LEADERSHIP STYLES AND SKILLS

Much has been written about leadership skills and leadership style. We have chosen the work of Goleman because we find it illuminating and useful when working with leaders at any stage in a change process. His work on leadership styles identifies a set of six styles for the leader to choose from in any situation and at any point in a change process. Leaders we have worked with find this very useful (see boxed examples).

This set of six styles is underpinned by Goleman’s work on emotional intelligence, which sets out the underlying competencies associated with successful leadership. This acts as a convenient checklist for those assessing their skills.

Goleman: leadership that gets results

In his quest to discover the links between emotional intelligence and business results, Daniel Goleman (2000) developed a set of six distinct leadership styles through studying the performance of over 3,800 executives worldwide. These six leadership styles, arising from various different components of emotional intelligence, are used interchangeably by the best leaders. He encourages leaders to view the styles as six golf clubs, with each one being used in a different situation. Goleman also found that each style taken individually has a unique effect on organizational climate over time, some positive and some negative. This in turn has a major influence on business results.

Goleman links the competence of leaders directly to business results, but also identifies the situations in which each style is effective:

Coercive style. Only to be used sparingly if a crisis arises. This is a useful style to employ if urgent changes are required now, but must be combined with other styles for positive results long term . Negative effects such as stress and mistrust result if this style is overused .
Authoritative style. Useful when a turnaround is required and the leader is credible and enthusiastic. This is the ‘ visionary ’ leadership style. Goleman indicates that this style will only work if the leader is well respected by his or her people, and is genuinely enthusiastic about the change required. He does acknowledge the strongly positive effect of this approach, given the right prevailing conditions.
Affiliative style. This style helps to repair broken relationships and establish trust. It can be useful when the going gets tough in a change process and people are struggling. However, it must be used with other styles to be effective in setting direction and creating progress.
Democratic. This is an effective style to use when the team knows more about the situation than the leader does. They will be able to come up with ideas and create plans with the leader operating as facilitator. However it is not useful for inexperienced team members as they will go round in circles and fail to deliver.
Pacesetting. This style can be used effectively with a highly motivated, competent team, but does not lead to positive results long term if used in isolation. Overuse of this style alone results in exhausted staff who feel directionless and unrewarded. The leader needs to switch out of this style to move into a change process rather than simply drive for more of the same.
Coaching. This is an appropriate style to use if individuals need to acquire new skills or knowledge as part of changes being made.

I realize on reflection that I have been using just two leadership styles all my working life. I am 54, and this has been something of a revelation. I have been using the coercive style together with the affiliative style. It never occurred to me to do it any other way. I would tell the staff how things would be, give them a dressing down, and make up afterwards by talking about the football or asking about the family.

No one would make suggestions or use their initiative, and no one ever seemed to learn anything new. I was completely in charge of an efficient but stagnant site.

It wasn’t easy incorporating other styles, but once I had cracked the coaching style, things began to change. The staff began to see me as more accessible. Now my people trust me more, and they are prepared to take responsibility and to suggest things and to make changes. I use less energy to carry out my role, and can think more clearly about how best to lead.

General manager of a manufacturing plant

At first glance I thought I was using all six styles in the right measure. Then when I began to talk to my team about it, I realized that I was using the pacesetting style 85 per cent of the time. Even my attempts at being friendly (or affiliative) turned out to be pacesetting approaches. People described how a casual chat with me would end up feeling like an interrogation . People on the shop floor actively avoided me after a while. Or they spent ages preparing for an encounter with me.

Of course, all my star performers loved this style. They found it thrilling and stimulating. The others fell by the wayside as I had no time for coaching at all. My style became a self-fulfilling prophecy . The competent people did well, and those who needed to learn didn’t get the airtime from me that they needed, so they failed.

I’m not saying that this has completely changed. But now I do recognize when I need to coach and when I need to paceset. My actions are more aligned to my intentions, rather than being simply a question of habit.

Head teacher

See Table 4.5 for our summary of the six different styles and their uses.

Table 4.5: Our summary of Goleman’s six leadership styles
	Coercive	Authoritative	Affiliative	Democratic	Pace-setting	Coaching
Short defination	Telling people what to do when	Persuading and attracting people with an engaging vision	Building relationships with people through use of positive feedback	Asking the team what they think, and listening to this	Raising the bar and asking for a bit more. Increasing the pace.	Encouraging and supporting people to try new things. Developing their skills.
When to use this style	When there is a crisis	When step change is required. When manager is both credible and enthusiastic.	When relationships are broken	When the team members have something to contribute	When team members are highly motivated and highly competent	When there is a skills gap
Disadvantages of this style	Encourages dependence. People stop thinking.	Has a negative effect if manager is not credible	Not productive if it is the only style used	May lead nowhere if team is inexperienced	Exhausting if used too much. Not appropriate when team members need help.	If manager is not a good coach, or if individual is not motivated, this style will not work

Goleman: the importance of emotional intelligence for successful leaders

Underpinning Goleman’s six leadership style is his work on emotional intelligence (see Goleman, 1998). This is worth examining as it sets out all the competencies required to be a successful leader.

Goleman’s research into the necessity for emotional intelligence is convincing. First, his investigation into 181 different management competence models drawn from 121 organizations worldwide indicated that 67 per cent of the abilities deemed essential for management competence were emotional competencies. Further research carried out by Hay/McBer looked at data from 40 different corporations to determine the difference in terms of competencies between star performers and average performers. Again emotional competencies were found to be twice as important as skill-based or intellectual competencies.

Self-awareness

Knowing one’s internal states, preferences, resources, and intuitions:

Emotional awareness: recognizing one’s emotions and their effects.
Accurate self-assessment: knowing one’s strengths and limits.
Self-confidence: a strong sense of one’s self-worth and capabilities.

Self-management

Managing one’s internal states, impulses, and resources:

Self-control: keeping disruptive emotions and impulses in check.
Trustworthiness: maintaining standards of honesty and integrity.
Conscientiousness: taking responsibility for personal performance.
Adaptability: flexibility in handling change.
Achievement orientation: striving to improve or meeting a standard of excellence.
Initiative: readiness to act on opportunities.

Social awareness

Awareness of others’ feelings, needs, and concerns:

Empathy: sensing others’ feelings and perspectives, and taking an active interest in their concerns.
Organizational awareness: reading a group ’s emotional currents and power relationships.
Service orientation: anticipating , recognizing, and meeting customers’ needs.

Social skills

Adeptness at inducing desirable responses in others:

Developing others: sensing others’ development needs and bolstering their abilities.
Leadership: inspiring and guiding individuals and groups.
Influence: wielding effective tactics for persuasion.
Communication: listening openly and sending convincing messages.
Change catalyst: initiating or managing change.
Conflict management: negotiating and resolving disagreements .
Building bonds : nurturing instrumental relationships.
Teamwork and collaboration: working with others toward shared goals. Creating group synergy in pursuing collective goals.

Source: Goleman (1998), reproduced with permission of Bloomsbury, London

Goleman defined a comprehensive set of emotional competencies for leaders (see box). He grouped these competencies into four categories:

self-awareness;
self-management;
social awareness;
social skills.

Self-awareness, he says, is at the heart of emotional intelligence. To back this up, Goleman’s research shows that if self-awareness is not present in a leader, the chance of that person being competent in the other three categories is much reduced.

The managers that we work with often have high drive levels and are also very intelligent . When this combination of characteristics is present in an individual, that individual often experiences a lot of frustration. Other people are either too slow, or too relaxed , or simply ‘not getting it’.

This was crystallized by a very dynamic and successful IT manager whom I worked with recently. When I went through her emotional intelligence feedback with her using HayGroup’s Emotional Competence Inventory, her self-management scores were low, especially in the area of self-control. I asked her how often she felt frustrated in her work. She paused for a moment and then with a sudden realization she said, ‘All the time.’ Up until that point, she had not realized that there was an issue. This had just become a way of life. Others were experiencing her as bad tempered, moody and occasionally bullying . Then we started to talk about strategies for dealing with this.

Esther Cameron, 2003

A brief scan of the competence set will confirm that self-awareness, self-management and social awareness are all competencies that are not necessarily observable. We call this inner leadership . Only the social skills category contains obvious observable behaviours. We call this outer leadership .

In our experience those involved in leading change have to develop especially strong inner leadership because of the emotions arising from their own drive to achieve, coupled with potential resistance from many levels, and the discomfort involved with letting go of old habits. It is a very emotional landscape!

Daniel Goleman says that it is vital that leaders develop emotional competencies. He says:

In the new stripped-down, every-job-counts business climate, these human realities will matter more than ever. Massive change is constant; technical innovations, global competition, and the pressures of institutional investors are ever-escalating forces for flux. As organizations shrink through waves of downsizing, those people who remain are more accountable – and more visible.

Whereas a bully, or a hypersensitive manager, might have gone unnoticed deep in many organizations 10 years ago, he or she is much more visible now.

STOP AND THINK!

4.6

Draw a pie chart that represents your own use of Goleman’s six leadership styles. Are you using them in the right proportion? If not, what do you plan to do differently and why? Try this exercise again, but this time use the framework to help someone else to focus on his or her leadership style. Write up the conversation, indicating what insights the exercise provoked.