There is no correct leadership style. People learn to be leaders by studying other leaders, trying different styles, and developing their own leadership style. This requires developing a leadership style that is adaptive to any situation. This requires people to be able to practice the four core leadership actions, perfect the nine leadership traits, and switch to any one of six leadership strategies based on the situation they are in (the topic of this presentation). The six strategies discussed in this session are:

• Directive. The directive strategy is often considered a repressive managerial strategy. Although being directive is a typical management strategy, it is not always repressive and leaders need to use this strategy in urgent situations. This is a "tell" strategies of leadership.
• Expert. An expert strategy is much like the directive strategy except that the leader surrounds herself or himself with experts that do the direction, giving them significant leniency in the direction to head. 
• Consensus. The consensus strategy is commonly found in volunteer and social organizations. It is a leadership style that requires agreement between everyone to make a decision.  This is the first of the "sell" strategies of leadership.

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• Engaging. The engaging strategy is generally used in small organizations that are short on resources or by new leaders trying to break out of a directive mode. It is also found in situations that might run better in a more autonomous atmosphere, but urgency or resource limitations require differently.
• Coaching. The coaching strategy is focused on growing the leadership capabilities of others by coaching them through decisions. Leaders are focused on getting others to become more autonomous and preparing them to be better leaders themselves. 
• Affiliative. Affiliative style is focused on building a specific culture of leadership and working with others to be leaders.

In this session, the moderator spends 8 to 15 minutes per strategy working with the audience talking about what the strategy is, how to best use it, and soliciting input from the audience on how they have used this action.

Objectives

The objective of this presentation is to:

• Develop the leadership capabilities of the attendees by helping them understand the importance of these six leadership strategies.
• Have the audience practice these strategies in the session.
• Help attendees through engaged and active dialogue to understand that there are many ways to use these strategies.

Customize for your theme

This is a 60- or 90-minute session.

It is easily coupled with the Extreme Leadership: A Matter of Life and Death keynote as it is a deep dive into one of the three topics of that keynote.

The discussion can be changed to match a conference's theme or a specific professional domain.