Summary

According to Daniel Goleman, the pacesetting style is a type of leadership that should be used sparingly. This type of leader sets extremely high performance standards which she herself exemplifies. The pacesetter usually gives no feedback on how people are doing, and tends to take over a task whenever she thinks people are lagging. The problem with the pacesetting style is that often employees feel overwhelmed by the relentless demands for excellence, and their morale drops. This is reinforced by the fact that often the pacesetter does not provide clear guidelines for what needs to be done, and simply expects people to know what to do. The result is that work becomes a matter of second-guessing the pacesetter's vision and goals.

The Background

Let's see how this might work in practice. Before becoming executive director of the Alexandria Free Clinic, a nonprofit that provides free health care services to low-income, uninsured residents, Eric Smith was a doctor at a large hospital in the area. Eric had been hired as executive director because he was the person that everyone turned to when they needed to get the job done. Now with ten people to manage, Eric began to slip. Not trusting that his subordinates were as capable as he was, he started to micromanage by being obssessed with details and taking over for others when their performance slackened. He found himself working nights and weekends and complained to his board that people weren't doing their share. When the board looked into the matter, they discovered a staff afraid of taking even small risks for fear of being criticized.

The Solution

As the example shows, the pacesetting style does not work well in the nonprofit context. On the other hand, the approach can and does work well for leaders of highly skilled and self motivated professionals, like R&D groups or legal teams.

Lessons Learned

When given a talented team to lead, pacesetting leaders can achieve the type of results that they expect from themselves and from everyone else. However, even in these situations, pacesetting should be used in conjunction with other leadership styles.