There is not one single leadership approach.

In fact, there are six distinct leadership styles: the “great man” theory, trait approach, behaviour approach, situational approach, reciprocal approach, and emotional approach. Majella’s talk was focused on the emotional approach, where leaders focus on emotional intelligence to drive change. Let’s now find out more about emotional leadership!

There are six styles of emotional leadership.

The six distinct emotional leadership styles are:

  1. The visionary leader, or the “come with me” leader, who guides individuals through a shared goal by communicating information about the destination, but without telling them how to reach it.
  2. The coaching leader, or the “I will help you develop” leader, who identifies individuals’ own goals and personality traits, and matches them with the organisation’s vision.
  3. The affiliative leader, or the “people first, task second” leader, who creates a positive environment through bringing team members together and resolving conflicts.
  4. The democratic leader, or the “let’s work it out together” leader, who focuses on collaboration, values input from their team members and reaches decisions by consensus.
  5. The pacesetting leader, or “do as I do” leader, who sets goals and high performance standards, but provides minimal guidance.
  6. The commanding leader, or “do what I say” leader, who adopts an autocratic and dominant approach in order to ensure the goal is achieved. This approach is known to alienate people.

As Majella explained, although these styles are distinct from one another, leaders don’t usually rely on just one leadership style! Instead, they use the most appropriate style for the individual and given situation.

Building your leadership styles.

Majella gave us several ideas about how we can build and enrich our leadership styles, including the importance of establishing relationships with peers, mentors, and role models; building a team of people with leadership styles you lack to complement each other; seeking feedback; and focusing on verbal and non-verbal communication with your peers.

Lead from where you are…

How many of us can think of relatively “small” moments when someone said or did something that had a big impact on our lives? Many of us can and do. Leaders can have a massive impact on someone’s life without even realising it. Small gestures and supportive conversations can go a long way!

The presentation was followed by a Mediterranean dinner at Spaghetti House where ENLPers had the chance to network!

We would like to thank Majella for her excellent interactive presentation, and we are looking forward to the next London Local Circle Event.

Thank you very much to our Guest blogger Dr. Eirini Dimidi (member of the UK Local Circle Committee) for writing this blog post!