David Wilkinson

David Wilkinson (ambiguity expert)

David John Wilkinson is considered to be one of the foremost experts and authors on how people deal with Ambiguity and Emotional Resilience / Psychological resilience...

 described four modes of leadership in his 2006 book, The Ambiguity Advantage.

Mode vs style

In situational leadership theory

Situational leadership theory

The Hersey–Blanchard situational leadership theory, is a leadership theory conceived by Paul Hersey, a professor who wrote a well known book Situational Leader and Ken Blanchard, author of The One Minute Manager, while working on the first edition of Management of Organizational Behavior...

, styles of leadership refer to behaviors that a leader should engage with in different situations. By comparison, modes are different systems or levels of thinking, logic, and development from which people, and particularly leaders, view the world. Individuals either stay in one mode all of their life or move from one mode to another, in order, as they mature and develop. There is evidence that different people start naturally in different modes depending on their degree of maturity.

Modes, problem solving, and decision making

The four modes of leadership reflect differing views of the world and therefore different ways of seeing and solving problems, based on the work of Ronald A. Heifetz

Ronald A. Heifetz

Ronald A. Heifetz is the Senior Lecturer in Public Leadership, co-founder of the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and co-founder of Cambridge Leadership Associates....

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1. Technical problems
2. Cooperative problems
3. Adaptive problems
4. Generative problems (added by Wilkinson in 2006)

Modes

There are four validated modes. Each mode describes a levels of ability to deal with increasing degrees of ambiguity

Ambiguity

Ambiguity of words or phrases is the ability to express more than one interpretation. It is distinct from vagueness, which is a statement about the lack of precision contained or available in the information.Context may play a role in resolving ambiguity...

 and complexity

Complexity

In general usage, complexity tends to be used to characterize something with many parts in intricate arrangement. The study of these complex linkages is the main goal of complex systems theory. In science there are at this time a number of approaches to characterizing complexity, many of which are...

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1. Mode One – Technical Leadership. These leaders usually deal with ambiguity by denial or creating their own certainty. They are also more dictatorial and are very risk averse by nature.
2. Mode Two – Cooperative Leadership. The aim of mode two leaders is to disambiguate uncertainty and to build teams around them to mitigate risk.
3. Mode Three – Collaborative Leadership. Mode three leaders have a tendency towards consensual methods of leadership. They prefer to work towards aligning team members values and getting agreement. Their approach to ambiguity is for the group to examine it.
4. Mode Four – Generative Leadership. These leaders use ambiguity to find opportunity. They tend to be inveterate learners and innovators.

, two additional modes are being researched.