The Impacts of Different Leadership Styles (continued)
By: Tania Watson
Tags: Leadership Styles, Leadership, Leadershipdevelopment, CEO, Leaders

Our last post on this topic discussed the impact of 3 of the 6 leadership styles outlined in ‘Primal Leadership’ by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie Mckee. These included the visionary, coaching and affiliative leadership styles.

In this post we’re going to look at the 3 remaining leadership styles the authors refer to, including the democratic, pacesetting and commanding leadership styles.

Democratic leadership Style

The democratic leadership style is also referred to as participative or shared leadership. Democratic leaders focus on equality and encourage participation from their team members. All contributions to the decision-making process are welcomed. A democratic leader offers guidance where necessary yet still retains control over who gets to contribute to decisions.

This leadership style has a positive impact on the climate of a company and tends to affect employee’s behaviour and morale in the following ways.

It values peoples input and gets commitment through participation.

​Team members are encouraged to share their ideas and opinions and thus feel more engaged, committed and involved.

The higher level of involvement results in team members caring more about results.

The democratic leadership style is most appropriate when building buy-in or consensus, or when getting valuable input from employees. It is known to be one of the most effective leadership styles and results in higher productivity and increased morale. On the downside, when time is tight it can lead to communication failures and incomplete projects.

Pacesetting leadership Style

A pacesetting leader is focused primarily on performance and achieving goals. They thrive on being high achievers themselves, able to meet challenging and exciting goals and expect excellence from their team members. They do not always allow free flow of ideas and contributions and will step in when they feel is necessary to ensure that targets are hit. Pacesetting leaders are not empathetic towards poor performers and expect the same high standards from everyone.

The pacesetting leadership style can be effective for meeting targets, however it can have a negative impact on the climate of a company and tends to affect employees behaviour and morale in the following ways:

It leads to stressed, exhausted and burnt out employees.

It can result in a high staff turnover.

It’s often poorly executed and often highly negative.

The pacesetting leadership style is most appropriate when getting high-quality results from a motivated and competent team, quickly. Since it focuses on high performance, it’s useful for leaders to learn how to train team members to improve the quality of their work. Engaging in high-performance coaching can help them to become more effective. To get the best results, leaders should practice their motivation skills.

Commanding leadership Style

Commanding leaders are what many perceive to be a ‘traditional leader’. They possess a take-charge attitude and are results and goals driven. Their approach to leadership depends heavily on the giving out of orders, on occasion disciplinary threats and tight control.

The issue with this style is that it is often misused, and can negatively impact employee behaviour and morale in the following ways:

It can result in stressed, fearful employees and decreased performance levels.

Employees feel like their contributions aren’t of any real value.

Employees feel as though they cannot be trusted.

The commanding leadership style is most appropriate for soothing fears by giving clear direction in in a crisis, to kick-start a turnaround, or with problem employees. Negative views of this style are due to the leader’s tendency to be critical and withholding of praise.

As a reflection point: which of the 6 leadership styles are you mostly using in your everyday leadership? How is this impacting on your team? What results do you achieve? How motivated are your people?

Tania Watson is the founder of Creative Coaching and an executive coach, organisational consultant and leadership specialist. Creative Coaching is a successful company dedicated to the development of senior leaders in organisations through one to one coaching, intact team development and group facilitation. If you or someone from your organisation would like to have a no obligation conversation about how Creative Coaching may be able to help, please email Tania directly at tania@twcreativecoaching.com.