Leadership styles - all for one and one for all?

Currently I'm involved in a paper at AU called 'Introduction to Leadership in Education'.  Our first few readings have been about leadership styles and identifying the skills and attributes of a Leader.  Reading these have given me the opportunity to not only have a greater insight into leadership and the elements there of, but it has made me look at my own leadership skills and attributes and allowed me to identify next steps in my own leadership style from a personal perspective.

The terms that have been bandied round are transactional, transformational, change agency, teamwork, servant leadership, carnivalesque, situational leadership and so on.  It's all new learning to me and reading about each element and putting previous experiences with, and labels on, previous role models and reflecting on my own ideas of leadership has opened up a whole new vision of what a leaders is/should be/could be in my mind.  There are so many layers to leadership and within each layer are a multitude of elements, many of which intertwine between layers. 

At this time in my study and the learning I've been involved with so far, what has spoken most clearly to me is 'to adopt any one element of leadership is not a means to achieve success as a leader.'  On the contrary, success is achieved through the careful selection of a variety of leadership styles demonstrating responsiveness to the context in which they are administered.

I'm thoroughly enjoying working my brain around the complexities of educational leadership and am looking forward to sharing more of my thoughts and new learning as I wade through this paper and add to my kite of knowledge in education.