the organization. (In more hierarchical organizations, clerical staff and administrators are unlikely to socialize, for instance; in a democratically-led organization, such socialization often happens.) It helps people feel valued when their opinions are solicited, and even more so if those opinions are incorporated into a final decision or policy.

What a democratic leadership doesn't necessarily do - although it can - is establish staff ownership of the organization and its goals. Although everyone may be asked for ideas or opinions, not all of those are used or incorporated in the workings of the organization. If there is no real discussion of ideas, with a resulting general agreement, a sense of ownership is unlikely. Thus, democratic leadership may have some of the drawbacks of autocratic leadership - a lack of buy-in - without the advantages of quick and clear decision-making that comes with the elimination of consultation.

4. Collaborative . A collaborative leader tries to involve everyone in the organization in leadership. She is truly first among equals, in that she may initiate discussion, pinpoint problems or issues that need to be addressed, and keep track of the organization as a whole, rather than of one particular job. But decisions are made through a collaborative process of discussion, and some form of either majority or consensus agreement. Toward that end, a collaborative leader tries to foster trust and teamwork among the staff as a whole.

A collaborative leader has to let go of the need for control or power or status if she is to be effective. Her goal is to foster the collaborative process, and to empower the group - whether the staff and others involved in an organization, or the individuals and organizations participating in a community initiative - to control the vision and the workings of the organization. She must trust that, if people have all the relevant information, they'll make good decisions...and she must make sure that they have that information, and provide the facilitation that assures those good decisions.

Effects on the organization . Collaborative leadership comes as close as possible to ensuring that members of the organization buy into its vision and decisions, since they are directly involved in creating them. It comes closest to the goal of servant leadership explored in the previous section, and it also comes closest to reflecting the concepts of equality and empowerment included in the philosophy and mission of so many grass roots and community-based organizations. It thus removes much of the distrust that often exists between line staff and administrators.

David Chrislip and Carl E. Larson, in Collaborative Leadership - How Citizens and Civic Leaders Can Make a Difference, equate collaborative leadership not only with servant leadership, but with transformational (see below) and facilitative leadership as well. They identify four characteristics of the collaborative leader: Inspiring commitment and action . The collaborative leader helps people develop the vision and passion to start and maintain the work. Leading as a peer problem solver . The collaborative leader facilitates problem solving by modeling and teaching a process, and by helping others bring their experience and ideas to bear. Building broad-based involvement . The collaborative leader invites everyone concerned into an inclusive process. Sustaining hope and participation . Reaching goals may take a long time. The collaborative leader both helps the group set interim goals so it can see progress, and, by example and in other ways, helps to maintain the passion and commitment to keep going when there's no end in sight.

Collaborative leaders also generally foster close relationships among staff members, making for more communication and cross-fertilization in their work, and leading to more effective ways to accomplish the organization's goals.

On the down side, management can be neglected in favor of building a collaborative organization. Even more to the point, collaborative decision-making can be excruciating. Depending upon the group, ideas can be talked to death, and insignificant disagreements about insignificant areas of policy can take hours to resolve.

Collaborative decision-making can be democratic - based on a majority vote after discussion - or dependent on arriving at consensus, with a range of possibilities in between. Consensus decision-making is particularly difficult, in that it requires everyone to agree before a decision can be made. A single determined individual can derail the process indefinitely. Even at its best, a consensus process can take inordinate amounts of time, and try the patience of all involved. It's not impossible to employ, but it takes real commitment to the ideal of consensus, and enormous patience. In practice, true consensus decision-making is most often used in collective organizations, which are significantly different from collaborative ones, and often involve everyone in leadership.

Styles of leadership

A different view, popularized by James MacGregor Burns, contrasts two styles of leadership: transactional and transformational.

Transactional leadership , as its name implies, views leadership as based on transactions between leader and followers. The leader sees human relations as a series of transactions. Thus rewards, punishments, reciprocity, exchanges (economic, emotional, physical) and other such "transactions" are the basis of leadership. In simplest terms, I lead this organization by paying you and telling you what you need to do; you respond by doing what you need to do efficiently and well, and the organization will prosper.

Transformational leadership looks at leadership differently. It sees a true leader as one who can distill the values and hopes and needs of followers into a vision, and then encourage and empower followers to pursue that vision. A transactional leader thinks of improvement or development as doing the same thing better: an organization that reaches more people, a company that makes more money. A transformational leader thinks about changing the world, even if only on a small scale.

Combining the two views of leadership style

These two ways of looking at leadership style are not mutually exclusive: in fact, it's easier to look at leadership in the context of both. Assuming, as almost all leadership theorists do, that transformational is either better than, or a necessary addition to, transactional leadership, what elements go into creating a transformational leader? What styles are transformational leaders likely to employ, and how?

Elements of transformational leadership

The transformational leader conceives of leadership as helping people to create a common vision and then to pursue that vision until it's realized. She elicits that vision from the needs and aspirations of others, gives it form, and sets it up as a goal to strive for. The vision is not hers: it is a shared vision that each person sees as his own.

Martin Luther King's overwhelming "I Have A Dream" speech derived its power not only from the beauty of his oratory, but from the fact that it crystallized the feelings of all those citizens, of all races, who believed that racism was a great wrong. In that speech, King spoke with the voices of the hundreds of thousands who stood before the Lincoln Memorial, and of millions of others who shared in his vision. That speech remains as the defining moment of the Civil Rights struggle, and defined King - who had already proved his mettle in Birmingham and elsewhere - as a transformational leader.

The conception behind transformational leadership is thus providing and working toward a vision, but also has elements of empowerment, of taking care of people, and even of task orientation. The job of the transformational leader is not simply to provide inspiration and then disappear. It is to be there, day after day, convincing people that the vision is reachable, renewing their commitment, priming their enthusiasm. Transformational leaders work harder than anyone else, and, in the words of a spiritual, "keep their eyes on the prize".

The methods that transformational leaders might use to reach their goals can vary. They'll virtually always include involving followers in the goal, as well as charisma, which comes, if not from personal characteristics, from the ability to put a mutual vision into words, and to move a group toward the realization of that vision. Transformational leaders may also use sharing power, setting an example, and/or persuasion to help move a group toward its goal.

What style does all that imply? The managerial style is perhaps least appropriate to transformational leadership, since it pays no attention to vision. The autocratic pays little attention to the ideas of others, and is not generally congenial to the transformational leader. On the other hand, there was Hitler, who tapped into the deepest emotions of those he led, and voiced them in a frightening but highly effective way. There is no guarantee that a transformational leader will work for the betterment of humanity, although he may couch his vision in those terms. The intersection of the transformational and the autocratic is not impossible, but it usually has, at best, mixed results.

Fidel Castro initiated and has maintained desperately-needed land, education, health, and other reforms in Cuba, for which he is still revered by much of the island's population. He also eliminated any vestige of political freedom, imprisoned and executed dissenters and political opponents, and was at least partially responsible for destroying much of Cuba's economic base in the name of ideological purity. As with the four styles described earlier, there is no guarantee that either a transactional or transformational leader will be an effective one.

The democratic and collaborative styles are both better possibilities for transformational leadership. Both allow for input from everyone, and both encourage participation in the realization of long-term goals. It can be difficult for a highly motivated, charismatic leader to operate in the collaborative mode, but it can also be tremendously satisfying. There is an argument to be made that, because of the high degree of ownership of the vision in a collaboratively-run organization, the collaborative style could be the most successful for transformational leadership. As noted above, David Chrislip and Carl Larson actually see collaborative and transformational leadership as essentially the same.

All that said, it is probably true that any leader, even a highly collaborative one, uses a range of different styles at different times - even, perhaps, in the course of a single day. Decisions have to be made, major and minor crises have to be met, situations and conflicts have to be resolved, often right at the moment. It is important to realize that different styles may be appropriate at different times, and for different purposes.

In an emergency, no one would suggest sitting down and making a group decision about what to do. There has to be decisive action, and one person has to take it as soon as possible. As long as it's clear who that person is, there should be no question about the philosophical issues involved. By the same token, it's counter -productive to make decisions about how people should do their jobs without at least consulting those people about what might work best. Good leaders usually have a style that they consciously use most of the time, but they're not rigid. They change as necessary to deal with whatever comes up.

There are at least two other factors that have to be considered when choosing a leadership style. The first is that leadership style - at least at the beginning - must, to at least some extent, be consistent with what people in the organization expect. You can try to change their expectations and perceptions of how an organization should be run - that's part of leadership - but you have to start by meeting them at least halfway, or you'll never get close enough to talk about it.

If you're trying to turn a system that's been autocratic into a collaborative one, you have to accept that most people in the system not only won't welcome the change, and that some won't even understand what you're suggesting. You also have to accept that they've probably developed their own methods of getting around the rigidity of the system that they'll continue to use, even if the system is no longer rigid. It can take a long time just to get your ideas across, and longer to help people overcome their suspicions and break old habits. A few may never be able to. You need patience, and the willingness to act occasionally in ways you'd rather not.

In the second story at the beginning of this section, the school principal was on the side of the angels: he was trying to be a collaborative, transformational leader who would inspire and support teachers to become the best educators they could, and who would make the school into a model of excellence, learning for all, and collegiality. The problem was that the teachers expected something entirely different. They wanted someone to tell them what to do, and then leave them alone to do it. They saw the principal's plans as just another way to trick them into doing things they didn't want to do, and to get them to work longer hours. The more he tried to explain how what he was asking was for their benefit, the more they resisted - they'd heard that line before. If he had started where the teachers were, the principal might have been able to be more successful. That would have meant his "running" the school as his predecessor had, and introducing reforms slowly over a long period. Suggestions to receptive teachers might have started the process; professional development could have helped it along. He might have used incentives of some sort to encourage teachers to try new things, rather than assuming they would be happy to be more independent and creative. Paying attention to the expectations of the staff might have paid off for the principal in the long run.

Finally, your style needs to be consistent with the goals, mission, and philosophy of your organization. As mentioned earlier - and in numerous places elsewhere in the Community Tool Box - an organization cannot remain faithful to its mission if its internal structure is at odds with its guiding principles. An organization dedicated to empowerment of the target population, for instance, must empower its staff as well. For most grass roots and community-based organizations, this consistency would mean using some variation of a democratic or collaborative style.

What kind of leader do you want to be? Perhaps even more important, how would you be most effective as a leader? What kind of leadership style would be of the most benefit to your organization, and would allow you to be the best leader you could be? The leadership styles described in this section aren't the only ways to look at leadership. As we've already discussed, most real leaders use a combination of styles, and there are others that haven't really been touched on here.

It's possible that Alexander the Great was a born leader, but how much are you like Alexander the Great? Be honest now...it's doubtful, isn't it? Just about all leaders, even great leaders, have to learn how to lead, and have to develop their skills over a period of time. You can do the same, especially if you have a clear idea of what you think leadership is about, and if you have good models to learn from. Here are a few things you can do to choose and develop your own effective leadership style:

Start with yourself.

Use what you know about your own personality, and about how you've exercised leadership in the past. Neither of these has to determine what you choose now - people can change, especially if they believe that what they've done before was ineffective or inconsistent with their values - but it's important to be honest with yourself about who you are. That honesty has two aspects.

First, be clear with yourself about what your natural tendencies and talents are. If you want to be a collaborative leader, but you tend to tell people what to do, you have to admit that and think about ways to change it. If you want to be a directive leader, but you have trouble making decisions, you need to deal with that issue. Not everyone can be charismatic, but almost everyone can learn to distill and communicate a vision that reflects the hopes and needs of a group. Knowing who you are is the first step toward both choosing a style and understanding what you'll have to do to adopt it.

Being truly honest with yourself is a difficult task. For most of us, it may take some time with a counselor or a trusted friend, or the willingness to hear feedback from colleagues, co-workers, and/or family members. It also takes an honest self -assessment, which can mean stripping away defenses and facing insecurities. Some questions you might ask yourself to start: How great is my need to be in control? (When you're in a car, are you uncomfortable if you're not driving, assuming the driver is competent? Would you let someone else order for you in a restaurant? If you were teaching a class, would it be a lecture? Would you follow tangents that were interesting to class members? Is there a right way to do most everything? If your answers to these questions are yes, no, yes, no, and yes, you probably have a pretty high need to be in control of things.) How willing am I to trust others to do their jobs? (Are you uncomfortable delegating work, so that you just try to do it yourself? Do you tell people exactly how to do things, even when they have experience doing them? Do you think supervisors should spend a lot of their time checking the work of those they supervise? "Yes" answers to these questions could mean that you don't have much confidence in others.) How patient am I? (If someone is having trouble doing something, do you just do it for him? Do you interrupt with your comments before others are finished speaking? Do you want the discussion to end because you want to start doing something? If all these are the case, patience may not be your greatest virtue.) How organized am I? (Can you almost always find whatever you need without having to search for it? Is your desk clean? Are your files alphabetized and orderly? Are your books alphabetized? Do you have a place for nearly everything? Is your appointment book readable by anyone but you? Are you always on time, and hardly ever miss appointments?) How good are my people skills? (Are you comfortable with other people? Do people seem to comfortable with you? When you're with others, do you spend most of your time talking? Listening? About even? Do people seek you out for help or advice? Do you consider yourself a good judge of people, and has that been borne out by your experience? Do you try to consider others' needs and feelings in any decision?) These few questions are obviously just a beginning, but they should help you think about some important leadership issues. If you have a high need for control, for instance, it doesn't mean you can't be a collaborative leader, but it does mean that you'll have to learn some new behavior, and perhaps a whole new way of looking at things. If you're not well-organized, it doesn't mean you can't be a good manager, but you'll have to find strategies to keep you on top of everything.

Second, acknowledge and be true to your beliefs. If you have a real philosophical commitment to a particular leadership style, it will probably be easier for you to change your behavior to match that style than to live with knowing you're betraying your principles.

Think about the needs of the organization or initiative.

A community coalition almost has to have collaborative leadership, or it will fall apart amid turf issues and accusations of discrimination. An organization that responds to situations where it has to act quickly - an emergency medical team, for example - may need more decisive and directive leadership. Some groups may have an impassioned vision, but don't have the practical skills - financial management, scheduling, etc. - to achieve it.

You can adapt most styles to most situations, but don't neglect the real needs of the organization in your calculations. You may need to practice a different style at the beginning from the one that you want to assume over the long term, in order to solve problems in the organization, or to get people on board. In the example at the beginning of this section, for instance, the school principal might have had more success if he had started by making very little change and moved more slowly into the role and philosophy he wanted.

Observe and learn from other leaders.

Think about how leaders you've worked for or with exercised leadership. What were their styles, and were they effective? How did they handle different kinds of situations? How did what they did make you and others feel? Try to watch others in action, and talk to them about how they see what they do. What do you like about how they operate? What don't you like? What can you incorporate into your own style?

Find a mentor. If there's a leader whom you particularly admire, and that person is accessible (Nelson Mandela might have trouble fitting you in), talk with her about leadership issues - about how she perceives what she's doing, how she'd handle particular situations and why, etc. Most people, especially if they're good leaders and conscious of what they do and why, welcome the opportunity to help others develop their own leadership skills.

Use the research on leadership.

There are lots of resources available on leaders and on both the theory and practice of leadership. Many are included at the end of this section, and there are hosts of others you can find yourself. They 'll give you a lot more ideas about leadership styles, and help you refine your own thinking about what leadership is and what kind of leader you'd like to be.

Believe in what you're doing.

If you've thought it through carefully, and believe in the way you practice leadership, that will be projected to others. If you believe in yourself, they'll believe in you, too.

Be prepared to change.

Although this may seem at odds with some of the above, it is probably the most important element to good leadership. No matter how well you're doing, it's not perfect - it never is, and never will be. Be prepared to find for yourself or hear from others the negative as well as the positive, to consider it carefully and objectively, and to make corrections if necessary. That way, you can not only become a good leader, but continue to be one.

Leadership style is the way in which a leader accomplishes his purposes. It can have profound effects on an organization and its staff members, and can determine whether the organization is effective or not.

Leadership style depends on the leader's and organization's conception of what leadership is, and on the leader's choice of leadership methods. Depending how those fit together, a leader might adopt one of a variety styles, each reflected in the way the organization operates and the way its staff members relate to one another. Some (very stereotyped) possibilities:

• Autocratic - totally in control, making all decisions himself
• Managerial - concerned with the smooth operation, rather than the goals and effectiveness, of the organization
• Democratic - consulting with others, encouraging equality within the organization, but making final decisions herself
• Collaborative - sharing leadership, involving others in all major decisions, spreading ownership of the organization.

Another way of looking at leadership is to categorize it as either transactional (based on transactions such as pay in return for work) or transformational (based on enlisting people in pursuit of a vision voiced by the leader, but based on their own needs and aspirations, which aims at real change). Combining this view with that based on the four styles makes it easier to understand how leaders operate and make decisions. It also makes clear that different styles may be appropriate for different purposes, and that most leaders shift back and forth among several in the course of a day, even if there is one that characterizes them.

You can choose and develop leadership styles and skills by assessing your own tendencies and talents; understanding the needs of the organization or initiative; observing others leaders and finding a mentor; believing in yourself, and being prepared to change.

Online Resources

The Center for Creative Leadership

The Center for Strategic Management

Chapter 10: Empowerment in the "Introduction to Community Psychology" addressed the different levels of empowerment, how to contribute to power redistribution, and ways to take action to make changes in communities.

Connective Leadership and Achieving Styles

Emerging Leader

The Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership

Idea Bridge

The Leadership Challenge

Leadership styles and problem solving - deBono's Six Hats

The Pew Civic Entrepreneur Initiative

Power and Leadership Practices by the Superintendent: What Do They Mean to Leaders and Followers?

Spokes: Resources for Non-profits

Style of Management and Leadership

Transformational Leadership

Print Resources

Bass, B. (1995). Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations . New York, NY: Free Press.

Burns, J. (1985).  Leadership . New York, NY: Harper Collins.

Chrislip, D. & Carl E.  (1995).  Collaborative Leadership - How Citizens and Civic Leaders Can Make a Difference . San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers.

Gardner, H. (1996).   Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership . New York, NY: Basic Books.

Gardener, H. (1998).   Extraordinary Minds . New York, NY: Basic Books, 

Gardner, J. (1993).  On Leadership . New York, NY: Free Press.

Greenleaf, R. (1983).   Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness . Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 

Macchiavelli, N. (1998).  The Prince . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wheatley, M.  (2001).  Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World . Barrett-Koehler Publishing.

Module 10: Leadership

Assignment: evaluating leadership, preparation.

In your readings on Leadership, you learned the difference between management and leadership, as well as traits, styles, and situations of leaders and leadership. Many modern-day leaders were profiled in the text, including:

• Warren Buffett
• Martin Winterkorn
• Carrie Toldstedt
• Ginni Rometty
• Mark Zuckerberg

In this assignment, you will research and write about a modern leader of your choice. You may not select one of the leaders listed above .  The following steps will help you prepare for your written assignment:

• Thoroughly read the Leadership module.
• Carefully consider the traits, styles, and differing situations for leadership in today’s organizations.
• Select a leader to profile in your written report. You may select one you admire, or a “good example of a bad example.”  There are numerous websites naming leaders to get you started.  A quick search on “famous contemporary leaders” revealed millions of possible lists, OR you may select a leader in your personal or professional life: your boss, a coach, a team leader, etc.
• Research your chosen leader, identifying evidence of his/her traits, styles, and leadership situations. Relate your findings to the module concepts. For example, how did your chosen leader demonstrate the trait of “desire to lead”?  Prepare examples.
• First, introduce your leader, and state why you selected him/her. Was their leadership effective or not effective?
• Next, expand upon the traits and style of your leader, including at least three properly referenced and defined terms from the module reading. For example, if you select Drive, describe what the term means in the context of leadership and how your leader demonstrates it.
• Next, describe the leadership situation your chosen leader was in, using one of the Situational Leadership Models from the module reading. For example, if your leader was charged with a group of new or low-competence employees, did they use the Selling style prescribed by Ken Blanchard?
• Finally, conclude with a short description of your personal leadership style and how effective it has been for you to date.

Your written assignment will be graded using the  Written Assignment Rubric . Please review and keep it in mind as you prepare your assignment. Each component is weighted as follows:

10% Organization and Format

Adequate: Writing is coherent and logically organized, using a format suitable for the material presented. Transitions used between ideas and paragraphs create coherence. Overall unity of ideas is supported by the format and organization of the material presented.

40% Content

Adequate: All required questions are addressed with thoughtful consideration reflecting both proper use of content terminology and additional original thought. Some additional concepts are presented from properly cited sources, or originated by the author following logic and reasoning they’ve clearly presented throughout the writing.

40% Development – Critical Thinking

Adequate: Content indicates original thinking, cohesive conclusions, and developed ideas with sufficient and firm evidence. Ideas presented are not merely the opinion of the writer, and clearly address all of the questions or requirements asked with evidence presented to support conclusions drawn.

10% Grammar, Mechanics, Style

Adequate: Writing is free of spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors, allowing the reader to follow ideas clearly. There are no sentence fragments and run-ons. The style of writing, tone, and use of rhetorical devices is presented in a cohesive style that enhances the content of the message.

• Assignment: Evaluating Leadership . Authored by : Betty Fitte and Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution

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The 8 Types of Leadership Styles Explained – With Examples

Last updated on 4th March 2024

At the head of every successful project is a great leader. But not all great leaders are the same. 

There are many different ways to lead a team. And different leaders have different traits that make their specific brand of leadership work. 

In this article we’re going to take a look at 8 leadership styles (with examples), so you can discover which one is the right leadership style for you, your business, and your team. 

Article Contents

1. Transformational Leadership

Transformational leadership is a leadership style that requires the leader to inspire employees and motivate them towards achieving their collective goal. 

Transformational leaders often embody their vision and believe in it so strongly that they can empower others to do the same.  

Transformational leadership: advantages and disadvantages

Millennials are a demographic that respond really well to transformational leadership because of the focus on aligned values.

However, even the most inspired and motivated people have a breaking point. Think of the start ups that work 80 hour weeks in a bid to disrupt their industry – yes, it’s exciting. But in the long run it can also be incredibly tiring. 

If you want to be a successful transformational leader, it’s important to strike the perfect balance.

Example of a transformational leader

There are many examples of transformational leaders throughout history, because these are exactly the type of people to go down in history. They have bold visions and they make them a reality. 

Think of Churchill’s “we shall fight on the beaches” speech. Churchill is a great example of a transformational leader that inspired an entire nation of people to work towards a common goal. 

In today’s world, Elon Musk is another example of a transformational leader. His company SpaceX was the first ever private spaceflight company to send a crewed spacecraft to space. And he is famously quoted as saying:

Richard Branson is also an excellent example of a transformational leader. His Virgin Group owns several companies across a range of industries, from broadband to international travel.

Branson himself isn’t an expert in all of these industries, but his charismatic personality gives him the power to inspire others to get excited about these ideas and make them work.

2. Autocratic Leadership

An autocratic or authoritarian leadership style imposes policies and procedures, sets expectations and defines outcomes. 

Authoritarian leaders are individuals who take full control of their team and makes all of the decisions with little input from anyone else. 

Autocratic leadership: advantages and disadvantages

On the face of it, this leadership style can sound a little tyrannical, but if the leader is the most knowledgeable person on the team – and if they act with fairness and kindness – then this leadership style can work well.

Example of an autocratic leader

Martha Stewart has her autocratic leadership style to thank for her self-made empire. She has been described as a meticulous boss that’s very demanding of her employees. 

And that’s because Stewart has a very clear vision to share with her staff and her customers. It’s this same attention-to-detail that’s boosted her to be a household name, with almost every home in America using her merchandise at one point or another. 

3. Participative (Democratic) Leadership

Also known as democratic leadership, participative leadership allows everyone on the team to get involved and work together to make important decisions.

While everyone’s input is encouraged, it’s the leader who will have the final say in the decision-making process. 

Participative leadership: advantages and disadvantages

The participative leadership style is a great way to create an atmosphere of inclusion and it can really help employees feel more aligned with the company, which is a big focus of democratic leaders. However, we all know the saying about too many cooks!

Example of a participative leader

Southwest Airlines has had many different leaders over the years, and all of them seemed to embody the participative leadership approach.

It’s likely that this is the trait that has taken the business from a small Texas airline to a major US carrier.

Ex-CEO, James Parker referred to participative leadership in his book, Do the Right Thing :

4. Transactional Leadership

Transactional leadership uses a model of rewards and punishments to motivate employees. 

Clear goals are set at the start of a project, with everyone informed on the reward if those goals are met and the consequences if they are not. 

Transactional leadership: advantages and disadvantages

This “give and take” leadership style can motivate employees and increase productivity and satisfaction, so long as the goals outlined are clear and achievable. 

However, not everyone will be motivated by a ‘carrot and stick’ method like this, and the implementation of rigid rules makes it difficult for the business to adapt quickly if needed.

Example of a transactional leader

A classic example of a transactional leader is the ex-football manager, Sir Alex Ferguson. When he was managing Manchester United, he got a lot out of his team using this leadership style. 

Players were rewarded financially if they played well consistently. However, those that were seen as underachieving felt the wrath of Ferguson’s notorious temper. 

This is touched upon in his book, Leading , in which he states:

5. Delegative Leadership

Also known as “laissez-faire leadership”, delegative leadership is a hands-off approach that allows every team member to use their own initiative to make decisions.

There are similarities to participative leadership here, in that employees are valued for their opinions and decisions are made somewhat collectively. 

Delegative leadership: advantages and disadvantages

Delegative leadership allows employees the autonomy to make their own decisions and be rewarded for their innovation. This provides many opportunities for skills development, but can also result in accountability issues if roles and responsibilities aren’t clearly communicated.

Example of a delegative leader

The American investor, Warren Buffet has been the CEO of the holding company Berkshire Hathaway since 1970. He’s currently 93 years old and quite comfortably holds the record for longest reigning CEO of an S&P 500 company.

He’s noted as a delegative leader because of his method of empowering his employees to make their own decisions and solve their own problems. 

6. Bureaucratic Leadership

The bureaucratic leadership style puts the needs of the company first and relies on stringent rules being in place for all team members to follow. 

This is common in long-established industries where rules have been laid out by predecessors.

Bureaucratic leadership: advantages and disadvantages

The bureaucratic leadership style can be advantageous in industries where there’s little room for error, such as healthcare organisations. However, doing things just “as they’ve always been” can lead a team – and a company – to go stale and possibly fall behind. 

Example of a bureaucratic leader

Bureaucratic leaders, because of the nature of this leadership style, are typically forged by the businesses that they work for. 

An example of a business that does things as they’ve always done is McDonalds. Despite their leadership team changing over time, McDonalds has always been run in the same way because their barometer for success is profit. 

As long as the business is profitable, the shareholders are happy and the company is classed as successful – and ultimately, customers get the same experience every time. 

This is why entrepreneurs that opt to buy a McDonalds franchise are expected to adhere to strict rules and regulations when running their branch. 

7. Servant Leadership

Servant leadership places the value of the team ahead of the individual. As such, a servant leader is someone who can shed personal agendas and whose main goal is for their team (and the company) to thrive. 

Servant leaders do everything they can to serve their team and ensure that everyone is happy and fulfilled.

Servant leadership: advantages and disadvantages

Servant leaders – because of their selfless nature – see potential in their team and enjoy raising them to new heights.

However, because of this focus on serving the team, servant leaders can sometimes be undermined if they are seen as lacking authority. Plus, balancing the needs of individual employees with overall organisational success can be difficult.

Example of a servant leader

Leadership expert and author of Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t , Simon Sinek strongly believes in this leadership style. 

He explains this in more detail here: 

8. Coaching leadership

The coaching leadership style is a great way to develop your team members and get the best out of them. It involves giving employees guidance and frequent feedback to help them grow and develop.

Coaching leadership: advantages and disadvantages

Coaching is a highly nurturing leadership style, which can lead to increased job satisfaction and enhanced employee morale.

On the other hand, it’s high-maintenance and requires a lot of time and energy input. Coaching leaders need to be consistent in their feedback and guidance, which can be difficult in large teams. Plus some employees could be resistant to feedback or coaching and become demotivated as a result.

An example of a terrific leader that embodied this style was Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs. He encouraged creativity in his team members and was known for giving them helpful criticism when necessary. His vision and use of the coaching leadership style helped to propel Apple to be the billion-dollar success it is today.

Final thoughts

There are many ways to lead your team to success. Effective leadership styles come in all shapes and sizes – and, quite simply, the most effective leadership style is the one that best suits you and your team.

However, one thing that all leaders need – regardless of style – is the correct tools at their disposal.

A project management tool can help you successfully manage your projects by keeping everything – communication, files, tasks – in one place, so that you have complete visibility of your team’s work. 

To find out more and get started for free, head to Project.co . 

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4 Types of Leadership Styles with Examples: Learn from Legends

Leadership is a critical element in any organization or team, and understanding different leadership styles can significantly impact how teams are managed and how goals are achieved. In this blog post, we will explore 4 types of leadership styles with examples of leaders who exemplify each style. 

By the end of this article, you will have a better understanding of these leadership approaches and their practical applications in various contexts.

Also Read: 20 Qualities of a Good Leader : Lead With Impact

4 Types of Leadership Styles with Examples

Table of Contents

1. Autocratic Leadership

Definition and characteristics.

Autocratic leadership is characterized by a top-down approach, where the leader makes decisions without seeking input from team members. They have a strong hold on authority and control, making them the sole decision-makers in the organization.

Examples of Autocratic Leadership

Pros and cons of autocratic leadership.

Autocratic leadership (among all 4 types of leadership styles with examples) can be effective in situations that require quick decision-making and strong direction. However, it can stifle creativity and innovation, and it may lead to employee dissatisfaction and turnover in the long run.

2. Transformational Leadership

The goal of transformational leadership is to encourage and inspire team members to realize their greatest potential. Leaders in this style often set high expectations, encourage innovation, and lead by example.

Examples of Transformational Leadership

Pros and cons of transformational leadership.

Transformational leadership can foster innovation and personal growth among team members. However, it may not be suitable in situations that require immediate decision-making or where the team lacks self-motivation.

3. Servant Leadership

Servant leadership is centered on the leader’s commitment to serving the needs of their team members first. They prioritize the well-being and development of their employees, which often leads to a more engaged and loyal workforce among other 4 types of leadership styles with examples.

Examples of Servant Leadership

Pros and cons of servant leadership.

Servant leadership can lead to a motivated and loyal team, but it may not be effective in situations where quick decisions are required, or when team members need strong direction.

4. Laissez-Faire Leadership

Laissez-faire leadership is characterized by a hands-off approach, where leaders provide autonomy to their team members. They trust their team’s capabilities and allow them to make decisions independently.

Examples of Laissez-Faire Leadership

Pros and cons of laissez-faire leadership.

Laissez-faire leadership can foster creativity and independence among team members, but it may lead to confusion or lack of direction if not applied appropriately.

How to Find Your  Leadership Style?

Finding your leadership style is an important step in becoming an effective leader. Your leadership style should align with your personality, values, and the needs of your team or organization. Here are some steps to help you discover your leadership style:

• Self-Assessment: Start by assessing your own strengths, weaknesses, values, and personality traits. Reflect on your experiences and think about the leadership styles that resonate with you. Consider what kind of leader you want to be and what values are most important to you in a leadership role.
• Observe Other Leaders: Pay attention to leaders you admire or have worked with in the past. Take note of their leadership styles and the impact they have on their teams. Try to identify elements of their styles that you find appealing or effective.
• Take Leadership Assessments: There are various leadership assessments and personality tests available that can provide insights into your leadership style. You may learn more about your preferences and inclinations as a leader by taking leadership style tests, DISC assessments, or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).
• Seek Feedback: Consult team members, mentors, or coworkers for their opinions. They might supply you insightful information on how your leadership style impacts the individuals under your direction. You may enhance your approach and uncover areas for progress with the use of constructive criticism.
• Consider Situational Leadership: Understand that effective leadership often involves adapting your style to different situations and individuals. Some situations may call for a more directive approach, while others may require a more collaborative or supportive style. Flexibility is key to successful leadership.
• Identify Your Core Values: Determine the values that guide your decision-making and actions as a leader. Your values should align with your leadership style. For example, if integrity is one of your core values, your leadership style should reflect honesty and ethical behavior.
• Set Leadership Goals: Define your leadership goals and what you want to achieve as a leader. Consider the kind of impact you want to have on your team or organization. Your goals can help shape your leadership style and provide a sense of direction.
• Experiment and Learn: Be open to trying different leadership approaches and techniques. Experiment with different styles and strategies to see what works best for you and your team. Learning from both successes and failures is essential for growth as a leader.
• Continuous Self-Reflection: Leadership is a continuous journey of self-improvement. Regularly reflect on your leadership experiences, assess their effectiveness, and adjust your style as needed. Seek opportunities for professional development and learning.
• Seek Mentorship and Coaching: Consider seeking guidance from experienced leaders or coaches who can provide valuable insights and mentorship. They can help you refine your leadership style and offer practical advice based on their own experiences.

Remember that there is no one-size-fits-all leadership style, and effective leaders often incorporate elements from different styles depending on the situation. Your leadership style may also evolve over time as you gain more experience and learn from your interactions with others. 

Tips to Improve Leadership Style To Become A Good Leader

Self-awareness: the foundation of leadership.

• Recognize your strengths and weaknesses.
• Understand your values and principles.
• Solicit feedback from others.

Effective Communication

• Listen actively to others.
• Be clear and concise in your messages.
• Foster open and honest communication.

Empower and Delegate

• Trust your team members’ abilities.
• Delegate tasks and responsibilities.
• Provide guidance and support when needed.

Lead by Example

• Model the behavior you expect from your team.
• Demonstrate integrity and ethical conduct.
• Show dedication and a strong work ethic.

Adaptability and Flexibility

• Be open to change and new ideas.
• Adjust your leadership style to fit the situation.
• Embrace challenges as opportunities for growth.

Empathy and Emotional Intelligence

• Understand and manage your emotions.
• Show empathy towards team members.
• Build strong relationships based on trust.

Set Clear Goals and Expectations

• Define clear, achievable objectives.
• Communicate expectations to your team.
• Monitor progress and provide feedback.

Conflict Resolution

• Address conflicts promptly and constructively.
• Encourage open dialogue to resolve issues.
• Seek win-win solutions when possible.

Continuous Learning and Development

• Stay updated on industry trends and best practices.
• Invest in leadership training and education.
• Learn from both successes and failures.

In conclusion, leadership styles play a crucial role in shaping the dynamics of organizations and teams. Autocratic, transformational, servant, and laissez-faire leadership styles each have their strengths and weaknesses. Effective leaders often adapt their style to the situation and the needs of their team. 

By understanding these 4 types of leadership styles with examples provided, you can become a more versatile and impactful leader in your own professional journey.

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How to Make Different Business Leadership Styles Work (With Case Studies)

Several thought leaders have referred to 2020 as the year of great reset. But if you want to be really strict about it, most of the biggest business shifts started way back at the onset of the 21st century. 

Traditional business leaders who are banking on traditional business leadership styles in this new century needlessly risk losing their businesses to unhealthy age-old leadership practices.

The pandemic just helped reiterate the need for business leaders to change the way they approach business problems primarily due to the following reasons:

• New technologies
• Pace of change
• Changing demographics and employee expectations
• Changing customer expectations

The chart below gives you a better glimpse of the reasons why there is a difference in the requirements for the kind of leaders we need to have in this era. The data depicted is from Deloitte’s Human Capital Trends Survey .

What are these particular requirements? According to the same study by Deloitte, business leaders need to have the following abilities:

• lead through more complexity and ambiguity
• lead through influence
• manage on a remote basis
• manage a workforce with a combination of humans and machines
• lead more quickly

See this second figure below.

According to Forbes , there are three notable leadership skill shifts for 2021 and these are the following:

• Communication to Empathy 
• Emotional Intelligence to Emotional Agility 
• Time Management to Context Management

Leaders are expected to be effective communicators, but the shift is now focused on empathy as a priority for business leaders this year. The Management Research Group found empathy to be the leading positive leadership competency and one of the biggest predictors of senior executive effectiveness . This makes a lot of sense especially now that the recent challenges brought about by the pandemic have highlighted the value of caring while communicating.

Emotional intelligence to emotional agility is another important shift. Susan David , a psychologist and the author of the book “Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life” describes emotionally agile people be the type of people who are not only aware of their feelings but also know how to navigate through them.

Now the shift from time management to context management gives emphasis on how the change in the context of how and where we work requires realignment in managing our time and designing our days around how we work. 

While there are several leadership styles and the specific strategies vary depending on the field or industry, the concepts are basically the same. Let’s take note of these leadership skill shifts mentioned earlier in studying how we can better tailor the different leadership styles to suit the changing times. 

The following are six of the different leadership styles we will tackle further:

• Autocratic Leadership Style
• Democratic Leadership Style
• Laissez-Faire Leadership Style
• Situational leadership style
• Transactional Leadership Style
• Transformational Leadership Style

First off, let’s start with the traditional business leadership styles.

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1. autocratic leadership style.

Case Study: Howell Raines of The New York Times

The New York Times under Howell Raines as the Executive Editor decided at one point to only put resources on the stories that he deemed as worth covering. While this led to The New York Times winning a record-breaking seven Pulitzer awards in a single year, several staff members got demoralized.

There is no known theorist behind autocratic leadership so it is considered as an organic leadership style that has developed over the course of time that it has been used. 

Basically, an autocratic leader is the type of leader who would make decisions without proper consultation. You may think that this leadership style is unacceptable for who decides on his own especially if the decision concerns an entire organization, right? 

But, Cleverism articulates three situations where the autocratic leadership style can be used and these are the following:

• The situation requires fast and immediate decision-making
• There is no clarity in the process of the procedure and pushing ahead might only lead people to danger
• There are more inexperienced people in the group and most of them are demotivated

The tendency of most businesses with an autocratic leader is that the subordinates will become passive and mediocre, or conflicts may arise.

In these situations where a business leader must step up and use the autocratic leadership style, it is important to take note of communicating openly and regarding others with respect the entire time.

2. Democratic Leadership Style

Case Study: Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google

Founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page hired Eric Schmidt to jump-start the Internet search engine. Blending autocratic, laissez-faire and democratic leadership styles, they allowed someone knowledgeable and experienced into Google which would then lead to more democratic teams composed of experienced talent. 

Also known as the participative leadership style, the democratic leadership style in business management is often characterized as the style that encourages collaboration with fellow leaders and team members. In other words, everyone is allowed to participate in the decision-making process. 

While this style of leadership is very motivating for most people as compared to the autocratic leadership style, it works best for businesses that employ experts in their departments so little supervision is required. 

According to St. Thomas University , the following organizations can take advantage of this:

• Biotech R&D divisions
• Housing construction sites
• Universities
• Information technology companies

Furthermore, the university lists the following as the disadvantages of this leadership style:

• Business leaders may become too dependent on their subordinates
• Getting everyone’s input may take a lot of time 
• Missed deadlines are possible 
• Consulting with people who lack accurate data or sufficient knowledge
• Too much burden for business leaders to oversee collaboration

The democratic leadership style can bring forth massive business growth if business leaders are willing to take responsibility for the decisions made and provide support and expertise during collaborations.

Such requires highly productive leaders who know what they do and will take action.

3. Laissez-Faire Leadership Style

Case Study: Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway

Warren Buffett is known for exemplifying the laissez-faire leadership style as he allows people he works with to do their jobs without his supervision or intervention. His great success over several years has been attributed to his style of leadership which allows a culture of motivation and confidence. He, however, sees to it that he only hires people he can trust to do their jobs.

The laissez-faire leadership style emerged from the French word laissez-faire which means “leave alone”. Also called the hands-off approach, this style is based on the concept that leaders can leave their employees or teams alone in coming up with ideas or decisions for the business departments they are part of. 

This used to be a very popular style before the 19th century, but as modernization started, more and more business leaders find the disadvantages of leading teams with no supervision to be detrimental. This is particularly possible for companies that lack expert talent.

What business leaders who employ this leadership style should note is that assuming that subordinates must be free from accountability. This only encourages the company’s people to be complacent.

The business leader must ensure that teams are composed of highly-skilled individuals who can be reliable in achieving business goals under their responsibility.

At this point, we’ve already discussed the three leadership styles that can be highly traditional unless approached with a fresh perspective that takes into account the new leadership needs and skill shifts.

How these three business leadership styles work is illustrated below.

Which leadership style can you resonate with the most?

We now have what we call modern leadership styles or approaches. These styles have emerged as a response to the traditional styles that do not allow much room for innovation. 

Although most of these new approaches are modified versions of the traditional leadership styles, they are identified mainly based on the following types of categories:

• Situational leadership
• Transactional leadership
• Transformational leadership
• Innovative leadership

4. Situational Leadership Style 

This leadership style follows the contingency-based leadership model when responding to situations or making decisions. Business leaders who employ this style are flexible and would normally use varying leadership strategies depending on the situation.

Goleman believes that a situational leader must be able to incorporate the six specific leadership styles given the right circumstances.

5. Transactional Leadership Style

Also known as managerial leadership, transactional leadership is a style that focuses on supervision, organization, and group performance.

Business leaders under this style use rewards and punishments to motivate subordinates in a given task.

According to Verywell Mind , the basic assumptions of transactional leadership are the following:

• When the chain of command is clear, your workforce performs their best
• Rewards and punishments are effective agents of motivation
• Obeying the leader is the most important goal of the subordinates
• Careful monitoring is a must

When giving assignments, the business leader must be clear when it comes to the instructions, rewards and consequences, as well as giving feedback. 

6. Transformational Leadership Style

Business leaders who subscribe to the transformational leadership style serve as inspirations to their subordinates.

They inspire as they lead by example and as they cultivate an environment that welcomes creativity and innovation. This suits employees who have entrepreneurial minds as transformational business leaders seek to inspire just the right amount of intellectual independence in the workplace.

In a roundup article, Harvard Business Review lists the following as the best examples of transformational leadership:

• Jeff Bezos , Amazon
• Reed Hastings , Netflix
• Jeff Boyd and Glenn Fogel , Priceline
• Steve Jobs and Tim Cook , Apple
• Mark Bertolini , Aetna
• Kent Thiry , DaVita
• Satya Nadella , Microsoft
• Emmanuel Faber , Danone
• Heinrich Hiesinger , ThyssenKrupp

The Harvard Business Review refers to this group as the Transformation 10 for exemplifying transformational leadership.

Strengthening Your Leadership Mindset

About 60% of the executives who participated in the 2021 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends said that what prepared them for the unknown is leadership . This is the kind of leadership that takes into account the unpredictable and incorporates strategies surrounding that through coaching, teaming, and fostering.

But did you know that based on the research of the Corporate Executive Board , about 50%-70% of the new business executives or leaders fail within the first 18 months? Unless you have the right leadership mindset and you solidify that mindset, you will become part of this figure. 

Whenever a major business problem happens, you can either succumb to the pressure and give up, or find a solution to the problem . The most successful business leaders try their hardest to never give up.

Most business leaders would rather grind than get back to their regular jobs of 9-to-5.

In 1519, a Spanish explorer and conquistador Hernán Cortés pursued the treasures of the Aztecs with 11 ships and a crew of 100 sailors and 500 soldiers. His army was vastly outnumbered and some soldiers tried to escape. Cortés gave the order to burn the ships and left no choice but to fight until their last breath.

That wasn’t the end for everyone. Part of the army survived and they got a hold of the treasure.

At first, calmness is a myth. People are emotional by nature and react to any deviations from their plans. With time, those who choose to be in the captain’s spot until the end see problems that have to be solved and suppress the emotional part that is dragging them down.

The role of a business leader isn’t easy in the first place. Constant changes and surprises are not abnormal and at some point, they become a daily routine.

Plenty of problems appear to be critical, but in the end, they should be solved. You don’t run away from them. You step up as a business leader and inspire your teams to follow through.

The most effective leadership style for business is the leadership that inspires.

If being a business leader of a successful company is among your highest priorities, work on your leadership know-how, develop your management soft skills , and make it work for your people.

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Leadership Self-Assessment: How Effective Are You?

• 21 Nov 2019

Knowing yourself is critical to being an effective leader . Building self-awareness and understanding your tendencies and motivational drivers can enable you to unlock the potential in yourself and your team.

“Self-awareness is about developing your capacity to sense how you’re coming across—to have undistorted visibility into your own strengths and weaknesses—and to be able to gauge the emotions you’re personally experiencing,” says Harvard Business School Professor Joshua Margolis in the online course Leadership Principles . “If you’re going to mobilize others to get things done, you can’t let your own emotions get in the way.”

This especially reigns true for professionals with experience in leadership roles. Leaders must be level-headed and capable of making critical decisions for the good of their organizations. Successful leaders must also be in tune with their leadership capabilities before acting on them. There’s reason to suggest that self-aware leaders directly correlate to happier employees and healthier companies.

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Why Is Self-Evaluation Important For Leaders?

According to an analysis by Korn/Ferry International , companies with higher rates of financial return tend to employ professionals with high degrees of self-awareness. Relatedly, research by the Association for Talent Development shows that self-aware leaders report having:

• Greater effectiveness in the workplace
• Better relationships with colleagues
• Improved abilities to identify and manage their emotions
• Reduced stress

Reaping these rewards can be achieved through honest self-assessment. By examining patterns in how you view yourself and how others experience you, you can identify ways to learn and develop as a leader.

If you want to maximize your career trajectory and improve how you guide and manage teams, here are four ways you can assess your leadership effectiveness.

How to Self-Evaluate Yourself as a Leader

1. complete a self-assessment.

Questionnaires can be useful for identifying your motivations and strengths. In the online course Leadership Principles , participants complete two self-assessments: the Emotional and Social Competency Inventory (ESCI) and the Personal Values Questionnaire (PVQ) .

By taking these assessments, leaders can recognize behavioral patterns and gain insight into how they manage themselves and their colleagues.

This self-awareness is critical to effective leadership because it develops emotional intelligence —an ability that’s possessed by 90 percent of top performers in the workplace . Through looking inward and answering questions with honesty and candor, you learn how to better command your emotions—as well as others’—and build a foundation for your leadership approach .

2. Observe Yourself

In addition to self-assessments, observing a video recording of yourself can be a valuable way to learn more about your current leadership tendencies. Taking part in this kind of exercise can enable you to gauge how you present yourself and exhibit attributes of different leadership styles , such as authenticity, humility, and faith. Maintaining these attributes can not only foster concern for your company’s success but employees' wellbeing—also known as “caring leadership.”

Engaging in critical self-observation can also help you overcome the vulnerability of putting yourself in front of others as a leader, providing the confidence needed to inspire and influence your team .

3. Ask for Feedback

Beyond self-reflection, turn to those you interact and collaborate with for feedback on your effectiveness. Unlike management , leadership is less about administering and organizing and more about aligning and empowering employees to pursue organizational goals.

By turning to colleagues for thoughts on how they experience your leadership style, you can identify discrepancies in how you perceive yourself and chart a plan for more effective leadership. Soliciting and heeding feedback also helps develop clear lines of communication , which, according to the Center for Creative Leadership, is essential for building trust and driving performance.

For Juliana Casale , a marketing professional who took the online course Leadership Principles , completing self-assessments and receiving peer feedback led to a greater sense of awareness in her role and improved communication with her team.

“I'm now more mindful of how my colleagues are experiencing me and less averse to having difficult conversations,” Casale says.

Related: How to Give Feedback Effectively

4. Build and Maintain a Robust Network

Leadership is a skill that must be honed. As you progress throughout your career, it’s vital to cultivate a robust network you can rely on for coaching, support, and guidance.

“Your internal and external networks are important leadership assets,” says HBS Professor Anthony Mayo in the online course Leadership Principles . “They're how you gain access to resources like information, know-how, and funding that are crucial in enabling you to help those you’re leading. Networks also foster your learning by connecting you to people in organizations with different skills, perspectives, and contexts than your own.”

Through networking, you can build a powerful resource that exposes you to new opportunities and drives personal growth and success.

Unleashing Your Leadership Potential

You can be an effective leader at any stage of your career . Whether you’re a mid-level manager or new to the workforce, honing your leadership skills can pay dividends for your professional development.

By building self-awareness, soliciting feedback, and networking, you can gain a better understanding of your personal leadership style and unleash the potential in yourself and others.

Do you want to enhance your leadership skills? Explore Leadership Principles —one of our online leadership and management courses —to discover how you can become a more effective leader and unleash the potential in yourself and others.

This article was updated on July 19, 2022. It was originally published on November 21, 2019.

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13.8: Assignment- Leadership and Management

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When you joined Workplace Solutions Consulting three years ago, you were required to participate in an intensive interview process. After going through preliminary interviews with individuals of the same rank/title and a manager-level person in your division, you then met with the Director of the Consulting division. Everyone you met thus far from the organization seemed smart, outgoing, and friendly.

Apparently the interview process had gone well as you were then scheduled to meet with company executives and officers. First, the VP of Customer Service, then the CFO, and finally the CEO of Workplace Solutions Consulting. The VP of Customer Service seemed highly meticulous in her interview questions, asking for detail behind every answer to her questions. She posed scenario questions to you regarding situations in which she was involved with tasks assigned on a daily basis.

Then you met with the CFO. He was a graduate of one of the nation’s military academies (it was apparent from the office decorations and diplomas). His questions carried implication regarding your self-organization. Do you make daily lists? How do you prioritize your lists? How do you keep your calendar? He even asked to see your daily planner.

Finally it was time to meet with the CEO. After the interviews with the VP and the CFO, you could only imagine what you were getting into with the company’s top leader. When you sat down with the person who had built this incredible company, imagine your surprise when he turned out to be the most pleasant, genuine, thoughtful, and enthusiastic individual you had ever met. He explained that his job as CEO was to ensure that every employee had what they needed to succeed. He told me that if you were hired, he would be working for you. You could not sign up fast enough to join his company!

What a variety of leadership styles, roles, and traits—and all in one interview process! Which interviewer do you think you would work best with? Why do you prefer the leadership styles, roles, and traits they demonstrated?

What combination of leadership style, role, and trait would be best for the following business situations:

• A company with routine and unskilled job functions.
• A company with dangerous job functions (toxic waste handling or heavy equipment operation).
• A company preparing to disrupt an existing market with ground-breaking technology.
• A company preparing for an IPO.

Please explain your thoughts for each situation.

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• Assignment: Leadership and Management. Authored by : Robert Danielson. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution

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3 More Leadership Styles—and When to Use Them

Yesterday we listed three of the most common leadership styles and when to use them. Here are three more styles to add to your toolbox. Affiliative leadership, which centers on building emotional bonds. This style builds connections and creates a positive company culture, but it shouldn’t be used in isolation. It may not provide sufficient […]

Yesterday we listed three of the most common leadership styles and when to use them. Here are three more styles to add to your toolbox.

Source: This tip is adapted from “6 Common Leadership Styles—and How to Decide Which to Use When,” by Rebecca Knight

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Leadership and Management in Learning Organizations Copyright © by Clayton Smith; Carson Babich; and Mark Lubrick is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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