(Created by Henry L. Thompson, Ph.D.)

There are four levels of leadership within an organization, team, organizational, strategic and visionary, each with its own particular focus. The cornerstone for this leadership system is team leadership and is defined as:

Leadership focused on the daily task of influencing team performance toward the accomplishment of the team’s mission through the appropriate use of the Limiting, Encouraging, Assisting and Developing styles of leadership with team members.

Close observation of leaders in action reveals identifiable patterns of behavior (styles) during leader-follower interaction. Leader style, although a controversial concept, is an important factor in high performance leadership. Style, as it is used here, is based on the premise that leaders apply their technical and interpersonal skills along two behavioral axes, relationship and task (Figure 1). The result is four basic leader styles, Limiting (L), Encouraging (E), Assisting (A) and Developing (D).

The LEAD model™ is one of the key components of high performance leadership at any organizational level. Effective diagnosis of team member performance level for a particular task, selection and application of the appropriate style and adjustment based on the dynamics of the situation greatly increase the probability of success.

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