www.hbr.org
Lead ership That Gets
Results
by Daniel Goleman
Incl uded with this full-text Harvard Business Review article:
The Idea in Brief—the core idea
The Idea in Practice— putting the idea to work
1
Article Summary
2
Leadership That Gets Results
A list of related materials, with annotations to guide further
exploration of the article’s ideas and applications
15
Further Reading
New research suggests that the
most effective executives use a
collection of distinct
leadership styles—each in the
right measure, at just th e right
time. Such flexibility is tough
to put into action, but it pays
off in performance. And
better yet, it can be learned.
Reprint R00204
Leadership That Gets Results
page 1
The Idea in Brief The Idea in Practice
COPYRIGHT © 2000 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Many managers mistakenly assume that
leadership style is a function of personality
rather than strategic choice. Instead of
choosing the one style that suits their
temperament, they should ask which style
best addresses the demands of a particular
situation.
Research has shown that the most success-ful leaders have strengths in the following
emotional intelligence competencies: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation,
empathy, and social skill. There are six basic
styles of leadership; each makes use of the
ke y components of emotional intelligence
in different combinations. The best leaders
don’t know just one style of leadership—
they’re skilled at several, and have the flexi-bility to switch between styles as the cir-cumstances dictate.
M anagers often fail to appreciate how profoundly the organizational climate can influence fi-nancial results. It can account for nearly a third of financial performance. Organizational climate,
in turn, is influenced by leadership style—by the way that managers motivate direct reports,
gather and use information, make decisions, manage change initiatives, and handle crises. There
are six basic leadership styles. Each derives from different emotional intelligence competencies,
wor ks best in particular situations, and affects the organizational climate in different ways.
1. The coercive style. This “Do what I say” ap-proach can be very effective in a turnaround
situation, a natural disaster, or when working
with problem employees. But in most situa-tions, coercive leadership inhibits the organi-zation’s flexibility and dampens employees’
motivation.
2. The authoritative style. An authoritative
leader takes a “Come with me” approach: she
states the overall goal but gives people the
freedom to choose their own means of
achieving it. This style works especially well
when a business is adrift. It is less effective
when the leader is working with a team of ex-perts who are more experienced than he is.
3. The affiliative style. The hallmark of the af-filiative leader is a “People come first” attitude.
This style is particularly useful for building
team harmony or increasing morale. But its
exclusive focus on praise can allow poor per-fo r mance to go uncorrected. Also, affiliative
leaders rarely offer advice, which often leaves
employees in a quandary.
4. The democratic style. This style’s impact
on organizational climate is not as high as you
might imagine. By giving workers a voice in
decisions, democratic leaders build organiza-tional flexibility and responsibility and help
generate fresh ideas. But sometimes the price
is endless meetings and confused employees
who feel leaderless.
5. The pacesetting style. A leader who sets
high performance standards and exemplifies
them himself has a very positive impact on
employees who are self-motivated and highly
competent. But other employees tend to feel
ov erwhelmed by such a leader’s demands for
excellence—and to resent his tendency to
take over a situation.
6. The coaching style. This style focuses
more on personal development than on im-mediate work-related tasks. It works well
when employees are already aware of their
weaknesses and want to improve, but not
when they are resistant to changing their
ways.
The more styles a leader has mastered, the
better. In particular, being able to switch
among the authoritative, affiliative, demo-cratic, and coaching styles as conditions dic-tate creates the best organizational climate
and optimizes business performance.
Lead ership That Gets
Results
by Daniel Goleman
harvard business review • march–april 2000 page 2
COPYRIGHT © 2000 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
New research suggests that the most effective executives use a collection
of distinct leadership styles—each in the righ t measure, at just the right
time. Such flexibility is tough to put into action, but it pays off in
performance. And better yet, it can be learned.
Ask any group of businesspeople the question
“What do effective leaders do?” and you’ll
hear a sweep of answers. Leaders set strategy;
they motivate; they create a mission; they
build a culture. Then ask “What should leaders
do?” If the group is seasoned, you’ll likely hear
one response: the leader’s singular job is to
get results.
But how? The mystery of what leaders can
and ought to do in order to spark the best per-formance from their people is age-old. In re-cent years, that mystery has spawned an entire
co tt age industry: literally thousands of “leader-ship experts” have made careers of testing and
coaching executives, all in pursuit of creating
businesspeople who can turn bold objectives—
be they strategic, financial, organizational, or
all three—into reality.
Still, effective leadership eludes many peo-ple and organizations. One reason is that until
re cently, virtually no quantitative research
has demonstrated which precise leadership
b ehaviors yield positive results. Leadership
experts proffer advice based on inference, ex-perience, and instinct. Sometimes that advice
is which precise leadership behaviors yield
p ositive results. Leadership experts proffer ad-vice based on inference, experience, and in-stinct. Sometimes that advice is right on tar-get; sometimes it’s not.
But new research by the consulting firm
Hay/McBer, which draws on a random sample
of 3,871 executives selected from a database of
more than 20,000 executives worldwide,
ta kes much of the mystery out of effective
leadership. The research found six distinct
leadership styles, each springing from differ-ent components of emotional intelligence.
The styles, taken individually, appear to have
a direct and unique impact on the working at-mosphere of a company, division, or team,
and in turn, on its financial performance. And
perhaps most important, the research indi-ca tes that leaders with the best results do not
rely on only one leadership style; they use
most of them in a given week—seamlessly
and in different measure—depending on the
business situation. Imagine the styles, then, as
Leadership That Gets Results
harvard business review • march–april 2000 page 3
the array of clubs in a golf pro’s bag. Over the
course of a game, the pro picks and chooses
clubs based on the demands of the shot.
Sometimes he has to ponder his selection, but
usually it is automatic. The pro senses the
challenge ahead, swiftly pulls out the right
tool, and elegantly puts it to work. That’s how
high-impact leaders operate, too.
What are the six styles of leadership? None
will shock workplace veterans. Indeed, each
style, by name and brief description alone,
will likely resonate with anyone who leads, is
led, or as is the case with most of us, does
b oth. Coercive leaders demand immediate
compliance. Authoritative leaders mobilize
people toward a vision. Affiliative leaders cre-ate emotional bonds and harmony. Demo-cratic leaders build consensus through partici-pation. Pacesetting leaders expect excellence
and self-direction. And co aching leaders develop
people for the future.
Close your eyes and you can surely imagine
a colleague who uses any one of these styles.
You most likely use at least one yourself. What
is new in this research, then, is its implications
for action. First, it offers a fine-grained under-standing of how different leadership styles af-fect performance and results. Second, it offers
clear guidance on when a manager should
switch between them. It also strongly suggests
that switching flexibly is well advised. New,
too, is the research’s finding that each leader-ship style springs from different components
of emotional intelligence.
Measuring Leadership’s Impact
It has been more than a decade since research
first linked aspects of emotional intelligence
to business results. The late David McClelland,
a noted Harvard University psychologist,
found that leaders with strengths in a critical
mass of six or more emotional intelligence
competencies were far more effective than
peers who lacked such strengths. For instance,
when he analyzed the performance of division
heads at a global food and beverage company,
he found that among leaders with this critical
mass of competence, 87% placed in the top
third for annual salary bonuses based on their
business performance. More telling, their divi-sions on average outperformed yearly revenue
ta rgets by 15% to 20%. Those executives who
lacked emotional intelligence were rarely
ra ted as outstanding in their annual perfor-mance reviews, and their divisions underper-formed by an average of almost 20%.
Our research set out to gain a more molecu-lar view of the links among leadership and
emotional intelligence, and climate and per-formance. A team of McClelland’s colleagues
headed by Mary Fontaine and Ruth Jacobs
from Hay/McBer studied data about or ob-served thousands of executives, noting spe-cific behaviors and their impact on climate.
1
How did each individual motivate direct re-por ts? Manage change initiatives? Handle cr
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