The author's leadership style quiz results identified them as a participative leader who prefers getting input from others and making decisions based on summarizing those inputs, while maintaining final decision-making authority. While participative leadership fits the author, they feel transformational leadership better matches how they lead. The key differences are that transformational leaders play a more important vision-setting role, require stronger communication skills, and inspire enthusiasm, while participative leadership emphasizes professionalism and avoiding emotional factors. Simon Sinek's philosophy of starting with "why" emphasizes inspiring followers through a clear vision, which aligns with the transformational model of leadership.

1. Leadership Style Essay
By Hong Yang
My result from the leadership style quiz is a participative leader. It generally means I
prefer to take inputs from others and make decisions based on the summarization of those
input. I would still keep the final say when making important decisions, but most of the
time I will just play the role of a coordinator. Since it is impossible for me to be an expert
in all fields, inputs from group members with their specialized knowledge and expertise
will help me making more effective and accurate decisions.
After reading through the various styles on the mind tools list, I feel that transformational
leadership model is the style that fits me best. Although there are some similar parts
between these two leadership styles, there are two major differences between them that
cannot be ignored.
The first difference is of the role the leader plays in the models. In participative model,
the leader is mainly a coordinator, an arbitrator and a facilitator. His job is to hear
members’ voice, do summarization and make decision. The leader’s personal opinion is
not emphasized. However, in transformational model, the leader plays a more important
role. He is the one who has a vision and sets the goals. In transformational model, the
leader is required to be more professional and more passionate than that is in participative
model. It also proposes a higher requirement to the leader’s communication skill.
The second difference is of the participants’ emotional status in these models. In
participative model, like any other democratic models, a formal framework is designed
and rules such as company regulations are created to make sure everyone follows the
framework. People in this model are expected to be professional to their work and finish
their jobs. Enthusiasm is not required in this process. Actually, in order to keep the entire
system work peacefully, a leader in participative model should avoid introducing too
many emotional factors. However, enthusiasm plays a very important role in
transformational model. One of the most critical jobs of a leader in transformational
model is to inspire people, encourage others and stir their emotion. This can definitely
bring higher efficiency to the job. However, this also requires the leader to be calm and
able to hold the situation when discussion become too hot and off the point.
In the “start with why”, I think the leadership style that Simon Sineck talk about falls into
the model of transformational leadership style.
First, Sineck emphasize that a great leader should always “start with why”. By doing this,
they are able to inspire their followers or team members. Actually, thinking about “why
you do it” is just similar as thinking about a company’s or a team’s vision. According to
Bernard M. Bass, transformation leadership is “a model of integrity and fairness, set clear

2. goals, has high expectations and encourage others”. When a leader start thinking about
“why we do it?” he just starts thinking about the company’s vision and goal and express
it to his colleagues and team members.
Second, Sineck said, “Great leader always tries to inspire people around him”. People
who believe what he believes will follow him. In transformational leadership style model,
a leader need to stir the emotion of his teammates, get people to believe what he believes
and inspire people to reach for the impossible.
With these two similarities, we can see that the leadership style that Sineck talks about is
identical to transformational leadership model.