The 6 domains of leadership and how to use them

What are the 6 domains of leadership?

The six domains of leadership are personal, relational, contextual, inspirational, supportive and ethical leadership. The model was first defined by a group of leadership academics in 2006. It is built as a pyramid that moves from essential, or foundational, aspects to peak aspects that are desirable but not entirely necessary. Leaders should start at the bottom and work their way up to become successful and effective leaders.

Also, these six domains build upon previous leadership academia, specifically the effects they can produce and the behaviours needed to achieve each style. For example, the six domains can produce, and require, credibility, trust, stewardship and so on.

So, let us cover the six domains of leadership.

Personal leadership

Personal leadership is essentially the way a leader’s personality affects their potential. As such, it covers traits such as authenticity and credibility or, in other words, how real a person appears.

This is considered a foundational domain of leadership, and it appears at the bottom of the domains’ pyramid. Unsurprisingly, this is because it is almost impossible to be seen as an effective leader if those following you cannot believe in what you say or do.

A leader must be seen as credible by those who follow them, and this is the basis of personal leadership. As the name suggests, it is about how one leads themselves, which is necessary to then lead others.

Words should be backed up by actions, and opinions and behaviours should be as consistent as possible.

Relational leadership

Relational leadership is another foundational domain. As you can imagine, this relates to a leader’s ability to build relationships with those they lead. If personal leadership is about creating one’s leadership persona, relational leadership is about how one applies it to their followers.

The key traits of relational leadership are empathy, communication, understanding and respect. For people to feel like they are being led effectively, they must feel like they can voice opinions, be treated fairly for their contributions and expect clarity within the workplace.

Relational and personal leadership go hand in hand to help leaders build trust. For example, providing honest feedback and clear expectations are both communication traits that establish a leader as trustworthy in the eyes of their teams.

Contextual leadership

Contextual leadership is the final foundational domain. In short, it involves a leader creating a shared identity within their team that followers can harness for inspiration and motivation. This identity includes shared values and missions within the team to provide context for how each person’s actions affect the bigger picture.

Similarly, it involves providing context for less clear aspects of how a team works. For example, this might be explaining specific processes or establishing team norms, and giving context for why they are used. In turn, team members can situate themselves within the team more effectively because they should have a clear understanding of how their actions impact others.

While the previous two domains relate to trust and credibility, contextual leadership is about establishing identity. Team members can use this for motivation and inspiration because they will know why they are doing things and what it means for the organisation at large.

Inspirational leadership

Moving to the middle-tier domains, we start with inspirational leadership. Its definition should be fairly clear: it is a leadership style defined by a leader’s ability to create a climate that expects excellence. Importantly, though, a leader has to be strong in relational and contextual leadership before attempting inspirational leadership.

Because we have moved to the second tier of the pyramid, we are now looking at desirable more than necessary aspects of being a leader. Specifically, any person can tell people what to do and what their goals are. An inspirational leader, however, gets their teams to want to exceed their goals.

Similarly, an inspirational leader needs a keen sense of self-awareness, because inspiring others comes from behaving in a way that motivates them to want to do better. After all, this is pretty much the definition of inspiration. Leaders in this domain, then, need to be authentic, credible and trustworthy.

Supportive leadership

Supportive leadership is the other domain on the pyramid’s middle tier. Much like personal and relational leadership are linked, so too are inspirational and supportive leadership.

If inspirational leadership is about getting people to want to do better, supportive leadership involves giving them the tools to do so. As the name suggests, it is how a leader provides their teams with the support needed to excel in their roles.

But what does this mean in a workplace context? Support can take many forms, such as additional measures outside of everyday work, the removal of external distractions like workplace politics or even just a listening ear for work and personal frustrations. The bottom line is that all types of support should be offered where possible.

The final important part of supportive leadership is shifting away from a blame culture. Rather, leaders should establish a sense of learning to react to workplace mistakes. Supporting team members through failure is a sign of an empathetic and understanding leader, and it will help motivate people to do better in the future.

Ethical leadership

Ethical leadership is the peak of the domain pyramid, and for good reason. It is what differentiates successful and effective leaders from simply good leaders. In short, a leader can balance what is right for the organisation against the feelings and wellness of their teams. In other words, they can lead ethically.

Perhaps the easiest way to understand it is through the idea of a work-life balance. Sure, you want your teams to succeed and create revenue for the company. But you want them to do so in a way that keeps them fresh, healthy and motivated. This is essentially the most ethical way to lead people within an organisation.

However, it also requires leaders to create a sense of both ownership and accountability within their teams. After all, people need to feel like their actions have consequences, whether positive or negative, otherwise they will not act in the company’s best interests. This helps to drive innovation and create a shared sense of belonging in the company’s success.

How to use the six domains in your leadership style

It is worth mentioning that the six leadership domains are ways of thinking and acting that together create the most effective leadership style. So, how do you use them to lead your organisation to success?

Start with self-awareness

Your starting point should be to improve your sense of self-awareness, as you will not make it very far up the pyramid without this. You should focus on reflecting on your actions and getting feedback from colleagues and mentors, for example through a 360 feedback review. This can help you figure out what you did well and what can be done better next time.

From there, you can start to look at your leadership actions. Specifically, you can act more with authenticity and credibility because you will have the ability to understand how your actions reflect on your leadership ability.

Work through each level in turn

If you feel confident enough to work through the six domains on your own, make sure you are confident in each level before moving on to the next. This is because they build upon each other and require effective knowledge and use of the previous tier’s skills.

So, build the personal, relational and contextual leadership domains before you try to be an inspirational leader.

Take a leadership training course

On the other hand, if you want some contextualisation for how to use the six domains, attend a leadership training course that uses this theory as the basis of its teaching style. Unsurprisingly, this will be the best way to understand each domain in more depth as well as to learn some ways to apply them to your leadership.

Of course, you may find that some domains are easier to develop than others. Attending a course will be beneficial here, too, as you can get individual support for areas where you feel a bit weaker.

The limits of the six domains model

While the six domains of leadership is only one branch of theory that tries to understand the concept of leadership, it is a useful one for knowing how different aspects relate to each other. After all, you cannot inspire others if you cannot communicate with them properly.