Impact of Leadership Styles: What’s Your Leadership Style?
Have you ever wondered where you get your impression of an effective or ineffective, good or bad, leader?
The truth lies in the details of how a leader communicates, builds relationships, and influences team members and peers. In the context of doing business, a leader’s responsibility is to deliver successful outcomes with the resources that they have available to them, such as their team or organization. But what is the manner in which they leverage their resources to get things done? What is their leadership style? A leader’s style is their approach to influencing, guiding, and enabling a group to achieve successful delivery. Ultimately determining the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of their leadership and the success or failure of their group’s performance.
The combination of skills, actions, and philosophies that a leader applies to motivate and inspire their team to achieve success has a profound impact on outcomes. The purpose of adopting a leadership style is to foster and promote collaboration and a productive working environment to execute in. Enabling everyone to emphasize their strengths and work together to meet objectives. Leadership styles vary based on operating environments (or industry), the leader’s personality, and their group’s objectives. A compatible leadership style is a powerful element for successful outcomes and leadership excellence.
Different industries and levels of leadership require different skillsets. Although, there are fundamental intangibles that are common across the board, such as leadership style, temperament, etc. How teams are being led and managed directly impacts the success or failure of the health and morale of the organization. It also impacts the outcome of what they are working together to deliver. Leadership is either constructive or destructive depending on how they go about implementing their strategies. Which is why it is imperative for leaders to be flexible and adaptable when employing a leadership style that is compatible with their operating environment and authentic to them as a person. There needs to be a healthy balance in order to produce the best possible outcome.
Imagine This
You are a leader at a young financial technology (FinTech). You are known for having a transactional leadership style, which emphasizes reward and punishment. Quick to criticize or praise your employees for their performance, and even your peers. At the same time, the FinTech company that you work for has a strong emphasis on relationships and collaboration. Relying heavily on relationships, and building and maintaining trust with employees and business partners in order to achieve success.
While noticing your team is not executing well. You receive feedback that your team(s), and business partners that you work with closely, are feeling dissatisfied with your approach. They want to be more involved in decision-making processes, but feel that your transactional style does not allow for the collaboration and trust-building that the company values. What would you do with that feedback? How do you recover?
Choosing the right leadership style depends on a multitude of factors. First and foremost, leaders must be aware of who they are, their personality, and environments that they work well in. It is paramount to take the time to self assess and assess the working environment, needs, goals, and objectives of the group that they are leading. For there to be success, there needs to be authentic compatibility. It’s no longer enough to simply rely on experience. Referencing the list of leadership styles displayed earlier in this piece, leadership styles are not finite and that is not a comprehensive list. Who the leader is as a person is a significant dependency to their success of failure. In turn, the long term success or failure of their teams.
The impact of leadership style is profound because it is imprinted on all frameworks, processes, and operations that their group navigates. A leader's choice of style has strong influence on the success of their team and organization. Just as working environments are not static, neither are humans in leadership nor their styles. Leadership excellence demands leaders to be adaptable and flexible in the circumstance they find themselves in. Different styles are more effective according to the situation. Leaders should strive to be aware of the different types of leadership styles that exist, and be willing to adjust to the needs of their company and organization. When the right leadership style is chosen according to their personality and the operating environment. It creates and promotes a more productive organization and enables successful outcomes.
