By Michael Holland –
Your leadership style is a melting pot of your personality, your life experiences, your natural/preferred communication style, the level of your emotional intelligence, and your perspective.
The success of both young leaders and well-seasoned leaders in eliciting the willing collaboration of others toward a worthwhile goal depends heavily on the capability of these leaders to be self-actualized.
In other words, how well does a leader know their style, and, more importantly, how well can they adjust their style to meet the demands of moment?
Knowing your leadership style enables you to be successful in these three areas.
Enabling Relationship Margin
Superficial relationships with employees are easy but there is little relationship margin which is defined as the space, latitude and time offered to you from a trusted relationship.
Understanding both how you react and how others perceive your reaction to pressure, delegation, conflict, stress, and success creates a relationship margin.
This margin of a split second to several seconds buys you the time to read the situation and appropriately adjust your style.
Creating and Sustaining Momentum
First, fully understand how and why your momentum fluctuates.
Then, seek to understand how you de-motivate others, both intentionally and unintentionally.
Your goal is to reach a level of self-actualization wherein you understand how you can motivate others, both directly and through the leaders who may work for you.
Building Leadership Maturity
Immature leaders act. Mature leaders think, act, and reflect.
Mature leaders gather intelligence from all interactions – even boring meetings – to add to their understanding of human dynamics.
Mature leaders have high emotional intelligence: they are socially aware enough to self-manage themselves so that they can build strong relationships.
As you mature, so will other leaders around you, and thus you will help to raise the leadership capacity of the organization.
Want to know more about leadership style? Check out these items. . .
- See a sample Everything DiSC Management assessment
- See our Leadership Model
- See a sample Everything DiSC Work of Leaders assessment
Coaching Thoughts – For You and Your Peers
- What are some of your natural leadership tendencies? Make a list of some of the characteristics that define you as a leader.
- Why do you think that understanding your natural leadership tendencies will help you in the three areas mentioned here?
- Grab a peer manager and debate/discuss benefits of understanding your leadership style.
