Understanding Leadership and Its Various Faces
Your company would not be as successful if the capabilities of the organizational leaders are not reliable. Consider using training in leadership development to even out the diverse types of leadership among your managers.
Keep Things the Same
In the workplace, there are theoretically as many forms of leadership as there are personality types in the world. Such differences can make the workplace a beautifully varied and wildly inconsistent location, like the world. Though leadership styles can vary from one individual to another, success is what should remain constant. No matter what leadership style they employ, leaders may encourage consistent employee efficiency, but only with leadership development training to help them recognize and alter those habits that lead to inconsistency.
Find a Mentor to Develop Leadership Skills
There are myriad forms of leadership. During every step of the process, some leaders inform and consult their staff, get input on future steps and provide feedback on minute information. To make team members feel as strongly dedicated to their mission and success targets as to their personal beliefs, dynamic leaders use their enthusiasm and persuasive abilities. As obsessive personal trainers, some coaches, some cajoling, and some set the tempo and trim excess fat; others encourage their teams to decide the pace that works best for them to succeed.
Just like no two workers are alike, no two respond to the same style of leadership identically. Leaders may and should change their strategy from time to time, based on where an employee is in their career. For instance, new team members will need more coaching, and in hands-off environments where they enjoy autonomy and self-sufficiency, highly experienced professionals excel. On the other hand, no two leaders are alike, but every leader’s purpose is the same: to boost employee efficiency. To maintain consistency in their organization, leaders must promote consistent results. So, although some diversity in leadership styles can affect, maintaining continuity between different leaders is also important for an organization.
Maintain an Even Keel
Consistency doesn’t compensate for individuality! We all admire diversity, and between personality styles and experiences, it’s unavoidable. When interacting with different markets, consumers, or client bases, variations in thinking, culture, learning style, and personality are key components of effective business operations.
However, because of those differences, what can impede performance is inconsistency or unpredictability. Inconsistent strategies between teams, divisions, or organizations can lead to inconsistent outcomes. There are minor variations in procedures and communication styles, but it can be a challenge for workers to work on engagements that span several departments of numerous leaders. “Most work environments are very dynamic, involving a virtual whirlwind of change, and the leader must provide “anchors” of stability wherever possible,” Dr. James Brown of Seba Solutions argues.
Empathy is Critical to Effective Leadership
Don’t worry if this continuity doesn’t come easily to your leaders. Deploying company-wide leadership development training can help create core skills and form habits that allow corporate leaders to be more closely aligned, without requiring them to fully change their leadership styles.
Emotional intelligence (EI) has become as popular a leadership term as the balance of work-life in the break room has. The theory he developed over 30 years ago is described by Daniel Goleman as comprising four domains[1]: self-knowledge, self-management, social awareness, and management of relationships. There are twelve EI competencies, learned and learnable skills nestled within each domain that facilitate excellent performance at work or as a leader.
More anxiety, depression, and drug dependence tend to be encountered by less emotionally intelligent individuals than those who handle and better control emotions. In the workplace, this can manifest as a leader not being able to resolve the low performance of their staff, not being able to provide a team member with challenging input, or any number of dispute resolution situations that have gone wrong.
Where Can You Hone Your Leadership Competency
It can be difficult to handle on-the-job preparation for emotional intelligence, but coaches or video training can quickly provide practical opportunities to learn and practice. Consider role-playing, for example, a scenario where leaders must include negative news about the success of a team member while applying the concepts of empathy, boundary-setting, and self-control that are foundations of emotional intelligence.
A lack of emotional intelligence, on the other hand, can lead to dissatisfied leaders repeating unsuccessful actions, only to see the same team outcomes. Expanding the tools and resources that leaders can have access to express themselves in different ways and to provide clear anchors for any form of leadership style for different audiences. Interactive eLearning environments will provide leaders with a dynamic experience to test various conversational skills.
And finally, watching others make mistakes often will help leaders be objective about future mistakes or mistakes that cause workplace uncertainty and inconsistency. A short video of another leader providing a team member with input will help leaders to recognize opportunities for change before implementing them to the job in a low-stakes, no-pressure environment.
Grow Leaders Within Your Organization
Leadership styles can be built and honed over time, like any talent. It is not only based on hidden internal states and characteristics of personality. Your organization will create talented, consistent leaders with a bit of effort. Regardless of their leadership style, professional development is essential for team members, and those anchors of continuity are critical for team members of every level of experience.