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This case study begins by asking the very important question, what do effective leaders do?  Leaders set strategy, they motivate, create a mission and build a culture but a leader’s singular and most important job is to get the best results from their employees. Research indicates leaders with the best results do not rely on a single leadership style.  They effortlessly use them all depending on the appropriate business scenario.  There are six styles of leadership, coercive, authoritative, affiliative, democratic, pace setting and coaching.

Coercive leaders demand immediate compliance, authoritative leaders mobilize people toward a vision, affiliative leaders create emotional bonds and harmony, democratic leaders build consensus through participation, pace setting leaders expect excellence and self-direction and coaching leaders develop people for the future.

During my last two positions, my past managers definitely exhibited one or more of the styles of leadership.  As a Financial Coordinator, my manager was a very affiliative leader.  She was very understanding and believed in getting to know her direct reports on a personal level through mutual interests and lifestyles.  She was very empathetic to the single mothers on her team as well as their personal issues reflecting upon her own experiences.  She was very understanding when a child was sick or when anyone had babysitting issues and needed to call out or work from home. As a Financial Analyst, my manager had a very coaching leadership style.  He was an excellent mentor and took a personal interest in your training and professional development.

One important trait of an effective, successful leader is having emotional intelligence.  This is the ability to manage ourselves and our relationships effectively.  To do this four fundamental capabilities are necessary, self-awareness, self management, social awareness and the ability to have social skills.  Each has many distinct traits.

Self awareness is emotional self awareness, accurate self assessment and self confidence.  Self management is self control, trust worthiness, conscientiousness, adaptability, achievement orientation and initiative.  Social awareness is empathy, organizational awareness and service orientation.  Social skill is visionary leadership, influence, developing others, communication, being a change catalyst, conflict management, building bonds, teamwork and collaboration.(1) Harvard Business Review, Leadership That Gets Results by Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: A Primer, pg. 80. 

Research also indicates how each leadership style affects the six drivers of climate or the working atmosphere.  The climate drivers are flexibility, responsibility, standards, rewards, clarity and commitment.  Executives who lacked emotional intelligence were rarely rated as outstanding in their annual performance reviews and their divisions underperformed by a average of almost 20%.(2) Harvard Business Review, Leadership That Gets Results by Daniel Goleman, pg. 81.  Flexibility is how free employees feel to innovate unencumbered by red tape, their sense of responsibility to the organization, the levels of standards that people set, the sense of accuracy about performance feedback and aptness of rewards, the clarity workers have about missions and value and the level of commitment to a common purpose.

Leadership is not an exact science, however, as the business environment changes over time, a successful leader must be able to adapt and be able to use their leadership styles to their professional advantage.  If done correctly, in the end they will always get the best results.