EI Leadership Styles Self-Assessment
About This Assessment
The Global Leadership Foundation's purpose is to raise the Emotional Health levels of people across the globe. Emotional Health is a state of enhanced wellbeing created through highly conscious choices and mindful practices. It is characterised by the ability to make constructive and respectful decisions in every situation — taking personal responsibility for how we relate to and engage with others. Emotionally healthy people are conscious of themselves — their thoughts, emotions, and behaviours — and of the impact they have on those around them. As leaders and as individuals, high levels of Emotional Health are the foundation of authentic, effective, and sustainable leadership.
Emotional Intelligence is often misunderstood as the same thing as Emotional Health — but the two are related, not identical. Emotional Intelligence is an element of Emotional Health: as our Emotional Health develops, our Emotional Intelligence develops with it; and as we develop our Emotional Intelligence, it supports our growth in Emotional Health. Developing our Emotional Intelligence is one of the many pathways available to us on the journey toward greater Emotional Health.
The six EI Leadership Styles — Visionary, Coaching, Affiliative, Democratic, Pacesetting, and Commanding — were introduced by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee in their landmark 2002 book Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence. This work demonstrated that emotional intelligence is the primary driver of effective leadership, and that a leader's emotional state profoundly shapes the climate and performance of the people around them.
Grounded in neuroscience and extensive research into organisational performance, Primal Leadership introduced the concept of mood contagion — the idea that a leader's emotions are literally contagious, spreading through a team and directly influencing engagement, creativity, and results. When leaders drive emotions positively, they create resonance — an environment where people can perform at their best. When they drive emotions negatively, they create dissonance, undermining the foundations that allow people to thrive.
Each of the six leadership styles creates either resonance or dissonance in different ways and contexts. The most effective leaders do not rely on a single style — they develop a repertoire, moving fluidly between styles as the situation demands. The Visionary style is the most broadly effective, but all six styles have their place when used with awareness and intention.
Each style is underpinned by specific Emotional Intelligence competencies. This assessment is designed to help you understand your current style preferences — the styles you use most frequently when leading and managing people — and to identify where your development opportunities lie.
The following statements relate to how you perform various leadership and management functions within your work environment. Rate each statement according to how often you demonstrate this behaviour.
To get an accurate picture, it is important that you are honest with yourself and choose the rating that best fits your actual behaviour — not how you aspire to behave.
Note: You may notice that some statements seem similar, but are actually different — please read each one carefully.
Rating Scale:
- Constantly — I constantly do this
- Often — I often do this
- Sometimes — I sometimes do this
- Never or Rarely — I never or rarely do this
| Style | How it Builds Resonance | Impact on Climate | When Appropriate | EI Competency Requirements |
|---|
Your Details
EI Leadership Styles Self-Assessment
0 of 50 completed
Rate how frequently you demonstrate each behaviour. Choose the rating that most accurately reflects your actual behaviour.
- Constantly — I constantly do this
- Often — I often do this
- Sometimes — I sometimes do this
- Never or Rarely — I never or rarely do this
EI Leadership Styles Report
This report shows your personal leadership style preferences across the six EI Leadership Styles. Your scores are expressed as percentages — a higher percentage indicates a stronger preference for that style. The report is divided into two parts: Part 1 is a summary profile, Part 2 is a detailed view of each style including element-level scores.
Leadership Style Scores
| Leadership Style | Score (%) | Rating |
|---|
Rating Scale
| Range | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| 80 – 100% | High Preference — almost always used |
| 60 – 79% | High/Medium Preference — often used |
| 40 – 59% | Medium Preference — used about half the time |
| 20 – 39% | Low/Medium Preference — sometimes used |
| Under 20% | Low Preference — rarely used |
The development guidance below covers all six leadership styles — not just your primary and secondary. Each style is assessed against benchmarks derived from research into effective resonant leadership, and your guidance is tailored to your specific score in each style.
Visionary and Coaching are the anchor styles of resonant leadership — the most important to develop as your primary modes. Affiliative and Democratic are situational resonant styles — valuable when accessible and well-calibrated, but potentially problematic if they become dominant. Pacesetting and Commanding are dissonant styles — they have a specific and limited role, and should be used sparingly and intentionally. If either scores above 20%, that is your most urgent development priority.