Being a leader is challenging. Not everyone responds the same way, and sometimes you may feel like you don’t know how else to direct a team. Learning the different types of leadership styles can help you improve as a leader, even if you don’t always fit into one category over another.
Read on to learn about nine leadership types and how you can adapt them in your organization.
Importance of Understanding Leadership Styles
You need to understand leadership styles to figure out which best fits you and your team. You could adapt your approach to suit an individual’s needs or work to learn more about another style that you think may drive success in a better way.
Common Leadership Styles: The Pros, Cons, and In-Betweens
Every style has its benefits and drawbacks. Here’s an overview.
1. Authoritative Leadership
Authoritative leaders use their clear direction and vision to inspire and guide team members toward a common goal. These leaders emphasize results and efficiency, setting high standards that they expect their team to meet.
Pros include:
- Clear vision and direction: The leader’s strong sense of purpose and direction guides teams toward common goals
- Adaptability: Authoritative leaders are open to feedback and new ideas that can help them achieve their goals
Cons include:
- Risk of being overbearing: Team members who are used to having autonomy and creativity in their roles can find this leadership style overbearing
- Stress and pressure: High standards can motivate team members but can also result in stress, especially if they feel the goals are too lofty or they don’t have enough support
2. Coercive Leadership
In coercive leadership, the leader uses methods to reward and punish employees, limit employees’ decision-making processes, and enforce rules and regulations. They use strict guidelines and set rules to control their employees’ activities and handle large groups.
Pros include:
- More effective employees: With the leader providing complete oversight, employees need to focus less on planning and more on execution with the skills they were hired for
- More team control: Since coercive leaders are micromanagers, they can control their team’s activities and output, avoiding any potential issues from a lack of leadership
One con is high turnover rates, resulting from the lack of trust in employees’ decision-making abilities.
A transformational leadership style inspires and motivates teams to work together to achieve the company’s goals. These leaders encourage collaboration to build a positive work environment that supports productivity.
Pros include:
- Empowered employees: These leaders discover team members’ strengths and weaknesses, finding ways to fit them together to yield the best outcomes
- Promotes creativity: Since there’s more scope to discover employees’ talents, they are also able to apply more creative problem-solving when they feel their skills would fit
A con of the transformative leadership approach is the investment that it requires from the leader. Effectively motivating a team requires a large commitment of time and skills that can take the leader away from other responsibilities.
4. Transactional Leadership
A transactional leadership style focuses on rewards and punishments, setting clearly defined goals with rewards for meeting expectations and demotions for failing to do so.
Pros include:
- Clear vision: Employees can focus on just hitting their targets, without looking at the bigger picture of the company’s goals
- More motivation: Some professionals feel more motivated when they have clearly defined expectations and goalposts to reach
Cons include:
- Less creativity: This leadership style fosters an environment where employees have no scope for creativity and innovation
- High burnout: Focusing primarily on performance can create an exceedingly competitive environment that discourages collaboration and leads to more burnout
5. Coaching Leadership
The coaching leadership style centers on each team member’s professional development. Managers see themselves as coaches who guide and support their teams with regular feedback, mentoring, and training to help employees reach their full potential.
Pros include:
- Higher retention: Employee-manager relationships in a coaching style have a base of trust, loyalty, and respect that lend to a sense of feeling valued and empowered
- Growth culture: Coaching leadership promotes a culture of continuous learning and improvement, encouraging employees to actively try to upskill and build on their knowledge
Cons include:
- Significant time investment: Leaders must put in a lot of time and effort to help team members achieve their goal, working closely with them and providing constructive feedback regularly
- Difficulty scaling: As the company grows and teams get bigger, leaders will have a harder time balancing their time on their own responsibilities against the time they spend with employees
6. Participative Leadership
Participative leadership is a democratic leadership style, promoting collaboration with employees for micro and macro business decisions. Leaders value the team’s opinions and feedback, creating a work environment that focuses on collaboration, open communication, and teamwork.
Pros include:
- Empowered employees: With a stake in the decision process, employees feel a sense of ownership over business outcomes, boosting morale
- Higher trust: With fewer barriers to communication between employees and leaders, employees have more trust and loyalty to the company
Cons include:
- Slow decision-making: Gathering and considering feedback from all viewpoints takes a long time and can hinder an organization’s ability to adapt to changing market trends
- Lack of focus: With so many viewpoints to consider, it’s tough to reach consensus, leading to a lack of direction
7. Pacesetting Leadership
In pacesetting leadership, the leader demonstrates by example the level of performance and quality expected of their juniors. It’s a results-oriented style that asks team members to match or exceed the standard that the leader is displaying.
Pros include:
- Fast results: Because of the emphasis on results, employees realize short-term goals quickly
- Well-defined expectations: When the leader sets the pace, the team can better understand the expectations they have to match, clearing up key progress indicators
Cons include:
- Disengagement long term: Some people need more mentorship and guidance, leading to them feeling alienated and disengaged
- Misalignment: Miscommunications can occur in terms regarding quality standards and specific processes when employees are focused primarily on meeting goals, resulting in lower-quality work
8. Affiliative Leadership
Affiliative leaders prioritize the people and their feelings, working to establish a harmonious environment over rigid adherence to tasks or performance goals.
Pros include:
- Better team cohesion: This style promotes unity and a strong sense of community, making the team more cohesive
- Flexible stress response: Since leaders help their team navigate stressful times, employees become more capable of responding to high-stress situations
One con of this approach is that it can lead to unresolved issues as the goal of unity can push leaders to avoid conflicts.
9. Bureaucratic Leadership
Leadership under a bureaucratic leader is based on rules, procedures, and established hierarchical structures.
Pros include:
- Clear roles: The defined hierarchy and roles make it clear to all team members what their tasks and responsibilities are
- More efficiency: There is high specialization because team members are assigned projects based on their expertise, leading to a more efficient workforce
The main con for bureaucratic systems is the amount of red tape, which can slow down attempts to grow the business.
The Role of Self-Awareness in Leadership
Self-awareness enables leaders to understand their strengths as well as their areas for growth. Understanding leadership style — and it advantages and pitfalls — helps identify biases and blind spots that can create conflict in the workplace.
Real-World Examples of Leadership Styles in Practice
Check out these famous examples to get an idea of what these styles look like.
Satya Nadella — Pacesetting
The pacesetting leadership of Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, transformed the company’s culture. Instead of being highly competitive and siloed, it now focuses on collaboration, growth, and continuous learning. By modeling these qualities, he has maintained Microsoft’s position as an industry leader.
Warren Buffet — Affiliative
Warren Buffet builds autonomy in Berkshire Hathaway by treating managers like partners instead of just employees. He invests in people he trusts, then gives them the freedom to act as they see fit.
Developing Your Unique Leadership Style
Understanding the types of effective leadership styles is the first step to developing your own style that drives success. But that’s only one challenge in leadership. Another is learning to lead a distributed team, as hybrid work models become more common. Learn about Industrious coworking spaces, where your team can produce results in an environment tailored for success.