What Is Your Leadership Style? Quiz Yourself to Find Out

A leader’s approach to managing and inspiring their team can significantly impact productivity, engagement, and organizational success. But how do you identify your leadership style, and how can it benefit your career growth? This is where a leadership style quiz comes into play. In this article, we will explore the purpose of leadership style quizzes, common leadership styles they identify, and how they can support your personal and professional growth.

A leadership style quiz is a tool designed to help you identify your natural approach to leading others. These quizzes ask a series of questions about your decision-making process, conflict resolution strategies, communication preferences, and overall management philosophy. The results often categorize leaders into different styles—ranging from authoritative to democratic, from transformational to transactional—each with its own unique strengths and areas for improvement.

Here are some leadership styles that a quiz might help you identify:

• Autocratic leadership: In this style, the leader makes decisions without much input from the team. It’s direct, efficient, and often necessary in high-pressure situations, but can sometimes lead to lower team morale.
• Democratic leadership: Leaders with this style are collaborative and value team input. They involve their team in decision making, fostering an inclusive culture, but may struggle with inefficiency due to prolonged decision-making processes.
• Transformational leadership: These leaders focus on inspiring and motivating their teams to achieve greatness. They’re visionaries who encourage innovation, but may struggle with grounding their teams in day-to-day details.
• Transactional leadership: Transactional leaders emphasize clear roles and expectations, rewarding performance accordingly. This approach is effective in achieving short-term goals, but can sometimes limit creativity and long-term growth.
• Laissez-faire leadership: In this hands-off style, leaders give their team autonomy to make decisions. While it can empower teams to innovate, it may lead to disorganization if not carefully managed.
• Servant leadership: These leaders focus on meeting the needs of their team before their own, fostering a people-centered approach to leadership. It can lead to high team satisfaction, but may burden the leader with too many responsibilities.

• Introspection: Understanding your leadership style allows you to reflect on your strengths and weaknesses. Are you an effective communicator? Do you empower your team? This awareness provides insight into how you naturally lead and how others perceive your leadership.
• Team dynamics: Different leadership styles influence team culture and dynamics. For example, a democratic leader may foster more creativity and collaboration, while an autocratic leader might drive efficiency. In understanding your leadership style, you can assess whether it aligns with your team’s needs and adjust where necessary.
• Career development: For those in leadership roles or aspiring to take on leadership responsibilities, a leadership style quiz can help you identify areas for growth. Many organizations also use these assessments as part of their leadership development programs, allowing employees to better understand their leadership potential and tailor their training accordingly.
• Team building and hiring: Understanding leadership styles can be instrumental in team-building efforts. Managers can use leadership style quizzes to ensure that their leadership approach complements their team’s work style, leading to higher engagement and collaboration. It can also inform hiring strategies by identifying what style is needed to lead certain departments or functions.

If you are looking to elevate your own organization’s leadership skills and styles, click below to speak with one of our experts and learn more about our Careerminds leadership coaching and development services.

There are several leadership quizzes and assessments available, each with its own unique approach to evaluating leadership styles and behaviors. Here are some of the most popular and widely used leadership style quizzes:

• What it measures: Personality type based on preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions.
• Leadership focus: Helps leaders understand their leadership style based on their personality type (e.g., ENTJ, ISFP).
• Use case: Popular for personal and leadership development, especially in understanding how different personality types approach leadership.

• What it measures: Behavior in four categories—Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness (or Compliance as originally designated).
• Leadership focus: Provides insight into how leaders interact with others, make decisions, and respond to challenges.
• Use case: Widely used in corporate settings to help leaders communicate effectively with diverse teams.

• What it measures: Leadership behaviors across five areas—Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart.
• Leadership focus: Evaluates how often leaders exhibit key behaviors linked to effective leadership.
• Use case: Often used in leadership training and development to highlight specific behaviors that can be improved.

• What it measures: The Big Five personality traits—openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
• Leadership focus: Connects personality traits to leadership style, showing how traits influence decision making, team interaction, and conflict resolution.
• Use case: Used in leadership coaching to predict leadership success based on personality.

• What it measures: Individual strengths across 34 different themes.
• Leadership focus: Identifies a leader’s top strengths and shows how they can leverage them to lead more effectively.
• Use case: Focuses on strengths-based leadership, helping leaders lead authentically by capitalizing on what they do best.

• What it measures: A wide range of 22 leadership behaviors across six core functions—Creating a Vision, Developing Followership, Implementing the Vision, Following Through, Achieving Results, and Team Playing.
• Leadership focus: Provides a detailed analysis of leadership behaviors and areas for improvement.
• Use case: Often used in executive coaching and leadership development programs for detailed behavioral feedback.

• What it measures: 360-degree feedback on leadership effectiveness and tendencies across two dimensions—creative competencies and reactive tendencies.
• Leadership focus: Combines feedback from peers, subordinates, and supervisors to offer a holistic view of leadership capabilities.
• Use case: Ideal for executive coaching and leadership transformation efforts.

• What it measures: 12 work-related statements about management and how it influences employee engagement and performance.
• Leadership focus: Though not a traditional leadership style quiz, it measures how effectively leaders engage their teams.
• Use case: Common in organizations seeking to improve leadership’s impact on employee satisfaction and productivity.

Don’t rely on just one quiz. There are various leadership assessments available, and they may categorize styles slightly differently. Take a few different quizzes to learn the most about your unique leadership style.

Once you have your results, take time to reflect. Do the insights align with how you see yourself? What do the results suggest about your strengths and areas where you might need improvement?

Compare the quiz results with feedback from your peers, team members, or mentors. Do others view your leadership style similarly, or is there a gap between your perception and their experience?

Based on your quiz results, identify areas for growth. If you tend to be more autocratic, consider ways to foster more collaboration with your team. If you’re more laissez-faire, look for opportunities to provide more structure and direction.

Leadership style quizzes are also excellent tools for recognizing and leveraging your natural strengths. For example, if you’re a transformational leader, harness your ability to inspire and motivate your team to work toward long-term vision.

Leadership is not one-size-fits-all, and that’s what makes leadership style quizzes so valuable. Through identifying your unique approach, you can become more self-aware and effective as a leader. These quizzes serve as a starting point for deeper reflection and personal development, helping you become the kind of leader your team truly needs.

Whether you’re new to leadership or a seasoned manager, understanding your leadership style can transform how you lead others, allowing you to create a more cohesive, motivated, and successful team.

Here are the key takeaways:

• Using leadership style quizzes can provide valuable insight into your natural tendencies.
• Common leadership styles you may find in your results include autocratic, democratic, transformational, transactional, laissez-faire, and servant leadership.
• Popular leadership quizzes include the MBTI, DiSC,r Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI), Big Five, and StrengthsFinder (CliftonStrengths).
• To best utilize leadership style quizzes, make sure you take more than one, reflect on the results, seek feedback, and create a development plan to improve your leadership skills.

If you’re interested in discovering more about our leadership coaching services at Careerminds, click below to connect with our experts and determine if we’re the right fit for your organization.

Cynthia Orduña

Cynthia Orduña is a Career and Business Coach with a background in recruiting, human resources, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. She has helped 50+ companies around the world hire and retain talent in cities like LA, SF, NY, Berlin, Tokyo, Sydney, and London. She has also coached over 300 people, from entry to senior levels, in developing their one-of-a-kind career paths, Her work has been featured in publications such as Business Insider, The Balance Careers, The Zoe Report, and more. To learn more you can connect with Cynthia on LinkedIn.