What Is a Leadership Style?
A leadership style is the way you influence people to work towards a goal. It’s how you set direction, how you make decisions, how you motivate people and how you respond when things go wrong. Your team sees it every day, in small moments: whether you explain the why, whether you ask before you decide, whether you notice when someone is struggling.
Leadership styles are not personality types. You can be quiet and still lead in a visionary way, or outgoing and still lead by listening. A style is closer to a set of habits, which is good news, because habits can be changed.
If you’re a manager, you need leadership as well as management. Our guide to management vs leadership explains the difference: management keeps today’s work running, leadership gets people ready for what’s next. This guide is about the second half of that job, and it’s the part new managers usually get least help with, which is why leadership sits alongside the practical skills in our management training.
Leadership Styles vs Management Styles
You’ll see the two terms used as if they mean the same thing, and lists online mix them freely. Strictly, a management style is how you organise and control the work, and a leadership style is how you influence and motivate people.
Our guide to management styles covers the practical day-to-day styles: Kurt Lewin’s autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire, and Daniel Goleman’s six (coercive, authoritative, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting and coaching). Those are about what you do in a given moment.
This guide covers the bigger leadership theories that sit behind them. Each one answers a slightly different question:
- Transformational and transactional: how do you get people to perform, through shared purpose or through a clear exchange?
- Servant: whose needs come first, yours and the organisation’s, or the team’s?
- Authentic: where does your credibility come from?
- Situational: how do you adjust to each person and task?
The Main Leadership Styles Explained
Transformational Leadership
Transformational leadership is about getting people to care about a shared purpose, and to grow while they work towards it. The idea comes from the historian and political scientist James MacGregor Burns, whose 1978 book Leadership described “transforming” leaders who raise the motivation and values of their followers, not just trade favours with them.
Bernard Bass took the idea into organisations in Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations (1985). In his later work with Bruce Avolio, transformational leadership is usually summarised as four behaviours, often called the four I’s:
- Idealised influence: you act as a role model people trust and respect.
- Inspirational motivation: you set out a direction that gives the work meaning.
- Intellectual stimulation: you encourage people to question assumptions and suggest better ways.
- Individualised consideration: you pay attention to each person’s needs and development.
In practice it looks like a team leader who explains why a new process matters to customers, asks the team how they’d make it work, and then helps each person build the skills they need for it. It works well when an organisation is changing and needs commitment, not just compliance.
The risk is a lot of inspiring talk with no plan behind it. People quickly lose faith in a vision that never turns into clear priorities and deadlines.
Transactional Leadership
Transactional leadership is an exchange. You agree what needs to be done and to what standard, and people earn rewards (pay, recognition, the good shifts) or face consequences depending on whether they deliver. Burns described it as the more common type of leadership, and Bass included it in his model alongside transformational leadership.
It sounds old-fashioned, but most workplaces depend on it. Clear targets, fair rules and following through on what you promised are transactional, and a team without them feels chaotic and unfair. It suits routine, measurable work and situations where the standard is obvious, such as safety procedures or service levels.
The weakness is that people learn to do exactly what’s measured. Ask for calls per hour and you’ll get calls per hour, not happier customers. Bass’s argument was that the best leaders use both: the transactional basics keep things clear and fair, and transformational leadership adds the commitment that targets alone can’t buy.
Photo: Campaign Creators on Unsplash
Servant Leadership
Servant leadership turns the usual picture upside down. The leader’s first job is to serve the people they lead: remove obstacles, support their growth, and look after their wellbeing, so that they can do their best work. Robert K. Greenleaf introduced the idea in his 1970 essay The Servant as Leader, after a career in management research at AT&T.
Greenleaf’s test of a servant leader was about the people served: do they grow, become more capable and more independent? That’s a useful question for any manager to ask at the end of a year.
In a workplace it looks like a manager whose standard question is “What’s getting in your way, and how can I help?”, and who then actually goes and fixes the broken system or argues for the extra resource. It builds trust and loyalty, and it suits teams of skilled people who know their work.
The risk is confusing serving people with pleasing them. A servant leader still has to make unpopular decisions, hold people to standards and tackle poor performance. Avoiding those things doesn’t serve anyone.
Authentic Leadership
Authentic leadership is about leading from your own values, honestly and consistently. The idea was popularised by Bill George, a former chief executive of the medical technology firm Medtronic, in his 2003 book Authentic Leadership. Researchers including Bruce Avolio and William Gardner later developed it into an academic theory, usually described in four parts:
- Self-awareness: knowing your strengths, limits and values.
- Relational transparency: being open and honest about what you think and feel, in a way that fits the situation.
- Balanced processing: looking at the evidence and other views fairly before deciding, including views you don’t like.
- An internalised moral perspective: acting on your values even under pressure.
Authentic leaders are predictable in a good way. People know where they stand. That makes it closely linked to emotional intelligence in leadership, especially the self-awareness part.
The risk is treating “I’m just being myself” as a reason not to adapt. Being authentic doesn’t mean being the same with everyone. You can stay true to your values and still change how you communicate with a nervous new starter compared with an experienced specialist.
Situational Leadership
Situational leadership says the right style depends on the person and the task. Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard first set out the idea in 1969: give more direction when someone is new to a task, more support when they’re capable but unsure, and step back when they’re both skilled and confident.
It’s the most practical of these theories for day-to-day management, because it tells you what to do differently with each person. The same person might need close direction on a new software system and almost none on the work they’ve done for years. Our guide to situational leadership covers the four styles, the later SLII version and how to use it in one-to-ones.
Daniel Goleman’s research makes a similar point from a different angle. He found the most effective leaders used several styles and switched between them, and our management styles guide sets out his six.
Leadership Styles Self-Assessment
This is a reflection exercise, not a validated psychometric test. It won’t tell you who you are. It will give you a quick, honest picture of the habits you lean on most, and the ones you use least.
Think about how you’ve actually behaved over the last month, not how you’d like to behave. Score each statement from 1 to 5:
1 = rarely or never · 2 = occasionally · 3 = sometimes · 4 = often · 5 = almost always
| No. | Statement | Score (1 to 5) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | I explain to my team why our work matters, not just what needs doing. | |
| 2 | I encourage people to challenge the way we do things and suggest improvements. | |
| 3 | I agree clear targets with each person and make sure they know how they’ll be measured. | |
| 4 | I follow through on what I’ve promised: recognition when it’s earned, action when standards slip. | |
| 5 | I regularly ask people what’s getting in their way, and then I do something about it. | |
| 6 | I put time into each person’s development, even when it doesn’t help this month’s results. | |
| 7 | I’m open with my team about my own mistakes and what I’m still learning. | |
| 8 | I make decisions in line with my values, even when it would be easier not to. | |
| 9 | I change how much I direct someone depending on how experienced they are with the task. | |
| 10 | I can name, for each person in my team, which tasks they need help with and which they can run alone. |
How to Score It
Add up each pair:
| Statements | Style | Your total (out of 10) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 and 2 | Transformational | |
| 3 and 4 | Transactional | |
| 5 and 6 | Servant | |
| 7 and 8 | Authentic | |
| 9 and 10 | Situational |
What Your Scores Mean
- Your highest total is probably your default. It’s what you do without thinking, and it’s likely a real strength. Keep it.
- Your lowest total is your blind spot. That’s where the most useful development sits. If transactional scored lowest, your team may not be clear on what good looks like. If servant scored lowest, people may not feel supported.
- Totals of 8 or more across the board? Either you’re very flexible, or you’re scoring your intentions rather than your behaviour. Ask someone in your team to score you on the same statements and compare.
- A gap of 4 or more between highest and lowest suggests you rely heavily on one approach. That works until you meet a person or situation it doesn’t suit.
The most reliable way to check your answers is to ask other people. For a structured, free option, HSE’s Line Manager Competency Indicator Tool, developed with the CIPD and Investors in People, lets you rate your own management behaviours and then ask your team for a 180 or 360 degree view. It’s aimed at preventing stress at work, but many of its behaviours (acting with integrity, managing your emotions, consulting your team) overlap closely with the styles above.
Photo: Redd Francisco on Unsplash
How to Choose the Right Leadership Style
No style wins everywhere. Each of the theories above has research behind it, and each has situations where it backfires. The skill is matching your approach to what’s in front of you. Four questions help:
- What does this person need right now? Someone new to a task needs direction. Someone skilled but wobbly needs support. Someone experienced and confident needs room.
- What does the situation need? A safety incident needs a quick, clear instruction. A change programme needs explanation and involvement. Routine work needs clear standards and fair follow-through.
- What do I need from the team afterwards? If you need commitment, involve people and explain the why. If you need learning, coach. If you need a clear result to a set standard, a transactional approach may be enough.
- Am I choosing, or defaulting? Most poor leadership moments come from using a habit in the wrong place, not from choosing the wrong style on purpose.
Your style also shapes how a new team settles. A group that’s just formed needs more direction than one that’s been working well together for a year. Our guide to Tuckman’s model of team development shows how a leader’s role changes at each stage.
How to Develop Your Leadership Style
You get better at leadership through practice and feedback, the same way you got good at the job you were promoted from.
- Pick one style to strengthen. Use your lowest score from the self-assessment. Don’t try to change everything at once.
- Choose one behaviour that shows it. For servant leadership, that might be asking “What’s in your way?” in every one-to-one. For transformational, it might be explaining the why behind every new task this month.
- Practise it for a month. Put a reminder in your diary. Notice what changes in how people respond.
- Ask for feedback. Ask two people in your team what they’ve noticed. Use their words, not your impression.
- Get coaching on the hard parts. Questions like “Why do I take over when I’m under pressure?” are easier to work through with someone outside the situation. The GROW coaching model is a simple structure for those conversations, and leadership coaching gives senior people a private space to work on them.
What to Do Next
This week, do the self-assessment honestly, then ask one person in your team to score you on the same ten statements. Where your scores differ most, you’ve found your starting point. Pick one behaviour from your lowest-scoring style and use it deliberately in every one-to-one for the next month.
If you’re developing a group of managers, our management training helps them recognise their own default style and practise adapting it to different people and situations, with follow-ups at 30, 60 and 90 days.