Corner Office: Leadership Styles

Oct. 9 -- Good chefs need knives. Lots of knives: Knives with long blades and short, serrated and smooth, heavy and light. Good chefs know when, and why, to use each knife: whether slicing carrots or bread, boning fish or spreading frosting.

Good leaders need different styles of leading: Demanding and mobilizing, harmonious and consensus-building, driven and developmental. Good leaders know when, and why, to use each style: One style works best in a crisis while another helps forge a new vision, one helps heal and another builds competencies for the long-term.

Getting to be a good leader who can use varied styles isn't easy: The only learning is trial and error. But good leaders are resilient and they look for options, so if one style doesn't work in a given situation they try another. As they learn which style they're best at and which people respond to, they can draw on them as needed.

Getting there takes self-awareness, discipline and a willingness to take risks. But ultimately, the leaders most comfortable with all six leadership styles are the leaders who get the best results. Isn't that what leadership is all about?

Taking Action

Know the six styles. It used to be that good leadership was like good art: No one could define it, but everyone knew it when they saw it. Recent research by the consulting firm Hay/McBer, however, has clarified what good leadership really is. The research drew on the experience of more than 3,800 executives worldwide, and found that there are six basic leadership styles: coercive, authoritative, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting and coaching.

Each style reflects underlying emotional intelligence competencies. Empathy, self-awareness and the ability to develop others are the foundation of the "coaching" style, for example. Each style works best then when deployed in the appropriate circumstance — and doesn't work at all when used inappropriately. Using a "coercive" ("because I said so") style, for example, is disastrous when "consensus" is needed. Each style also has an impact on the organization's climate. Two of the six are negative.