If you’re a business leader, take a step back and think about some of the traits you display in the workplace. Do you enjoy teaching your employees about the business? Do you always consider how your business decisions could impact your employees? These traits and more are examples of a coaching leadership style or an emotional leadership style, respectively.
If you’re interested in finding out more about leadership styles, take a look at these four below. This isn’t an exhaustive list but a selection of leadership styles I believe work best in the workplace.
The Emotional Leader
Emotional leaders act like the glue for their organization — they foster strong bonds with their employees and hold everyone together in times of stress. As someone who wants to create a sense of belonging for their employees, these leaders build deep bonds with their employees, and they are kind and giving of their time and attention.
As someone who highly values others’ emotions, these leaders take their employees’ feelings and strengths into consideration, and appoint people to positions that leverage their strengths in order to achieve success.
The Coach
A leader with a coaching style of leadership wants to nurture and develop their people for the future, so you can often catch them teaching their employees the tips and tricks of the business. As they’re teaching, these leaders help their employees identify their strengths and weaknesses, and encourage them to pursue their personal and career aspirations.
Coaching leaders love to see their employees succeed, so they often delegate tough tasks they believe their employees can accomplish and learn from. Although it may be more time-consuming, these leaders like to foster long-term learning for their employees and help them understand that failing is part of the learning process but will make them more successful overall in the future.
The Democratic Leader
Much like the coaching leaders, democratic leaders believe in the positive potential of everyone around them and ensure everyone’s voice is heard. As a strong believer in democracy, this type of leader likes to receive input from many parties and builds their rapport through team consensus. You will frequently find democratic leaders in meetings with their team members asking for their opinions about the business and advice about what can be changed or improved.
This leadership style is most effective when business decisions will impact a team or when leaders needs fresh ideas from employees.
The Innovator
For innovators, earning millions of dollars in profits isn’t as important as creating something original and meaningful that has a lasting impact. Although they do value economic success, innovators create their businesses and products with human values in mind — and that’s what drives their passion to succeed. As quoted by Bill Taylor in an article for the Harvard Business Review, these leaders don’t just want to run companies; they aim to turn their companies into a cause.
