What is your primary leadership style? (Part 6 of 6)

Pacesetting Leadership

We’re back with the final installment of the “What is Your Primary Leadership Style?” series. In the previous installments, we discussed:

• affiliative leadership 

• autocratic/authoritarian leadership

• charismatic leadership

• democratic/participative leadership

• laissez-faire leadership

This week, our focus shifts to pacesetting leadership.

Description: Leaders with a pacesetting style are results-driven, demanding, goal-oriented, ambitious, persistent, and disciplined. As the name of this style indicates, these leaders set the pace for quality, efficiency, and productivity. Pacesetting leaders lead by example. Team members are then expected to meet or exceed their leader’s high-performance standards. Oriented toward continuous improvement, these leaders always seek ways to do their work better and quicker. And once they identify ways to produce even better results, they correspondingly raise the bar for their employees’ performance. Leaders with this style measure success by how well their teams meet ambitious goals and consistently deliver high-quality work. Due to the rigorous and unrelentingly high expectations of pacesetting leaders, experts caution against using this style exclusively. Instead, it is most effective when used in combination with other leadership styles.

Advantages: A pacesetting leadership style can help to achieve short-term goals by boosting the productivity needed to drive the work to completion. Employees on teams led by these leaders are motivated to deliver top results and continuously improve their skills and processes to meet performance expectations. This contributes to a culture of operational excellence which benefits the organization. Similar in respects to autocratic leaders, pacesetting leaders are typically very clear about what they want and how they want it done. This reduces ambiguity and enables teams to determine which tasks take precedence. Unlike an autocratic leader, however, pacesetters trust their teams to get the work done and give them a level of autonomy to make decisions and take ownership. Finally, pacesetting leaders excel at eliminating delays and keeping team members focused on execution. This is highly beneficial in settings where fast results are needed such as on sales teams or on critical projects with limited time frames for completion.

Disadvantages: The pacesetting leadership style is unsustainable over long periods of time. Constant high pressure for team members to meet ambitious goals leads to them feeling overwhelmed and burned out. Employee morale and team culture are the unfortunate casualties of this. Pacesetting leaders place a premium on achieving results over teamwork. Therefore, their team members have fewer opportunities for collaboration and knowledge sharing as the focus is often on hitting individual targets and not working together. Team members also have fewer opportunities for professional development. The constant focus on achieving results can leave little time for skill development and career advancement. Further, pacesetting leaders may not have the time or patience to provide coaching or constructive feedback to underperforming employees which stunts their development. Last, despite giving their team members autonomy, these leaders may step in if they feel the work is not being performed to their high standards, opening the door to what may devolve into disempowering micromanagement.

Examples: A few well-known figures who have exhibited characteristics of pacesetting leadership include Jack Welch, James Cameron, Greta Gerwig, Satya Nadella, and Virat Kohli.

Sources: The Niagara Institute Leadership Styles Handbook, Five Real-Life Examples of The Effectiveness of Pacesetting Leadership, Pacesetting Leadership

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