Daniel Goleman starts his article asking two rhetorical questions. The first asks “What do effective leaders do?” The second question asks “What should leaders do?” Goleman retains that these two questions are relatively easy for people studying leadership to answer. But the real purpose of the essay is to answer “how?” This is because the “mystery of what leaders can and ought to do in order to spark the best performance from their people is age-old,” (Goleman 78). He goes to on to write about how there is an emergence of leadership experts trying to offer advice to young professionals, but “effective leadership eludes many people and organizations. One reason is that until recently, virtually no quantitative research has demonstrated which precise leadership behaviors yield positive results,” (Goleman 78). This stands to be the reason why this article has been written: Goleman wants to demystify the guidelines to what makes good leadership.
Being that this article does not seem to be an academic peer-reviewed research paper and is instead a well-researched feature article, Goleman does not actually state a hypothesis like a research paper would. One of the closest statements to one in this article is this: “the research indicates that leaders with the best results do not rely only on one leadership style,” (Goleman 78). In fact, the hypothetical question that this informative article seeks to answer is “What are the six styles of leadership?” (Golman 80). Goleman is an author of books that are about emotional intelligence, and he approaches this subject with this background, assuming that emotional intelligence plays a large factor in effective leadership. According to Goleman defines emotional intelligence as “the ability to manage ourselves and our relationships effectively consist[ing] of four fundamental capabilities: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social skill,” (Goleman 80).
Goleman’s research with the consulting firm Hay/McBer was needed because no research beforehand has really looked into the finer details of how emotional intelligence is necessary for effective leadership. The new research, Goleman indicated, was that it “offers a fine-grained understanding of how different leadership styles affect performance and results,” (Goleman 80), and that each leadership style relies on different components of emotional intelligence. He used a previous study as an example of how executives “who lacked emotional intelligence were rarely rated as outstanding in their annual performance reviews,” (Goleman 81). This summary of the previous study is vague, and so Goleman establishes the need to look into this further.
The research conducted in this article was done between Goleman himself and a consulting firm called Hay/McBer. They drew results from a sample of 3,871 executives that were randomly selected from a database of about 20,000 executives. The study was designed to answer these questions: “How did each individual motivate direct reports? Manage change initiatives? Handle crises?” (Goleman 81). In analyzing the data, researchers sought to answer how leaders rated in terms of self-control, social skill and levels of empathy, and compared the results to draw conclusions.
Goleman starts his literature review with defining climate, since part of the purpose of the study was to look at how different leadership styles affected the working climate. He uses the definition coined by psychologists George Litwin and Richard Stringer, referring it to six proponents that would influence a company’s working environment. Those are “flexibility – that is how free employees feel to innovate unencumbered by red tape; their sense of responsibility to the organization; the level of standards that people set; the sense of accuracy about performance feedback and aptness of rewards; the clarity people have about mission and values; and finally, the level of commitment to a common purpose,” (Goleman 81).
Next, Goleman went ahead to define each of the six different leadership styles that he mentioned before. The first style he covered was the Coercive Style of leadership. He defines this as a “reign of terror,” with an “extreme top-down decision making,” (Goleman 82). Coercive leaders, in other words, “demand immediate compliance, (Goleman 80). The authoritative style helps “mobilize people toward a vision,” (Goleman 80), and in comparison, makes a very positive impact on the work environment. The “hallmarks” of the authoritative style are “enthusiasm and clear vision,” (Goleman 83).
“Affiliative leaders create emotional bonds and harmony,” (Goleman 80), which is the next style he describes. This style “revolves around people – its proponents value individuals and their emotions more than tasks and goals,” (Goleman 84), and it strives to make employees happy in the workplace. Similarly, “democratic leaders build consensus through participation,” (Goleman 80), by focusing on employees’ feedback and professional opinions. In this way, a leader “builds trust, respect and commitment,” (Goleman 85).
The pacesetting style exemplifies leaders that “expect excellence and self-direction,” (Goleman 80) from their employees. In other words, the leader “sets extremely high performance standards and exemplifies them himself,” (Goleman 86).
Coaching leaders, on the other hand, “develop people for the future,” (Goleman 80). Leaders who use this style “encourage employees to establish long-term development goals and help them conceptualize a plan for attaining them,” (Goleman 87).
The article is written using certain leaders in the study as specific examples for each leadership style. However, Goleman does not actually list out any statistics from his research, even though he states that “leaders who have mastered four or more [styles] – especially the authoritative, democratic, affiliative, and coaching styles – have the very best climate and business performance,” (Goleman 87). Goleman includes advice for how to grow emotional intelligence in order to be a better leader. But the example he uses, a leader named Jack, essentially worked on his flaws by finding a coach. Goleman writes about how the neocortex and the emotional centers of the brain “need repetition and commitment” to master better emotional intelligence. But aside from Jack going to a leadership coach, there isn’t actual a list of practices or self-reflection for the reader to incorporate.
Goleman lays out what styles are not effective and which ones are as part of his results. The coercive style hurts flexibility and the rewards system. However, this style does well in a crisis, since it handles problem employees and tackles problems head-on. However, it has an overall negative impact on the work climate, and “should be only used with extreme caution and in the few situations when it is absolutely imperative,” (Goleman 83). The authoritative style is the “most effective, driving up every aspect of climate,” (Goleman 84), but it fails “when a leader is working with a team of experts or peers who are more experienced than he is,” (Goleman 84). The affiliative style improves flexibility and rewards good work, and it is good for building team spirit. However, its “exclusive focus on praise can allow poor performance to go uncorrected,” (Goleman 85). The democratic style also established good teamwork, but falls apart when the team members are not competent enough to handle the issue. The pacesetting style hurts the reward system and gives poor flexibility, but it works well if employees are “self-motivated, highly competent, and need little direction or coordination,” (Goleman 86). This requires employees with certain personality characteristics, though. Lastly, a leader that acts like a counselor or a coach “focuses primarily on personal development, not on immediate work-related tasks,” (Goleman 87). It has a positive effect, but it needs “constant dialogue,” (Goleman 87).
This article was written mainly for a mainstream audience, so it helps that Goleman wrote this article with that in mind. It makes the material accessible and easy to digest for the audience. Considering that there isn’t any actual statistical data involved, however, readers would have to digest his information in complete trust that he would be giving them truthful information and sound the advice as to what leadership style is the best to implement in whatever kind of situation. The article is mainly based on the different leadership styles, and Goleman covers his tracks by praising and criticizing each according to how those styles work and how they don’t. That alone would provide readers with enough information to think critically about the topic. However, aside from writing about the leadership styles, all other information lacked sufficient information.
Goleman has written about emotional intelligence, since that his expertise. But he does not define emotional intelligence and why it would be so important to leadership styles enough. Actually, his work in emotional intelligence-based theory actually makes a distinction between emotional intelligence and emotional competency. Competency in this sense is defined as a “learned capability based on emotional intelligence that results in outstanding performance at work,” (27). He admits in this work that underlying emotional intelligence “is necessary, though not sufficient,” (27), and that while a person can be emotionally intelligent, he or she needs to be competent in the workplace in order to ensure that the emotional intelligence is used effectively. This makes this article seem misleading.
Considering that being a leader, according to Goleman, is also dependent on relationship management, it may actually be significant to consider social intelligence as a factor that may influence proper leadership. Social intelligence has two components: “(a) being aware of or noticing others’ needs and problems and (b) responding or adapting to different social situations,” (Kobe, Reiter-Palmon and, Rickers 156). While this definition seems to be incorporated into Goleman’s definition of emotional intelligence, it might actually be helpful to use a definition like to social intelligence to distinguish emotional intelligence and emotional competency to readers. This is important since he is so descriptive about the different styles of leadership, but does not actually lay out how readers can improve their social intelligence to be more competent in certain situations.
While Goleman lists four components in emotional intelligence, his work is influential in several magazine articles that address this issue and try to adapt his concepts to the mainstream reader. However, some of them include a fifth component, which would be to “anticipate how their people are likely to react to situations and don’t wait until after the damage is done to respond,” (Fast Company 2014). Comparatively to articles like these, Goleman’s work is much more detailed and helpful, since short reads like this can only aim to make a reader be self-reflective, but cannot communicate in detail how their own leadership styles exemplify or not exemplify these traits.
Goleman’s work has also been used for other positions, such as politicains and public speakers. Now, “new evidence shows that when people hone their emotional skills, they become better at manipulating others. When you’re good at controlling your own emotions, you can disguise your true feelings,” (Grant, 2014). Since emotionally (and by extension, socially) intelligent people can learn to be manipulative through his work, it seems plausible that Goleman should respond to these studies and also write about it in his work. While this particular article is about improving leadership skills and providing a comparative analysis of these skills, it seems important that an exploration of the darker elements of having too much emotional control over others should be explored – especially when his intended audience would be composed of would-be leaders.
All in all, however, Goleman’s article is well-rounded and includes enough analysis and details to effectively express his message. Readers can get gain a clear understanding of these different leadership styles, although the explanation of emotional intelligence certainly would benefit from improvement.
Works Cited
“5 Crucial Emotional Intelligence Traits of Highly Effective Leaders.” Fast Company. Fast Company & Inc., 16 June 2014. Web. 18 Feb. 2016.
Goleman, Daniel. “An EI-Based Theory of Performance.” The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace. Ed. Cary Cherniss and Daniel Goleman (eds.). San Francisco: Jossey- Bass, 2001. 27-44. PDF File.
---. “Leadership Gets Results.” Harvard Business Review. April (2000): 78-90. Print.
Grant, Adam. “The Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence.” The Atlantic. The Atlantic Monthly Group, 2 January 2014. Web. 18 Feb. 2016.
Kobe, Lisa M., Reiter-Palmon, Roni, and Rickers, Jon D. “Self-Reported Leadership Experiences in Relation to Inventoried Social and Emotional Intelligence.” Current Psychology. 20.2. (2001): 154-163. Print.
