One of the greatest leaders I have ever seen had this powerful way of getting people to do what he wanted without having to ask. He learned how to communicate in a way that trained his team to take initiative and quickly handle tasks. They were eager to make him happy because he had a way of making his people feel special.
This is the power of developing your leadership style—creating a team of people who respect and trust you while contributing their best to accomplish a common goal. Leading is an action, and actions are more effective when they’re conducted with intention and awareness. This article will help you develop an adaptable, 21st-century leadership style that allows you to lead the way your people need you to, while staying true to yourself.
Take Stock of Your Values
This is important—lean in and listen closely. When taking stock of your values, do NOT think about your values in terms of what you believe makes you a good person by someone else’s standards. Being conscious about your values helps you create a leadership style that is authentic to you. Your values will also show you where you need to do the work to become a better leader and where you can head off potential issues at the pass.
For example, one person might value relationships, creativity, and independence, whereas another leader might value collaboration, open communication, and consistency.
The first person may be really good at building people up and developing friendships (value of relationships), praising out-of-the-box solutions (value of creativity), and may find themselves getting annoyed when their team members are constantly coming to them for input and guidance on problem areas (value of independence).
This leader is likely to create teams of people who like them and nurture their team’s adaptability so that they come to the table with strong, thoughtful ideas that move the needle forward for the company. But they’re also likely to unintentionally break their team’s trust if they take a “figure it out yourself” mentality when it comes to supporting their team with projects and tasks.
The second person may excel with building team dynamics (value of collaboration), giving team members the platform to share their ideas and stuck points so they feel heard (value of open communication), and struggle with the noncohesive schedules that can happen during remote work completed at the team member’s discretion (value of consistency).
This leader is likely to create teams that have great communication, build off of one another, and feel comfortable seeking out help, which can help the leader avoid delays or pauses on project deliverables because the team stays the course easier. But this leader can have issues with their team if they try to hold the reins too tightly and create an overly regimented process or schedule for their team to follow.
Taking stock of your values isn’t necessarily about creating a team that will conform to them. It’s about being able to see your default mindset and motivations that could create conflict with your team, so you can avoid unnecessary issues and create a stronger workflow with your people.
Understand How People Perceive You
Part of your leadership style is based on your values. Another piece of your leadership style is guided by the people you’re leading. For example, how you see yourself is one thing. How other people see you is completely different.
When you communicate, you have the full context of what you’re saying, the intention behind it, and a vision for why you’re saying the words you’re saying. For others, especially team members, your words and actions may not be as clear. It’s easy to be consistently misunderstood when you’re not objectively watching yourself.
Here’s why this is important. If you don’t understand how your people perceive you, you can’t fully understand how to build a relationship with or motivate them because you don’t have a picture of the actual obstacles you’re overcoming.
For example, a leader’s team struggles to get their work in on time, making the past four projects late for clients. The leader assumes the team is lazy and they need to look for replacements. In reality, the team is afraid to ask for help when they need it because they’re afraid of getting a negative reaction from the leader. If the leader in this scenario understood how their people viewed them and could take action to shift the fear their team has, it would save the company thousands upon thousands of dollars in turnover and training costs for new employees and actually make them hundreds of thousands of dollars more in increased productivity and performance.
Understand Your Mix of People
When it comes to leadership, there are only about a handful of hard and fast rules: be respectful, be responsible, honor consent, and do your best by your people. So it lends to reason that you may need to build in some flexibility to the way you lead your people depending on how they need to be led.
Every team has a variety of personalities on it. And with those personalities come groups of similarities and differences. Think about it like high school.
In a classroom, you’ve predominantly got groups of jocks, nerds, creatives, and loners. Each of these groups communicate differently. What excites a group of football players might scare or shut down a group of creatives. So as the leader, the teacher has to find the similarities and differences in order to get their point across so each person in the classroom has their best chance for success.
The same goes for your team. You likely have a team with some strong, Type A personalities, and some personalities that are a little more sensitive. Understanding the distribution of personality types you have and what motivates them, will help you lead them (and the company) to success.
One of the simplest ways to figure this out is to have your team take a personality and behavioral assessment. This can give you important information on how your team members communicate, what makes them feel inspired, what they need to perform their best, and how to best reward them.
Becoming the Leader Your Company Needs
Twenty-first-century leadership is about adaptability, emotional intelligence, and strong strategic prowess. Leadership is no longer about putting people in their place so they will do what you say and stay in their lane. That type of motivation is going the way of the Dodo because it’s no longer effective. Not to mention, markets and companies are changing at rapid rates. There’s no room for rigid leadership that ignores what’s best for the company at large.
When you’re looking at how to best lead your people, develop your leadership style in this recipe format:
Your values + team perception + team needs + company needs = your current leadership style
Think about your leadership style like you would your sense of fashion. Some things you try will change with the seasons or certain trends. Some things you’ll try on for size and they won’t fit. And others will become an integral part of how you operate as a leader and a person. All of these things create an adaptable leadership style that can help you motivate your team to success.
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