Leadership Styles

Daniel Goleman in his book, Primal Leadership (with Richard Boyatzis and Annie Mc Kee) offers six (6) different leadership styles (refer to the table below; with acknowledgement to 12Manage.com). Effective leaders can act according to the various styles and they can also switch between the various styles and that is depending largely on the situation.

Please click the table for bigger image to view details

In Goleman’s views, effective leaders create resonance. I look at few on-line dictionaries and find it rather hard to explain resonance in general layman terms. Perhaps, the closest is to produce an echo; meaning to restate in support or in agreement. Creating resonance, according to Goleman, comes naturally to people with a high degree emotional intelligence and the process of creating resonance also involves intellectual aspects of a leader.

My view on this is that a person may have a predominant leadership style. The reason for me to believe this is because he or she has characters, personality, and strengths (and not to mention weaknesses, of course). For a person to master the various styles of leadership he or she needs to develop them and as Goleman pointed, mastering these styles will make him or her effective leader.

I came across 2 video clips that show different leadership styles and I would like to share with all readers here. Want to take a guess, which styles they are?