Leadership Styles vs. Leadership Theories: Definitions, Comparisons and Examples

What is the difference between a leadership style and a leadership theory? Style makes it sound like something intuitive, like your natural leadership personality. But theory seems important too—like a practice you put intention behind.

If you are in a leadership role (or hoping to be), you want to become more familiar with the concepts of leadership. What sets them apart? Can you have a certain leadership style that you support with leadership theory? Will any of these things make a difference when it comes to leading or managing people?

Yes—it will. There are so many things written about leadership, and still, it’s hard to cultivate good leaders. Maybe the secret is about mixing style and theory.

What’s the difference between leadership theories vs. styles

The difference between leadership theories and styles is nuanced and sometimes complicated. A theory is a body of evidence that substantiates or supports a hypothesis. Theories are developed by experts and scholars in respective fields. Typically, a theory is named after the individual who developed it. For example, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs or Locke’s Goal Setting Theory. 

On the other hand, leadership styles are a way to classify or define the way a leader leads based on their leadership skills, behaviors, attitudes and traits. For example, if a leader is always observing employee actions and giving tips and tricks for improvement, one might define that leader as having a coaching leadership style. 

From the classroom and into the workforce, knowing a little bit about different leadership styles and theories can help you work better with others—allowing you to recognize the different tendencies, approaches and leadership abilities of those around you.

Here are some common leadership styles to get familiar with.

11 Common leadership styles

While this list includes some of the most common leadership styles, it’s not an exhaustive list.

1. Authoritative (autocratic) leadership 

Authoritative leaders do not seek the opinions or perspectives of other employees. They make decisions independently. Because of the way these leaders behave, they are often seen as egotistical and controlling.

This style can work in crisis situations (like war or emergencies) but is often not a positive example of good leadership in today’s organizations. For more on that, check out Signs of a Bad Manager: 6 Traits and Tendencies to Avoid.

2. Democratic leadership

Democratic leaders value gaining the team’s opinion or perspective before making decisions. They seek collaboration and participation amongst the team. Democratic leadership is generally referred to positively by followers and others. 

3. Participative leadership

Participative leaders are similar to democratic leaders. However, there is more of a commitment to making decisions based on the team’s perspective. While the democratic leader seeks the team’s opinion, they still ultimately make the decision they see as the best fit. 

Participative leaders are committed to making decisions based on shared opinions and perspectives. They have open communication and go beyond the “open door” policy to encourage idea sharing and feedback. Participative leaders also give more autonomy to employees to encourage creativity and innovation.

4. Laissez-faire leadership 

Laissez-faire leaders are laid back. They delegate tasks and provide autonomy and independence in daily activities and directives of team members. Laissez-faire can be a great leadership style, if you are leading a team of senior experts in the field.

However, it can be seen as negative if you are leading new employees or those not demonstrating a strong commitment to their role and responsibilities. 

5. Transformational leadership

Transformational leaders are seen as those that transform a field or industry through innovation, challenging the status quo, constant experimentation and having a big-picture perspective. Transformational leaders are often described as “visionary”. However, that’s also its own leadership style. 

Transformational leaders are often described as charismatic. However, if you look historically at leaders deemed transformational such as Steve Jobs, most will not describe him as charismatic. So, there are some discrepancies and differences in how different experts and scholars define each style. 

6. Visionary leadership 

A visionary leader paints a picture or tells an inspiring story about the ideal future or potential future of the organization based on meeting the mission and the vision. This motivates employees to contribute to obtaining this idealized future.

7. Servant leadership 

Servant leaders look to serve their employees. Instead of focusing on the CEO, shareholders and profitability, servant leaders work to provide fair wages and benefits, resources, training and development to employees to help make their lives and work easier. 

In turn, employees are more committed, engaged and dedicated to the customer—resulting in the same or better outcomes for shareholders. This approach focuses on serving people to meet the organization’s goals, versus more traditional leadership models which focus on profitability at any cost, even to the harm of the people. 

8. Transactional leadership 

Transactional leadership is quid pro quo. It is the agreement for a result based on an action, behavior or achievement. Transactional leaders are very goal-oriented with strict adherence to penalties and rewards based on goal obtainment. This approach removes the relationship from the leader-follower interaction. 

9. Coaching leadership 

Coaching leadership is focused on giving small, ongoing pieces of information or feedback for improvement and adjustment. Think of a baseball coach: choke up on the bat, turn your hips when you swing, step closer to the plate…this is typically seen as a good leadership style for new or novice employees. 

However, it can read like micromanagement for senior and experienced employees. I often think of the conflict between Tom Brady and Bill Belichick when I think of how this leadership style can be ill-received by more experienced members of a team.

10. Pacesetting leadership 

Pacesetting leaders expect followers to match their pace and efforts. It is usually assigned to CEOs that set extremely aggressive growth targets and expect the average employee to have the same commitment to the company as themselves, despite the very different outcomes and financial rewards for each party in meeting those targets. 

The concept of pacesetting looks positive (just do as I do). However, expecting someone making a small salary to have the same commitment as someone who stands to reap extreme financial rewards for high performance can be unrealistic. 

For more on this idea, check out Companies Struggle With Ethical Decision Making—And it’s Going to Cost Them.

11. Affiliative leadership

Affiliative leaders focus on building relationships amongst the team and between themselves and each team member. This might be facilitated through team-building activities and by establishing trust and open communication. Building relationships is always positive for leaders.

However, relationships are often more likely built organically over time once team members have the chance to feel like they truly and deeply know each other.

Leadership styles should adapt to the situation

These common leadership styles are identified ways that people lead. However, keep in mind that common doesn’t always mean “good” or a good fit for every situation. 

For example, authoritative leadership is not very well received in most organizational settings today. People want to work in environments where their opinion matters, where they are empowered and where there is a shared voice in decision-making. Yet, there are situations that might necessitate this type of leadership style, for example, the front lines of the military or an emergency situation like a bank robbery. 

Though many organizational situations are often positioned like emergencies, most are not--unless you work in a hospital emergency room. 

Identifying a leadership style isn’t always easy or clear

If you look at literature about different leadership styles, you will find a lot of conflicting categorizations. For example, I’ve seen Elon Musk defined as authoritative, transformational, pacesetting and visionary in different online articles.

I’ve seen Bill Gates defined as transformational, visionary and participative. You could easily categorize most leaders as having more than one leadership style depending on the viewpoint, perspective and goal of the author. 

I’ve also read arguments by Martin Chemers in his book ‘An Integrative Theory of Leadership’ against defining technology leaders or “Silicone Valley” leaders as transformational. Chemers suggests that we only define them as such because they have had business success. He asks the reader to consider if we would still call them transformational, if (for example) the iPhone^® never took off and became such a success. 

Does transformational just mean successful? Or does it mean someone who truly changes society, like Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi?

If you’re trying to decide how to define a leader’s style, pick one style and document and cite your reasons for why they fit that mold, or pick two or more styles and do the same exercise to see which one might be the best match. 

Digging into leadership theories

Leadership theories are substantiated bodies of evidence that explain leadership or why certain leadership styles exist.

Theories are not attempting to define a single individual’s behaviors, practices, characteristics or actions. Instead, they are looking to build understanding around the concept of leadership and leadership effectiveness. 

If the goal of leadership is supporting followers, engaging them in the purpose and motivating them towards overcoming challenges to reach a shared goal, then leadership theory research would either substantiate or disprove that certain ways of leading help or hinder achieving that goal.

Leadership theories shift over time

If we look at leadership theories from a historical timeline, we can see that original scholars believed that leaders were born not made. This is because trait theory (which includes theories like Great Man Theory) supported the notion that people are born with a certain set of traits that either make them great leaders or not. 

This theory also supported how most government or political leaders were decided upon at the time: by birth into a certain family. As time progressed, scholars started to realize it wasn’t extroversion or physical traits that encouraged people’s commitment to the task or goal, but instead their behaviors. This is when behavioral theories started to develop. 

Behaviors can be learned and developed over time, so there was a shift in belief about leaders being born. As soon as we started to accept the behavioral theory viewpoint, we recognized that some leadership behaviors are well received in some situations but not in others. This sparked leadership theories like contingency theory and situational leadership which focus on how leadership should change or adjust based on an organization, its situation and its followers. 

In contemporary leadership theories, these original theoretical perspectives still exist. I often explain to my students that there is still no agreed upon or universal understanding of a single best way to lead. It is often “in the eye of the beholder” and will continue to change as society changes and our expectations around leadership change. 

As you can see, leadership theory goes deeper than leadership style. But that foundation of understanding why leaders operate in certain ways—and whether those ways have been effective—gives an intricate context to the choices you might make as a leader.

Ideally, understanding leadership theory will help you choose the right style for the right situation and make better choices as a leader.

Where do certain leadership styles and theories overlap?

As you continue exploring these topics, you might come across concepts defined as both leadership styles and theories. The following examples demonstrate how transformational, transactional and situational leadership can each be explained as both a style and a theory. 

Transformational Leadership:

Style: Leaders who inspire and motivate followers through their vision. Leaders who constantly challenge the status quo, experiment and foster an environment of change.

Theory: Explains that transformational leaders can encourage organizational innovation through a shared vision and culture of risk-taking, challenging precedence and experimentation.

Transactional Leadership:

Style: Leaders who focus on routine transactions and use rewards and punishments to achieve compliance.

Theory: Describes how transactional leaders maintain organizational stability through clear structures and well-defined roles and expectations.

Situational Leadership:

Style: Leaders who adapt their approach based on the situation and the readiness of their followers.

Theory: Provides a framework for understanding that there is no single best style of leadership. Effective leadership depends on the context and the developmental level of followers.

What is the best leadership style?

There is no “best” leadership style for all situations, people and environments.

An individual’s leadership style is going to be created through a culmination of their personal values, beliefs, experiences, knowledge and education, and this will all adjust and flow with time—along with an organization’s values, goals, expectations, mission and vision. 

It is important that all managers understand that their title simply gives them a formal position of authority. Management insinuates technical expertise. However, leadership is something else entirely. There are hundreds of definitions of leadership, but successful leaders all center on the people: their influences, inspirations and motivations. 

At the end of the day, the best leadership style is an informed, intentional choice you make as a leader to fit your situation and empower your team to be the best they can be. It’s far from easy. But good leaders are worth their weight in gold.

If you are interested in being that kind of leader, check out Empowering Teams Should Be a Manager's Top Priority: Here's How to Do It.

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