I got into an argument with Marc when I got my Leadership Style results.

The Leadership Style Quiz came from a leadership study(1) we’d commissioned years ago — a study that’s held up well over nearly a decade and thousands of responses. It’s a resource I’m genuinely proud we offer, even though — or maybe especially because — it grew out of research on leadership in the nonprofit sector, a world we well. The insights hold up just as easily for leadership in any context.

There is something in me — I’m sure there’s an explanation for it in one of the many personality tests out there — that immediately rejects, with a great deal of skepticism, any “type” I might be. At my very core, I rebel against the idea that a simple quiz, a formula, could ever truly get me. When I take these assessments and read the results, I feel judged and less-than. It doesn’t matter what it says. It could say “you have a friendly smile for everyone” and I would still feel judged by it.

Maybe that’s more than you wanted to know. Or maybe you feel the same way and are relieved someone finally said it out loud.

So why would the leadership style quiz be any different? Of course I was going to feel boxed up, judged, and misunderstood. That’s my starting line with this kind of information.

But this time, the feeling had a head start — because Marc and I had already argued about it, not long before I ever took the quiz.

The Doorway Argument

We’d just wrapped our morning meeting, and I was already halfway out of Marc’s office when it happened — one of those “one more thing” moments, tossed out casually as I was reaching for the door. He was still buzzing about the leadership styles quiz — the one we’d commissioned, part of the research we were about to offer as a resource — Servant Leadership, Transformational, Charismatic, Transactional, a whole taxonomy of ways to lead, and he couldn’t wait to share it with the world.

I turned around. I could feel it filling my lungs like a balloon before I’d even decided to say anything.

“Marc, Servant Leadership isn’t a style of leadership,” I said. “It’s leadership. It’s what anyone in a position of responsibility for people or an organization is mandated to do, and how they’re mandated to be.”

He tried, patiently, to walk me through the others — transformational, charismatic, transactional — real categories, he said, with real research behind them.

“Fine,” I said. “Those are add-ons. But they’re add-ons to what real, responsible leadership actually is.”

Underneath the argument was something I didn’t say out loud that morning: that “Servant Leader” is a diminutive kind of name for a set of behaviors that women — especially women in faith communities and nonprofits — are already socialized to perform for free. Calling it a “style,” available to some leaders and not others, felt like it let everyone else off the hook for the things I’d been quietly doing, and expected to do, all along.

We went back and forth until we ran out of runway, and landed where these things sometimes land: we agreed to disagree. Neither of us actually believed it. We each walked away just as certain as we’d walked in.

Marc — if you’re reading this, this is the part where I tell you that you were a little bit right.

The Quiz

A few months ago, I finally ended up taking the quiz myself — not because I’d changed my mind, but because we needed to test the CRM flow it fed into, and someone had to click through it. I wasn’t there for self-discovery. I was there to check that the email fired correctly.

But as I clicked through the questions, I found myself back in Marc’s doorway. The balloon in my lungs. This isn’t a style. This is leadership.

And then the email arrived: “You are a Servant Leader.”

Of course I was.

I read through the characteristics — emotional healing, empowering others, putting subordinates first, servanthood, and more — and I agreed with every single one. Not as my particular flavor of leading, but as a description of what leadership is. Which was, infuriatingly, exactly what I’d told Marc in his office. The quiz hadn’t taught me anything new about myself. It had just handed my own argument back to me with my name on it.

That’s when it occurred to me — slowly, and then all at once — that this was probably not a discovery unique to me. If I looked at “Servant Leadership” and saw the whole of leadership, then someone who scored as a Transformational Leader probably looked at their own results and thought the same thing: this isn’t a style, this is just what leadership means. Every one of us, defending our own reflection as the universal picture.

I thought about going back to Marc’s office to tell him he’d won. But that felt too small for what had actually happened — this wasn’t really about winning an argument in a doorway. It was about realizing I’d been looking at leadership through one particular window my whole life, so convinced it was the only window that I’d mistaken the view for the whole house.

So instead, I just kept the realization to myself. Until now, Marc. This is me telling you.

What It Looked Like in Practice

It mattered almost immediately, because we had a project coming up that would ask both of us to lead in very different ways at different times.

Rather than feeling misunderstood or unsupported, I was able to see the project like a timeline, like a landscape — the whole, not just the parts I was focused on and most comfortable with. That also let me celebrate and support Marc when he was operating in his strength, instead of quietly wishing he’d operate in mine.

Knowing your leadership style gives you a place to keep learning and growing in ways that are actually aligned with how you’re meant to lead. It brings light to your style so you can adjust to best serve your team, and invite others around you to strengthen and even out how leadership moves your mission forward. Inviting others to know their leadership style invites them to sing their own song of leadership — rather than singing your style of leadership out of tune.

If you’re anything like me — a little suspicious of quizzes, a little sure you already know yourself — I’d still invite you to take the Leadership Style Quiz yourself. Not because it will tell you something you don’t already know, but because, like me, you might find it’s been in front of you all along.

(1): Concord Leadership Group partnered with Bloomerang, Boardable, and DonorSearch to fund the study through the Hartsook Centre for Sustainable Philanthropy at the University of Plymouth, UK.