Your Leadership Style: It’s not about you!
Your Leadership Style: It’s not about you! by Casey Reason
Leadership style refers to the behavioral approach employed by leaders when directing, motivating, and managing others. But how do leaders select and then adopt the style that they use?
Sadly, it’s a rather haphazard process. We may pick a style based on something or someone we’ve observed. Or, we will often pick a leadership style that's consistent with our own learning style, or personality. For example, a leader who is excellent in terms of their emotional adaptability, and emotional intelligence may find themselves really comfortable with a democratic leadership style, emphasizing team building and human connection. Or, someone who is inherently shy but very intentional may prefer a moral Laissez-Faire leadership style, relying on the adaptability of others and the sense that good leaders can emerge if you give them the opportunity.
The problem with both of these habits for driving a predominant leadership style is that they are generally speaking about the wrong things. They revolve around the experiences and the comfortability of the leader, rather than focusing on the situation and those being led. In other words, the best leaders develop a style that isn't focused on them. It's instead built around the needs of the situation, and the maturity and readiness of the group.
Consider these questions:
For each of these questions, give yourself a numeric rating of 0-5, with 0 being a low mark and representing resolute disagreement with five being the high mark representing 100% agreement. Remember, you can’t be all things to all people. Really think about what lands right with you.
I am a leader who believes that people must be carefully leveraged to perform. This means at times you might need to come up with incentives, or even the threat of punishment to make sure employees are complying.
I believe a leader must always construct a vision for what is and what could be. This means see yourself as the illustrator in chief, always illuminating what’s ahead for the organization.
I am a leader who understands that due to wisdom, or my team’s lack of overall readiness, I must be the one to make most of the important decisions for my team.
I am a leader who believes it's my job to build teams up within your organization so that together, people can perform.
I am a leader who believes that generally speaking, if you get out of people's way and let them discover their strengths and struggle through their challenges, they are ultimately better off. Sometimes the best thing I can do as a leader is to get out of the way.
I am a leader who believes in knowing the learning journey of everybody who reports to me. I want to help each individual person discover things about themselves, grow, and discover their connection to the organization's bigger purpose.
I'm a leader who understands that I'm going to have to lead differently in certain situations and show up with a different energy, influence and intention, depending on the person I am leading or supervising, or the situation we find ourselves in.
Consider your leadership circumstance
1. Transactional Leader-I am a leader who believes that people must be carefully leveraged to perform.
This is a style that is generally not very trusting. Although this is generally not seen as a very advisable leadership style, it is occasionally employed in situations where trust is lacking and potentially high degrees of supervision are required because of some negative circumstances.
2. Transformational Leader- I believe a leader must always construct a vision for what is and what could be. You see yourself as the illustrator in chief as to what’s ahead for the organization.
This is a great style for setting the course and leading change. In fact, most theorists suggest that it is truly one of the most effective styles for successfully transforming an organization. Perhaps the only time this style may not work is if you are leading in a situation where there is a high degree of managerial, in the moment demand and there isn't much time for giving focus to change, new ways forward, and innovation (Deng, C., Gulseren, D., Isola, C., Grocutt, K., & Turner, N. ,2023).
3. Autocratic Leader- I am a leader who understands that due to wisdom, or my team's lack of overall readiness, I must be the one to make most of the important decisions for my team.
This leadership style is more helpful in situations where those being led are lacking in skills and experience to execute appropriate decision making. However, an autocratic mindset serves to significantly demotivate mature, high autonomy seeking peak performers who want to be inspired and engaged and don't need correction and direction, at least not as much.
4. Democratic Leader-I am a leader who believes it's my job to build teams up within your organization so that together, people can perform?
This leadership style works in a variety of settings. By focusing on building a team, this leadership style serves to be one of the strongest elements in building organizational culture (Hilton, S.K., Arkorful, H., & Martins, A. ,2021).). Furthermore, problem solving is often enhanced with this approach. That said, a leader who focuses on this stylistic intention has to know how to build teams, solve team based problems, and deal with the complexity of people working together and be patient through the need for multiple iterations. Some leaders are more autocratic than democratic because they simply don't want to take the time, or don't have the time to make decisions collectively and collaboratively.
5. Laissez–Faire-I am a leader who believes that generally speaking, if you get out of people's way and let them discover their strengths and struggle through their challenges, they are ultimately better off. Sometimes the best thing I can do as a leader is to get out of their way.
To be effective as a Laissez Faire leader You must be leading a group that is mature enough to somewhat lead themselves. In other words, this type of leadership style works well with groups that will be OK if you don't check up on them for extended periods of time. They don't need direction and this type of leader believes in many respects that employees become more skilled and empowered if they know they have to solve problems for themselves.
6. Servant Leadership-I am a leader who believes in knowing the learning journey of everybody reports to me. I want to help each individual person discover things about themselves, grow, and discover their connection to the organization's bigger purpose.
Servant Leaders believe that change happens one conversation at a time, one individual commitment at a time, by building up the competency and commitment in each individual employee. This type of leader is interested in the big picture, but understands the importance of picking up the story of each employee and helping to understand how their involvement in their work serves their personal journey, serving the organization as well. This style once again creates raving fan followers and high levels of individual engagement. It may be a little harder to execute if a leader has an extraordinarily high number of direct reports.
7. Situational Leadership-I'm a leader who understands that I'm going to have to lead differently in certain situations and show up with a different energy, influence and intention, depending on the person I am leading or supervising.
Situational leaders see themselves as malleable to a variety of situations, variables, and the individual or small group needs in the moment. They have high degrees of emotional sensitivity and can tell what is required in the situation, and can bring that level of focus and attention. Sometimes situational leaders change their energy, their degree of flexibility, or even their voice patterns and pace as a mechanism for heightening the level of awareness and engagement of the followers, and actually increasing focus and intentionality. This style is most excellent 4 dealing with the spontaneous demands of change. However, it can be a bit difficult to teach for newer leaders in that the leader is required to flex and evolve with great dexterity in the moment, requiring high degrees of emotional awareness and the ability to change courses very quickly.
Conclusion
In the first section of this article, I hope you gave an honest assessment of what your instincts tell you about the kind of leader you want to be. As you thought about those descriptions, I hope you indeed were reflective on your habits, comfortability, and tendency to engage.
In the second part of the article, as you learned some of the basics of many of the most popular leadership archetypes, I hope that you realized that making a decision about leadership style isn't about what makes you comfortable or aligns with some prominent skill or communication tendency you might have period while those gifts will help you certainly along the way, you need to make the decision about your leadership style based on the needs of those around you. Without question, there are circumstances where each of the styles referenced in this article would no doubt be preferred, and some of the others, even with good intentions may not work as well. The goal is always for you to develop and maintain a style that's consistent with your values and beliefs, and is consistent with the needs of those around you, and the system you serve.
Deng, C., Gulseren, D., Isola, C., Grocutt, K., & Turner, N. (2023). Transformational leadership effectiveness: an evidence-based primer. Human Resource Development International, 26(5), 627–641
Hilton, S.K., Arkorful, H., & Martins, A. (2021). Democratic leadership and organizational performance: the moderating effect of contingent reward. Management Research Review, 44(7), 1042-1058.