Leadership Styles Explained: Find Out How You Lead

Today's episode is talking about what I believe is the most important first step in leadership - knowing your leadership style. Whether you're an aspiring leader, a new leader, someone who's been at it for a while or an absolute seasoned pro, you need to know what your natural leadership style is. So why is this important?   Your leadership style is happening, whether you know about it or not. If you think about gravity, you do not need to know what gravity is to know that if you drop a pen, it will hit the ground. It's the same with your leadership style, whether you know what your leadership style is or not, it is happening. You have a natural style that you are doing in your leadership, whether you know about it or not. So best to know what it is. 

In today's podcast episode, I'm talking about Goleman's six leadership styles, helping you to see your strengths and blind spots, and a free quiz to get some personalised feedback.

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Episode Transcript:

Kate Peardon: 0:00

Most people work along their technical career till they get to a point where they're really good at what they do technically and then they get given a group of people to manage. Now leading people is a completely different skillset to what you technically do. So if you were an engineer and you're a really good engineer often, then you get the job of leading the engineers. But that doesn't make you a good leader. Leadership is a skill that you need to learn and train. Leaders are not born. They are made. Today's episode is talking about what I believe is the most important first step in leadership. And that is knowing your leadership style, whether you're an aspiring leader, a new leader, someone who's been at it for a while or an absolute seasoned pro, you need to know what your natural leadership style is. So why is this important? Your leadership style is happening, whether you know about it or not. If you think about gravity, you do not need to know what gravity is to know that if you drop a pen, it will hit the ground. It's the same with your leadership style, whether you know what your leadership style is or not, it is happening. You have a natural style that you are doing in your leadership, whether you know about it or not. So best to know what it is. There are so many different ways that you can understand the leadership style and all profiles and leadership tools are great. As long as they help you to understand about yourself. And see where your pros are or where your strengths are and perhaps where some of the blind spots are. In today's podcast episode, I'm talking about Goleman's six leadership styles. The reason I'm talking about this particular one is it's one that is easily accessible. And it's one that I have a free quiz on the website. So you don't need to fork out 500 a thousand,$2,000 to do a leadership profile. You can find this free quiz on a Zenith Journey dot com and along the top banner, there is take the leadership quiz. You can also find it in the resources section under leadership quiz. Now this is five, 10 minutes it will take you, so it's not going to tell you your future or your past, but it's going to give you a great insight On what your preferences are as a leader. And if you haven't listened to one of my episodes called the Leadership Ladder, which you can search in your podcast platform Level at Leadership, The Leadership Ladder. And it explains that most people work along their technical career till they get to a point where they're really good at what they do technically and then they get given a group of people to manage. Now leading people is a completely different skillset to what you technically do. So if you were an engineer and you're a really good engineer often, then you get the job of leading the engineers. But that doesn't make you a good leader. Leadership is a skill that you need to learn and train. Leaders are not born. They are made. Yes. Some people have some natural traits that make it easier for them, but it's something that you can learn. Now. Yes, you can learn leadership and yes, you already have a leadership style that is happening, whether you know about it or not. So let's learn a little bit about these six leadership styles and see which of these, you might be able to see yourself in, what some of these strengths are, and perhaps what are some blind spots for your leadership? And by the end of the podcast episode, I'd love it. If you can take one thing and apply it into your day to day leadership, And this is whether you have a leadership title or not we all have a leadership style. So why is it so important to know this leadership style? And that's because your approach directly impacts your team's performance, morale, success. and when you're aware of your style, You can flex into this style or other stars and adapt as you need. There's a saying if the only tool you have is a hammer. Every problem looks like a nail and it's the same for your leadership style. If you are a Visionary person and you're always looking at the big picture and the future. You think that is a solution for every leadership situation, where sometimes people need more detail, they need more management rather than"here's the goal, I'll see you at the end". So if you know your leadership preference, you can also understand the other Leadership Styles And which ones you might need to grab, like putting on a different hat or different tools in the tool belt, depending on the situation. Let's get into the styles and see if you can see it yourself in one or two of these. the first leadership style is known as Commanding or Coercive Leadership. I'm going to refer to it as Commanding. This particular style is a leader that is"do what I say". This is a great crisis mode leadership, and often seen what a company or team is in trouble and rapid decisions are necessary. One of the downsides of this is it can demoralize teams because it can limit creativity and input from others. So people don't often feel empowered or trusted because the leader makes all decisions. They believe they have the answer and they tell people what to do. a non-work example, if I'm doing surf lifesaving, and we're onto a rescue. You want someone to take control of the situation and tell people what to do. It can be really great in these crisis situations. If you were using this style every day in your work situation, the challenges are people don't think for themselves. They rely on you to tell them what to do. And the challenge is people don't feel empowered or trusted. So an example is a CEO stepping into a failing company. might immediately cut cost, layoff employees, centralise decisions. It's a really great short term to get everyone on the same page, but long-term, it can create negative fear-driven culture. If it's overused. If this is one of your go-to's. My suggestion would be to think about when to use this and when to reach for a different leadership style. So, this is one of the styles that isn't great long-term just for short term. The second style is the visionary leader. This latest sounds like"come with me". They're very good at providing a clear direction and rallying people around a long-term goal. They're particularly motivating and inspiring. Especially when a team needs a new direction or a big picture to work towards, often allow freedom and long as the vision is achieved. The challenge with this style is open the, don't give the details of how to get there. Sometimes they can work very quickly. They're so far into the future. They forget to bring people with them. very popular example is Steve jobs. When he returned to apple in the nineties, he had this bold vision of simplifying products And transforming user experience this clear direction inspired the team to innovate and push boundaries. Now. If they didn't have people within the company that could make the plan of how to make this happen, then it just becomes a pie-in-the-sky dream. So these particular style of a clear vision. And the visionary leader is excellent for setting direction. And if this is something that you leaned on quite a bit. One tip could be making sure that your team. Knows what the plan is to get there. The third style is Affiliative Leadership. Now, this leader is all about harmony, their mantra is people come first. They really focus on building strong emotional bonds within the team. One of the challenges with this style is too much focus on harmony can lead to a lack of performance or accountability. And if leaders avoid difficult conversations and they don't set clear goals, results can slip because they're focusing so much on the people. an example where this is great. You might be a manager, a creative agency might use this affiliative star to encourage collaboration, creative freedom, making sure people in the team feel safe to express their ideas without fear of judgment. If you're an Affiliative Leader, you'll probably have a wonderful harmony in your team and great focus on people. My tip for you would be to think about the task side of your leadership. And what needs to be done to make sure that the job is still getting done while you have a great people, first culture. The fourth style is Democratic Leadership. Now this approach is what do you think they're actively seeking input for the team, fostering collaboration and ownership. This style is great for getting buy-in and commitment from team members. It's also great for tapping into people's collective knowledge, making people feel heard and valued, but the downside is if you were getting everybody's opinion before making a decision, it can slow decision-making. So anytime you need something to happen quickly. This can slow you down. And now the challenge with this is, are you looking for everyone's opinion and you're just going to choose the most popular one, or you getting people's opinions and then you make the decision as a leader, be really clear if you are looking for your team to have a Voice or a Vote. Uh, Voice means you want their opinion. A Vote means their opinion is an equal vote to everybody else's and to yours. And as a leader, you have to make the tough decisions. You can't just make the popular decisions. All right. The fifth style is Pacesetting Leader. These leaders are so quick, their motto is"do as I do, now" they lead by example, they take on tasks themselves and they set the bar high. One of my first managers was a Pacesetting leader. And one of the challenges was people found her hard to work with because she worked so fast. I personally loved it. And I learned so much because I found it a challenge. That's not always the case. One of the challenges with it is it can also burn people out if you are working so fast, so often, people feel like they can never keep up. One of the great things about this style is. It's great. When the team is highly skilled and self-motivated, it drives excellence and faster results. A lot of people that start their own business Have a Pacesetting style because you need to be working long hours, setting high expectations for the team. You start doing everything yourself before you pass off to other people. it can create a culture of excellence and burnout that can become a real risk if everyone feels I can't match the latest pace, which is often. I've had people that are Pacesetting leaders and they say that no one can do it as well as I can do it, or as fast as I can do it. And sometimes it is an issue with how they're going about delegating or who they've hired. And sometimes it's just a Pacesetting that they have a Pacesetting style and it might not be realistic to consider that everyone's going to work at their pace. So when I'm working with Pacesetting leaders, we look at, okay, what structure and framework can we put in place? So we are not burning out the team and we're still getting results. And the final style is a Coaching Leadership style. This is one that I personally more naturally go to and it's focused on personal development, helping individuals improve for the future and their approaches. Try this. It's definitely a long-term capabilities build. So people that work with me, it's always about longterm learning and growth and developing talent. And whether you're developing the talent with my business or the business I'm working with, or you then grow enough that you go and move somebody somewhere else as a coaching leader, I still see both of those as success. The challenges are. It requires patience, it takes time for results to show. And if you're in an immediate crisis, this approach is not the best fit. one of the other challenges is not everybody wants to learn and grow all the time. Some people will say to me like Kate, I'm tired. I just want to know the answer. I don't want to be coached through it. So knowing when to use it and how to use it is quite key for this. So they're the six styles. I'll run you through them again as a bit of a refresher. So there was coercive or commanding style. I refer to it as commanding. There's the Visionary Leader. There's the affiliative leader. There's the Democratic Leader, Pacesetting and Coaching. Now, which is the best one. Everyone always wants the answer. I can tell you there's no one best answer. What this is a different leadership styles that you can pick and choose what is going to be most effective.

12:11

So now is the time to jump onto the website, ZenithJourney.Com or ZenithJourney.Com. along the top, you'll find a bar that says, take the leadership styles quiz. it will take you about five minutes and then you'll receive a personalized email with your Leadership Style and a few tips on how you can make the most of your style and also how you can use some of the other styles to become a more balanced leader. I hope you found today's episode valuable and make sure you hit subscribe or the plus button so you get new episodes as soon as they drop And you can also share this episode with a friend or a colleague that would also find this concept of Leadership Styles interesting and beneficial to their leadership journey. Thanks for taking the time today to learn about your leadership style and level up your leadership.