The Need to Develop Your Leadership Styles
If you’re leading a change project (or any other project for that matter), it’s vitally important that you develop your leaderships styles. Understanding your own style and where other strengths are required ensures that you can develop a strong and sustainable change that has the support of a number of individuals and team members with differing skill-sets. Here are just a few points to bare in mind in order to develop your leadership styles.
Be Self-Aware
Being self-aware is the keystone to being a good leader and unlocks potential for an organisation.
There are three domains of leadership, as described by Pendleton and Furness: Strategic, interpersonal (dealing with people) and operational. You should be aware that no single leader can be good at all of these domains. The key to leadership is, therefore, to identify what it is that you are good at (your default style) and how you can find people in your leadership team to fill in the gaps.
Know Your Default Style and the Effect it has on Others
Every leadership style has consequences (sometimes positive and in other situations negative) that you must be aware of. For example, my natural style is pacesetting which essentially means I led and encourage others to follow. I’ve noticed however that this can disempower people as they are waiting for me to do something before they act.
Ben Goldman identifies 6 leadership styles and explores the different levels of effectiveness at generating a positive climate in teams and organisations. In his analysis he shows that coercive leadership (essentially ‘do as I say’) is the least effective, whereas a democratic style (‘let’s work together’) is the strongest for creating a positive climate.
Different Styles for Different Situations
When I talk about leadership, note that I talk about styles not style. As previously mentioned, everyone has a default leadership style, but to be a good leader you must be dynamic.
Anything you do regarding leadership has a context (i.e. a change in company goals or the launch of a new project). The ever-changing context therefore requires different leadership styles to drive results. This is often defined as situational leadership.
In order to achieve different styles for different situations, one must be self-aware and learn to be reflective. Understanding situations in relation to your default style enables you to identify what is needed to create a positive climate in your team and drive results. This may mean utilising a style that you are not usually comfortable with, but this is something a strong leader must deal with and know how to overcome.
Do a Personality Profiler
Personality profiling is an important part of developing your leadership styles, and you may be familiar with some tools that allow you to do this (such as Myers Briggs or DISC).
By completing a personality profiler, the point is not to obsess over what it says about yourself, but instead should be used to identify how you might be perceived. For example, my personality is that of an introvert meaning I internalise answers. My natural behaviour in team brainstorming sessions is therefore to remain quiet and internalise information, which is no bad thing. As a result of this however, people may perceive me as arrogant or not a team player.
By realising this and understanding the consequences of my personality I am able to adapt. In brainstorming sessions I go out of my way to be active to help establish a positive environment. Knowing what you’re like should be seen as a spring-board to how other people see and respond to you; from here you can make any necessary changes in different situations.
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