A practical, research-informed self-assessment based on Daniel Goleman’s six leadership styles, designed to help you understand your default leadership patterns and where greater flexibility could strengthen your effectiveness.
Sometimes the leadership approach that has worked well for you stops working. The team changes. The pressure increases. People need different things. A situation becomes more complex, and you find yourself unsure what to try next.
This free Leadership Styles Self-Assessment can help you step back, understand the approaches you rely on most and identify where adapting your leadership could help you get unstuck.
Understand how you lead. Build your confidence and competence. Increase your influence and impact.
Leadership Styles Self-Assessment
What happens to your leadership style when the pressure goes up?
You may know how you want to lead. The more useful question can be what you actually rely on when priorities compete, performance slips, difficult conversations need to happen or people need different things from you.
This free self-assessment is designed to help you reflect on how you currently lead, using Daniel Goleman’s six leadership styles as a framework.
It brings together:
A structured self-assessment
Clear explanations of each leadership style
Guided reflection questions to support development
Prompts to help you consider when your usual approach is helping and when another approach may be more effective
It is intended as a starting point for increasing awareness of your leadership approach and how it influences people, performance and outcomes. The aim is not to identify one “right” leadership style. It is to help you develop a broader range of choices and greater confidence in deciding what a particular situation needs from you.
Why This Matters
Leadership is often discussed in terms of strategy and decision-making. In practice, how you lead on a day-to-day basis shapes:
How people experience their work
How teams communicate and perform
How effectively organisations deliver on their goals
How confidently you respond when the usual approach is no longer working
How much influence you can have across different people, relationships and situations
Research suggests that leaders who can adapt their leadership style based on context can contribute to more positive organisational climates, which have been associated with stronger performance and engagement (Goleman, 2000).
This assessment supports you in identifying where you are now, so you can make more intentional choices about how you lead.
Greater awareness gives you more choice. More choice can help you move beyond default reactions and select the approach that could be most effective for the people, purpose and context in front of you.
This Assessment Could Help You
By completing the assessment, you could gain:
Clarity on your default leadership style(s)
Insight into how your approach may be experienced by others
Awareness of where you may be over-relying on one style
Direction on where expanding your range could improve effectiveness
Greater confidence in how you approach different leadership situations
Greater competence in adapting your leadership rather than relying on one familiar approach
A way to get unstuck when your current approach is not producing the outcome you need
Greater awareness of how you could increase your influence and impact
Practical questions to help you decide what the situation needs next
This Could Be Useful If…
You are leading people and finding that the same approach does not work equally well with everyone.
You are managing difficult conversations, competing priorities, performance issues or changing expectations.
You want to become more confident and competent in how you lead.
You feel stuck in a team or leadership situation and want another way of looking at what is happening.
You want to increase your influence without simply becoming more directive.
You want your leadership to have greater impact on people, relationships and performance.
You work in HR, L&D, OD or DEI and support leaders to reflect on and develop their leadership practice.
This Assessment Could Help You
By completing the assessment, you could gain:
Clarity on your default leadership style(s)
Insight into how your approach may be experienced by others
Awareness of where you may be over-relying on one style
Direction on where expanding your range could improve effectiveness
Greater confidence in how you approach different leadership situations
Greater competence in adapting your leadership rather than relying on one familiar approach
A way to get unstuck when your current approach is not producing the outcome you need
Greater awareness of how you could increase your influence and impact
Practical questions to help you decide what the situation needs next
What Happens Next?
You will receive access to the assessment so you can work through your leadership styles and reflect on how they show up in practice.
We will also share Leadership Letters and occasional relevant ELIS resources to help you continue developing your confidence, competence, influence and impact as a leader.
No generic leadership formulas. The focus is on understanding what is happening, what matters in the context and what could help you move forward.