You may have wondered, “What kind of a leader am I?”

Most people look to academic leadership theories to answer this question. Or find a list of leadership personality traits. They can use different leadership styles to try to answer this.

For example, there’s transformational leadership or authentic leadership or transactional leadership and laissez-faire leadership. You could be more autocratic or a coaching leader. 

Is this making sense?

With so many ways to look at your leadership styles it may leave you feeling discouraged.

What kind of leader are you?

The big question here is what kind of leader are you?

If you’re not sure what kind of leader you are, how are you supposed to find support or improve?

Perhaps it best to look at Why and How you lead?

Most leadership theories are all about how a person behaves when they’re leading a group as a marker of what kind of leader they are. Perhaps it is better to focus more on the things that you already know about yourself. Your leadership style then becomes easier to identify though your natural patterns of excellence.

These natural strengths tell you more about why you lead the way you do, and how you lead best. This is more important than what kind of leader you are.

What are the Four Domains of Most Effective Leadership?

It can be more helpful to look at Domains of leadership rather than styles – we are all different after all. Leadership styles do not really map all the skills you personally need to have as a leader.

The 4 Domains of leadership are as follows:

Communication : Maybe something you’re naturally drawn to as a leader is being vocal. If you are someone who is always in front of the room, this could be one of your stronger domains.

Achiever: You find yourself being the leader who is always pushing their team to go further. Encouraging your team to reach higher and continually challenge themselves. Your achiever domain could be driving this.

Ideas: You could be the leader who is energized by brainstorming sessions. You love thinking about all the things that could be! Your ideas domain will be leading this.

Relationships: Here you’re the type of leader who listens to everyone’s individual story. You can see the unique value that every follower brings to your team. You excel in the relationships domain.

Each leader is naturally drawn to different things. This is why you may find that more traditional ways of compartmentalizing leadership styles leave you confused. Instead, answer the questions presented by the four domains of leadership below.

The four domains of leadership say, “You naturally do all of these things; you just do them differently than others. Let’s discover your unique way of leading.”

The 4 domains of most effective leadership are a helpful framework. It enables you to stop searching for one specific leadership style. It prevents you wasting time trying to pigeon-hole yourself.

Each of the four domains encompass strengths and behaviours that allow leaders to:

• improve their decision-making
• boost their engagement
• increase their productivity

Simply understanding your strengths makes your life and the lives of those you lead better. Who wouldn’t want to have a higher quality of life and be more effective?

How do you know how good you are within the four Domains of most effective leadership?

There is a solution If you still feel confused.

Come and have a discussion with me at The Professionals Coach and we will see if we can uncover your strengths and find out how they can help you!