Preston Smalley

Daniel Goleman who writes on emotional intelligence, also lays out six distinct styles of leadership. Last week, Ryan Lahit of OrgLeader visited eBay to give my organization’s management team an overview of these concepts. I found this vocabulary useful in understanding and observing the styles of leadership I see in others.

Six Styles of Leadership:

• Coercive (aka Directive) - Demands immediate compliance (telling)
• Authoritative (aka Visionary) - Mobilizes people toward a vision (selling)
• Affiliative - Creates harmony and builds emotional bonds (relationships)
• Democratic - Building commitment thru participation (consensus)
• Pacesetting - Sets high standards for performance (showing)
• Coaching - Developing people for the future (supporting)

I think it is important to understand which style is most important given the situation as well as where the organization is in its development (more on this later).

Want to learn more?

• Article: Leadership that Gets Results [$] (Goleman, HBR 2000)
• Book: Primal Leadership (Goleman, 2004 Edition)
• Consultant: Ryan Lahit of OrgLeader, LLC
• Previous blog post of mine: Emotional Intelligence

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Since eBay’s began the dominant means for buyers to browse the search results page was to use the Ending Soonest or Newly Listed time based sorts. Now with the launch this week of Best Match our buyers have a new more relevant way to shop which ranks the results based on the item’s title and description, plus past buyer behavior for similar searches.

Let’s look at a typical search for the words “Canon Powershot”…

Top 5 Results Sorted by Ending Soonest (see example):

• 2x NB-4L Battery for CANON Powershot SD200/SD300/SD400
• Battery NB-4L For CANON POWERSHOT SD400 SD450 SD600
• NEW Canon PowerShot SD600 ELPH 6.0 MP + 1GB SD Card
• Canon Powershot A540 6MP Digital Camera 2 Lens 1GB Kit!
• Leather Case Canon PowerShot Pro 1 G6 S1IS S2IS etcCX07

Top 5 Results Sorted by Best Match (see example):

• Canon Powershot A540 6 Megapixel Digital Camera NEW
• New Canon PowerShot SD450 Digital ELPH 5.0 Megapixl NR!
• CANON 5.0 Megapixel PowerShot(R) Compact Digital Camera
• NEW~CANON A530 POWERSHOT 5MP DIGITAL CAMERA+3 BONUS+1GB
• NEW~CANON A530 POWERSHOT 5.0MP DIGITAL CAMERA 16 X ZOOM

Notice how in the Best Match results the top results are actually cameras, not batteries and cases–although they’re all still there just further down in the list.

Hat’s off to Raghav and all the research guys that made this possible as well as Esteban and Sheila in the Product group for getting it out the door. Official Announcement

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