CHAPTER 4

Leadership Styles

Introduction

One of the most interesting, and voluminously researched, topics in leadership studies is “leadership style.” In general, leadership style focuses on how leaders interact with their followers and has been more specifically defined as “the manner and approach of providing direction, motivating people and achieving objectives.”¹ Whereas there are a number of different models of leadership style, several of which are discussed in the following sections, three fundamental dimensions are often represented: the leader’s approach to influencing the behavior of his or her followers; the manner in which decisions regarding the direction of the group are made, with a specific emphasis on the level of participation offered to followers; and the balance struck between goal attainment and maintaining harmony within the group (sometimes referred to as group “maintenance”).² For example, two alternative approaches to influencing the behavior of followers are the transactional leadership, which views the leader–follower relationship as a process of exchange, and transformational leadership, which relies on the leader’s ability to communicate a clear and acceptable vision and related goals that engender intense emotion among followers that motivates them to buy into and pursue the leader’s vision. Contrasting styles for decision-making are found when distinguishing authoritarian (autocratic) and participative (democratic) leaders. Finally, the balance between goals and maintenance is emphasized in those models, such as Blake and Mouton’s Grid Theory, that analyze the degree to which leaders exhibit task and/or relationship orientation in their interactions with followers.

Many commentators, notably Kotter, have observed that coping with change is one of the most important challenges confronting leaders of organizations, particularly given the unending pressures caused by globalization, innovations in technology and communications, and turbulent economic times.³ Reardon et al. suggested that five phases of change could be identified—planning, enabling, launching, catalyzing, and maintaining—and that each required a leader to use one of four different types of leadership styles—commanding, logical, inspirational, or supportive—that was most appropriate for that phase.⁴ Muczyk and Adler have questioned the feasibility of this model given that it calls for an uncommonly versatile and flexible leader.⁵ However, other researchers who have studied the evolution of organizations have also concluded that appropriate leadership styles do tend to change as time goes by and that although it may not be feasible for a single leader to attempt to change his or her style, changes at the top of the organizational hierarchy may be needed from time to time in order to bring in the right person for the particular situation.⁶

Leadership Styles

Definitions and descriptions of leadership styles typically are based on three fundamental dimensions:

• The leader’s approach to influencing the behavior of his or her followers
• The manner in which decisions regarding the direction of the group are made, with a specific emphasis on the level of participation offered to followers
• The balance struck between attaining goals and maintaining harmony within the group (sometimes referred to as group “maintenance”)
• Among the styles included in representative models of ­leadership styles are the following:
• Authoritarian or autocratic; participative or democratic; and delegative or “free reign” (sometimes referred to as “­laissez faire”)
• Exploitive authoritative, benevolent authoritative, consultative system, and participative
• Country Club Leadership (High Concern for People/Low Concern for Production), Produce or Perish Leadership (Low Concern for People/High Concern for Production), Impoverished Leadership (Low Concern for People/Low Concern for Production), Middle-of-the-Road Leadership (Medium Concern for People/Medium Concern for Production), and Team Leadership (High Concern for People/High Concern for Production)
• Directive autocrat, permissive autocrat, directive democrat, and permissive democrat
• Coercive, authoritative, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting, and coaching
• Leadership “approaches”: strategy, human assets, expertise, “box,” and “change”
• Servant

Lewin’s Three Styles of Leadership

The results of one of the earliest attempts to identify different styles of leadership using research methods were published by Lewin et al. in 1939. This study became quite influential in the field and led to the recognition of three major leadership styles, two of which became the foundation of further work by other researchers in the decades that followed: authoritarian or autocratic; participative or democratic; and delegative or “free reign” (sometimes referred to as “laissez faire”).⁷ Rather than conduct research in the context of a business organization, Lewin and his colleagues observed the behaviors of schoolchildren in response to different styles of leadership as they worked to complete an arts and crafts project. They concluded that good leaders use all three styles at some point in time; however, one style was usually the dominant style and democratic/participative leadership was generally the most effective approach. In contrast, poor leaders usually rely on one style regardless of the situation and are most likely to choose either the authoritarian/autocratic style or the delegate/laissez faire style.

Authoritarian or Autocratic Leadership

The authoritarian, or autocratic, leaders in Lewin et al.’s study provided members of their groups with clear expectations of what needed to be done and when and how the tasks and activities should be completed. All decisions were made by the leader without input from group members and there was a clear division between the leader and his or her followers. Not surprisingly, Lewin et al. found that the decisions made under the authoritarian style were less creative and that authoritarian leaders were often seen as being controlling, bossy, and dictatorial by their followers. In addition, authoritarian leaders had much more difficulty transitioning to a participative style than vice versa. All in all, authoritarian leadership was seen as being useful and efficient in limited circumstances, such as when there is little time for the group to participate in weighing options and making decisions and the leader is demonstrably more knowledgeable about the task at hand than the other members of the group.

Participative or Democratic Leadership

The distinguishing feature of participative, or democratic, leadership was the willingness of the leader to not only offer guidance to members of the group but also allow them to provide input into decisions regarding the objectives of the group and how those objectives should be pursued. There was less distance between the leader and his or her followers when the participative style was used and the leader was more involved in the routine interactions that typically occur in the group context. Although participative leaders retained the right to make the final decisions, group members felt more involved in the process and thus appeared to be more motivated and creative. Participative leaders were the most effective among the three styles studied by Lewin et al. Although members of the group were less productive than members of the autocratic group, Lewin et al. felt that the contributions of the members of the participative group were of higher quality than those who worked under an autocratic leader.

Delegative or Laissez Faire Leadership

Delegative, or laissez faire, leadership was the least effective of the three leadership styles and featured little or no guidance from the leaders to their followers. As a result, members of the group were forced to take on many of the roles typically carried out by the leader such as making decisions about the goals of the group and the best way to organize the work activities of group members. Lewin et al. found that the members of this group were unable to work independently, had trouble cooperating with one another, and made more demands on their leader. Although there may be situations where this type of style might work, such as when group members are highly qualified in a specific area of expertise, the general finding was that group members were poorly motivated and unproductive because of the lack of clearly defined objectives and roles. Whereas infrequently observed among U.S. managers, laissez-faire leadership behaviors do occur from time to time and, not surprisingly, research conducted after the study by Lewin et al. has indicated that this “style” of leadership generally has an adverse impact on work-related outcomes of followers.⁸ Bass was also critical of laissez-faire leaders who avoided the proactive involvement associated with transformational and transactional leaders, a topic discussed elsewhere in this chapter, and who chose to “abdicate their responsibility and avoid making decisions,” thus leaving their followers without guidance as to identifying and completing their job responsibilities.⁹

Likert’s System Four model

Rensis Likert identified four systems of management that might be deployed within an organization.¹⁰ The fundamental characteristic of each of these systems was the dominant “style of leadership,” which is the method that leaders within the organization used when determining the level of involvement of subordinates in decision-making and motivating subordinates to follow the directions issued by the leader. Likert categorized his four systems as follows:

1. The “exploitive authoritative” system is used by leaders that have low regard for subordinates (i.e., no trust or confidence) and are prepared to use threats and other fear-based methods to ensure that subordinates will comply with the decisions made by the leader. In this system subordinates are simply expected to follow the decisions made by their leaders without question or the opportunity to provide input. Communication channels when this system is used are downward and the social and psychological needs of subordinates are largely ignored. Completion of the work identified by the leaders is the only concern within the organization and there is no interest in encouraging or rewarding teamwork.
2. The “benevolent authoritative” system, sometimes referred to as “benevolent dictatorship,” is still authoritarian (i.e., decisions are made solely by the leader); however, the leader does pay some attention to the concerns of subordinates and is willing to create a reward system to encourage subordinates to act in the manner directed by the leader as opposed to simply relying on threats and fear. Communication channels when this system is used are a bit more open although subordinates continue to be guarded about what they share with the leader and often limit their comments to what they think the leader wants to hear. The leader may delegate a small amount of authority, generally to a small group of managers who focus on making sure that those lower in the organizational hierarchy complete their tasks without straying from the directions provided from above, but all major decisions remain the sole province of the leader.
3. The “consultative” system features an authentic attempt by the leader to listen to the ideas and views of subordinates although the leader’s explicit outreach to subordinates remains limited (but more active than if the benevolent authoritative system is used). Centralized decision-making remains the rule when this system is used; however, subordinates are motivated by rewards and some level of satisfaction that the leader is willing to hear and respect their opinions and their ideas for improving the way in which the organization operates. This system features more open horizontal and vertical communications than either of the authoritative systems although it is still the case that more information flows downward than upward.
4. The “participative” system features full use of participative methods by the leader to bring subordinates into the loop regarding major decisions and create an organizational culture in which the ideas of people at all levels are valued and people feel a psychological closeness and gain satisfaction from working closely together toward a shared goal. Leaders have a high level of confidence in the abilities of their subordinates and the work of the organization is conducted through teams that are linked by effective integrative strategies. Subordinates are committed to the goals of the organization and assume responsibility for achieving them because they are satisfied about the opportunities for meaningful participation in setting those goals and the leaders have designed a reward system that is closely aligned to those goals.

Based on his analysis of the responses to his questionnaires Likert concluded that organizational units that relied on either of the “authoritative” systems were the least productive and that units relying on either the consultative or participative systems were the most productive. As to what he considered to be the ideal system Likert maintained that organization should adopt a participative system order to achieve the highest levels of effectiveness, productivity, and satisfaction among managers and employees.

Blake and Mouton’s Grid Theory

In the early 1960s Robert Blake and Jane Moulton developed a framework for categorizing and describing leadership styles that focused on two behavioral dimensions—concern for people (“people orientation”) and concern for production (“production orientation” or “task orientation”).¹¹ In contrast to many of the other leadership/management theories, Blake and Mouton did not opine as to whether it was better for a leader to be production-oriented or people-oriented (or a combination of the two) and their main interest was in establishing a model that described various leadership styles so that leaders could see where they fit and take steps to develop skills needed to adapt their styles to the wide range of circumstances that can arise during the course of managing the activities of an organizational unit.

Blake and Moulton devised the Managerial Grid, sometimes referred to as the Leadership Grid, with the dimensions referred to earlier as the two axes and each axis ranging from low on one end to high on the other. A leader’s “concern for people” was measured by how much the leader considered the needs and interests of team members, as well as their personal development, when making decisions about how to accomplish tasks needed for the organization to achieve its objectives. A leader’s “concern of production” was measured by the weight that the leader gave to concrete objectives, organizational efficiency, and achieving high productivity when making decisions about how to accomplish organizational tasks. Using these dimensions Blake and Moulton originally identified the following five leadership styles:

1. Country Club Leadership (High Concern for People/Low Concern for Production): A leader using this style is extremely concerned about the needs, feelings, and development of subordinates and generally assumes that as long as subordinates are feeling satisfied and secure they will be motivated to work hard to achieve the organization’s production requirements. The by-product of this style, also referred to as “accommodating,” tends be a comfortable work environment yet one in which production goals are often missed because of inadequate controls.
2. Produce or Perish Leadership (Low Concern for People/High Concern for Production): Leaders using this style—sometimes referred to as authoritarian or dictatorial leaders—do not value the needs and feelings of subordinates and see them only as tools to be used as necessary in order to achieve production goals. The workplace environment is quite autocratic with subordinates subject to strict rules, policies, and procedures. Subordinates are motivated by fear of punishment for failing to comply as opposed to rewards for achieving their goals. This style is similar to McGregor’s Theory X and is often used when organizations are in crisis.
3. Impoverished Leadership (Low Concern for People/Low Concern for Production): Not surprisingly, a leader using this style is extremely ineffective as he or she has no concern about positively motivating or satisfying his or her subordinates for creating systems and process that promote achieving of production goals. As a result, the workplace operating under impoverished leadership is chaotic and stressful for all who are a part of it. This style is sometimes referred to as “indifferent.”
4. Middle-of-the-Road Leadership (Medium Concern for People/Medium Concern for Production): This style of leadership represents an effort to compromise by not being too extreme on either of the dimensions and striking a balance between people and production concerns. The by-product of such a decision, however, is an organization that is no better than average with respect to employee satisfaction and productivity and thus unable to generate the inertia necessary for long-term sustainability and growth. In some instances leaders adopt this style (sometimes aptly referred to as the “status quo”) because they doubt that their workers have the skills necessary to perform much better than average.
5. Team Leadership (High Concern for People/High Concern for ­Production): A leader championing teamwork involves employees in making decisions about the goals and objectives of the organization and the means that should be used to achieve production requirements and establishes processes and reward systems that are designed to satisfy the personal needs of employees to motivate them toward high production. Leaders and employees operate in an environment of mutual trust and respect. This style is sometimes referred to as “sound” leadership.

Whereas Blake and Mouton wanted to create a model for use in analyzing organizational leadership styles they did note that team leadership was, in many instances, the preferred leadership/managerial style and recommended that leaders look for ways to adapt their approach toward something that was quite similar to McGregor’s Theory Y and other participatory leadership/management styles.¹²

Transformational and Transactional Leadership

The terms “transformational leadership” and “transactional leadership” were first used by James MacGregor Burns in 1978.¹³ Burns began by defining leadership as “leaders inducing followers to act for certain goals that represent the values and the motivations—the wants and needs, the aspirations and expectations—of both leaders and followers.” For Burns, leaders had the greatest impact on their followers when they were able to “motivate followers to action by appealing to shared values and by satisfying the higher order needs of the led, such as their aspirations and expectations.” He went on to say that “… transforming leadership ultimately becomes moral in that it raises the level of human conduct and ethical aspiration of both leader and the led, and thus it has a transforming effect on both.” Although Burns clearly had feelings about the value of transformational leadership he also recognized that leaders often needed to engage in another form of leadership, which he referred to as “transactional,” and which was based on transactional exchanges of value between leaders and followers; in other words, leaders offered and awarded items of value under his or her control in exchange for followers providing needed inputs such as services.

Burns and others argued that done well, transformational and transactional leadership could complement one another and that leaders needed to know and understand what type of leadership would work best in a particular situation, knowledge that evolved over time as leaders accumulated more education and experience. Bass, a disciple of Burns who became the leading champion of transformational leadership in the 1990s, wrote with this colleague: “The best leadership is both transformational and transactional. Transformational leadership augments the effectiveness of transactional leadership, it does not replace transactional leadership.”¹⁴ The bridge between the two types of leadership was further illustrated by the adaptation of Kegan’s six stage developmental theory by Kuhnert and Lewis, who suggested that as leaders develop they are able to grasp and practice successively “higher order” leadership traits.¹⁵ In the model suggested by Kuhnert and Lewis, leaders generally began at the “transactional (stage 2)” level at which the commitment of the leader and his or her followers to the organization is based primarily on a sense of reciprocity. Certain leaders are eventually able to move to the “higher-order transactional (stage 3)” level where they begin to regularly

use relational ties to motivate followers to believe work is more than the performance of certain duties for certain concrete ­payoffs. Followers may perform at exemplary levels with little immediate payoff in order to maintain the respect of their leader.

At this level a sense of trust and respect develops between the leader and his or her followers and they begin to forge an alliance that is based on mutual support, promises, expectations, obligations, and rewards. Bass noted, however, that “[a]lthough followers who are persuaded by higher level transactional leaders may expend extraordinary effort to maintain a certain level of mutual regard with their leader, their beliefs and goals typically have not changed.”¹⁶ It is the eventual integration of the leader’s goals and values by his or her followers that sets the stage for the “transformational (stage 4)” level in the Kuhnert and Lewis continuum. At this level, Bass said, “… leaders are able to take an objective view of their goals and commitments; they can operate from a personal value system that transcends their agendas and loyalties.”

However, although transformational and transactional leadership are related, there are clear and important distinctions between the two styles. Bass and his colleagues have demonstrated that there are meaningful distinctions between these two styles of leadership.¹⁷ Raza explained:

Transformational leadership is distinguished from transactional leadership in that it aims at innovation, while the latter is focused on planning and execution. Furthermore, transactional leadership focuses on rewards and punishments in order to achieve goals. These characteristics suggest that transformational leadership strives to create new opportunities for employees in an organization, whereas transactional style works off of an existing structure. Another distinguishing feature between the two styles is that transformational leadership aims at motivating people while transactional leadership focuses on the use of manipulation of power and authority.¹⁸

Schuster pointed out that whereas transformational leaders appealed to “higher motivation” and sought to improve the quality of life for their followers within the organization, transactional leadership was “at best a networking of power.”¹⁹

Bass further explained that transactional leaders accomplish their goals by rewarding employees who meet expectations by providing them with rewards such as recognition, pay increases, and promotion; however, an important part of transactional leadership is that employees who fail to meet expectations will likely be penalized.²⁰ As noted earlier, in contrast to transformational leadership, transactional leadership focuses on specific benefits that followers would receive by taking on and completing agreed-upon tasks, and leaders using the transactional leadership style should expect to engage in ongoing negotiations with their followers regarding the terms upon which the followers would be willing to exchange their labor for the benefits offered by the leader. The “behaviors” that are generally associated with transactional leadership are quite different than those associated with transformational leadership and include techniques and practices such as “contingent reward” and “management by exception.”²¹

Raza noted that transactional leadership becomes particularly unappealing when the leader relies too heavily on “passive management by exception,” which Howell and Avolio explained happens “when leaders transact with followers by focusing on mistakes, delaying decisions, or avoiding intervening until something has gone wrong, or rewards focused on recognizing the work accomplished.”²² Transactional leadership is often criticized as merely a system of rewards and penalties that fails to inspire and motivate followers to do anything more than the basics of their jobs, and leaders relying on the transactional style have been accused of excess reliance on coercive, rather than referent, power and being unwilling to interact with followers unless the followers have failed to meet expectations and/or follow standards and procedures established by the leader without input from the followers.²³

A number of researchers have claimed to have found evidence confirming the effectiveness of transformational leadership. For example, Judge and Piccolo and Stewart claimed to have found a positive correlation between team performance and the use of transformational leadership style.²⁴ Barling et al. found that transformational leadership facilitated a positive change in the way that followers perceived their managers and help to improve the organizational commitment and performance of the followers.²⁵ Lowe et al. argued that their research supported the notion that transformational leadership has a positive influence on work unit effectiveness at all levels of the organization and that leaders would do well to focus on engaging their followers and providing them with individual consideration.²⁶ Other researchers have identified a ­positive relationship between transformational leadership and financial performance whereas simultaneously finding that transactional leadership style, with its excessive emphasis on meeting goals and achieving desired results, ­negatively impacts unit performance and caused followers to lose motivation and feel that their freedom to grow within the organization was limited.²⁷ Wells and Peachey suggested that the engaging style of transformational leaders would lead to more meaningful and satisfying relationships between followers and their organization and thus reduce the likelihood that the followers would leave and seek jobs elsewhere.²⁸

If one assumes the validity of the distinction between transformational and transactional leadership and the value of transformational leadership in certain instances, the key question then becomes: How can leaders effectively motivate their followers to accept the transformational style? Bass and Steidlmeir offered four interrelated components that were explained by Homrig as follows²⁹:

1. Idealized influence, which calls for building genuine trust between leaders and followers based on a solid moral and ethical foundation. Bass explained: “If the leadership is truly transformational, its ­charisma or idealized influence is characterized by high moral and ethical standards.”
2. Inspirational motivation, which occurs when the leader’s appeal to what is right and needs to be done serves as the impetus and motivator for the activities of the followers. Bass explained: “Its [transformational leadership’s] inspirational motivation provides followers with challenges and meaning for engaging in shared goals and undertakings.”30
3. Intellectual stimulation, which Bass explained “… helps followers to question assumptions and to generate more creative solutions to problems.” The ability of followers to question assumptions and think creatively is built on the leader’s success in providing them with a sense of the “big picture” and the leader’s vision with respect to the organization, the connections between everyone in the organization, and the overall goals of the organization.
4. Individual consideration, which Bass explained occurred when a leader “… treats each follower as an individual and provides coaching, mentoring and growth opportunities.” This component stresses the need for leaders to recognize and fulfill the needs of their followers with respect to self-actualization, self-fulfillment, and self-worth, and the success of the leader is essential to motivating followers toward greater achievement and further growth.

Homrig himself also offered a summary of the ingredients for transformational leadership that he had recognized through his extensive review of the research: Leaders have high moral and ethical values; leaders express genuine interest in followers; leaders have an inspirational vision; genuine trust exists between leaders and the led; followers share leader’s values and vision; leaders and followers perform beyond self-interest; participatory decision-making is the rule; innovative thinking and action is expected; motivation is to do the right thing; and leaders mentor. For Homrig, “… the goal of transformational leaders is to inspire followers to share the leader’s values and connect with the leader’s vision.”

Muczyk and Reimann’s Directive/Participatory Leadership Model

Muczyk and Reimann suggested that five “mainstream” North American leadership dimensions could be identified and that two of them—participation and direction—were situational or contingent, meaning that leaders could, depending on the circumstances, take different approaches to how they make decisions (i.e., the degree of participation by subordinates) and how those decisions are executed (i.e., the level of direct control over execution exercised by the leader).³¹ Although “making” and “executing” decisions can be separated, as a practical matter they are obviously tightly connected and essential to the leader’s overall objective of obtaining results. Muczyk and Reimann argued that it was possible and useful to construct four generic profiles of leader behavior by combining the extreme points of the two situational dimensions, thus creating four possible leadership styles for analysis: directive autocrat, permissive autocrat, directive democrat, and permissive democrat.

In a later work relying on the original Muczyk/Reimann model, Muczyk and Adler noted that the influence of societal culture has played a big part in the evolution of the debate on what constitutes effective “leadership.” They pointed out that “most of the post-WWII leadership literature has been generated by American scholars”³² and that this has led to prescriptions that leaders everywhere should act in ways preferred and celebrated in American culture, which meant practicing democratic leadership and supporting individual autonomy. Muczyk and Adler also suggested that the notion of “soft power”—described by Ikeda as the reliance on knowledge and information, shared values, ideas, and international law as opposed to reliance on military might, formal authority, and wealth³³—had a strong influence on popularization of leadership models that were “non-positional, team based, or empowerment centered.” However, Muczyk and Adler cautioned that “the leadership construct should not be a peculiarly American one” and should instead be “universal.” They went on to argue that the only way to formulate a useful universal leadership construct was to present it in a “contingency/situational framework” that accounted for things such as societal culture, which often required that leaders incorporate autocratic and directive elements into their styles when operating in societies outside of the United States,³⁴ and the characteristics of subordinates, business practices, and business strategies.³⁵

Directive Autocrat

The “directive autocrat” style features no employee participation in ­decision-making and extensive directive behavior or follow-up on execution. Although this type of style sounds particularly extreme in countries such as the United States, where democratic and permissive leadership approaches are generally preferred and lauded, Muczyk and Adler explained that this type of leader

is not some misanthrope or ogre, but merely a person who is paid to make the important decisions, set the salient goals, and direct subordinates along the way—especially in a crisis, when subordinates tend to rally around a decisive leader.³⁶

A directive autocratic is the preferred type of leader in situation that require quick action and there is no time for extensive consultation or consensus building among subordinates and Muczyk and Adler observed that this leadership style is probably appropriate when subordinates are new, inexperienced, and/or underqualified. A directive autocratic approach is also needed when there is an adversarial relationship between managers and employers and the organizational leader has no choice but to coerce workers into doing their jobs. In order to be effective, however, a directive autocrat must have extensive knowledge of the organizational mission and must be comfortable acting in an autocratic fashion. The directive autocrat must not forget that he or she must still treat people with courtesy, dignity, and respect and, in fact, evidence indicates that if such a leader follows this simple advice he or she will be perceived much more positively than one might expect.³⁷ One method for making the “medicine go down easier” is to mix direction with tools that enable subordinates, such as training in the new technologies that may be necessary in order for the organization to succeed.

Permissive Autocrat

The “permissive autocrat” style features no employee participation in decision-making and no directive behavior or follow-up on execution. In other words, “[t]his type of leader ... makes decisions alone, but permits followers a great deal of latitude in accomplishing their delegated tasks.”³⁸ Like the directive autocrat style, this style is well suited for situations where quick decisions are needed but delegation of the “means to the ends” to subordinates only makes sense in situations where the tasks and activities that need to be completed are relatively simple and structured or the subordinates have the requisite levels of experience, ability, and initiative.³⁹ In addition, a permissive autocratic is generally willing to forego direct control if he or she has in place adequate substitutes for personal direction, which Muczyk and Adler listed as including “well-defined or routine tasks, explicit rules and procedures, technology, incentive systems, professional standards, or a strong corporate culture.”⁴⁰ They cited the example of Debbi Fields, founder of Mrs. Field’s Cookies, relying on an in-store expert information system to control operational aspects of every franchised store and track whether the managers of those stores were following the directives issued from the top of the organization by comparing store performance against standards programmed into the information system.⁴¹

Directive Democrat

The “directive democrat” style features both extensive employee participation in decision-making and extensive directive behavior or follow-up on execution. In other words, subordinates are very involved in the decision-making process but once the decision is made the leader closely supervises the subordinates to make sure they are properly completing their assigned tasks. Muczyk and Adler suggest that this style is appropriate when the project is complex and involves many interdependent activities. In this situation, the speed of the decision is generally less important than making sure that the solution chosen is technically correct and the chances of arriving at such a solution increase with broader input from those who will be involved in the project. The need for close supervision arises when the subordinates lack either experience or ability or the leader feels that they are not reliable and will not take the initiative on their own to get the project completed as planned.

Permissive Democrat

The “permissive democrat” style features extensive employee participation in decision-making and no directive behavior or follow-up on execution. In other words, a great situation for subordinates who have an opportunity to participate in making decisions and setting goals and autonomy to decide for themselves the best way to execute the decisions that they helped to make. According to Muczyk and Adler, this style works well in organizations where involving subordinates has both information and motivational benefits; however, they caution that such an approach will be successful only if certain conditions are satisfied, such as highly qualified employees, effective substitutes for personal direction, and sufficient time to seek opinion and reach a consensus. A permissive democratic must also genuinely value the democratic process and have faith and trust in the judgment of his or her subordinates and their capabilities and motivations with respect to completing the necessary tasks and activities.

Evolution of Leadership Styles

Having suggested and described their four leadership styles, Muczyk and Adler then turned their attention to examining whether one particular style would be best for the entire lifecycle of the organization or whether changes in the leadership style would be required as the organization evolves through various stages of development. They noted that several researchers had concluded that changes in leadership style do occur as time goes by and suggested a “leadership cycle” for organizations that proceeded from “directive autocrat” during the early stages of organizational development to “permissive democrat” by the time that organizations become more mature and sophisticated.⁴² Although Muczyk and Adler conceded that it was possible for an organization to jump immediately from a directive autocrat to a permissive democrat, the more likely scenario was a gradual change of just one of the dimensions at a time—for example, a directive autocrat might first attempt to become either more participative, perhaps by learning to seek out the opinions of subordinates more often, or less directive by recruiting new mid-level managers that he or she could come to trust to handle execution of decisions. Muczyk and Adler suggest that the transition generally begins by opening up the decision-making process to a wider range of people (i.e., moving from “autocrat” to “democrat”) followed by more and more delegation of the finer points of execution to subordinates as they become more familiar with the goals and purposes of the activities through their participation in the original decision. The transition from directive to permissive can also be eased through the use of the substitutes for personal direction discussed earlier.⁴³

Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Styles

Goleman is also among the army of researchers looking for the elusive answer to the seemingly simple and basic question: “What should leaders do?”⁴⁴ His answer was that “the leader’s singular job is to get results” and he argued that it was possible to use the results of quantitative research to identify those “leadership behaviors” that would produce the most positive results. Based on the research data that he reviewed, Goleman believed that the best leaders were able to mix and match the competencies associated with emotional intelligence to suit the particular challenges and problems they were confronting at any point in time and argued that six basic leadership styles could be identified among leaders of knowledge workers that were based on various combinations of the competencies of emotional intelligence: “coercive,” often also referred to as “directive” or “commanding”; “authoritative,” often also referred to as “visionary”; “affiliative”; “democratic”; “pacesetting”; and “coaching.”⁴⁵ In Goleman’s view, the best leaders not only needed emotional intelligence but also skill and acumen at identifying and applying the appropriate leadership style for the situation. The following is a brief summary of each of these styles using some of Goleman’s own words and elaborations provided by others⁴⁶:

• The “coercive” leader develops strategies and ideas largely without input or consultation and then issues clear directions that he or she expects to be followed immediately and without challenge (i.e., “Do what I tell you!” and “Just do it!”) and uses a style based on the emotional intelligence competencies of a drive to achieve, initiative, and self-control. A coercive leader often appears to be cold and distant and exudes emotional self-control which hopefully serves as a calming influence that also gives members of the group confidence that the leader is moving the group in the right direction. This style is best suited to crisis situations where immediate action is required to launch a turnaround and may also be adopted with problem members of the group when other leadership styles have failed to motivate them. This style, which is sometimes also referred to as “directive” or “commanding,” can lead to problems when group members are already competent and motivated on their own to perform and succeed.
• The “authoritative” or “visionary” leader mobilizes people toward a shared vision by providing a picture of where the group should be going but not telling them exactly how they should get there (i.e., “Come with me”) and uses a style based on the emotional intelligence competencies of self-confidence, empathy, and change catalyst. A visionary leader is authoritative rather than authoritarian and excels at providing information to the group that can be used in order to navigate the path to the desired end result. A visionary leader is particularly good at explaining to members of the group how their contributions will assist the group in achieving its goals and objectives. This style works best when organizational changes require a “new vision” or when it is necessary for the leader to set a clear direction for the organization and may not be successful when the group to be motivated includes more experienced experts or peers.
• The “affiliative” leader focuses on building connections and emotional bonds between people within the group (i.e., “­People come first”) in an effort to create harmony that is conducive to strong levels of collaboration and uses a style based on the emotional intelligence competencies of empathy, building relationships, and communication. An affiliative leader emphasizes emotional needs over the specific tasks needed to complete particular work activities. This style improves morale and reduces conflicts and generally has a positive impact on the group culture and work environment, particularly during times when the group is experiencing high levels of stress and/or is trying to heal internal rifts, and is well suited to supporting the principles of a visionary leader; however, an affiliative leader may have difficulty in taking necessary action that might lead to emotional distress such as delivering negative feedback to members of the group.
• The “democratic” leader forges consensus through participation (i.e., asking people “What do you think?”) and uses a style based on the emotional intelligence competencies of collaboration, team leadership, and communication. A ­democratic leader works hard to elicit inputs from all parts of the group through participation and simply listening to reports from group members. A democratic leader seeks both good and bad news and makes an effort to demonstrate that the information provided is valued and used in making decisions about the direction of the group and the way that the work flow is structured. This type of leadership style is sometimes referred to as “participative” and practitioners are noted for their ability to be a good listener and a team player and their skills in influencing others to take the necessary actions and commit themselves to the goals set by the leader. This style has a positive impact on the group culture and work environment and works best when the leader needs to obtain “buy-in” to a chosen strategic direction or a consensus from subordinates or to solicit input or collect missing information from key employees to make a decision. A democratic leader must not, however, get bogged down in listening and must demonstrate that he or she can also act decisively based on the information collected.
• The “pacesetting” leader leads by setting challenging and exciting goals for members of the group and pushing them to succeed by establishing expectations of high-level performance (i.e., “Do as I do, now”) and uses a style based on the emotional intelligence competencies of conscientiousness, drive to achieve, and initiative. A pacesetting leader is generally willing to lead by example and step in to complete an activity when others are having difficulties; however, this type of leader often fails to provide group members with the basic training and guidance necessary for them to be successful on their own. A group with a pacesetting leader often experiences good short-term results but as time goes by frustration builds and the impact on the group culture and work environment can become quite negative. A pacesetting leader may be innovative and highly creative in his or her own area of expertise—with high standards for his or her own performance—yet have little or no understanding of how to teach or motivate others. This style works best where the members of the group are already highly motivated and have acquired the necessary level of competence from other sources and experiences.
• The “coaching” leader focuses on developing people for the future (i.e., “Try this”) and uses a style based on the emotional intelligence competencies of developing others, empathy, and self-awareness. A coaching leader spends a good deal of time and effort identifying the wants and aspirations of members of the group and then connecting those desires to the goals that have been established for the group. A coaching leader will meet with people in the group to determine their strengths and weaknesses and then use this information to find the best organizational roles for them. A coaching leader is willing to delegate assignments and authority, a practice which motivates people to succeed in order to justify the faith that the leader has placed in them. This style, which is also sometimes referred to as “mentoring,” is best suited to situations where members of the group need to improve performance or build long-term strengths and capabilities and can have a positive impact on the group culture and work environment; however, a coaching leader must take care not to engage in micromanaging.

Goleman’s research also uncovered evidence that he believed supported the conclusion that each style had a direct and unique impact on what he referred to as the “organizational climate” of the company, division, or team that was being led and, in turn, on the results that the leader was able to achieve in terms of financial performance. Goleman explained that the “organizational climate” consisted of six key factors that influenced the working environment of the company, division, or team, including such things as flexibility (i.e., the freedom afforded to employees to innovate without worrying about restrictions and authorizations (“red tape”)); the sense of responsibility that employees feel toward the organization; the level of standards set for activities within the organization; the sense of accuracy about performance feedback and aptness of rewards for performance; the level of clarity that organizational members have regarding the overall mission and values of the organization; and the level of commitment among members of the organization toward pursuing and achieving a common purpose.⁴⁷ Goleman’s analysis of the data showed a correlation between each leadership style and each aspect of organizational climate and he found that the overall impact of the “authoritative” style on the organizational climate was “most strongly positive,” the highest endorsement among the six styles. The “affiliative,” “democratic,” and “coaching” styles each had a “positive impact” on climate, whereas the “coercive” and “pacesetting” styles both had a “negative impact” on climate. Goleman concluded that no style should be relied on exclusively and that each style, even those that had a “negative impact” on climate, had at least short-term uses that made them appropriate for specific issues and challenges that the leader had to address at a given moment.⁴⁸

Researchers go to great lengths to emphasize that the six categories described earlier are styles of leadership rather than leadership types and that leaders can make a conscious choice to adopt, or avoid, a particular leadership style and can also deploy a mix of two or more styles at any given point in time in order to fit the particular circumstances and environmental challenges currently confronting the organization. Goleman argued that leaders could be trained, through hard work, to expand their “style repertories,” just as they could improve their abilities with respect to the competencies associated with emotional intelligence. Although it is not clear that persons with particular personality traits can vary their leadership styles as easily as one might like, it does make sense for leaders to realize that there is more than just one way to motivate their followers and drive the organization firm in a direction that makes sense for everyone involved. The key question, of course, is identifying which of the leadership styles are best suited for a particular leader and the situation that he or she is dealing with at any given time.

In addition, leaders could build a team that includes members adept at employing styles that the leader lacks. For example, a leader who prefers, and is good at, building personal relationships with employees (i.e., the “affiliative” style) could delegate performance standards to a member of the leader’s management team whose strengths with respect to emotional intelligence competencies include self-confidence, empathy, and change catalyst and thus made him or her more suited to applying the “authoritative” style necessary for crystallizing the vision necessary for the organization to achieve the desired results. Goleman mentioned that this particular situation also called for a manager who could serve as a “pacesetter” to support the establishment and pursuit of high performance standards.49

Even if leaders can and do develop the ability to effectively deploy two or more of the leadership styles, he or she will not be effective unless the style is suitable and appropriate for the particular organizational context. For example, it is generally accepted that the “authoritative” and “coaching” styles are particularly well suited to knowledge workers and that the “affiliative” and “democratic” styles are also appropriate for such workers although probably best when deployed with the first two styles. On the other hand, “pacesetting” and “coercive” styles are only recommended and effective in very specific situations and then only for a short period of time. If a leader continues to use a “pacesetting” or “coercive” style for an extended period he or she can expect a decided downturn in organizational performance and morale and eventually drive the organization’s best managers and workers—including those who are highly skilled in other leadership styles in their own right—to seek other places to work.

Farkas and Wetlaufer’s “Approaches to Leadership”

Farkas and Wetlaufer believed that the behavior of leaders could be analyzed and categorized by their “approach to leadership,” which they described as the leader’s “guiding, overarching philosophy about how he or she can best add value.”⁵⁰ Specifically, “approach” meant

which areas of corporate policy—for example, strategic planning, R&D, or recruiting—receive the most attention, what kind of people and behaviors the CEO values in the organization, which decisions the CEO makes personally or delegates, and how he or she spends each day.

Although Farkas and Wetlaufer referred often to “leadership” in their work, in fact they were toiling their results were a better fit for identification and explanation of managerial roles and, in fact, they commented that “a leadership approach is a coherent, explicit style of management.” Farkas and Wetlaufer did not discount the importance and relevance of the personality traits of the leader; however, they argued that the most effective leaders, based on the CEOs that they studied, did not simply adopt the leadership approach that was the best fit for their personalities but instead opted for the approach that was best for the organization in light of the competitive challenges confronting the organization, the potential competitive advantages available to the organization, and the organization’s resources (i.e., capital, technology, and people). Based on interviews with 160 CEOs in different countries and industries, Farkas and Wetlaufer identified the following five “leadership approaches”⁵¹:

1. The “strategy” approach is used by the CEO who is primarily focused on creating, testing, and designing the implementation of a long-term strategy for the organization and this type of leader spends a good deal of time on identifying and understanding the organization’s current business situation and developing a vision for the desired future situation and the path to get there.
2. The “human-assets” approach is used by the CEO who is most concerned about imparting to his or her organization “certain values, behaviors, and attitudes by closely managing the growth and development of individuals.” In this instance, the CEO spends a lot of time traveling to meet personally with individuals within the organization and invests a good deal of his or her effort in “personnel-­related activities such as recruiting, performance reviews, and career mapping.”
3. The “expertise” approach features a CEO obsession with identifying and nurturing those sources of expertise within the organization that can serve as the basis for a competitive advantage. For example, the CEO will devote most of his or her time to studying and understanding new technologies, analyzing competitor’s products, and meeting with customers and engineers to get their views of where the industry is moving. The CEO will seek to motivate and encourage others to join him or her in this quest by creating and championing programs that train people to pursue innovation and reward them for ideas and systems that contribute to creation of a competitive advantage.
4. The “box” approach features the creation and use of an explicit set of financial, operational, and cultural controls to “ensure uniform, predictable behaviors and experiences for customers and employees.” The CEO who uses this approach is predisposed to favoring detailed, prescriptive policies and procedures and establishing reward systems that are tied to compliance with those policies and procedures. A good deal of the CEOs time is spent on understanding and resolving “exceptions” to the controls and budgets that have been established, such as understanding why projected financial targets have not been attained. Farkas and Wetlaufer noted that the CEOs using this approach tended to prefer using a seniority-based system for promotion.
5. The “change” approach is used by a CEO who believes that his or her role is to create an environment of continuous change, or “reinvention,” in order for the organization to survive in an environment that is also changing dramatically all the time. Many of the tools used by other types of CEOs—strategic plans, control systems, policies, and procedures—are rarely used by a “change” CEO and he or she spends most of his time in meetings with employees from all over the organization pitching a “gestalt” of change. Farkas and Wetlaufer comment that this approach often leads to chaos within the organization and strategic miscues.

GLOBE Project

The Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness project, commonly referred to as “GLOBE,” was conceived and launched in the early 1990s by Robert J. House and is considered to be the most extensive and ambitious attempt to gather and analyze information relevant to the study of the cross-cultural aspects of leadership.52 The data used for the GLOBE project were first collected from 1994 to 1997 by 170 voluntary collaborators around the world (“country co-investigators”) who administered written surveys to about 17,000 managers from nearly 1,000 local (i.e., non-multinational) organizations in 62 different countries. The original focus of the GLOBE project was studying the perceptions of leadership among the participants in the survey and the GLOBE researchers defined leadership as “... the ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members.”53

The GLOBE leadership questionnaires included over 100 behavioral and attribute descriptors that the survey designers hypothesized as either contributing to a person’s ability to be an outstanding leader or inhibited a person’s ability to be an outstanding leader. Each of the participants were asked to rate each of the descriptors on a scale of one to seven with a rating of one meaning that the behavior or attribute greatly inhibited a person from being an outstanding leader and a rating of seven meaning that the behavior or attribute greatly contributed to a person being an outstanding leader.54 Following analysis and verification of the responses to the leadership questionnaires, the GLOBE researchers concluded that there was substantial statistical support for the following “culturally endorsed” implicit theories of leadership (i.e., leadership styles)55:

• Charismatic/Value-Based Leadership: This style is based on the ability of a leader to inspire, to motivate, and to expect high performance from others based on strongly held core values. Key behavioral attributes associated with this type of leadership style include being visionary, inspirational, self-­sacrificing, trustworthy, decisive, and performance oriented.
• Team-Oriented Leadership: This style reflects an emphasis on team building and defining and establishing a common purpose among team members. Key behavioral attributes associated with this type of leadership style include being collaborative, integrative, diplomatic, nonmalevolent, and administratively competent.
• Participative Leadership: This style reflects the willingness and ability of the leader to involve others in making and implementing decisions. Key behavioral attributes associated with this type of leadership style include being participative and nonautocratic.
• Humane-Oriented Leadership: This style reflects an emphasis on the leader’s ability to be supportive, considerate, compassionate, and generous to his or her followers. Key behavioral attributes associated with this type of leadership style include modesty and sensitivity to people.
• Autonomous Leadership: This style refers to leaders who act independently and individualistically. Key behavioral attributes associated with this type of leadership style include being autonomous and unique.
• Self-Protective Leadership: This style reflects an emphasis on ensuring the safety and security of the leader and his or her group. Key behavioral attributes associated with this type of leadership style include being self-centered, status conscious, conflict inducing, face saving, and procedural.

The GLOBE researchers concluded that the information collected during the survey provided evidence that the six global leadership dimensions of culturally endorsed implicit theories of leadership were significantly correlated with isomorphic dimensions of societal and organizational culture and that selected cultural differences strongly influence important ways in which people think about leaders and norms concerning the status, influence, and privileges granted to leaders.56 For ­example, they found that all of the attributes associated with team-oriented leadership were universally endorsed; however, this type of approach was perceived as being especially important for effective leadership in societies where in-group collectivism, humane orientation, and uncertainty avoidance were all high such as the countries in the Southern Asian, Confucian Asian, and Latin American clusters, all of which strongly endorsed team-oriented leadership styles.57 In addition, whereas two of the attributes associated with charismatic/value-based leadership—the visionary and inspirational attributes—were universally endorsed, support for a third attribute—self-sacrifice—was mixed across cultures. The level of support for charismatic/value-based leadership was likely to be higher in societies where cultural values included strong in-group collectivism and humane orientation, such as the countries in the Anglo, Germanic, and Nordic culture clusters. Finally, whereas there was general support for humane and participative leadership, the response varied significantly across cultures and the general rule was that the intensity of endorsement of participative leadership within a country was negatively correlated with the strength of uncertainty avoidance, assertiveness, and power distance in that country. In addition, support for participative leadership was positively correlated to performance orientation and gender egalitarianism. Not surprisingly, participative leadership was most warmly embraced in the Germanic, Anglo, and Nordic cultural clusters.

Servant Leadership

Servant leadership has attracted a great deal of attention as an alternative to the traditional command and control models that have dominated leadership theories and prescriptions. The most widely quoted and accepted definition of servant leadership comes from Greenleaf, who provided the following explanation of “Who is the servant-leader?”:

The servant-leader is servant first… . It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first… . The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is this: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will they benefit, or, at least, not be further deprived?⁵⁸

Many of the other definitions and descriptions of servant leadership strike a similar tone. For example, Archbishop Desmond Tutu explained: “The leader is the servant. So leadership is not having your own way. It’s not for self-aggrandizement. But oddly, it is for service. It is for the sake of the led. It is a proper altruism.”⁵⁹

It has been observed that servant leadership is somewhat similar to transformational leadership; however, servant leadership is distinguishable because of its strong focus on the followers. Since the early 1990s there has been a continuing increase in the attention given to “servant leadership,” including a dramatic rise in research conducted on service leadership and efforts to implement service leadership into organizational practice.⁶⁰ Spears, one of the most influential scholars in the area of ­servant leadership, offered the following list of the 10 characteristics of servant leadership⁶¹:

1. Listening: Listening, coupled with regular periods of reflection, is essential to the growth of the servant-leader.
2. Empathy: The servant-leader strives to understand and empathize with others.
3. Healing: Learning to heal is a powerful force for transformation and integration.
4. Awareness: General awareness, and especially self-awareness, strengthens the servant-leader.
5. Persuasion: The servant-leader seeks to persuade others rather than to coerce compliance.
6. Conceptualization: The ability to look at a problem (or an organization) from a conceptualizing perspective means that one must think beyond day-to-day realities.
7. Foresight: Foresight is a characteristic that enables the servant-leader to understand the lessons from the past, the realities of the present, and the likely consequences of a decision for the future.
8. Stewardship: Servant-leadership, like stewardship, assumes first and foremost a commitment to serving the needs of others.
9. Commitment to the growth of people: Servant-leaders believe that people have an intrinsic value beyond their tangible contributions as workers.
10. Building community: Servant-leadership suggests that true community can be created among those who work in businesses and other institutions.

Russell and Stone reviewed the leadership on servant literature to create a list of the “functional attributes” of servant leaders, which they explained were the “operative qualities, characteristics, and distinctive features belonging to leaders and observed through specific leader behaviors in the workplace.”⁶² This list included vision, honesty, integrity, trust, ­service, modeling, pioneering, appreciation of others, empowerment, teaching, and delegation. In addition, Russell and Stone offered the following list of “accompanying attributes,” which they explained to be secondary characteristics which complement the functional list: communication, credibility, competence, stewardship, visibility, influence, ­persuasion, listening, and encouragement. Patterson’s attempt to develop a model of servant leadership included presentation of the following “component constructs underlying the practice of servant leadership”: “Agapao Love,” which means to love in a social or moral sense; humility, the ability to keep one’s accomplishments and successes in perspective; altruism, which means helping others selflessly just for the sake of helping; vision, which was cited as being necessary for good leadership; trust, which speaks to leader morality and competence; service, which was defined as a mission of responsibility to others; and, finally, empowerment by entrusting power to others.⁶³

Coach Dean Smith as a Servant Leader

An interesting and entertainment perspective on the practice of servant leadership comes from an article published online on the Championship Coaches Network soon after the death of Dean Smith, the legendary long-time basketball coach at the University of North ­Carolina who collaborated with Dr. Jerry Bell to write and publish a book, “The Carolina Way,” that included many of Smith’s ideas for effective coaching and leadership. The article used quotes from the book to illustrate “10 Leadership Lessons from Coach Dean Smith” and the author observed that “Coach Smith was practicing servant leadership long before it has become the popular management principle it is today.”In fact, the following quotes from the book are quite clear on how Smith approached his relationship with his players: “The coach’s job is to be part servant in helping each player reach his goals within the team concept” (p. 147) and

When I became head coach at North Carolina, I tried to put myself in the shoes of the players. How did they want to be treated? How could I help them reach their potential? How could I make the game fun and enjoyable and still work them hard? (p. 200)

Other key characteristics of servant leadership highlighted in the ­article using quotes from the book included the following:

• Genuine caring for followers: “The most important thing in good leadership is truly caring. The best leaders in any ­profession care about the people they lead, and the people who are being led know when the caring is genuine and when it’s faked or not there at all” (p. 4). Smith was famous for building and maintaining long-term relationships with all of his players that extended far past the day that a player’s eligibility ended.
• Willingness and ability to earn commitment of ­followers: “A leader’s job is to develop committed ­followers. Bad leaders destroy their followers’ sense of ­commitment” (p. 33). Smith argued that leaders can no longer demand or expect automatic respect from their ­followers and must be prepared to earn commitment, respect, and trust from ­followers, a process that requires leaders to act with integrity and credibility.
• Confidence building: “I’d get on the players if I needed to, but it was also important to praise them for the good things they had done, especially on the road, where they faced enough adversity without my piling on. I wasn’t as critical during games as I was at practice. Players needed confidence during games more than criticism” (p. 240). Whereas constructive criticism is necessary for skill building and correcting errors that are undermining performance, leaders should be sensitive to how and when feedback that is likely to be ­perceived as negative is ­delivered.
• Team building: In the book Bell explained Smith’s approach to team building as follows: “Part of Dean Smith’s greatness as a leader lies in his ability to get his players to get beyond understanding their roles to embracing them. But their commitment starts with clarity. If employees don’t understand their roles, their specific areas of responsibility, it’s almost impossible for the company to work well as a team. ­Confusion will reign. Divided responsibility ends up being nobody’s responsibility” (p. 137). The article emphasized the need for leaders to invest time and effort with every employee, not just the “stars,” to set and define their roles within the organization, explain how they are contributing to the organization, and establish a plan for them to follow in order to expand and change their roles as time goes by.

The other principles of leadership highlighted in the article, although not as directly related to servant leadership as those previously outlined, were nonetheless complimentary and flowed naturally from Smith’s fundamental approach to relating to his players. For example, “fair and consistent” punishment was mentioned as an element of team building and inconsistent punishment will almost certainly undermine a leader’s attempt to establish and maintain commitment from followers. In addition, by caring for players from the moment they entered the program and continuously working with them to defining their roles and build confidence Smith was able to develop a group of senior leaders who could mentor younger players and tell them what was expected of them and what it would take to achieve their goals. Smith also made the process of confidence building easier and clearer by creating a daily “emphasis” and “thought,” based on Smith’s core principles and philosophies, which became the focal points of teaching and reinforcement during practices. Finally, Smith built credibility among his players by demonstrating through his words and actions that although team performance, and winning, was very important and certainly a source of pressure for everyone involved, his priorities with respect to his players were not grounded in results on the court but on helping them to get a good education and become good citizens.

Source: “10 Leadership Lessons from Coach Dean Smith.” Championship Coaches Network (blog), http://championshipcoachesnetwork.com/­
public/315.cfm (accessed December 14, 2018). See also Smith, D., and G. Bell. 2004. The Carolina Way: Leadership Lessons from a Life in Coaching. New York, NY: The Penguin Press.

Silicon Valley Leadership Styles

Academics exploring leadership of emerging companies in the United States have suggested a variety of frameworks for classifying and explaining “leadership styles” Inc. focused on four strategies—directive, participative, laissez-faire, and adaptive—and suggested that the dynamic environment in which emerging companies operated required that leaders be able to apply each of the styles at the appropriate moment.⁶⁴ A PsychTests study of more than 7,000 top-performing leaders, including leaders of firms other than emerging companies, confirmed the advice from Inc. by finding that the most effective leadership style in terms of firm performance could best be described as “eclectic” and incorporated elements of four other distinct leadership styles identified in that same study: the “sports coach,” the driver-director, the mentor, and the “country clubber.”⁶⁵

An article in Fast Company described the menu of leadership styles developed by Goleman in his 2000 study of mid-level managers: pacesetting, authoritative, affiliative, coaching, coercive, and democratic.⁶⁶ Obviously the apparent ability to identify and describe a particular leadership style does not mean that it is effective or used as often as it should be. For example, Goleman found that his pacesetting and coercive styles typically produced a negative impact on leadership effectiveness and that his coaching style, which he argued could be quite effective, was often kept on the shelf by leaders who feared it would take too long to apply.⁶⁷ Complicating the area even further is that argument of researchers such as Kets de Vries that companies can no longer look to a single omnipresent ruler but must instead recognize that success is tied to creating and maintaining a team of self-aware executives that learn how to work together to apply “distributive, collective, and complementary leadership.”⁶⁸ Kets de Vries suggested that the “leadership team” have the capability to carry out eight different archetypical roles including strategist, change-catalyst, transactor, building, innovator, processor, coach, and communicator.⁶⁹

The extraordinary financial and inventive success of Apple, and the death of its iconic leader Steve Jobs, has served as a platform for a robust debate about whether or not Jobs should be lauded for his leadership practices and style. Williams, writing for Psychology Today, noted that many management consultants, academics, and business leaders had applauded Job for his work as a “leader” and pointed to research conducted among the heads of Silicon Valley companies that showed meaningful support for Jobs’ often abusive behavior as necessary for building a financially successful company (i.e., the “ends justifies the means”).⁷⁰ Williams, who described Jobs’ leadership style as autocratic, egotistical, and lacking in transparency and generally based on an old-style “carrot and stick” approach, suggested that “claiming Steve Jobs was a great leader smacks more of hero worship than an objective view of what a great organizational leader should be and do” and warned that “extolling his virtues to a new generation of up-and-coming leaders would be a serious mistake.”⁷¹ He also pointed to research arguing that, Apple notwithstanding, an abusive leadership style is not the road to optimal sustainable ­bottom-line performance.

Other well-known Silicon Valley-based companies have also generated commentary regarding the leadership styles that have been used to build their organizations. Thompson has written that Google has attempted to avoid excessive oversight of employees and provide them with substantial leeway, and resources, to develop new ideas that they might think of on their own.⁷² Critics have scoffed at the efficacy of this approach from a financial perspective, arguing that most of the new products that have been developed have not been successful; however, it appears that the system has produced important intangible benefits in the form of a workforce that feels “personally invested in the company’s sense of mission and future success.”⁷³ According to Manimala and Wasdani the five key precepts of the leadership practices of Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive officer, were

get to know your employees, create new ways to reward and ­promote your high-performing employees, let your employees own the problems you want them to solve, allow employees to function outside the company hierarchy, and have your ­employees’ performance reviewed by someone they respect for their objectivity and impartiality.⁷⁴

Manimala and Wasdani also reported that an internal Google research team headed by the Laszlo Bock, Google’s senior executive for human resources, had identified the following eight qualities among the best and most-effective leader-managers within the company:

be a good coach, empower your team and don’t micromanage, express interest in your team members’ success and well-being, be productive and results-oriented, be a good communicator and ­listen to your team, help your employees with career development, have a clear vision and strategy for the team … [and] … have technical skills so you can advise the team.⁷⁵

Sustainable Leadership

Although all leaders should have a vision and desire to inspire their followers to take collective action to make it happen, sustainability leaders can be distinguished as people who inspire and support action to identify and develop innovative sustainable solutions, business models, and practices that will lead to a better world. Sustainable leadership focuses on bringing about dramatic changes and requires taking a long-term perspective in making decisions; fostering systemic innovation aimed at increasing customer value; developing a skilled, loyal, and highly engaged workforce; offering quality products, services, and solutions; and engaging in ethical behavior and decision-making, and establishing ethical values and standards throughout the organization. In order to be effective, sustainability leaders must develop and practice several important habits including a systemic, interdisciplinary understanding; emotional intelligence and a caring attitude; values orientation that shapes culture; a strong vision for making a difference; an inclusive style that engenders trust; a willingness to innovate and be radical; and a long-term perspective on impacts. In addition, they must implement a number of initiatives to establish and maintain the foundation for sustainability throughout their organizations including training and staff development programs, proactively striving for amicable labor relations, development of strategies for staff retention, shifting compensation programs toward metrics that valued contributions to customer loyalty and to innovation, promoting environmental and social responsibility, initiating communications with multiple stakeholders and transparently taking into account and balancing their interests, and developing and embedding a share vision for the goals of the business.

There is a considerable body of evidence that shows that sustainable leadership practices are more likely to enhance business performance over the long term than the traditional approach that puts the interests of shareholders first and focuses primarily on short-term financial ­metrics. Done well, sustainable leadership leads to several desirable performance outcomes including integrity of brand and reputation, enhanced ­customer satisfaction, solid operational finances that ensure viability and organizational sustainability and provide capital for investment in innovation, and long-term value for multiple stakeholders.

Visser and Courtice suggested that “a sustainability leader is someone who inspires and supports action toward a better world.”⁷⁶ They also noted that the Sustainability Leadership Institute (www.sustainabilityleadershipinstitute.org) had identified sustainability leaders as “individuals who are compelled to make a difference by deepening their awareness of themselves in relation to the world around them. In doing so, they adopt new ways of seeing, thinking and interacting that result in innovative, sustainable solutions.” Visser and Courtice argued that “leadership for sustainability” should not be treated as a separate school of leadership but rather should be viewed in a manner akin to the contingency/interaction school: a particular blend of leadership characteristics applied within a specific context (i.e., the sustainability challenges facing the world and the aspirations of multiple stakeholders for a more sustainable future). They suggested that whereas it may currently be necessary to differentiate sustainability leadership from leadership in general, the distinction may erode as time goes by and sustainability becomes more embedded in organizations in much the same way as the focus on quality did in the 1980s and 1990s.

Avery and Bergsteiner argued that there is a considerable body of evidence that shows that sustainable leadership practices are more likely to enhance business performance over the long term than the traditional approach that puts the interests of shareholders first and focuses primarily on short-term financial metrics.⁷⁷ For example, companies that take a long-term perspective, and attract patient investors that share sustainability values, are able to reap benefits from investing in their people, innovative technologies, and strong and enduring relationships with customers and suppliers. This allows those companies to build trust, accumulate and retain knowledge by working hard to train employees and retain them through development programs and finding ways to keep them during difficult economic times, and build an organizational culture that is readily adaptable to change and new opportunities. Moreover, savings realized from recycling and improving the eco-efficiency of operational activities not only strengthens financial performance but can also be re-invested in other environmental and social initiatives.⁷⁸ Companies also find that many of the practices associated with sustainable leadership, such as focusing on staff retention and development, ultimately turn out to be important sources of competitive advantage.⁷⁹

In spite of the advantages to practicing sustainable leadership, old practices are often hard to discard and the changes associated with shifting toward sustainability are often risky and disruptive and carry both financial and intangible costs. Avery and Bergsteiner also pointed out that sustainable leadership systems are vulnerable to a variety of external events such as mergers and acquisitions, which bring in new employees, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders who may not share the core values of sustainability that had been developed prior to the transaction; taking on additional major shareholders who may have different ideas about what constitutes acceptable performance for the business; or the hiring of new executives who are not familiar with the organizational cultures and may bring different values from their prior positions.⁸⁰ Downturns in financial and consumer markets will also put a strain on sustainable leadership practices as companies must address economic survival and make hard decisions about laying off employees and cutting back investments in training and development and innovation aimed at protecting the environment and social responsibility. Although sustainable leaders realize that they live and operate in a world in which short-term results still matter, they also know that violating ethical principles to appease investors or ignoring the interests of nonfinancial stakeholders can significantly and permanently damage their organizational culture and undermine their long-term goals and success.⁸¹

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¹ Fertman, C.I., and J.A. van Liden. 1999. “Character Education: An Essential Ingredient for Youth Leadership Development.” NASSP Bulletin 83, no. 609, pp. 9–15. See also Ashkenas, R., and B. Manville. 2018. Harvard Business Review Leader’s Handbook. Cambridge MA: Harvard Business Press.

² Scholl, R. 2000. What is Leadership Style?

³ Kotter distinguished “leadership” from “management” and argued that it was the job of “leaders” to cope with change and set direction while managers tended to dealing with complexity and planning. See Kotter, J.P. March-April, 1995. “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail.” Harvard Business Review OnPoint, pp. 1–10; and Kotter, J. 1996. Leading Change. Cambridge, MA: ­Harvard Business School Press.

⁴ Reardon, K.K., K.J. Reardon, and A.J. Rowe. 1998. “Leadership Styles for the Five Stages of Radical Change.” Acquisition Review Quarterly 6, pp. 129–46.

⁵ Muczyk, J., and T. Adler. 2002. “An Attempt at a Consentience Regarding Formal Leadership.” Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies 9, no. 2, pp. 2–17. Muczyk and Adler have also proposed the existence of a “leadership cycle” that anticipates a change in leadership style as organizations go through various stages of development.

⁶ Id. (citing Muczyk, J., and B. Reimann. 1987. “The Case for Directive Leadership.” The Academy of Management Executive 1, no. 3, pp. 301–11); Quinn, R., and K. Cameron. 1983. “Organizational Life Cycles and Some Shifting Criteria of Effectiveness: Some Preliminary Evidence.” Management Science 29, no. 1, pp. 33–51; Greiner, L.E. July/August 1972. “Evolution and Revolution as ­Organizations Grow.” Harvard Business Review, pp. 37–46; and Hersey, P., and K. Blanchard. 1988. Management of Organizational Behavior, 5th ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall.

⁷ Lewin, K., R. Llippit, and R. White. 1939. “Patterns of Aggressive Behavior in Experimentally Created Social Climates.” Journal of Social Psychology 10, no. 2, pp. 271–301. The summary of the results of the study by Lewin et al. in this section is derived from K. Cherry, “Lewin’s Leadership Styles.” http://psychology.about.com/od/leadership/a/leadstyles.htm (accessed December 14, 2018).

⁸ Ardichvili, A., and K. Kuchinke. 2002. “Leadership Styles and Cultural Values Among Managers and Subordinates: A Comparative Study of Four Countries of the Former Soviet Union, Germany and the US.” Human Resource Development International 5, no. 1, pp. 99–117, 102. (citing Bass, B.M., and R.M. Stogdill’s. 1990. Handbook of Leadership: Theory, Research & Managerial Applications. New York, NY: The Free Press.) Yammarino, F.J., and B. Bass. 1990. “Long-term Forecasting of Transformational Leadership and its Effects Among Naval Officers: Some Preliminary Findings.” In Measures of Leadership, 151–69, eds. K. Clark and M. Clark. Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership.

⁹ Bass, B.M. 1990. “From Transactional to Transformational Leadership: Learning to Share the Vision.” Organizational Dynamics 18, no. 3, pp. 19–31.

¹⁰ Likert prepared and administered questionnaires to managers and employees in over 200 organizations that examined a number of key organizational characteristics including leadership processes, motivational forces, communication processes, interaction-influence processes, decision-making processes, goal-setting or ordering procedures, and control processes. See Likert, R. 1967. The Human Organization: Its Management and Value, New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

¹¹ See Blake, R., and J. Mouton. 1964. The Managerial Grid: The Key to Leadership Excellence. Houston: Gulf Publishing Co., and Blake, R., and J. Mouton. 1985. The Managerial Grid III: The Key to Leadership Excellence. Houston: Gulf Publishing Co.

¹² Two other styles—opportunistic and paternalistic—were added to this Grid Theory by other researchers many years after Blake and Mouton first published their work. Opportunistic leaders do not really fit into any of the initial five style categories and tend to vary their behavior to suit the current situation and achieve what is in their own personal interest. Opportunistic leaders are seen as exploitive and manipulative. Paternalistic leaders rely on praise and support to motivate employees but are not really interested in receiving and accepting opinions from employees about changes in the way that the leader should be managing the workplace. See McKee, R., and B. Carlson. 1999. The Power to Change. Austin, TX: Grid International Inc.

¹³ References, and quotes attributed, to Burns in this section are adapted from Burns, J.M. 1978. Leadership New York, NY: Harper and Row.

¹⁴ Waldman, D.A., B.M. Bass, and F. Yammarino. 1990. “Adding to Contingent-Reward Behavior: The Augmenting Effect of Charismatic Leadership.” Group & Organizational Studies 15, no. 4, pp. 381–94.

¹⁵ References, and quotes attributed, to Kuhnert and Lewis in this section are adapted from Kuhnert, K.W., and P. Lewis. 1987. “Transactional and Transformational Leadership: A Constructive/Developmental Analysis.” Academy of ­Management Review 24, no. 4, pp. 648–57.

¹⁶ Bass, B.M. 1985. Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations. New York, NY: Free Press.

¹⁷ See Bass, B.M. 1996. A New Paradigm of Leadership: An Inquiry into Transformational Leadership. Alexandria, VA: Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences. (reviewing a series of studies that support the distinction between transformational and transactional leadership).

¹⁸ Raza, T. November 2011. Exploring Transformational and Transactional Leadership Styles (citing and quoting Tucker, B.A., and H. College. 2004. “The ­Influence of the Transformational Leader.” Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies 10, no. 4, pp. 103–111.)

¹⁹ Schuster, J. 1994. “Transforming Your Leadership Style.” Association Management 46, no. 1, p. 103.

²⁰ Bass, B.M. Winter 1990. “From Transactional to Transformational Leadership Learning to Share the Vision.” Organizational Dynamics, pp. 19–31.

²¹ Ardichvili, A., and K. Kuchinke. 2002. “Leadership Styles and Cultural Values Among Managers and Subordinates: A Comparative Study of Four Countries of the Former Soviet Union, Germany and the US.” Human Resource Development International 5, no. 1, pp. 99–117, 101. (citing Bass, B.M. 1985. Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations. New York, NY: The Free Press. The behaviors associated with transactional leadership are measured with the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire.) See Avolio, B., B.M. Bass, and D. Jung. 1995. MLQ: Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire: Technical Report. Palo Alto, CA: Mind Garden.

²² Howell, J., and B. Avolio. 1993. “Transformational Leadership, Transactional Leadership, Locus of Control and Support for Innovation: Key Predictors of Consolidated-Business-Unit Performance.” Journal of Applied Psychology 78, no. 6, p. 891.

²³ Bass, B.M. Winter 1997. “From Transactional to Transformational Leadership Learning to Share the Vision.” Understanding the dynamics of power and influence in organizations, pp. 19–31; and Jayasingam, S., and M.A. Ansari, and M. Jantan. 2010. “Influencing Knowledge Workers: The Power of Top Management.” Industrial Management and Data Systems 110, no. 1, pp. 134–51.

²⁴ Judge, T., and R. Piccolo. 2004. “Transformational and Transactional Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Test of their Relative Validity.” Journal of Applied Psychology 89, no. 5, pp. 755–68; Stewart, G. 2006. “A Meta-Analytic Review of Relationships Between Team Design Features and Team Performance.” Journal of Management 32, no. 1, pp. 29–54.

²⁵ Barling, J., T. Weber, and E. Kelloway. 1996. “Effects of Transformational Leadership Training on Attitudinal Financial Outcomes: A Field Experiment.” Journal of Applied Psychology 81, no. 6, p. 872.

²⁶ Lowe, B., G. Kroeck, and N. Sivasubramanium. 1996. “Effectiveness Correlates of Transformational and Transactional Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Review of the MLQ Literature.” Leadership Quarterly 7, no. 3, pp. 385–425.

²⁷ Howell, J., and B. Avolio. 1993. “Transformational Leadership, Transactional Leadership, Locus of Control and Support for Innovation: Key Predictors of Consolidated-Business-Unit Performance.” Journal of Applied Psychology 78, no. 6, p. 891; Barling, J., T. Weber, and E. Kelloway. 1996. “Effects of Transformational Leadership Training on Attitudinal Financial Outcomes: A Field Experiment.” Journal of Applied Psychology 81, no. 6, p. 872; Judge, T., and R. Piccolo. 2004. “Transformational and Transactional Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Test of their Relative Validity.” Journal of Applied Psychology 89, no. 5, pp. 755–68; and Bass, B.M., D. Jung, B. Avolio, and Y. Berson. 2003. “Predicting Unit Performance by Assessing Transformational and Transactional Leadership.” Journal of Applied Psychology 88, no. 2, pp. 207–18.

²⁸ Wells, J., and W. Peachey. 2010. “Turnover Intentions: Do Leadership Behaviours and Satisfaction with Leader Matters?” Team Performance Management 17, nos. ½, pp. 23–40.

²⁹ Homrig, M. December 21, 2001. “Transformational Leadership.” http://leadership.au.af.mil/documents/homrig.htm (accessed December 14, 2018) (adapting from Bass, B.M., and P. Steidlmeier. 1998. Ethics, Character and Authentic Transformational Leadership. On authentic leadership, see George, B. et al. 2017. Authentic Leadership (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series). Cambridge MA: Harvard Business Press.)

³⁰ For guidance on acting as an inspirational leader, see Garton, E. April 25, 2017. “How to Be an Inspiring Leader.” Harvard Business Review.

³¹ Muczyk, J.P., and B.C. Reimann. 1987. “The Case for Directive Leadership.” The Academy of Management Executive 1, no. 3, pp. 301–11. The description of the model is based on the discussion appearing in Muczyk, J.P., and T. Adler. 2002. “An Attempt at a Consentience Regarding Formal Leadership.” Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies 9, no. 2, pp. 2–17. For further discussion of situational leadership, see Blanchard, K., P. Zigarmi, and D. Zigarmi. 2013. Leadership and the One Minute Manager Updated Ed: Increasing Effectiveness through Situational Leadership. New York, NY: William Morrow.

³² Muczyk, J.P., and D. Holt. May 2008. “Toward a Cultural Contingency Model of Leadership.” Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies 14, no. 4, pp. ­277–286, 277. (citing Nadler, N. 2002. International Dimensions of ­Organizational Behavior, 4th ed. Cincinnati, OH: Southwestern); and Koopman, P.L., D.N. Den Hartog, and E. Konrad. 1999. “National Culture and Leadership Profiles in Europe: Some results from the GLOBE Study.” European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology 8, no. 4, pp. 503–20.

³³ Ikeda, D. November 1991. “The Age of “Soft Power” and Inner-Motivated Philosophy.” New Century, pp. 9–15 (cited in Muczyk, J.P., and T. Adler. 2002. “An Attempt at a Consentience Regarding Formal Leadership.” Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies 9, no. 2, pp. 2–17). Muczyk and Adler also referred to several articles that they believed reflected the influence of “soft power” on recommendations about how leaders should act, including “Leading From the Grass Roots,” “Creating Organizations with Many Leaders,” and “The Leader Who Serves.”

³⁴ For further discussion of impact of societal culture on the choice of the most effective leadership style in the Muczyk/Adler model, see “Cross-Cultural Leadership Studies” prepared and distributed by the Sustainable Entrepreneurship ­Project (www.seproject.org).

³⁵ Muczyk, J.P., and T. Adler. 2002. “An Attempt at a Consentience Regarding Formal Leadership.” Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies 9, no. 2, pp. 2–17. A well-studied example of when autocratic or directive behavior from the organizational leader is required as a matter of “business strategy” is in situations where the organization is in need of a “turnaround” or “retrenchment.”

³⁶ Id. Other research has provided evidence to support the notion that autocratic and directive behavior is especially needed in “turnaround” or “retrenchment” situations in order to ensure that the organization is able to achieve vital goals and objectives in a time of crisis. See, e.g., Muczyk, J.P., and R. Steel. March-April 1998. “Leadership Style and the Turnaround Executive.” Business Horizons, pp. 39–46.

³⁷ Muczyk and Adler, referencing the previously cited research done by Muczyk and Steel, noted several instances where autocratic and directive leaders achieved impressive financial results in crisis situations yet were eventually dismissed by the board of directors, with the support and appreciation of employees, when it became clear that their tyrannical actions with respect to employees (e.g., public hazing, humiliation, and physical intimidation) failed to meet the requirement of treating subordinates with courtesy, dignity, and respect.

³⁸ Muczyk, J.P., and T. Adler. 2002. “An Attempt at a Consentience Regarding Formal Leadership.” Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies 9, no. 2, pp. 2–17.

³⁹ Muczyk and Adler noted that the “permissive autocrat” style may be suitable, and even necessary, in certain turnaround situations that call for a leader who can quickly develop his or her own broad vision for transforming the organization, because the prior strategies obviously did not work, and a group of key people who buy into the leader’s vision without question and have the skills and experience to expertly execute the strategies associated with the leader’s vision without an excessive amount of direct control. Id.

⁴⁰ Id.

⁴¹ Id. (citing Cash, J.I., F.W. McFarlan, J.L. McKenney, and L. Applegate. 1992. Corporate Information Systems Management. Homewood, IL: Irwin.)

⁴² Id. It is also possible for this type of evolution to occur in very large organizations that are confronted with a crisis that dictates the temporary use of the “directive autocratic” style during a turnaround phase followed by a turn to a less autocratic approach once the necessary drastic changes have been made and the restructured organization is running more smoothly. Muczyk and Adler cited the example of Jack Welch as CEO of General Electric, who initially acted in ways described as “ruthless” to reduce the number of employees, eliminate management positions, and shut down entire business units and then eventually announced, once the purging was completed and the organization had returned to financial success, that “there was no room at GE for autocrats.” See ­Muczyk, J.P., and R. Steel. March-April 1998. “Leadership Style and the Turnaround Executive.” ­Business Horizons, pp. 39–46.

⁴³ Muczyk and Adler did not dismiss the possibility that a directive autocrat might attempt to initiate change by recruiting capable and independent employees who could support a “permissive” approach to control while the leader continued to make the decisions without input; however, Muczyk and Adler commented that it might be difficult for such a leader to attract and retain those types of employees because they presumably would grow weary of not being allowed to participate in key decisions using the knowledge that they had gained through their responsibilities in executing the strategies set in the past.

⁴⁴ Goleman is well known for his argument that a high level of “emotional intelligence” is necessary for effective leadership, a subject that is discussed in detail in “Leadership Traits and Attributes” prepared and distributed by the Sustainable Entrepreneurship Project (www.seproject.org).

⁴⁵ Goleman, D. March-April 2000. “Leadership That Gets Results.” Harvard Business Review 78, no. 2, pp. 4–17.

⁴⁶ Id. at pp. 82–83 (“The Six Leadership Styles at a Glance”).Elaborations are drawn from Goleman, D., A. McKee, and R. Boyatzis. 2002. Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard ­Business Press; and Richard, L., and M. Sirkin. December 2008. “Six Styles: How Will You Handle Your Firm’s Reins?” Law Practice, pp. 32–34.

⁴⁷ Goleman, D. March-April 2000. “Leadership that Gets Results.” Harvard Business Review, pp. 78–90, 81.

⁴⁸ Id. (“Getting Molecular: The Impact of Leadership Styles on Drivers of Climate”). The table in the article allows readers to see the correlations between the leadership styles and each of the climatic factors. For example, predictably the “coercive” and “democratic” styles had very different impacts on the measured level of “flexibility” in the organizational climate. In addition, the results showed that there were varying levels of correlation for each style with respect to the various climatic factors: For the “authoritative” style, there was a strongly positive correlation with respect to “rewards” but a decidedly weaker correlation, albeit still positive, to “responsibility.”

⁴⁹ Id. at pp. 89–90.

⁵⁰ Farkas, C., and S. Wetlaufer. May-June 1996. “The Ways Chief Executives Lead.” Harvard Business Review, pp. 110–22.

⁵¹ Id.

⁵² For an interesting and detailed overview of the development of the GLOBE project and the organizational processes used to collect and analyze the information, see House, R., and N. Mansor. 1999. “Cultural Influences on Leadership and Organizations.” I Advances in Global Leadership, pp. 171–233.

⁵³ House, R., P. Hanges, M. Javidan, P. Dorfman, and V. Gupta, eds. 2004. ­Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies 15. The GLOBE researchers were careful to point out that the definition they used pertained to “organizational leadership” and not to leadership in general and noted that others had suggested broader definitions of leadership that might apply in other contexts (e.g., political leaders) such as a “group member whose influence on group attitudes, performance, or decision making greatly exceeds that of the average member of the group.” See Simonton, D. 1994. Greatness: Who Makes History and Why, 411.

⁵⁴ Dickson, M.W., D.N. Den Hartog, and J.K. Mitchelson. 2003. “Research on Leadership in a Cross-Cultural Context: Making Progress, and Raising New Questions.” Leadership Quarterly 14, no. 6, pp. 752–53.

⁵⁵ Northouse, P.G. 2006. Leadership: Theory and Practice, 314, 4th ed.

⁵⁶ House, R.J., and N. Mansor. 1999. Cultural Influences on Leadership and Organizations, 1 Vols. Advances in Global Leadership 171–-233. For further discussion of the analyses of the data undertaken by the GLOBE researchers to demonstrate support for the culturally endorsed nature of the GLOBE global leadership dimensions, referred to by the researchers as “leadership scales,” see also Guidelines for the Use of GLOBE Culture and Leadership Scales, August 1, 2006, available at http://bsos.umd.edu/psyc/hanges/index_files/GLOBE_Culture_and_Leadership_Scales_Guidelines.pdf

⁵⁷ Dorfman, P., P. Hanges, and F. Brodbeck. 2004. “Leadership Prototypes and Cultural Variation: The Identification of Culturally Endorsed Implicit Theories of Leadership.” In Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies, eds. R. House, P. Hanges, M. Javidan, P. Dorfman and V. Gupta. See also House, R.J., and N. Mansor. 1999. Cultural Influences on Leadership and Organizations, I Advances in Global Leadership, pp. 171–233.

⁵⁸ Greenleaf, R. 1977. Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness, 27 New York, NY: Paulist Press.

⁵⁹ Tutu, D. October 2, 2009. “Forging Equality in South Africa.” Academy of Achievement, http://achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/tut0int-1

⁶⁰ Extensive reviews of the literature and research surrounding servant leadership can be found in McIntosh, T.A., J.A. Irving, and B. Seminary. 2008. “Evaluating the Instrumento de Contribución al Liderazgo de Siervo (ICLS) for Reliability in Latin America.” Journal of Virtues and Leadership 1, no. 1, pp. 30–49; and Molnar, D. 2007. Serving the World: A Cross-Cultural study of National ­Culture Dimensions and Servant Leadership [Dissertation] Abstracts International 68, no. (5–A), p. 2052. UMI No. AAI3266277. Molnar’s dissertation provides an interesting international comparison of the relationship between culture and servant leadership. See also Blanchard, K., and R. Broadwell. 2018. Servant Leadership in Action: How You Can Achieve Great Relationships and Results. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

⁶¹ Spears, L. 2004. “The Understanding and Practice of Servant-Leadership.” In Practicing Servant Leadership: Succeeding through Trust, Bravery, and Forgiveness, eds. L. Spears and M. Lawrence, 9–24. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

⁶² Russell, R., and A. Stone. 2002. “A Review of Servant Leadership Attributes: Developing a Practical Model.” Leadership and Organization Development Journal 23, no. 3, pp. 145–57, 146.

⁶³ Patterson, K.A. 2003. Servant Leadership: A Theoretical Model [Doctoral ­Dissertation] Abstracts International, 64, no. 2, p. 570, UMI No. 3082719.

⁶⁴ Blickenstaff, G. 2012. 4 Leadership Styles to Master.

⁶⁵ Kay, A. June 29, 2013. At Work: One Size Doesn’t Fit All on Leadership.

⁶⁶ Benincasa, R. 2012. 6 Leadership Styles and When You Should Use Them. ­(citing Goleman, D. March-April 2000. “Leadership That Gets Results.” Harvard ­Business Review 78, no. 2, pp. 4–17.)

⁶⁷ Id.

⁶⁸ Yakowicz, W. 2013. Leadership: 8 Archetypes Explained. Inc. (citing De Vries, M.F.K. 2011. The Hedgehog Effect: The Secrets of Building High Performance Teams. John Wiley & Sons.)

⁶⁹ Kets de Vries, M.F.R. 2013. “The Eight Archetypes of Leadership.” Harvard Business Review.

⁷⁰ Williams, R. April 7, 2012. “Why Steve Jobs Was Not a Leader.” Psychology Today. (citing Sutton, R.I. 2007. The No-Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace Surviving One That Isn’t. UK: Hachette.)

⁷¹ Id.

⁷² Thompson, S. Google’s Business Leadership and Organizational Culture.

⁷³ Id.

⁷⁴ Manimala, M., and K. Wasdani. May/June 2013. “Distributed Leadership at Google: Lessons from the Billion-Dollar.” Brand, Ivey Business Journal.

⁷⁵ Id.

⁷⁶ Visser, W., and P. Courtice. 2011. Sustainability Leadership: Linking Theory and Practice, 2. Cambridge UK, University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.

⁷⁷ Id. at p. 11 (citing Ghoshal, S. 2005. “Bad Management Theories are Destroying Good Management Practices.” Academy of Management Learning & Education 4, no. 1, p. 75).

⁷⁸ Avery and Bergsteiner suggested that sustainably led organizations had been identified across different sectors, countries, institutional contexts, and markets and included unlisted companies such as WL Gore & Associates (Goretexw and other products) and SAS (software) in the United States; Giesecke & ­Devrient (bank notes and securities) and Kärcher (cleaning solutions) in Germany; and Endress & Hauser (flow technologies) and Migros (retail conglomerate) in ­Switzerland. Id. at p. 10.

⁷⁹ Id. at p. 12 (citing Ichniowski, C., K. Shaw, and G. Prennushi. 1999. “The Effects of Human Resource Management Practices on Productivity: A Study of Steel Finishing Lines.” American Economic Review 87, no. 3, p. 291); Pfau, B., and S. Cohen. 2003. “Aligning Human Capital Practices and Employee Behavior with Shareholder Value.” Consulting Psychology Journal 55, no. 3, p. 169; Cascio, W. 2002. Responsible Restructuring: Creative and Profitable Alternatives to Layoffs. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler; D’Souza, R., L. Strazdins, M. Clements, D. Broom, R. Parslow, and B. Rodgers. 2005. “The Health Effects of Jobs: ­Status, Working Conditions, or Both?” Australian & New Zealand Journal of Public Health 29, no. 3, p. 222; Pfau, B., and S. Cohen. 2003. “Aligning Human Capital Practices and Employee Behavior with Shareholder Value.” Consulting Psychology Journal 55, no. 3, p. 169.

⁸⁰ Avery, G., and H. Bergsteiner. 2011. “Sustainable Leadership Practices for Enhancing Business Resilience and Performance.” Strategy and Leadership 39, no. 3, pp. 5–10.

⁸¹ Avery and Bergsteiner conceded that it was likely to be more difficult for listed corporations or private equity groups to operate on sustainable principles because of the pressures on them to achieve short-term performance goals; however, they identified several listed companies that had successfully managed their relationships with financial markets while simultaneously operating in a sustainable manner: Munich Re (finance) in Germany; Colgate (consumer goods) in the United States; BT Group (telecommunications) in the United Kingdom; Siam Cement Group (construction) in Thailand; and Holcim (construction) in Switzerland. Id. at p. 10.