Early in my career I worked for a manager that was demanding and micro managing. It felt like nothing I did met their standards and was good enough. It was a tough environment that I dreaded being in. My work wasn’t the best it could be and I felt like I was failing.

A few months later, I moved to a new boss who helped develop me and positively pushed me to perform better. Within a year, I received my first big promotion.

The 2nd boss was firm when they needed to be, which I knew wasn’t terribly comfortable for them. They taught me best practices. They sought my opinion more and gave me a little more freedom. That boss became a great leader for me early in my career by showing up how I and our business unit needed it at the moment.

Daniel Goleman, one of the leading voices in Emotional Intelligence over the past 30 years, researched and wrote about the leadership styles that all leaders need to be able to step into depending on circumstances.

Here are his 6 primal leadership styles.

Commanding Leaders

This style demands immediate compliance and offers little to no explanation behind the commands. “Do it because I say so” is the feeling. A commanding leader seeks control over all situations and monitors everything. The focus is what people are doing wrong rather than what is being done right.

While the pervasive use of this style is not conducive to employee growth and happiness and not a good long term style, it can be beneficial in crisis situations or when urgent turnarounds are necessary.

Pacesetting Leaders

This style exemplifies excellence. It’s the leader who is really good or likely the best at the main job of the business. Pacesetting obsesses over doing better, doing more, always raising the bar. Low performers are pinpointed and pressure builds to get pace with the leader.

This style works well in start-up, sales, technical or highly competitive environments when the team can keep up with the leader. The danger is that employees that can keep up with  the leader feel pushed too hard and can get burned out quickly. This style often relies on having people follow them rather than teaching and providing direction.

Democratic Leaders

Like in a democracy, this style creates an environment where all voices and opinions are heard and considered. Collaboration is rampant and decisions are made by committee. The democratic style uses input from employees to gain clarity over uncertainty.

Use this style when ideas are needed to push a path or project forward and to gain key insights from the people who will be implementing and executing. However, the challenge with this style is that decisions can be delayed or not made if there’s not a clear consensus in a direction.

Affiliative Leaders

This style promotes harmony in the workplace and nurtures relationships. Affiliative leaders focus on the emotional needs of people – sometimes even over results. Praise is lavishly given and leaders use empathy and emotional intelligence to guide the team.

This works well in environments where harmony and connection of a team are assets. And this style provides motivation to work through challenges in times of stress because people feel the leader has their back. However, this style does not necessarily address performance issues or pushes to elevate the performance of the team.

Coaching Leaders

The coaching leader helps people identify key strengths and weaknesses while tying those into career and personal goals. This style challenges employees with assessments meant to stretch them into better performance or new skill sets. Leaders can boost confidence and morale.

This style works really well with employees that are eager to learn, grow and develop. Because of the efforts to push their people, environments where micro failures lead to growth and higher performance are great places to practice this style. However, in places and with people that require too much direction or lack internal motivation, this style can fall flat.

Visionary Leaders

This style paints the picture of where the group or business is going. It focuses more on the journey and not so much on how things are executed to get there. Though, this style does provide a standard of performance that anchors towards the grand vision. With this style, companies can become “brands” that distinguish themselves from competitors in a similar space.

This style, according to Goleman a & his research, is the optimum “default” style that is used in most business and with most leaders. It’s especially effective during a turnaround or when a fresh vision is needed. However, leaders should be mindful of this style coming across disconnected, aloof or tone-deaf depending on the business dynamics.

The greatest leaders have all 6 of these in their toolkit and know when to use them with teams and individuals. No one style is perfect. Therefore, being able to understand how you show up as each of these is vital to your ability to raise your leadership lid and help your team win.