Fluid Leadership. Leadership is not a static effort. Rather, leaders should choose their leadership style depending on their circumstance. Often, however, when we think about leadership, there is a tendency to categorise the different styles as either good or bad. Yet different styles achieve different results. Are leaders looking to motivate a team or are they pursuing growth? Leadership styles are not intrinsically good or bad, they are different. Each has its own positives and negatives.
Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee identified six leadership styles in their book, Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence. The authors suggested that each style serves a very different objective and that leaders should be able to effortlessly move from one to the other.
-
The Visionary Leader
Visionary leaders have an innate ability to paint a vivid picture of the future. They motivate their team towards this destination and do not dictate how to arrive there. They trigger new ways of thinking and encourage their team to proactively find solutions through their own initiative. This leadership style works best when a clear strategic direction is identified, or radical change is needed in the business.
-
The Commanding Leader
Commanding leaders adopt an autocratic approach to leadership. They typically display a high resistance to delegating control and decision-making. They default to the threat of punishment and exert their authority to instruct teams to get work done. Although often denounced, this leadership style is well-suited to times of crises or when dealing with problematic team members.
-
The Coaching Leader
Coaching leaders place emphasis on understanding individual team members’ values and personal goals and aligning them with those of the business. This style is characterised by collaboration. Coaching leaders promote teamwork and creativity and encourage team members to provide feedback instead of blame, which creates a space for learning. This leadership style helps people to build their long term strengths, and those of the team.
-
The Affiliative Leader
Affiliative leaders put people above all else. They emphasise emotional connection and promote an agreeable culture, increasing employee morale. These leaders excel at building high performing teams even though their focus is not about performance, but rather in ensuring team members feel connected and part of a greater whole. This leadership style is best when it comes to dealing with divisions in teams or as motivation during high pressure periods.
-
The Democratic Leader
Democratic leaders have a strong focus on collaboration, deliberately looking for their team to provide input. A democratic leadership style encourages a more active role by team members in decision making and is a better suited approach when working with more experienced team. This leadership style encourages a free flow of ideas and works to create agreement or when team input is required.
-
The Pacesetting Leader
Pacesetting leaders place a strong emphasis on achievement and performance. They expect a high level of excellence and do not easily accept the poor performance of team members. Whiles this style can be motivating to some, others may react negatively. It can result in burnout, and the high churn of team members. This leadership style works best for ensuring solid results from a highly competent team.
The Leadership Shapeshifter
If 2020 has shown us anything, it is that businesses need to be agile and be able to adapt quickly in this complex world. This requires agile leadership. An effective leader is adaptable and has perfected the art of seamlessly shifting from one leadership style to another, responding to ever-evolving threats and opportunities. An effective leader instinctively knows how to inspire peak performance within their teams.
To lead effectively, you need to understand your dominant leadership style, and that requires you to find clarity on why you do what you do, what you truly care about, and how you make decisions. The hallmark of an effective leader is the ability to first look inward. And an acceptance of this exposes a myriad of opportunities for you as a leader to develop the intuition to adapt your style and build stronger teams.
I have witnessed this firsthand with many of the business leaders I work with. One example that comes to mind is of a woman who, when she took over her utility business, had to grapple with inherited legacy issues. Her first task was to craft a vision for the future of her business. She had to make it so enticing that it captured the imagination of the entire team as a collective. During this period, she adopted the style of visionary leader. After collectively developing a strategy to realise this vision, she sat down with each executive, as a democratic leader, to understand the implications it held for them personally and how they could make this work as a team. Then, when COVID-19 struck, the business lost a vital contract. Leading from the front, she acted swiftly and decisively to manage the crisis. At this point she needed to turn into the company’s commander as she sought to bring stability across the business.
By being able to change her leadership style, not only did she ger her entire team behind her vision and strategy for the business, she was also able to effectively lead the company through one of the most challenging times in its history. This reassured her staff and won them over, she secured a greater sense of loyalty and respect, and her actions motivated them to be better team players.
The Deliberate Leader
Being able to switch between leadership styles requires you, as a leader, to be deliberate in increasing your leadership capability. I always urge leaders to slow down and not to react to situations, but to rather evaluate an event thoroughly. They can then choose the appropriate leadership style to suit their challenge. Here are some of the insights I share around effective leadership:
- Be present – It is essential that leaders remain present in their businesses. Their decisions for the future need to be informed in the reality of the here and now.
- Be Clear – clarity about communicating your vision, goals and expectations is paramount when effectively leading a winning team.
- Be energetic – Make a considered choice to be optimistic and adopt a positive attitude. This kind of energy is highly contagious and easily rubs off on those around.
- Be prepared to lose -The best leaders take responsibility for the results their team achieves. Taking ownership when things go wrong requires extraordinary humility and courage, but it influences team culture, builds trust, and helps strengthen your team in the long run.
- Be equipped – develop a hunger to learn and develop yourself as a leader, this will equip you with the tools required to build and lead a winning team.
Deliberate leaders are effective leaders. They can intuitively adopt different leadership styles to build winning teams and drive consistent results in their business. This however requires a sense of self-awareness and the discipline to adapt your leadership style to best suit your current challenges and meet your teams’ needs.
