Leadership <> Employeeship styles

Keep in mind
Be critical about this and any thought that could be taken into 'boxing people' kind of conclusion/thinking.This is just a conversation starter. A question, not an answer.

Leadership styles

We read about Studie/research etc on leadership styles. A  recent Harvard post  lists the following: Autocratic, Bureaucratic, Coaching, Democratic, Laissez-faire, Pacesetter, Servant, Visionary.
But leaders lead other people, who must select for and flourish or despair with the different leadership styles.
So what are these attribute sets, behaviors and change potential on the other end?

Employeeship styles

For the lack of a better term, I’ll call it employeeship styles, since leaders often lead employees, and employees follow and report to leaders.

The following is an initial set of employee-ship styles that I could gather from a quick reflection on all observations and experience I've had so far:
  • Mandating: demands and challenges decisions, but make very few themselves. Often happy to provide input, do research and share an opinion on anything.
  • Mobile: can move between teams, domains etc quietly and happily with little to no damage on their own performance, but sometimes equally mobile in the market (high churn).
  • Autonomous: high outcome, critical, manager of one, very allergic to micro management and management BS in general (but can handle it fine for a while).
  • Grinding (on the grind): high output and have simple incentive formula (typically it's one thing: remuneration, recognition etc).

These styles are derived based on the following dimensions:
  • Level of clarity of employee's understanding of the big picture, their role in it and their own personal growth and expectations: implicit to explicit.
  • Level of decision making driving capability of employee's own work and their influence on decision making of others' work: passive to proactive.


Questions to go further

  • Is there a key 3rd (or even 4th) dimension missing that might uncover other significantly different styles? (e.g. Commitment: missionary vs. mercenary, or Leadership potential: IC vs. Manager, or Success focus: personal development vs. company/team mission)
  • From feedback: one likely equally important dimension is 'sense of belonging' or 'commitment' or 'loyalty'. This can vary from 'make it home' to 'passerby'.Some styles that might emerge along that dimension in combination with the others:
  • Harmonious: family belonging and implicit/passive
  • Change agent: family belonging and explicit/proactive
  • Mercenary: passerby and explicit/passive
  • Companion: passerby, explicit and proactive
  • Piggybacking: passerby, implicit and passive
  • How do typical leadership styles hover over employee-ship styles in terms for a good-fit?