How Can You Become a More Effective Leader?

If you’ve been following our blog posts on the six major leadership styles, you know that leadership can appear to be a complicated and a multi-faceted concept. Every leader has his or her tendencies, but the most effective leaders understand that employing different styles at different times is the key to success.

Today, I want to wrap up our series on the leadership styles with a review and some thoughts to help you move forward.

Why Is Style Important?

Leadership expert and Harvard researcher Daniel Goleman identified six major leadership styles as a result of his extensive analysis of more than 3,000 middle-level managers over the course of three years. These styles are so important to understand because, as Goleman found, they are responsible for 30% of a company’s bottom-line profitability.

A leadership style encompasses many things, including personality, life experiences, level of emotional intelligence and more. It’s a complicated subject, but thanks to Goleman’s extensive research, it’s possible to understand what, exactly, makes a specific style effective — or ineffective — in certain scenarios.

For more than 20 years, I’ve witnessed and experienced just about everything that the corporate world has to offer, and I’ve seen companies try to improve their bottom lines in countless ways. But very few of them look at strength of leadership as a transformational factor.

I want to change all of that because I believe that an organization’s heart and soul — and it’s ability to profit — lies in leadership above all else. Sure, tweaking policies and procedures can drive results in a positive way, but focusing on effective leadership is a much better use of time, money and effort.

Awareness and Leadership Style

The key to great leadership isn’t learning how to be a “good” leader; it’s about becoming more self-aware and leveraging your emotional intelligence to facilitate shifting your style based on the situation and need at hand.

As you look back on your professional career, you can probably point to numerous examples of effective — and ineffective – leadership, and now you can lean on the lessons you’ve learned to help make you more successful in your efforts. When I reference self-awareness and emotional intelligence, this is what I mean:

• Awareness of your own natural leadership style and tendencies (self-awareness)
• Awareness of your people and what drives them
• Awareness of your organization’s mission and goals
• Awareness of the specific scenario you find your organization in
• Awareness of the urgency of your organization’s situation

You’re here because you want to be an effective and impactful leader, and that’s a great first step. For you, it’s important to take that self-awareness and put it into action in a way that allows you to not only understand the leadership styles, but to implement them in ways that reflect what your organization needs to move forward effectively. This means continuing to work on your awareness through expanding your emotional intelligence (EQ) and challenging yourself to recognize when an unfamiliar style might be the most appropriate for a given scenario.

Six Major Leadership Styles — A Review

Let’s review the six major leadership styles.

• The Pacesetting Leader presents his or her ability to achieve as an example of how the job should be done.
• The Authoritative Leader gets people to understand and believe in a common vision or goal, offering clear, inspiring direction to team members.
• The Affiliative Leader strengthens bonds between people within an organization, often with an ability to enhance a feeling of “belonging.”
• The Coaching Leader focuses on individuals, often placing team members’ personal, professional goals ahead of the company’s mission.
• The Coercive Leader demands strict compliance and high performance immediately and without question.
• The Democratic Leader gets people to “buy in” by building consensus and considering the thoughts and opinions of many individuals.

These styles all have their time and place in the corporate world, and if your goal is to be the most effective leader you can be, you need to be able to understand them all.

The first step is identifying your own natural leadership style and how it affects your organization. I encourage you to learn about your style in greater detail, even if you uncover some characteristics that may not be flattering.

• How does your style help your organization succeed?
• In what areas does your style clash with your team and/or your organization’s mission?
• Is your natural style appropriate for the specific situation your organization is experiencing right now?
• Is your natural style appropriate for the personalities you’re managing?

This type of honest exploration into your own style will help you identify areas where you can grow as a leader. Then, you can use your knowledge of the other leadership styles to help you craft a “super style” that incorporates aspects from all six, as needed.

Learn More

Are you ready to learn more about effective leadership? Are you wondering how you can improve your awareness and EQ in the interest of boosting your leadership abilities? Are you unsure which style is most reflective of your leadership tendencies?

Leaders Edge is here for you!

Let us know what you think and how we can help you maximize your potential as a leader in the modern business world!

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