Leadership Styles: A comprehensive review of 11 leadership approaches 

Perhaps the leadership style that we are most likely to be familiar with is the authoritarian style.  This is the 'do as I say' approach, and is aligned to what most would refer to as the 'commond and control' leadership style.  As you'll appreciate, this style is fast becoming outdated and has been proven to be one of the less effective leadership styles.

The authoritarian or dictatorial approach could best be associated with the military, where people are trained to follow instructions, no matter what.  This is important where soldiers need to act despite life-threatening conditions and must do so without hesitation.

In the corporate world, where life and death are not immediate, this approach prevents individuals from contributing and taking ownership. It is not conducive to building high-performing, self-leading teams.

This leadership style is focused on group collaboration, where the leader always seeks to involve the group when key decisions must be made.  The obvious strength of this approach is that individuals within a team feel consulted and part of the decision-making process.  This promotes a sense of inclusivity, ownership and accountability.

The downside is that when a democratic leadership style is used in all situations, decision-making can become laboured and consume a significant amount of productive time.  As a result, opportunities may be lost and competitive advantage sacrificed.  

In my coaching practice, I performed a 360 feedback process for a democratic leader.  Whilst the feedback from peers and staff was highly complimentary, given the individual's people-centred skill set, the team requested to be consulted only on decisions that directly impacted their portfolios, reflecting that broad consultation required more time than they had available.  A strenght over-played becomes a weakness and balancing when to consult and when to inform is a key element of this leadership approach.

This is a hand-off leadership approach, where a leader steps away and allows the team to be largely self-governing.  This leadership approach is unlikely to be effective in the usual business context, where leaders are required to be available to support the growth of their team, make key decision, and resource and enable their teams.

When I was leading a marketing team, I worked for a Laissez-Faire leader.  It was incredibly frustrating and felt impossible to get timeous decisions on key matters.  On many occassions, I informed his executive assistance that if the leader didn't revert with decisions timeously, the business would end up missing press deadlines and would end up paying for print ads that never ran.

Where Laissez-Faire leadership is effective is where teams or organisations are led by highly capable leaders who themselves need little support, and/or who are given full authority in their role.  An example is leaders running businesses within larger groups of companies where provided the financial numbers remain good, there is little need for interference from group-level leaders or the board members.  A Laissez-Faire style may also work well with a highly skilled team of experts who are mature and know what needs to be delivered.

A pace-setting leadership style is where the leader is very active in the operational aspects of the team and drives the team to perform and keep up with the pace that they set.  My think is that this leadership style would likely include a high degree of micromanagement, which creates its own set of challenges.

You can imagine that a team can become exhausted by a constant pace-setting approach, which is why this approach should be used very sparingly.

Visionary leaders are those who encourage others to follow them towards a vision of the future, that is enticing and inspirational.  By their nature, visionary leaders tend to be big thinkers, reflecting on issues of a strategic and big-scale nature.  In and of itself, visionary leadership pulls followers towards the vision and can motivate and inspire people to greatness.

However, moving from point a to z has a lot of steps and many moving parts that likely require attention to detail.  This focus on operations, logistics and details may not play to the strength of visionary leaders.  They may drop balls that lead to poor execution and thus failure to achieve the vision.  Therefore, provided these leaders have the sense to surround themselves with operationally capable leaders, managers and teams, a visionary leadership style can deliver success.

Bureaucratic leaders are all about following the process.  Whilst at first glance this may appear tremendously tedious, there are instances where the process is important.  Consider for example the importance of getting the servicing and maintaining of aeroplanes right.  Missing critical steps may have catastrophic consequences.  In this instance, enforcing adherance to a process is important.

However, when it comes to running a business that requires innovation and agility, adopting a bureaucratic leadership style will stifle creativity and kill innovation.  My sense here is that there is a time and a place for process, but it is unlikely to serve people and businesses as a singular approach.

This leadership style became popular in the previous decade.  Leaders who are charismatic have a strong ability to create a movement that attracts people to them.  When charisma is focused, these leaders can inspire others to achieve remarkable success.  However, history has indicated that charismatic leaders generally are in it for themselves, and themselves only.  Therefore, they neglect to build competence and capacity around them, leaving massive gaps in leadership and succession when they depart an organisation. 

Beyond question, having a leader who demonstrates charisma - someone whose presence can be felt in a room - is a powerful attribute to have as a leader.  However, this magnetism must be balanced by commercial acuity and leadership capability, to ensure taht the business is set up for success beyond the immediate horizon. 

This is a leadership style that many leaders practice, often without knowing they are doing it.  Think about the recent interactions you've had with poeple in your organisation and ask yourself if these interactions where transactions.  We need something from our teams, so we ask for that. We have a project that must be delivered on time, so we follow up on how it's progressing.  These are all transactional, task-focused interactions,  This leadership style focuses on reward and punishment, emphasising clear roles and responsibilities.

Whilst this style may be effective in highly structured and routine environments, the focus on people is diminished when tasks are given more importance that the person performing them. 

Transformational leadership is where a leader inspires and motivates people to go above and beyond what is ordinarily expected.  A transformational leader focuses on growing the individuals with a team so that they excel.  Personal development is a primary aspect of this approach. Furthermore, a transformational leader encourages new thinking and innovation and at the same time focuses the team on a shared vision.

There's a lot to be celebrated about the transformational leadership style, and it is likely the most sought after approach in current times.  However, because of its nuances and sense-making requirements, transformational leadership is likely achieved by those who have significant leadership experience and have successfully traversed the various passes when moving from individual contributor to that of a "level 5 leader".

Servant leadership is a leadership style that is focused on serving the needs of the team and organisation.  In a people-first approach, the servant leader has the objective of advancing the well-being and personal development of the team leaders.  Servant leaders are humble, often celebrating the successes of the team rather than personally taking credit for their wins.

Servant leadership is gaining in popularity, as leaders recognise that success in leadership is achieved through others and thus enabling and growing others is a key requirement.  Perhaps one area of balance for servant leadership is to be found somewhere between humility and authority.  There are occassions when authority must be exhibited by leaders.

Fairly new in leadership terms, the coaching leadership style is one that is enjoying strong attention.  With the upsurge in coaching as a practice, leaders have recognised the benefit of including coaching in their leadership approach.  The premise behind this approach is to ask questions that invite individuals and teams to think for themselves.  Through a process of supportive questioning, poeple can find their own answers, own them and deliver excellence with a higher level of accountability.

The challenge of course with a coaching apporach is that it is highly situational.  If the office is on fire, you're not going to ask your people what they think you all should do.  Equally, a coaching approach assumes that the individual(s) being coached has the necessary experience to be resourceful and come up with appropriate answers through a process of reflecting and questioning.  The coaching leadership style therefore works well with subject matter experts and when it is focused around personal development topics.