Leadership Styles — Strengths Based

Let’s face it, we’re all leaders.

It could be that we were anointed with a title and a position in our profession or community. Or, perhaps life and circumstance have thrust us into a situation that requires us to hone our leadership skills and our ability to influence others. We demonstrate leadership when we make a difference to our organization, our community and the people we love.

If you’re alive, you’re a leader in one way or another.

If we are ALL leaders, then it’s likely that our leadership style is as unique as we are. So the question is, what kind of leader are you?

There are numerous models that claim to identify effective leadership styles and frameworks. Their intent is to inform the consolidation of your professional style and your individual personality into one cohesive structure.

Good leaders often possess a combination of various “leadership qualities.” However, the most successful leaders are able to adapt to the needs of different professional and personal situations, employing their diverse set of leadership skills in order to achieve their goals.

Of course a quick Internet search will return dozens of leadership models, but in this short mini-series, we’ll consider three:

• Strengths Based Leadership
• Human Needs Leadership
• Intentional Leadership

As we kickoff the series In Part 1, we’ll investigate the Strengths Based leadership model. Stay tuned for Part 2 and Part 3 in coming weeks.

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Strength Based Leadership

In their bestselling book, Strengths Based Leadership, coauthors Tom Rath and Barry Conchie examined “the specific emotional needs people have to experience with their leaders in order to feel engaged and connected to the organization and their day-to-day work.”(Rath & Conchie, 2009) They refer to these people as “Followers” of the leader.

Leaders that provide or enable these specific emotional needs build teams of followers that are more engaged and connected to their organization. They are more aligned, more inspired and more empowered to activate goals and objectives. Team members are more personally satisfied and motivated by the realization that they are contributing in a meaningful way.

Let’s look at the “Followers’ Four Basic Needs” as compiled by B.J. Brim when writing for Gallup:

• Trust: Building trust is the foundation for leading. Honesty, clarity and behavioral predictability all make up trust. (Brim, 2021)
• Do you trust your leader? Do your people trust you? Trust is built and cultivated when all parties respect and adhere to commitments, agreements and expectations. Without open, honest, and frequent communication, trust cannot exist.
• Compassion: Being compassionate means caring about your followers holistically while seeing them as more than just their ability to perform (Brim, 2021)
• Compassion sounds a lot like empathy, “the ability to recognize, understand, and share the thoughts and feelings of another person.” Developing empathy is crucial for establishing relationships and behaving compassionately.” (Psychology Today, 2022) Are you a compassionate leader? Is your leader? Leaders that are able to connect empathetically engender trust, stability, and hope.
• Stability: Providing stability looks like creating space where people feel psychologically safe, like they can depend on you to answer their questions, hear their ideas and address their concerns. (Brim, 2021)
• Confidence, calmness, openness, a steady hand, and an even temper help a leader minimize unnecessary tension, anxiety, and discord within the team.
• Hope: Encourage people to believe in a better future. While stability focuses on today, hopefulness deals with the future. (Brim, 2021)
• “Hope springs eternal” is the old maxim, and it’s true for teams that have an empathetic, enthusiastic leader. Expressing optimism that even if things are good today (or if times are trying right now,) greater things are in store for tomorrow, drives a team to strive for success every day.

According to this leadership model, trust, compassion, stability, and hope need to be the four primary tools in your leadership tool box.

• If you are a people leader, at which of the four are you the most adept? Which one, or ones, need the most work for you to achieve a level of competency?
• If you are a “follower” as defined in this article, which of the four are most important to you in a manager?
  Which leads to an interesting question — can a person truly be a leader without trust, compassion, stability, and hope — or are they more likely a manager and not truly a leader?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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Look for additional installments of this series coming soon:

• Part 2: The Human Needs Leadership Model
• Part 3: The Intentional Leadership Model
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Sources:

Brim, B. J., ED.D. (2021). Strengths-Based Leadership: The 4 Things Followers Need. Gallop CliftonStrengths.
https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/251003/strengths-…

Wiederman, M. W., Ph.D. (2022). To Flourish, Humans Are Motivated by Four Universal Needs. Psychology Today.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mindful-professional…

Wilkinson, R., & Leary, K. (2020). Leading with Intentionality: The 4P Framework for Strategic Leaderships. Working Papers, (384).
https://bsc.cid.harvard.edu/files/bsc/files/2020-09-cid-wp-3…

Rath, T., & Conchie, B. (2009). Strengths based leadership. Gallup Press.Psychology Today (n.d.). Basics — Define Empathy.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/empathy#:~:text=Em… 

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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