4 Emerging Leadership Styles and Why You Should Care
- Dr. Jeff Doolittle
- 3 hours ago
- 5 min read
Uncertainty doesn’t just test leaders—it exposes them. It reveals whether espoused values are operationalized or merely aspirational. And right now, most organizations are struggling to withstand the pressure. Gallup reports that only 3 in 10 employees are engaged, with more than half quietly quitting. McKinsey data shows that less than half of employees experience a positive workplace climate, and just 38% believe their company truly prioritizes people over profits.
The leadership lesson? Style without structure is a risk.
As leaders attempt to adapt to a more diverse, demanding, and disrupted workplace, many are shifting styles—moving toward more servant, transformational, authentic, or spiritual models. But here’s the danger: when leadership style evolves without clearly defined decision rights, authority boundaries, and accountability mechanisms, it doesn't inspire—it destabilizes. Execution stalls. Authority blurs. Teams stop acting and start interpreting. Over time, that erodes trust, clarity, and performance.
Leadership style is never neutral. Without a system-level anchor, it becomes a liability—amplifying risk instead of resilience.
As the adage goes: what got you here won’t get you there. Leadership in today’s world requires more than adaptation—it requires integration. Understanding how different leadership styles interact with organizational systems is essential for avoiding unintended consequences and building enduring impact.
Here’s what you need to know about the motivations, characteristics, and system-level risks of four emerging leadership styles—and why self-aware leaders must go beyond style to build structure.
A reimagined business purpose
Did you hear? The purpose of business changed. The Business Roundtable, made up of 181 prominent US CEOs, has recently restated the purpose of a corporation.
The purpose of business is "investing in employees, delivering value to customers, dealing ethically with suppliers and supporting outside communities." Fitzgerald
While attention-grabbing, it's not too shocking, given that value creation comes from serving multiple stakeholders. Here is a short video discussing the change and its merits.
It is not new for the Business Roundtable to suggest that investing in employees and communities is essential to generating shareholder value. However, because words matter, they decided that the current language was inconsistent with how CEOs strive to run modern businesses.
The change has generated some debate. In response, members have clarified that the new purpose statement is not abandoning capitalism but a call to action to ensure benefits are shared. The desire is to encourage boards to focus better on creating long-term value by serving investors, employees, communities, suppliers, and customers.
Why your leadership style matters
I am a scientist by training, and my hypothesis is that leadership habits are life-changing. Effective leadership affects the personal and professional results you achieve and the quality of your life.
The costs of poor leadership often manifest in the workplace as low employee engagement, a lack of team cohesion and collaboration, high employee turnover, and failed execution.
Good leadership can make a success out of a weak plan, but ineffective leadership can destroy a business with a great strategic plan.
According to Jim Collins in the book Good to Great, a review of 1,435 companies studied over more than forty years revealed that leadership effectiveness accounts for up to 6.9 times greater returns than market averages.
Emerging Leadership Theories and Styles
Leadership style reflects a leader’s inner game (values, virtues, and motivations) and outer game (behaviors and habits). In today’s evolving workplace, four emerging 21st-century leadership styles—servant leadership, transformational leadership, authentic leadership, and spiritual leadership—are gaining attention for their people-centered, purpose-driven promise.
Yet as organizations seek to adopt these styles, few recognize the potential liabilities when leadership behavior shifts ahead of system alignment. Leadership style, while influential, is never neutral. Without shared operating frameworks—defined decision rights, clear authority boundaries, and accountability systems—style alone introduces organizational risk.
The comparisons below highlight the unique motivations of each style—and the systemic vulnerabilities that arise when these styles are not anchored in structure and discipline.
Comparing Servant Leadership and Transformational Leadership
While similar to servant leadership, the central focus of transformational leadership is organizational benefit, while servant leadership's primary focus is serving others (see Table 1).
System-Level Risk: Servant leadership assumes authority, clarity, and stable accountability. When roles are ambiguous, this style can unintentionally diffuse responsibility, delaying decisions and weakening ownership. Transformational leadership assumes the leader can set direction and drive momentum. But without execution discipline, it can spark vision without results—leading to initiative fatigue instead of transformation.
Comparing Servant Leadership and Authentic Leadership
In contrast to servant leadership, authentic leadership focuses on the leader being who they were created to be. Authentic leadership and servant leadership share similarities of leading with the heart and humility. However, the critical difference between these two leadership styles is the difference in the leader's focus (see Table 2).
System-Level Risk: Authentic leadership assumes a governance structure that frames transparency. In its absence, authenticity may appear subjective or inconsistent—creating confusion instead of cohesion.
Comparing Servant Leadership and Spiritual Leadership
While spiritual leadership and servant leadership share the most similarities among the four leadership styles, they are distinctly different. Spiritual leadership focuses on motivating, which is very different from servant leadership. Both spiritual leadership and servant leadership styles share the characteristics of love, vision, and altruism (see Table 3).
System-Level Risk: Spiritual leadership presumes that purpose enhances—rather than replaces—formal authority systems. Without execution clarity, it risks prioritizing meaning over performance, blurring consequence and accountability.
Servant leadership begins with the decision to serve first. Transformational leadership taps into deeper motivations to advance collective goals. Authentic leadership insists on inner alignment and transparency. Spiritual leadership calls for meaning and shared identity. Each has the potential to elevate culture and performance—but only when embedded within a system that supports clarity, consistency, and execution.
The world desperately needs a new approach to leadership.
Leadership styles are not choices in isolation. Leadership systems either absorb that change — or amplify its risk. The question is whether your organization has made that distinction explicit.
This is often where leadership system conversations begin.
Are you ready to better understand your leadership style and maximize your potential?
Take our Leadership Style Inventory assessment. Leaders discover their preferred leadership style through forced-choice responses to various real-world leadership scenarios. You'll receive a personalized one-page report that will give you a new understanding of your leadership style.
Engage in a powerful virtual or in-person executive coaching partnership. Our executive coaching programs are tailored to address your leadership goals and development needs. In addition to the leadership style inventory, coaching consists of a pre/post leadership 360 survey to reveal blind spots and hidden strengths and measure your growth. A typical program includes nine to twelve coaching sessions.
Apply your new leadership insights. Now, it's time to use what you have learned to maximize your leadership potential and get more out of life and work.
References:
Bennis, W. G. (1959). Leadership theory and administrative behavior: The problem of authority. Administrative Science Quarterly, 4(3), 259- 301.
Bass, B. M. (2000). The future of leadership in learning organizations. Journal of Leadership Studies, 7(3), 18-40.
Fitzgerald, M. (2019). The CEOs of nearly 200 companies said shareholder value is no longer their primary objective. CNBC Markets.
Fry, L. W. (2003). Toward a theory of spiritual leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 14(6), 693-727.
George, B. (2003). Authentic leadership: Rediscovering the secrets to creating lasting value John Wiley & Sons.
Greenleaf, R. K., & Spears, L. C. (2002). Servant-leadership: A journey into the nature of legitimate power and greatness (25th-anniversary ed.). Paulist Press.
Northouse, P. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice seventh edition. Sage.
Patterson, K. (2003, October 16). Servant-leadership: A theoretical model [PDF]. Regent University School of Leadership Studies Servant-leadership Research Roundtable.
