Do you know your own leadership style? You should. There is a strong relationship between your leadership style and the company’s results. Do you want to know my style of leadership? The last week, I have been taking several tests to find the answer.

How to define a leadership style?

For me, a leadership style is the sum of your personality traits, your behavior during quiet and stressful times, your relationship with your colleagues and their perception of you, your core values and your ethical morality.

I googled “Definition leadership style”. On Psykologibloggen, I found the following description: A person’s leadership style can be defined as the composition of how the leader itself sees the role as a leader, and how they conduct this role in practice (Fischer & Sortland, 2001).

We do not have just one leadership style, but rather a mixture of several styles. Situation dependent leadership requires awareness and control, based on who you work with, work environment, where you are in the process etc.

What kind of leadership styles exist?

I do not have a PhD in leadership, only practical experience and reading books and articles. This week, I have been doing some extra reading about leadership styles. My approach has been to get an overview, then choosing the representation that seems to be the most reasonable based on my practical experience.

My favorite became Daniel Goleman’s description. For three years, he researched what leadership behavior creating the most positive results. The study included more than 3000 leaders! Based on his research, he identified six leadership styles. Each of them are derived from elements of emotional intelligence. (Source: Harvard Business Review, March-April 2000 issue, Leadership That Gets Results).

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The test and my answers

I found a free test on Skills you need. It consisted of 30 questions that were easy to understand, but I had to consider closely some of the questions. It is easy to glorify yourself when taking tests like these. If you take the test – be a little self-critical. Answer how you actually deal with situations, not how you wish you dealt with them.

It is important for me to say that more comprehensive and deeper tests give a wider basis for an evaluation.

The test took approximately 10-12 minutes to finish. I got the results immediately. Below, I have listed Goleman’s categories and marked my results with colors.

As shown in the illustration, my results showed that I am strong (green) in the leadership styles pacesetter, visionary and coaching. I scored medium (yellow) on the leadership styles coersive and democratic, and I have a potential for improvement (red) in the leadership style affiliative. I think that these results are quite correct, and that they correspond with the feedback I received from my colleagues – I unveil the feedback from my employees!

Final lap – leadership style v2.0

I think my work with leadership styles has been rewarding. My consulting toolbox is filled with tools that help me with project management, benefits realization, process optimizing etc. However, during this process, I have learned that I need to further develop my Leadership toolbox.

Do you know anyone who is interested in leadership? Feel free to share this post on social media!

Stay tuned for Leadership style v2.0!

Aloha from Maui,

Cecilia 🙂

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My review of the some of the other tests I took:

www.teamtechnology.co.uk. This test consisted of 36 questions. You get two statements, and you are supposed to choose which one you agree with the most. I thought some of the questions were a bit hard to understand. I used the whole specter of answer options. The test took approximately 20 minutes to finish. The results came immediately. They were based on psychiatrist Carl Jung’s types of personality traits. I agreed with the results, which concluded that my main personality trait was ENFP, and the second was ENTP.

www.psychology.com. This test consisted of 18 questions with different answer options from question to question. The questions were easy to understand, and the test took approximately 10 minutes to finish. The results came immediately. They were based on psychologist Kurt Lewin’s three leadership styles. I agreed with the results. They concluded that my main leadership style is Participating leadership style.

www.mindtools.com. This test consisted of 18 questions that were easy to understand. The test took only 3-4 minutes to finish. The results were given immediately. The results were put into three different categories, along with details for how you scored within nine different areas. The test was a quite superficial, and I did not really agree with the results. Among others, one of the results was that I am not efficient. I think everyone who knows me would disagree with that one J.