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 successful
leaders have strengths in the following
emotional intelligence competencies: selfawareness,
self-regulation, motivation,
empathy, and social skill. There are six basic
styles of leadership; each makes use of the
key 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 flexibility
to switch between styles as the circumstances
dictate.
Managers often fail to appreciate how profoundly the organizational climate can influence financial
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,
works best in particular situations, and affects the organizational climate in different ways.
1. The coercive style. This “Do what I say” approach
can be very effective in a turnaround
situation, a natural disaster, or when working
with problem employees. But in most situations,
coercive leadership inhibits the organization’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 experts
who are more experienced than he is.
3. The affiliative style. The hallmark of the affiliative
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 performance
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 organizational
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
overwhelmed 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 immediate
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, democratic,
and coaching styles as conditions dictate
creates the best organizational climate
and optimizes business performance.
Leadership 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 right 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 performance
from their people is age-old. In recent
years, that mystery has spawned an entire
cottage industry: literally thousands of “leadership
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 people
and organizations. One reason is that until
recently, virtually no quantitative research
has demonstrated which precise leadership
behaviors yield positive results. Leadership
experts proffer advice based on inference, experience,
and instinct. Sometimes that advice
is which precise leadership behaviors yield
positive results. Leadership experts proffer advice
based on inference, experience, and instinct.
Sometimes that advice is right on target;
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,
takes much of the mystery out of effective
leadership. The research found six distinct
leadership styles, each springing from different
components of emotional intelligence.
The styles, taken individually, appear to have
a direct and unique impact on the working atmosphere
of a company, division, or team,
and in turn, on its financial performance. And
perhaps most important, the research indicates
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
both. 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.
Pacesetting leaders expect excellence
and self-direction. And coaching 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 understanding
of how different leadership styles affect
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 leadership
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 divisions
on average outperformed yearly revenue
targets by 15% to 20%. Those executives who
lacked emotional intelligence were rarely
rated as outstanding in their annual performance
reviews, and their divisions underperformed
by an average of almost 20%.
Our research set out to gain a more molecular
view of the links among leadership and
emotional intelligence, and climate and performance.
A team of McClelland’s colleagues
headed by Mary Fontaine and Ruth Jacobs
from Hay/McBer studied data about or observed
thousands of executives, noting specific
behaviors and their impact on climate.
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How did each individual motivate direct reports?
Manage change initiatives? Handle crises?
It was in a later phase of the research
that we identified which emotional intelligence
capabilities drive the six leadership
styles. How does he rate in terms of selfcontrol
and social skill? Does a leader show
high or low levels of empathy?
The team tested each executive’s immediate
sphere of influence for its climate. “Climate” is
not an amorphous term. First defined by psychologists
George Litwin and Richard Stringer
and later refined by McClelland and his colleagues,
it refers to six key factors that influence
an organization’s working environment:
its flexibility—that is, how free employees feel
to innovate unencumbered by red tape; their
sense of responsibility to the organization; the
level of standards that people set; the sense of
accuracy about performance feedback and aptness
of rewards; the clarity people have about
mission and values; and fin
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