Goleman scenarios
To be used in conjunction with The Goleman Hat Game which is described at the end.
Affiliative
You are leading a newly formed team to develop a care pathway in diabetes. You are linking a team
from secondary care as well as primary care, and are looking to increase the amount of care in the
community. The hospital based team is threatened. What style of leadership is needed?
Authoritative
You are heading up a project team which hopes to end in the practice moving from a charming but
ancient Victorian house to purpose built premises, you need to galvanise action from every member
of your team. Which leadership style is needed?
Coaching
You are working with a new nurse who is keen to develop skills for primary care. This is her first
general practice job. She is working to develop her skills in family planning, but wants to add to her
list of skills to as to be able to be competent and confident in primary care and provide the best fit
for the rest of the team. Which leadership style is required?
Democratic
You haven’t done well at all in your access figures and you recognise that the way requests for
appointments are being handled is less than perfect. You realise that if things are to change it needs
all clinicians, receptionists and the admin team to be involved. Which leadership style is required?
Pace Setting
You are just about to change over to a new web based computer system in the practice. There have
been opportunities for training, but a good 20 % of clinicians have not attended or only attended in
part, you need to be sure that everyone is up and running and that the clinical system use is safely
used by all. What style of leadership is required?
Coercive
A patient has just collapsed in front of you, you have called for help and a receptionist, another
doctor and nurse arrive; what sort of leadership style is required?
Veronica Wilkie – Senior Clinical Teaching Fellow (Warwick Medical School), 2010
The Goleman Hat Game
This game looks at the six
leadership styles that Goleman18
(also famous for his writing on
emotional intelligence19) identified.
These are: Affiliative, Authoritative,
Coaching, Democratic, Pace Setting
and Coercive,
Method: The facilitator reads out a scenario and the groups have to rush to identify a hat with the
appropriate leadership style on it (use coloured paper crowns with each style written in with thick
black ink).
Some of the scenarios are obvious (a patient requiring resuscitation – coercive), but some can be
written to identify more than one style. And if more than one hat is grabbed and worn by an
individual he or she then needs to debate its merits with the person wearing one of the others.
It helps to put the definitions up on a flip chart or on a
PowerPoint slide so that people can use it as a reference at
the start. By the end, the group generally has a pretty good
idea of how each style is defined and which scenario would
require which style.
Variations: Goleman Chair game - with them rushing to sit on the appropriate chair rather than
grabbing a hat.
Veronica Wilkie – Senior Clinical Teaching Fellow (Warwick Medical School), 2010